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.
Mental Load
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 mental load.
Every time I attend a board game event, be it a game night or a convention, the same thing happens. I can learn around four games in a day before my brain just starts to feel tired. Any games I play after that need to be games I already know or are the type of silly game that doesn’t really requiring learning or thought.
For me, and I suspect for most people, mental load is accumulative across games. I can learn more games in a day if they are all silly and simple, fewer games if they are more complex. A really good game teacher can also help reduce the mental load of learning a game.
Mental load is what it sounds like, the pressure we put on our brains when doing tasks, especially when we are juggling a number of bits of information. In board games, mental load comes from learning and parsing rules, strategizing, and calculating any math in the game. I discussed in the last episode ways to reduce mental load in rules parsing. A very good rulebook and clear graphic design can further help reduce mental load, as can reducing the amount of visible math. Reducing rules exceptions and special cases also will reduce mental load.
In other words, good game design packaged in a well produced game will produce less of a mental load than a similar game that is sloppily made. However, board games will always require an irreducible amount of mental load. Indeed, the challenge of learning and mastering a game system is what draws many people to board games.
So, instead of trying to eliminate mental load, let’s look at ways to measure it so that you can fit your game’s complexity to the tolerance level of your target audience. First, for our purposes we will assume that in a well designed and produced game that most of the mental load comes from a game’s complexity.
When discussing complexity, it is important to touch on the difference between rules complexity and strategic complexity. Rules complexity refers to having to learn lots of rules which are usually interconnected with lots of if-then statements. Strategic complexity involves emergent game states that can arise even from simple rulesets. Basically, a pair of novices will struggle to sit down and teach themselves an 18XX game, but would be able to play a game of Go even if they missed the strategic nuance.
Because games with simple rules but strategic complexity can still be played by new players, I am less concerned with the impact of strategic complexity on mental load. Based on my experience, strategic complexity can be ignored by players who don’t wish to engage with it. Granted, those players will lose to more experienced players and may not enjoy themselves, but you cannot force players to engage with strategy.
On the other side of things, rules complexity is a gate that must be passed through in order to play a game. But measuring rules complexity is tricky.
There are a number of ways to approximately measure the rules complexity of a game. One popular method is to look at the page count of the rule book or even the word count. As a designer, you would probably benefit from listing out all the rules in your game both to see how many there are and also to make player aids.
You may prefer to simply list all the steps in a turn, which is also a good way to approach player aids, especially early in the design process. Number of steps in a turn or round is my preferred way of gauging complexity, but I don’t design very heavy or asymmetric games.
Another approach would be to list the number of mechanisms in the game and note how many are interlocking mechanisms. Players can chunk rules together if they have knowledge of mechanisms already, which will reduce mental load. However, the way those mechanisms interact with each other will be unique to your game.
Geoff Engelstein recently wrote about his theory that good gateway games all have a similar structure. The structure he outlines shows that complexity comes from feedback loops within a game. Whenever a player has to choose between getting points now or investing to get more points in the future, the complexity of the game increases noticeably. I really like his diagrams, so take a look at the link in the show notes.
You can argue, rightly, that feedback loops are about strategic complexity. However, playing games with my parents has shown me that feedback loops are also a source of rules complexity. Each turn, I have to explain what their options are, which is the rules complexity portion. Then they invariably ask “which is better?” That’s them bouncing off of strategic complexity. Sometimes I’ll walk them through example strategies but mostly I tell them “it depends”.
This view of complexity as movement toward or away from immediate reward explains how some games can have lots of rules but still be fairly simple. Games like Red dragon Inn are easy to teach but if you include all of the rules on the cards actually have a ton of rules. However, players don’t need to have an awareness of those rules until they are face up on the table. Players don’t have to weigh strategy because there isn’t really room for strategic thinking.
So, which is better? Simple games with deep strategy? Complex rules that require mastery in their own right? Silly games with low mental load? It depends. But mostly, a well designed and produced game will have the right amount of mental load for your target audience.
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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