Welcome to Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, an in depth look at 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 games that ask players to be creative.
It is a general truth that putting players on the spot to be creative is a huge turn off for a wide swath of gamers. No one likes to feel as though their creative efforts are lacking, even within the confines of a game. As a result, most party games provide a structure in the form of prompts that give players a jumping off point.
Let’s start with judging and guessing games. Both categories tend to have a display of cards that are curated in response to a prompt or result in a clue being given. There’s a couple of extremes these games can fall into. Asking players to come up with witty responses based on vague prompts results in very group dependent play experiences. Some people don’t like games like Dixit because the game depends on player cleverness. On the other hand, games with very specific card prompts usually end up needing expansions in order for subsequent plays to not feel repetitive, which is why I somehow own around a thousand Apples to Apples cards.
There is a better way to approach asking players to be creative. One of the most important lessons I learned in theatre is that unlimited creative scope can be overwhelming, but just telling people what to do can be stifling. So boundaries have to be placed on creativity. Dixit letting players say or sing anything is too broad for some players. Just One allows players to create their own clues, but with a strict boundary: one word and no repetition with the other players.
This approach makes Just One the easier game to teach and play. It also solves the Apples to Apples problem. Because you can see the same words again from one game to the next in Just One but still end up with different clues. You still need some variety, but having multiple words per card provides variety in an efficient way.
Creativity within games should be like writing sonnets: strict rules with room for endless variation. Codenames asks clue givers to provide a word and a number. Within that structure, players can draw connections between groups of words of varying sizes using clues they generated rather than cards made by the designer.
The reason games like Codenames are so popular is that humans naturally draw connections between two or more ideas. It’s the easiest way to ask someone to be creative. In a drawing game, people will feel more comfortable drawing a line between two points than if they were simply asked to draw a straight line in space. In a clue giving game, asking someone to generate a clue that connects two words is much easier than asking them to come up with a random word without a prompt.
Importantly, if a prompt combines two or more cards in a deck, the combinations of possible prompts in a game is much higher than if a prompt is a single word. Because even though Just One handles player creativity well, eventually a player may feel as though they’ve seen every word in the game. This is less of an issue with people who play with different groups, but people who play with the same group will not have the freshness of new perspectives added to subsequent plays. When I play Dixit with my husband, we just know how to clue the other in to certain cards, which makes the game less creative for us and more frustrating for our friends.
Lastly and most importantly for games that require players to do more than come up with one word: consider adding a time limit. Drawing games go over better when everyone is equally bad. Timers are the best way to achieve this. Timers also free a player from worrying that they need to be more clever. Clever is good, but finishing on time is better. This is true for drawing games but also games that require players to come up with full sentences or other large chunks of creativity.
To recap, boundaries need to be placed on player generated content that allows players to be creative without stressing about the need to be creative. Allowing players to make connections between two or more prompts allows for more variability and provides players with opportunity to connect concepts. Adding time limits prevents analysis paralysis and levels the playing field.
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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