In an attempt to transition out of hiatus, I will be posting the scripts of my Thinking Beyond Mechanisms segment. I don't plan to edit them, so there may be some differences between the audio and written versions. Take the audio as the correct version. I also plan on offering some additional thoughts in separate posts—commentary on the episodes, if you will.
Ep 3 Classical Design
Welcome to Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, an in depth look at some of the other aspects of game design, the segment that looks at some of the theory of board game design that goes beyond what typically gets covered when we start learning how to design games. My name is Sarah Shipp and today I want to talk about my favorite principle of design theory, which is unity.
Unity is a design quality that occurs when all elements work together as one harmonious composition. In other words, all the elements feel like they belong in the same world. A unified composition will feel like one piece rather than a bunch of small elements stuck together.
Aristotle is credited with inventing the concept of unity. In writing about unity in tragedy plays, he wrote "the components ought to be so firmly compacted that if any one of them is shifted to another place, the whole is loosened up and dislocated; for an element whose addition or subtraction makes no perceptible difference is not really a part of the whole." That’s also good advice for board game design.
David Lauer and Stephen Pentak list unity as one of five basic design principles in their book Design Basics, a popular text book for visual art and design classes. Within the visual art realm, unity still refers to elements forming a cohesive whole, whether that whole is a Renaissance painting or a Jackson Pollack.
If you study theare, however, in addition to Aristotle’s definition for unity which hails from the classical era, you will be introduced to what are known as the classical unities, although they come from the neoclassical era. In 1570, Lodovico Castelvetro codified what became known as the classical unities of theatre: unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time. This meant that the story of a play needed to occur in one location, during one day, and be about one thing. This was supposed to prevent audience confusion about what was taking place on the stage.
The purpose of the classical unities was to make sure the audience knew what was going on. This philosophy spawned a tradition of plays set in a single room, frequently a drawing room. One of the most well-known adherents to the classical unities was Moliere, perhaps best known for the comedy Tartuffe. These day, most plays don’t stick to the classical unities as rigid rules. Instead, theatre students are taught the unities to illustrate the importance of not confusing your audience with regards to where, when, and why the action on the stage is taking place.
This is also useful in board game design. Our players need to know why they are performing the actions of the game. To design a more thematic game, there needs to be unity of action between the mechanics and the theme. As I discussed in the first Thinking Beyond Mechanisms episode, the explicit theme needs to match the mechanical theme. Players need to know who they are and what they want in the game.
In board game design, unity of place and unity of time are somewhat less important to player confusion but still play an important role in crafting the play experience. Like in modern theatre, board games don’t have to be set in a single geographic place but can include multiple locations. For me, unity of place includes setting but also world physics and character physics.
Setting is where an event takes place. World physics is the manifestation of the rules of that world such as gravity, propulsion, heat, or visibility. Character physics usually manifests as direction of movement and speed but could also be inventory size, strength, need to eat, etc. Adding mechanics that represent world physics thematically is a way to deepen the play experience. For example, the flow of gameplay in SuperSkill Pinball is highly informed by the physics of actual pinball tables. Creating a sense of place in board games can involve so much more than illustration.
Time behaves differently in games than it does in more linear entertainment. The date and time that certain events occur to characters in the game world is less of a concern in board games, because board games depict abstracted worlds where the same events can recur over and over. However, the perception of time passing is a valuable tool that affects how a player feels while playing a game. Unity of time in board games is about pacing, rhythm, and scale, not about game length or linear narrative. A frantic, real time game should have a theme that matches the rhythm of play. How we theme our games should be informed by the pace of gameplay.
Castelvetro’s unities are a good starting place when developing a theme. Who are the players and what are they doing in the game? What are the actions and goals? Where does the action take place, and how is that represented in the design? What is the timeframe or scale of the game? Do the actions take place over centuries or seconds? How does that scale inform the pace of gameplay? Does the rhythm of play match the theme? Should it? Which thematic elements might need to be sacrificed to usability?
Aristotle’s unity, on the other hand, is a good principle for development of a design. Which elements can be taken out without affecting the overall experience? Which elements are distracting from the experience? Do you need to add an element to glue two parts of the design together?
Both concepts of unity can inform how we design games. A unified design reduces confusion and increases usability. It tells a more cohesive story. If a game has mechanical unity, all the mechanisms fit tightly together, and are probably easy to teach and remember. If a game has thematic unity, the actions of the game will tell an emergent story that lines up with the explicit theme.
So, which type of unity is my favorite principle of design? As much as I like the thematic implications of the neoclassical unities, I’m with Aristotle on this one. A good design is a unified design.
For more ways of thinking beyond mechanisms, you can visit my blog at shipp board games dot blog spot dot com or catch future episodes of thinking beyond mechanisms on ludology.
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