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.
Resonance
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 learn how to design games. My name is Sarah Shipp and today I want to talk about what makes ideas resonant.
A few years ago, I had been working on my own ideas of what it means to be resonant, when I ran across the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. The concepts in Made to Stick both validated and helped clarify my ideas around resonance. The book outlines a number of traits that make ideas sticky—more likely to be remembered or acted upon. These traits can be applied to marketing, but also awareness campaigns or even urban legends. Together, these traits spell out Success: S-U-C-C-E-S.
The first trait is Simplicity. Sticky ideas get to the core of the matter quickly. The next is Unexpectedness. Surprise helps keeps an audience’s attention. The next trait is Concreteness. Ideas that use less abstract imagery, but are instead stated in terms of human senses are more relatable. The next concept is Credibility. Ideas may come from someone with authority or may express their own internal credibility. The next trait is Emotions. Tapping into people’s emotions gets them invested in an idea. The final trait is Stories. Stories allow an audience to experience a situation without having to actually live through it.
There is a certain amount of overlap within these traits. Stories generally contain emotion and are a good way to harness emotion. Stories also generally contain concrete imagery. Stories may also have internal credibility. Additionally, the order of the traits in Made to Stick is merely for the sake of the acronym.
I wanted to borrow some of these ideas but adapt them to be useful to board game designers. The first thing I did was throw out credibility. External credibility is more about marketing than design. Some designers have credibility because of their past designs. Some because they have expertise in the theme they are using. However, most first time designers don’t have the experience needed to establish credibility. And those designers are the future of the hobby. So, I don’t wish to place too much emphasis on external credibility when it comes to design.
Additionally, I find that internal credibility naturally arises when the other traits are well-executed. A simple, surprising, concrete, emotional story does not need additional credibility in order to be resonant. When thinking about considerations beyond resonance within design, credibility becomes more important. But I wanted to distill resonance down to something easier to remember than the Succes model.
In my formula, I combine Concreteness and Emotions with Stories, under the heading of Familiarity. People respond to the familiar. Have you ever heard a familiar song on the radio and your first thought was “I love this song” only to realize after the first few seconds that you hate the song but your brain was temporarily excited because the opening notes were familiar? Our brains seek the familiar. We place stories into genres because we want to know what sorts of things will be familiar about them before we read, watch, or listen.
Concreteness is also about familiarity at a human scale. By including elements that are viscerally familiar, we can better transport our audiences into our stories. In board games, this means that when laws of nature are represented simply but viscerally, players will become more invested. For example, SuperSkill Pinball represents gravity by having players continually moving the pieces down the board, where “down” is toward the player. Another example is in The Coldest Night, players feed fuel cards into a central fire to keep it from going out but must play cards that won’t smother the flames.
Emotions are not something we add into a design, but a by-product of the elements that we add. Visceral imagery and compelling stories can create a whole range of emotions. So, in a sense, I leave emotions out of my formula, but I acknowledge that they are a part of fine-tuning resonance and must be considered during playtesting.
I won’t speak too much to stories here; that may be a later episode. While stories and emotion fall primarily into my category of Familiarity, they also impact my next category for resonance, which is Unexpectedness. Yes, I am borrowing the term directly from the Succes model; it’s the most straightforward word. A twist in familiarity keeps ideas fresh and hooks in audiences. My main caution here is that the ideal ratio of familiarity to unexpectedness is 90/10. Too much unexpectedness will make ideas feel random, hard to follow, and lacking in credibility.
Lastly, I reframe Simplicity from a design perspective and call it Removing Chaff. If you aren’t aware, chaff is the name for the outer husk of wheat berries that must be removed before the grain is ground into flour. An idea will not be truly resonant if it is bogged down by lots of extraneous, unrelated elements. For a deeper dive into this concept, refer to my previous segment on unity.
Finally, I put my concepts together in a formula for resonance, which is: Familiarity plus Unexpectedness minus Chaff. This concept can be applied to themes but also mechanisms. Most games build on other games but with a few twists. We’ve all heard complaints about kitchen sink games that don’t feel cohesive. By my definition, those games are not resonant. It turns out that resonance is a surprisingly simple concept, but often difficult to execute.
So, remember when designing that games should to feel familiar with a twist and uncluttered by elements that distract from the main experience.
If you’re interested in a more detailed discussion of my formula for resonance, I gave a talk at GDC in 2021 that is now available on YouTube. 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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