TBM: Ep 9 EXTRAS

I'm a little obsessed with taking "feels bad" moments in board games and giving them thematic justification in order to expand the emotion palette designers have access to. I really latched on to the idea when I read Achievement Relocked, but I think we should be looking beyond just loss aversion. However, since that book is the only show in town for this type of topic, I reference it a lot. 

I own Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, but it's still in shrink. I'm beginning to worry about sticker integrity, tbh. 

If you don't like a paragraph of bullet points with no elaboration, I'm not sure how you can stand to listen to TBM. Although, I think I get better after the first dozen episodes. 

I haven't played Portal or Death Stranding, but I have watched my husband play. 

Not sure my point about Death Stranding comes thru without completely describing the whole plot. If you speed run this moment, you can barely tell the difference between the cut scenes and the player controlled parts, because the entire location is a gate with only one action you can take in order to advance. And it is the most extreme example of thematic loss you could possibly have in a game. My husband did not want to advance from this scene. I just wish the game had made the brave action the gate (instead of the immediately following cut scene) rather than the "following orders" action. 

There's another major gate in Portal and Death Stranding, both near the end of gameplay. Each one demands players take the correct action before the game progresses, resetting after every incorrect action. The pay off of these gates is frankly better than the earlier loss gates. But they aren't loss gates, so I left them out of the discussion, especially since that sort of reveal gate is easier to pull of in video games. 

I know Death Stranding is apocalyptic magi-science fiction, but with a very few thematic tweaks it could have been a really great cyberpunk setting. I'm not a fan of what I've seen of the gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077. I would prefer cyberpunk that is a little less GTA. 

TBM: Ep 9 script

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.

Loss Gates

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 a specific time when restricting player agency leads to interesting game experiences. This is a continuation of the last episode, where I introduced the idea of gates, which are times in games where players are forced to act without choice. 

There is another type of gate that interests me. When gates are used to make players face loss aversion in a thematic way. This type of gate forces players to confront loss. Perhaps the most well known example of this is in the video game Portal. Players are given a weighted companion cube and told to take care of it, only to be told to incinerate it at the end of the level. The emotional attachment comes from loss aversion via the endowment effect but the moment is a gate in the game because you cannot advance until you surrender the cube. In this way, the game forces the emotional moment on the players. You can read more about loss aversion in general and this example specifically in Geoff Engelstein’s book, Achievement ReLocked.

The most famous example of this sort of gate in board games occurs in Pandemic Legacy Season 1, where the forced loss has a mechanical impact on the game. Asking players to give up something that is both emotional and has mechanical utility is a risky design choice, especially in a board game. If a player plays the game more than once or knows about the moment ahead of time, the player will not experience the same emotional impact and may take steps to mitigate the mechanical impact. Players may also feel that the moment of emotion is unearned due to the lack of choice. This type of gate requires careful playtesting to ensure that it fits with the overall game experience. 

I have a few additional observations about this type of gate. Repeating the loss will dilute the emotional impact and could increase player frustration due to lack of player control of game progression. Adding some agency around when the loss occurs can also dilute the emotional impact but will likely decrease player frustration. Recall that forced-actions are a type of gate defined by actions that lack choice but nevertheless have some agency around when they occur. Players that feel they have agency to mitigate or control loss will be less frustrated but as a result will feel the loss less acutely. Additionally, as players near the end game, they may also feel the loss less as the desire to win overtakes loss aversion. 

Lastly, loss aversion gates must result in real loss to be at all impactful. There is a moment in the video game Death Stranding where players are asked to perform an action similar to the incineration of the companion cube in Portal except the stakes are much higher. Like in Portal, players cannot progress until the action is performed. However, performing the action does not result in real loss. While this is for the best in the overall story of the game, the moment of the gate itself feels cheap, similar to a jump scare early in a horror movie. Players are left to wonder why the moment exists at all if the decision to proceed through the gate does not have the consequence that was promised. 

The game could have made the gate hinge around the decision the character ultimately makes, but which is instead relegated to a cut scene. Instead the action the player takes is not the action the character takes, which results in the player feeling as though the game developers are toying with the player’s emotions for no reason. If the gate required the player to make the same action as the character, the emotion would not be as strong in the moment, but players would feel less cheated afterward. 

Moments of non-choice are useful design tools to propel a game forward. They can provide surprises, strategy frameworks, temporary goals, and memorable moments. Gates can also be  emotional tools when used well. Carefully curated moments of forced loss can elevate a game thematically and emotionally. All gates are tricky design choices, but especially gates that evoke loss aversion, so proceed with caution. 

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.

TBM: Ep 8 EXTRAS

I definitely think that "uninteresting" choices are worthy of a deep dive of their own. 

This is the first episode that would have been a blog post except I had stopped blogging at this point. Lucky for you, because podcast episodes have a higher word count than my typical posts. 

Can we all just agree when I say things like "3 common types of gate" that I am using shorthand to say, "hey here's something interesting that I have noticed and am trying to describe" rather than assuming I think I have discovered a law of design. (Still working through my feelings about that one book review, clearly.) 

Obviously, the term "gated" is used in video game design. It's possible other board game design writers have used the term before. My memory is crap and I'm doing my best, but if I ever fail when it comes to proper attribution please let me know. 

I do think this is an important part of the anatomy of a game. I probably would have included gates in my book if it hadn't been already out when I wrote this episode. 

TBM: Ep 8 script

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.

Gates

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 times when restricting player agency leads to interesting game experiences. 

If you’re listening to this, you have likely heard that games should present interesting choices to players. Interesting choices must be impactful to gameplay. Too many choices at once can lead to player confusion and too few choices can lead to player frustration. Interesting choices allow players to have a grasp on the impact of their choices, giving direction to gameplay. 

Every game usually has some uninteresting choices. Choosing a player color is one of the most common. It is a necessary choice, but has no impact on the outcome of the game. Every game usually has instances of non-choice as well. If the decision space shrinks over the course of the game, players may have only one option left by their last turn, such as in a trick taking game when players play the last card in their hand. This type of non-choice is still interesting because every choice in the game led to this last moment of reveal. 

I refer to mechanical instances of non-choice as gates. Gates are moments in a game that players must pass through in order to progress, but the gate itself is fairly scripted. Importantly, gates must involve player action, even though the action is a non-choice. Pauses to read lore in a campaign game do not count, although certain actions during recovery phases (such as resting in a town) might. Three common types of gates are forced actions, objectives, and events. 

Forced actions are actions players must take in order to progress. Hand management games usually include forced actions such as discarding or using a turn to pick up used cards. Time tracks and roundels often make use of forced actions. For instance, Tokaido gives players choices of which locations to visit, with the exception of the inns which are required locations. The inns in Tokaido are gates that players must pass through to progress in the game. 

Objectives can behave similarly to forced actions. Not all objectives are gates, but when players have to achieve objectives in a certain order to be able to progress the objective becomes a gate. Reaching objectives may unlock rewards that players need to succeed. When objectives become required goals they typically also become gates. 

Tech trees are a combination of objectives and forced actions in which players must progress in a certain way to reach a given ability. Each step in a tech tree could be an objective that provides a reward, but is also a required action in order to reach a further step. Tech trees combine player choices and gates because players may follow more than one gated path through the game. 

Events are the most scripted type of gate. Forced actions and objectives leave room for the player to perform them at variable times. Events involve the least amount of player agency because the timing is not up to the players. Events usually occur at set times throughout play. Events usually provoke forced actions for the players. If the events are set and public, players can plan around them, but if they are random or secret players will not be able to strategize as well. 

Because random events involve the least amount of player agency, many designers recommend avoiding including them in games. However, if the random events provide benefits for players more often than not and if negative events are not overly punishing, random events can inject variability between rounds of play. Since Quacks of Quedlinburg is already a high randomness game, the fortuneteller cards help each round of the game feel slightly different. Crucially, the random events often provide players with temporary agency, such as being able to go further without busting or to restart after an initial bad pull from the bag.  

Gates serve a number of purposes. They can help guide players through the content of the game. They can curate the intended play experience. They can point to various strategies that player might employ. Gates often signpost progression of play; because gates are required actions players can gauge progress by passing through them. Gates can also reinforce theme. Anchoring moments of non-choice in the theme justifies the action mechanically while also ensuring certain thematic moments occur during play, such as dining at inns in Tokaido.  

There are other ways gates can be used thematically, which I will explore in a future episode. 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.

TBM: Ep 7 EXTRAS

There's a lot of attempts to describe decision space out there. My approach is player forward as opposed to game forward. After all, decisions happen in the brain not on the table. Like a lot of topics, I first started thinking about decision space as something that could be themed better. I am the "X ALL THE THINGS!" meme for theme. 

I'm not confident in my definitions of logic and strategy. I'm just doing my best to say that planning exists on a somewhat different level than basic logic. 

I'm always fascinated by the crossover of language between game design and other arenas. Most often that's theatre or visual art, but in this episode it's feminism. The only times I encounter the term agency are  in feminist discussions (bodily autonomy, film criticism, etc) and board games. This is even more interesting when looking at the demographics of game designers. Bears discussion, I'm just saying. 

We need to pay more attention to players as a design resource. Not as playtesters, but as a design element. Dynamics between players create so much of a game's experience. Decisions are a foundational element of games. 

This episode came from a Tabletop Network topic that I'm just realizing never made it as a blog post. That talk focused on theming the decision space, but used the same structural breakdown as this episode. 

TBM: Ep 7 script

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.

Decision Space

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 the decision space. 

A game comes with rules and components and graphics and art in the box. Thru the rules players discover the shape of the game: the mechanisms, win conditions, objectives, and constraints. These can still be said to exist in the game prior to it being played. But there are a handful of elements that don’t exist until play has begun. 

Players bring decisions and the physical actions to the game. Actions become a hybrid moment where player decision merges into game mechanics. Decisions belong more fully to the player and exist only in the mind. The game offers limited choices that the players must decide among in order to play properly. This area of gameplay is often referred to as the decision space. 

I am fascinated by the decision space because shaping the decision space within a design directly affects the thought processes of players. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about some broad aspects of player psychology that inform the decision space. I’ve identified five areas, all of which can be considered when designing games: logic, strategy, agency, motivation, and emotion.

Players are not beings of pure logic. As such, many different things influence them when they are making decisions. As designers, we can shape the decision space to calibrate how much emphasis there is on each of the five aspects. By emphasizing different aspects, not only do we create different experiences, but we affect how players make decisions in a game. For example: if we successfully emphasize the emotional aspect of play, players will begin to make more emotion-based decisions. 

Let’s take a closer look at these five parts of the decision space. Logic and strategy seem very similar. Logic can be defined as a method or system of reasoning that has the goal of drawing correct conclusions. For our purposes, logic is about evaluating the game space and determining the best action based on the information the player has access to. This is probably what most people would think of when asked to describe the decision space. 

Strategy, on the other hand, is a path of decisions that a player embarks on early in a game and which informs all later decisions. Strategy is a way of narrowing the decision space, sometimes merely to discover if that particular path has merit or not. Logic focuses on evaluation whereas strategy focuses on navigation within the decision space. 

A lot of traditional game design advice around choice boils down to strategy and logic. However, I am increasingly intrigued by how the other aspects of the decision space affect players’ choices. Undoubtably, this is because I come from a theatre background, where the goal is to make audiences laugh, cry, gasp, and think. Board games are even more interesting to me because the intended audience is also actively participating. 

The area I find most intriguing also bridges the gap between logic and emotion. Agency shapes the decision space. Fundamentally, agency is the ability to make meaningful choices. The design of a game shapes the sorts of choices available to a player. Agency gives shape to logic and strategy. But importantly, agency also shapes the emotional experience of a game, often by placing limits on what a player can accomplish. The emotional impact of agency can be amplified when connected with a resonant theme. I will be talking more about limiting player agency for emotional impact in future segments. 

Player motivation is what propels them thru the decision space. Players may be motivated by winning, in which case they may focus on logic and strategy. But players may also be motivated by discovery, social connection, teamwork, or many other things. Listen to my previous segment about intrinsic motivation for more kinds of motivators. Motivation can be intrinsic to the player, something they bring with them into the game, or it can be assumed based on their avatar. A desire to achieve is intrinsic, but the desire to build the tallest tower or biggest city is an assumed motivation provided by the game theme. 

Specific emotions can be difficult to design for. However, if you are designing for an intended player experience, you are already designing with emotion in mind. Emotions affect the decision space by encouraging players to make suboptimal decisions. Players may choose the most fun option, the most vengeful option, the coolest option, etc, rather than the option that nets the most progress toward winning. 

Emotion is very important to keep in mind when designing games with direct player interaction, especially negotiation and bluffing games. As designers, we can shape the emotional experiences of players using the mechanisms of a game, but the most powerful generator of emotions available to us is other players. This expands the design space from the game on the table and the thoughts in a player’s head to include the interactions with other players. 

These various aspects of the decision space interact with one another. Agency affects motivation which affects emotion. Agency affects strategy. Emotion can undermine strategy and logic. The decision space is a complex place of competing forces that are shaped by the designer. As you design and playtest games, pay attention to how you shape the decision space, both the logic and strategy options in the game but also the agency, motivation, and emotion that arises based on the structure of the game. 

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. 

TBM: Ep 6 EXTRAS

I like thinking about player motivation because motivation is a pre-cursor to emotion (more or less). When someone finally gets around to writing a full textbook on experience-focused game design, motivation deserves a chapter. (I will not be writing this book.) 

I was dinged in a book review for not critically examining Reiss's list of motivations. I hope readers here know by now that I'm trying to describe concepts with the intention to get you thinking more deeply about design, NOT trying to accurately label all of human experience. I like the list because it has a number of good places to start when considering player motivation. I don't really care beyond that. 

I only include part of Maslow's needs because the rest overlap somewhat with Reiss's list or don't feel relevant. But there are way too many survival games with oxygen mechanics to ignore the need to breathe as a strong thematic motivator. 

If I were writing this episode now, I would have spent longer talking about each item in the list. I was just starting to struggle with morning sickness when I wrote this one. 

I think the most important point here is about playtesting. Knowing that players are motivated by pressures beyond just winning and what those pressures might be can help craft better game experiences. 

TBM: Ep 6 script

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.

Motivation

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 motivates players during gameplay. 

Much of the time, when we talk about player experience we discuss how we want players to feel when playing a game. Player emotions occur as a result of stimuli provided by a game. Player motivation, on the other hand, is something that players bring to a game.

Steven Reiss, an American psychologist, developed a list of sixteen basic human desires that make up human motivation, often referred to as intrinsic motivation. Those desires are romance, curiosity, honor, acceptance, order, family, independence, power, social contact, physical activity, status, saving (defined as the desire to collect), eating, vengeance, tranquility, and idealism.

This isn’t a list of everything that can motivate us, but rather a list of universal things that motivate all of us. I will refer to the traits from Reiss’s list as motivators because they are sources of motivation. 

Right away we can see how the motivators are relevant to thematic design. Mechanical design requires us to look a little deeper. If I were to make two lists, one for motivation within game mechanics and one for motivation within game theme, the list for game theme would include every motivator from Reiss’s list. We can also add some of Maslow's needs to round out this list for thematic purposes: specifically physiological needs (such as breathing and sleep) and the need for safety (which includes protection from the elements or injury). 

My list for motivators that apply to game mechanics would include the following: curiosity, acceptance, order, independence, power, social contact, physical activity, status, saving, vengeance, and tranquility. Remember that saving means collecting in the sense that we can define a savings account as a collection of monetary value. Here’s a cursory look at why I think these motivators apply to game design. 

Curiosity is a good motivator for exploration games, push your luck games, and sandbox narrative games. Order and saving are standard motivators in strategy games. Physical activity is a motivator for dexterity games and some types of party games. Twister, for example. Social contact is a general motivator behind why many people like to play tabletop games but also a motivator specifically for party games. Acceptance might be a motivator for party games like Green Team Wins or could be a motivator in negotiation games. Similarly, independence could be a motivator for why someone does not want to negotiate for a shared victory. Vengeance is a motivator in games involving direct player conflict. Power is a motivator in games that have leveling up mechanisms or direct conflict. Status is the motivator that pushes us to try to win the games we play. Lastly, tranquility is what motivates people to seek out cozy games. In this instance, cozy refers to the play style and not the theme. 

How does this list help with designing games? We become invested in the action of a game because the action is comprehensible to us; we know why someone would want to act and what drives them to action. This is true even if we don't agree with the actions taken by our avatars. We would not declare war on our neighbor, but the desire for more power is comprehensible to us, which allows us to become invested in a combat game.

Often when we are play testing, players will want to take actions that are contrary to the goals of the game. Your players will tell you that they want to take certain actions because those actions are fun. We should assume, however, that something is motivating them to take those actions. Most players will be motivated by progression in a game, but what they consider progress and what you consider progress may not be the same thing. 

One common place this comes up is in games with pvp combat. Players will not be motivated to attack other players if other actions have stronger motivators or if the results of combat don’t yield a good enough progression toward victory. As designers, we can either make our core game more motivating and engaging or we can align gameplay with what players are already motivated to do. 

Another way to use this list is when you are deciding on the type of experience you want your game to provide. Instead of focusing only on how you want players to feel when they are playing, you can design around what types of motivators you want to be present in your game. A game that inspires curiosity and status will be very different from one that inspires acceptance and saving. 

Intrinsic motivation helps designers understand player behavior and in turn motivators shape that behavior to fit the desired experience of a game. 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.