Practitioner Knowledge

(This post serves as a rebuttal to some of the discussion around terminology in Ludology 278.)

How we talk about games changes based on our audience. General audiences need accessible language and the fewest specialized terms possible. For instance, the word 'drafting' does not appear in the rulebook for Sushi Go!. Enthusiast audiences tolerate a high amount of terminology, the acquisition of which is considered part of the initiation process. However, enthusiast audiences don't necessarily tolerate nuanced, under-the-hood process discussions. For instance, discussing whether colonial themes are appropriate narratives to keep returning to in new games is seen by a large section of this audience as "limiting the artistic process." (In my opinion, the problem here is showing the enthusiast audience part of how the sausage is made, rather than the whole process or not at all.) Academic writers and audiences use highly specialized terms that borrow from other academic fields and can be incomprehensible to non-academics. When we talk about games we should use the language that fits best with the audience we are speaking to.

The final group in our subset of gaming languages is practitioners. Practitioners are those who work in a field at a practical level. Practitioners exist between enthusiasts and academics. Enthusiasts receive many of their terms from practitioners, as do academics. However, practitioner language has a unique purpose. Practitioner language must be practical, precise, and internally consistent. Academics can define terms to mean certain things in different papers. Practitioners don't have the luxury of listing their definitions every time they use a term. Practitioners must also be more precise than enthusiasts. Overtime, practitioner language can become as incomprehensible as academic language, only more specialized because it serves a single field. 

Sometimes this means that practitioners will rename words that are in common use elsewhere. For example, in theatrical lighting the word 'lamp' refers to what non-practitioners would call a 'bulb.' At the same time, it is common for theatre sets to have floor and table lamps onstage. However, those lamps are usually referred to as 'practicals' (or practical fixtures, i.e. a light source that is visible to the audience). Specialized fields use their own names for the things they work with even if those things already have commonly used names. 

As board game design develops as a practice, terms will evolve to be more precise and to meet the needs of the practitioner, in this case the designer. As a result some terms will change, some will be created, and some will be discarded. This is normal, especially in specialized artistic fields. As texts are written, many of these words will be codified. A shared language enables practitioners to do their jobs efficiently and with as little confusion as possible. 

When I write about definitions and concepts on this blog, I am writing to the practitioner. Neither consumers nor academics need to know the difference between an associated action and a metaphoric action. On the other hand, practitioners need to know precisely what is meant by theme, immersion, resonance, and simulation—all terms that are currently used to mean a wide variety of things. Selecting a single practitioner definition (and creating more terms to fill in the gaps) is not arrogant; it is practical. It is also inevitable. (Trust me, you don't want to say 'light bulb' in front of a theatre lighting person.)

We need to be more clear about who our audience is (and by extension what type of information they have access to) and tailor our language accordingly. But we also have to develop our language as practitioners. Language shapes knowledge. The more precise words we have in our shared language, the more our knowledge can grow. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

How Research Informs Theme

Why research theme? Shouldn't gameplay be prioritized over theme? I usually spend at least several days researching theme early in my design process. My research helps shape my intended core experience which informs how my core loop develops. While researching, I always find ideas better than anything I could invent. But in the interest of actually writing a full post today, here are four more ways research will have a positive impact on your game. 

Abstraction

The predominant argument against extensive thematic research is that games are abstractions, and as such they cannot present very much in the way of thematic detail, especially mechanically—so why bother spending valuable design time researching? However, abstraction from lack of knowledge conveys ideas more poorly than abstraction from knowledge of a subject. Abstraction is the removal of details in order to present a more simplified representation of a concept. Knowing what details to preserve and which to remove requires an understanding of the subject you are abstracting. I prefer Bang! to all other social deduction games that I have played in part because it does the best job at evoking the theme, both subject and setting. Yet few people would list Bang! if they were asked to list strongly thematic games. The thematic experience is effective but not extensive; the theme works because of which details are preserved in a fairly simple game. 

Verisimilitude

Familiarity with your theme enables you to add the small flourishes that make the game feel grounded in something real. Attention to small details will make your game world feel as though there is a fully formed world that exists beyond the constraints of the game. This is especially true for players who have some prior knowledge of a subject. Players may not notice every detail that flows smoothly with a game, but if there is something that sticks out to them as wrong they will fixate on that detail. Keep in mind that a world you invented will most likely still have elements that exist in reality. Some of my favorite fantasy authors have gotten more mileage out of using obscure but real details than made up ones. Likewise, many sci-fi authors are well versed in space/technology design and research in order to present some plausible elements alongside less plausible ones. Research within genre media can also be important. If you want to play into tropes or against tropes, you have to know what the tropes are. 

Emotional Knowledge 

When you are familiar with a subject, you can better judge how lightly or seriously you can present it. Understanding the emotional content of a subject requires more than just cursory knowledge. You have to know the subject well enough to understand how knowledgeable players will feel when they play your game. Most people will forgive the details you sacrifice to the abstraction of gameplay as long as the game 'feels' like the theme. Playtesting can help reveal the experience a game will provide, but is limited by the demographics and proclivities of your playtesters. Cultural consultants can help, but awareness of pitfalls at the beginning of a project will be useful both to you and any cultural consultants brought in later in the process. 

Resonance

Resonance is familiarity plus unexpectedness minus chaff. Verisimilitude covers familiarity; abstraction covers chaff. That leaves unexpectedness. Research can reveal delightfully true details that will make your game more memorable by their inclusion. For example, I found a list of real Victorian charities to use as flavor text in Deadly Dowagers. The names were far funnier than anything I could come up with and felt more appropriate to the setting because they are contemporary to the setting. Instead of using flavor text to display my own cleverness, I creatively curate details that shine a light on all the wacky, delightful things that already exist in the world. 

Yes, you should research your theme. But you should research with an eye for design. Learn how the people closest to the subject matter feel about it. Learn enough of the details to know which to leave out and which to leave in. Make sure to leave in some of the most memorable details, even if they only make it into the rulebook. The amount of time spent on research will have an outsized impact on your final product. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

Ways to Express Setting

Two weeks ago, I wrote about setting in a more mechanics forward way. This post expands upon that one by exploring the types of thematic elements to be considered when expressing setting in a game. 

The key to a good setting that is integrated into a game is research. Unfortunately, you can have a research degree in your theme and still not know how to express those details in your game. Design is the process by which we curate which details are expressed and in what way. Setting is a very broad term that can be broken down into a few more specific categories. Not every game needs every possible expression of setting, but hopefully thinking about setting in a variety of ways will help you to come up with more immersive, thematic solutions during the design process. 

Setting as a Physical Place

Geographic location can be shown via maps and illustration or thru the types of actions and resources available. A house will be illustrated differently than a mountain but will also provide a different environment for players to interact with. Maybe a necessary resource isn't found in the location where the game takes place. One way to show that would be to have that resource only available thru purchase rather than collection. Different locations will also have different accumulations of natural phenomena. While laws of physics don't change, natural forces will be more present or less present in different locations. Game designs may seek to capture temperature, precipitation, natural disaster, gravity, air current/wind, biome growth, natural selection, etc. in their mechanisms. The Coldest Night models severe cold thru negative effect cards, and most of the game focuses on building a fire without smothering it. Attention to the amount of thematic time elapsed within turns and between turns can make actions feel more grounded in reality. Some actions may take longer to accomplish than others; actions that require more time mechanically should also require more time thematically (and possibly vice versa). 

Setting as Anthropology 

Settings that contain intelligent life forms will be impacted by those life forms even if they are not represented in the game. Petrichor has players controlling clouds whose stated purpose is to water crops, specifically, as opposed to plants more generally. The existence of crops (and, in an expansion, cows) provides a setting where human farmers are active participants in the life cycle, even if they are not depicted in the game. Where intelligent life has an impact on setting, there are a number of ways that can be represented. History, like geography, can permeate illustrations as well as mechanisms. On the illustration side, shiny new buildings deliver a different concept of history than ruins do. On the mechanic side, knowing your setting's history can help tailor the rules to give a better sense of why things work the way they do in this setting. Games with combat especially benefit from having a sense of why the conflict exists, of what is worth dying for. Local laws or politics also add justification for certain rules, but in turn can add immersion by implying there are in-world lawmakers behind the rules. Even if you are playing as the lawmakers, older laws or traditions could impose restrictions on how you must act. Traditions are one aspect of cultural mores. Cultural mores are social guidelines that are enforced by a particular culture. Cultural mores could include religious practices, acceptable dress, food taboos, good manners, etc. Many laws are universal across cultures, such as prohibition of stealing, but cultural mores are distinct to a specific culture. Representing cultural mores or values in some way helps your setting feel like it belongs to a specific culture instead of using that culture as window dressing. 

Setting as Artistic Expression

Setting does not have to be simply a realistic representation of the physical or cultural traits of a location. Setting can be stylized for emotional effect. Time, as artistic expression and not realistic simulation, can be used to give a sense of urgency or calm: the pace of the gameplay is a major component of a game's emotional atmosphere. Color choice and line quality are aspects of illustration that convey atmosphere. Being able to communicate what kind of atmosphere your setting has is important even if you aren't a visual artist. For example, you may need to give guidelines to an illustrator that the art should have muted colors and flowing lines, or dark, saturated colors and sharp, abrupt lines. Those instructions leave plenty of room for the creativity of the illustrator but they each convey very different atmospheres. Genre tropes can provide shortcuts to conveying atmosphere thru illustration or thematic labeling of actions and resources. By presenting familiar tropes, you provide players with clues for what to expect from the experience of play. The relative intensity of gameplay creates an atmosphere for the game that will either work with or against your setting. Tight and tense mechanics provide a different experience than cozy and breezy mechanics. The setting can reinforce the experience of the mechanics or it can mitigate that feeling (e.g. Root) or it can provide commentary on the type of experience provided by the mechanics (see below) or it can feel mismatched and lead to player dissatisfaction. 

Setting as Commentary

Setting can never be totally divorced from the cultural context of the audience that is consuming the media. Setting a game in a particular time and place will convey meaning to players, often in the form of subtext. The Grizzled works as a commentary on war because it is set in a particularly horrific war that is also far enough removed in history that no one alive today fought in it. The intended audience is also familiar enough with WWI that they can jump right in with limited explanation. The commentary is fairly surface level (war is more sad than fun), thus not risking misinterpretation. Some games present certain themes as good in order to point out that they are bad, to mixed results, especially if the game lionizes particular behaviors. In other media, settings can be metaphors used to comment on contemporary issues. Board games are only beginning to explore satire and commentary, and I am unaware of a published game that makes a point about something different from what the game purports to be about. (The play The Crucible, for instance, is set during the Salem witch trials but is a commentary on McCarthyism.) I anticipate that over time board games will expand more into the territory of intentional commentary. I wouldn't recommend new designers start at this point. However, it is important to acknowledge that the hobby is filled with games that are unintentional commentaries in which perspectives they elevate and which they ignore. 

This is the kind of work, the sorts of considerations, required when we so off-handedly say, "Just integrate the theme with the mechanics." In addition to story structure aligning with game structure, we also must give our settings enough touchstones to provide a sense of place: geographical, anthropological, atmospheric, or metaphoric. While it sounds like a lot of work, really what you will be doing is imagining the world you are trying to evoke and limiting some of your design decisions to options that best evoke that world. Most of what I write is just a detailed exploration of ways of imagining solutions to design problems. That's really what design is: imagining possibilities, curating ideas, and implementing the best ideas into the whole project. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.