Creating Empathy in Board Games

First off, you should practice empathy until it is the only way you interact with the world. This is the best way to be human.

Empathy as a designer is usually talked about in terms of listening to playtesters and incorporating culturally sensitive feedback. This is important too.

Also, maybe don't design around culturally offensive themes to begin with?

The above statements, along with most of the discussion I have seen online, are about you developing empathy as a designer. I don't really have anything to add to that other than: "Do the thing!" But there does seem to be a misconception that designers cannot create empathy in players. Not only is this not true, but there are concrete steps you can take to make a game more empathy-inducing.

Let's start with my game design philosophy: players are improv actors given the rules of the scene by you, the director. If you can believe this is true, then all the rules of theatre apply to board games.

What does it mean to create empathy in an actor? We think of actors creating all of their emotions independently as a part of their process. But any actor will tell you that set, props, lights, and costumes (especially shoes) can really propel a character into existence. Also, the script is pretty important when it comes to creating emotion, just saying. So, how do we create empathy in an actor?

Rule one: The actor has to want to feel empathy. An actor who is not there to play with what they're given is not going feel anything from it either. A subset of uncooperative people does not invalidate the attempt at emotional immersion.

Rule two: The character(s) should be engaged in meaningful activity. It really helps if the actor is playing a distinct character with goals. Those goals should have emotional stakes. The emotion behind an activity is what makes it meaningful. Emotional stakes create empathy. Emotional stakes should be apparent in the script, not something the actor has to dream up. Emotional stakes usually lead to 'higher meaning' themes.

Now, let's switch to the bridge genre between acting and board games: tabletop roleplaying games. One of the benefits of TTRPGs is that players can put on 'masks' in the form of ridiculous characters in order to explore emotions and difficult situations in a less vulnerable way. TTRPGs have been studied for their ability to create empathy in players. Practice pretending to be someone else has a positive impact on empathy (provided the player engages emotionally, see rule one). This is not that different than children 'playing pretend', another activity that develops empathy.

So, how can empathy be created in board games? Is a narrative-heavy script required? No. We do not have to copy narrative techniques in plays or books or movies to build emotional responses. Our audience is our actors. Instead of manipulating an actor whose performance manipulates an audience, we are one step closer to our audience. We can manipulate them (semi) directly.

How? Create feelings of imbalance, so the players can't assume their emotional response. Do this by avoiding stereotypes and flipping tropes. Forcing players to play characters they are uncomfortable with will cause players to confront their own biases. This may be difficult in a 'diverse' game if every player is able to choose the character that most closely matches themselves. Design a game about CEOs where every character is a woman, POC, WOC, queer, etc, but try picking just one minority. Then tie that character choice mechanically to gameplay, so that it makes sense and is difficult to retheme. Actions taken by characters should be unexpected but realistic. You will have players that push back on the idea of a game about African American women CEOs. As you get this feedback, you will be able to feel your players try to put your narrative or characters back in the boxes you are trying to free them from. Do not cave and make your game "more believable." My game Deadly Dowagers does this very intentionally. (I don't like using my own WIPs as examples, generally. But I don't think I've played a published game that works as an example.) Every character is a Victorian era woman who is greedy, ambitious, and murderous. None of those adjectives are very 'feminine'. This creates discomfort in my players. Some playtesters try to lessen the feeling by suggesting what 'should' be in the game: balls, fancy clothes, rumors, gossip, etc. Some of those ideas have been implemented to help build the world, but I have pushed back very hard that my characters need to be girlier. Making players comfortable with your theme is not always the goal of a design; often it shouldn't be.

Your game should also have a clear narrative. That narrative must be closely tied to actual gameplay. Imagine explaining Spirit Island without explaining narrative elements. I'm not sure it's possible, but also, why would you? You can explain the rules in a way that tells players why they are playing. Every element of a game should be motivated so that the 'why' is clear. When players know why they are taking actions, they can identify with their character. When the narrative is clear, players can look beyond the narrative to the emotional content. When the narrative is unclear, it is harder to imagine how a character would feel, because you can't tell what their underlying goals are. Narrative does not have to come in the form of a long lore dump. Your rules, mechanics, and art should all come together to paint a singular compelling narrative.

Along the lines of a clear narrative, your theme should be a one sentence story. "Dogs" is not a theme; it is an art suggestion. "Dogs racing to unbury bones" is a theme. "Dogs racing to save humans from a collapsed building" is a theme with strong emotional content. However, a game can create empathy without needing the high drama of "save people from dying". Again, avoiding stereotypes and searching out unexpected stories can create empathy. Presenting low drama themes from unexpected angles can arguably create more empathy than high drama themes. This is because it requires more reflection on who the characters are as people in order to 'buy in' to the narrative. I don't find diversity in a post-apocalyptic setting to be as compelling as diversity in a contemporary or historical one, because we have more assumptions about history than we do about a fictional dystopia.

It should be obvious, but the most productive use of creating empathy is in realistic human characters. I am not convinced that feeling empathy towards rubbery aliens translates to feeling empathy toward minority groups. If your design goal is to create feelings of empathy in your players, your characters need to be human. Your characters should also feel human, while avoiding stereotypes. Ideally, your humans should be interesting in ways that feel 'foreign' to players. Do this by challenging assumptions about what types of humans belong in what types of roles. Need practice? Take a popcorn ensemble movie and list the characters and roles of the main squad, separately. Then shuffle the roles and deal them out to the characters. Now, rewrite the premise to rationalize why the 'tank' is the short, skinny kid. It may not make much sense, but you'll start to see the underlying assumptions made when casting those types of movies, most of which are not written to create empathy.

To summarize, create empathy in games by:

1. Introducing thematic imbalances to push the players out of their comfort zone.

2. Have a clear narrative to explain the 'why' of the game.

3. Have a one sentence theme that combines thematic imbalance and clear narrative.

4. Have human characters.

Note that none of these suggestions involves mechanics that require role-play. Players can identify with their characters and feel for them without having to act them out. Not all players are comfortable with role-playing. Besides, expecting players to do the work of creating empathy on their own is a design cop out. Any game could have spontaneous role-play break out if the character design is interesting enough. If you want to create empathy in your games, focus on what you can control: well-crafted themes, narratives, and characters.

Does having empathy as a designer make designing games that create empathy easier? Probably. For me the key is moving past assumptions of how people should behave and looking at how characters could behave under certain circumstances. That is the essence of theatre. 

The Set Design Approach Part II: Script Analysis

This is a continuation of The Set Design Approach. In that post, I skipped over 'story analysis' as a step that theatrical designers take in their design process, partially for length but partially because script analysis is a topic in its own right. 

When directors and designers 'break down' a script, they are looking for specific elements to give insight into the themes and structure of a play. Board game designers can use story analysis techniques to examine their own designs for thematically consistent, dramatically logical narratives. By narrative, I do not mean only narrative-driven games. Any game that has a theme tells a story, in that it has a setting, characters, actions, events, and an ending in which the world-state is noticeably different than the beginning. For the rest of this post, when I talk about game design I am referring to games with recognizable themes. Abstract games, including those with a pasted on theme such as Seikatsu, would not benefit much from story analysis. 

The first step in story analysis is a scenic breakdown: creating a list of locations that occur in the story. This step, and many of the following, will seem unnecessary for board game design. Do it anyway. You should be able to easily articulate the setting and other story details when describing your game. Also, by actually breaking down these elements, you can find any areas that are not fully developed or are disconnected from other elements. For your locations, you should be able to describe the world of the game in simple terms that aid and do not hinder the learning of the game. Put another way, knowing where the game is set should add to the internal logic of gameplay. Part of your location breakdown should include when the game is set in the overall world history of the game world. Historical games require historical research. Fantasy games (in the sense that fantasy means "not real life") require having a sense of the world state at the beginning of the game. 

Next, we turn to dramatic structure. Dramatic structure requires a logical progression of events from the beginning to the conclusion. Drama starts with exposition, which is where the situation and rules of the world are laid out. In most board games, exposition for the world should exist in the rules explanation. As in, "Here's why you are gathering resources and turning them into points." Most board game narratives start at the point of attack: the action(s) that kick off the drama of the story. Theatre assumes that there are no dramatic actions before the first action in the play. After all, if there were wouldn't the play be about that instead? The most interesting, dramatic actions in board games should be the ones the players take. The players should not be disappointed by playing a game after hearing exciting and dramatic lore. The central dramatic question that kicks off the point of attack is the inciting incident. This would be the event that occurred immediately before a game starts. Everything after the inciting incident is action (including the point of attack). However, much as we discovered when looking at scene work for actors, actions viewed from a dramatic structure viewpoint are more emotionally charged than we are used to thinking about in board games. Consider this quote: "The playwright then goes on to create a series of events or actions through which the emotional responses and tensions of an audience will vary based on how closely we come to achieving the major dramatic question." (Dunham, Stage Lighting p 174) In game design, the actors are also the audience. The thematic tension is tied to how close the players are to winning or losing. Thus, the emotional responses to the theme should be closely tied to the mechanical win conditions. With this understood, you can take rising and falling action, climax, and resolution from traditional dramatic structure and translate them to gameplay moments. The key is tying the narrative moments to the meta-narrative of the gameplay. 

Stories are made up of time, place, actions, and characters. I find most published board games have a decent grasp of time, place, and action but get hazy when it comes to character. Characters should be used to help illuminate why certain actions are being taken and how those actions relate to the central dramatic question. Again, as we saw in the scene work post, knowing your character's motivation in the form of knowing their goals helps the player understand why they are doing what they are doing. All of the players can be playing the same unnamed units, with the same powers, but they should still know what those units are and why they take the actions they take. Pillars of the Earth is an excellent example of unnamed workers who have clear motivation and logic behind the actions they take. That game tells a story, even though the players are not playing a named protagonist. It should be noted that Pillars of the Earth still abstracts the actions of the 'master builders'. Board games, like theatre, will always require suspension of disbelief. As long as the internal logic is sound, abstraction for the benefit of mechanics is not only okay, but required. 

I have mentioned the central dramatic question a couple of times. Also called the super-objective or the dramatic spine, this question is the core to the theme of a narrative. A dramatic question can be posed as a question that gameplay is seeking to answer, such as "Who is the best merchant in the Mediterranean?" or "Can my team stop the apocalypse before time runs out?" Theme should be more specific than genre though. A contest to see who is the best merchant is a theme, whereas trading in the Mediterranean is a genre. Theme is also closely aligned with mood (see previous post about image research). Your theme, mood, and narrative should be closely entwined. To check if they are, see if the following statement is true about your game: "The theme is X because the narrative is Y which creates a mood of Z." The more 'because' statements you can come up with, the more connected your theme and mood and narrative. This is easier to achieve if your main theme is present throughout your game. When a theme is deeply connected to a game, certain mechanisms will be rejected because they adversely affect the mood or narrative of a game. Befriending the eldritch horror or murdering the other merchant competitors may stem from fun and interesting game mechanics but don't advance the central narrative of your game. Of course, you could change the narrative. However, in my experience, once you have built the internal logic of your game world you will find it difficult to change any element that goes against the spirit (or ethics) of your game. This is doubly true if you are invested in the theme. Wingspan was only ever going to be a game about birds, because of Elizabeth Hargrave's integration and investment in the theme. This is perhaps not the literary definition of theme, and as board game design progresses we are seeing more 'higher meaning' behind the themes of games, but I believe that starting with theme integration naturally leads to deeper, universal themes. The more you think about your underlying narrative, the more theme you can get back out of it. 

This is a lot of terms to consider, but I believe you can boil it down to some simple questions to answer when analyzing your design: 

-Do the locations make sense and connect to the overall design?

-Can the rules be explained in the context of the narrative?

-Does the tension of gameplay line up with the dramatic tension of the narrative?

-Do the players know who they are playing and why that matters?

-Does the purported theme of the game mesh well with the narrative that plays out? With the mood?

I firmly believe that having a theme in a design means having a story. Theme is story; art is story. Narrative-driven games require that more effort be put into their stories, but every themed game should have consideration for its story. Anything less is merely an abstract game with art.

For this post, I relied heavily on Stage Lighting: Fundamentals and Applications, by Richard Dunham, found here, as my scenic design teacher didn't teach from a text book.

The 'Set Design' Approach

When I was planning my wedding, I didn't pick out wedding colors; I picked out a painting: Edgar Degas' Dancers, Pink and Green. I told my florist, cake baker, and bridesmaids that I didn't care what colors they went with as long as the colors were found in the painting. The painting also served as a texture reference for flowers and fabrics. Most people I shared the painting with had never heard of someone approaching wedding planning like that. 

Recently on Facebook, someone responded to a post I made by saying that it sounded like I 'lean creative' when designing board games, meaning I use the artistic and not analytic parts of my brain. I would argue I can't help it. Turns out my default approach to creative problems is to treat them like set design. When you're a Freudian, every problem looks like suppressed sexual energy. For me, every creative problem looks like a set design challenge. 

Scenic design, stage design, and set design are terms used for the conceptualization and rendering/modeling of scenery for theatre. Since the term 'set' implies traditionally produced plays, that's the term I'll use when talking about standard design practices in theatre. 'Theatrical' design includes set, lighting, costume, and sound design. 

There are a number of ways to start designing a set. The order matters less than the creative process of going thru the steps. For our purposes, I list them as: concept, image research, text research, story analysis, sketch, and iteration. The real step one in theatrical design is to read the script, but since board games don't exist before we design them, I'm skipping this step. 

Directors and designers usually will have general concepts for the direction they want the design to go. For instance, a traditionally performed version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream could have a set design concept of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Initial concepts are usually one to two sentences. For board game design, concepts generally start on idea lists. You could also develop your concept into a design vision statement that your refer back to throughout the whole design process. This is not particularly new territory, so let's move on. 

Image research is the area that was drilled into me in college but few people outside of theatre seem familiar with. The idea is not to find images that represent your design, but images that have the same feel. These images are frequently arranged into 'mood boards'. You have to know the mood of your design before you actually start designing. While you could list some emotions, or write a story, or listen to some music, I contend that the best way to decide on the mood of a visual design is by looking at other images. Even if this does not become a regular part of your design process (I have yet to design board games with a mood board), it is still a good exercise in focusing creatively on the feelings you wish to evoke in a design. It could also be a good idea if you are not a good artist but want to better convey your ideas on how the final product could feel, particularly if you are trying to communicate the potential feel of a design to a co-designer early in the design process. The great part about image research is that even though you shouldn't go looking for ideas to directly rip-off, you will frequently find that styles, colors, and other elements from your images will seep into your design.

I don't expect board game designers to start making mood boards. On the other hand, there is no such thing as too much text research. Text research may still involve images, but the information can easily be conveyed in written form, whereas image research cannot. First and foremost, every game designer should research the structure of their game. If theatrical designers have to be familiar with dramatic structure, in spite of not being authors, board game designers should be required to know as much as they can possibly learn about the mechanics they have designed into their games: terms, usage in other games, common pitfalls. 99% of the time, board game design is part of a larger collaboration to create a product. While some may argue that designing in a vacuum is important to their creative process, staying in a vacuum will result in letting down your collaborators by not putting forth the effort to actually understand the area of design you are working in. Board games are not like novels, where most of the creative work is done by one person (Ryan Laukat excepted); board games are like theatre, each member of the team contributes to the artistic success of the whole. And part of the design process for theatre is research. (Obviously, authors do a lot of research as well, but many won't read other contemporary works in the genre they write in.)

In addition to structure research, there are other important areas of text research. Theatrical designers study genre, style, and conventions. Genre is a broad classification of subject matter. In theatre, genres include comedy, tragedy, musical, farce, and melodrama. If you are designing a horror game, you should be generally familiar with the horror genre across mediums. Style is the manner in which the genre is expressed. Typical theatrical styles include realism/naturalism, period/historical, and abstract (as in art, not games). Another way to describe style is a recurring way of doing things. Sticking to a single style helps keep elements consistent in look and feel. Within style, elements can be motivated or non-motivated (these are lighting design terms). Motivated elements have a practical rationale for their existence. Non-motivated elements only add to the mood, but have no practical purpose. Conventions are stock short-hand methods to convey certain things to your viewer. Conventions are usually unique to certain styles or genres. Breaking conventions can make your game feel fresh, but the more conventions you adhere to the easier your game will be to learn. This is true even if the conventions are thematic ties and not purely mechanical. In short, conventions reduce mental load for players. Research styles and conventions by selecting a genre and taking a close look at the elements from that genre you wish to include in your game. Try to keep track of what you pull inspiration from, so you can return to it if you need future inspiration. 

I'll be going into story analysis in another post. The short version is that every game has a story, so every designer should carefully consider the story elements of their game. Especially if the game has a theme (even if it doesn't tell a story). 

After all of that research and analysis, it's time to sketch! I tend to sketch ideas for boards or tableaus just before starting to prototype. Set designers will sketch a number of different looks or scenes that occur during a play. I find that mentally or visually planning the visual/physical impact of a game design helps me make decisions about which directions to take the design in the early stages of the design process. These sketches should primarily be the basic shapes and functionality of the physical game. 

Just like game designers, set designers iterate. After sketching, designers will usually build a white model of the set, similar to black-and-white prototypes. Then set designers will begin work on color renderings (two-dimensional color images of the set or set pieces) and a final model. Even then, there will be iterations based as the rehearsal process finalizes how the set must function. Eventually, someone else (hopefully) builds the set to look like the model and renderings. Sound familiar? 

Here's the whole process again, but from a board game perspective:

-Come up with a concept for a game. 

-Decide how you want the game to feel.

-Research mechanics and genre/theme. 

-Consider the story your game tells. 

-Sketch some rough ideas.

-Build a prototype. 

I realize this list feels like it goes against the 'rush to prototype' mantra. But you could do everything on the list prior to prototyping in a few hours or less. Sure, you'll have to do more research later, but you don't have to spend too long on the other steps. Eventually, these steps can become so instinctual that you'll never be able to design any other way. At least, that's been my experience. 

For this post, I relied heavily on Stage Lighting: Fundamentals and Applications, by Richard Dunham, found here, as my scenic design teacher didn't teach from a text book. 

Using Aesthetics

Some of the most prolific video game mods for any game will be texture packs. Texture packs usually don't re-theme a game or change it mechanically. All they do is make a game look more pleasing to the viewer. This illustrates the importance of aesthetics to players.

I'm not trained in aesthetics in the abstract, but most of my higher education was aesthetics training after a fashion. According to Wikipedia, aesthetics "is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well the philosophy of art."

Denis Dutton describes aesthetics as having six universal indicators: expertise, non-utilitarian pleasure, style, criticism, imitation, and special focus. Previously, I have written that form (as opposed to function) is another term for aesthetics. Remember that our definition of design on this blog is the relationship between form and function (or content). So, we can look at these six indicators as indicators of design as well. Certainly expertise, criticism, and imitation are obviously elements found in the meta-conversation about well-crafted design. Special focus means that the subject of the work is set above the mundanity of life and imbued with a certain level of drama. Achieving a special focus should not be too difficult for board game designers who already have to distill down a theme to what can be supported by mechanics. 

Non-utilitarian pleasure is where we start to find some difficulty. This is where fights can break out over whether better looking games are more fun to play. I would argue that mechanics appeal to the analytical side of human nature and theme/art appeal to the emotional side. Which you prefer in a game may say more about you than about the game. In this video, Mark Rosewater shares lessons he's learned in his years designing Magic: the Gathering. He argues that aesthetics matter and that "poor implementation is fighting against human nature" because "humans come pre-loaded with emotional responses." We will never all agree on what is "good" and "bad" in art, but as humans, we all have art/art styles we prefer. And chances are, those preferences are emotional and difficult to quantify. In short, just because you don't mind sparse art doesn't mean that that style is the best choice for a game if you are hoping for broad appeal. 

Style in art is the organization of certain distinctives, like color, line-quality, and predominant shapes into categories. In art, we recognize Cubism as distinct from Impressionism. In board game design, we might start by separating games by genre: fantasy, history, horror, modern life, etc. We can look at atmosphere, tension, humor, excitement, peacefulness, drama, heroism, etc. By combining thematic elements and emotional content we see a game's style start to emerge. This can be somewhat separate from the art of a game or can include art and graphic design. Ryan Laukat has a distinctive art style. His games also have a distinctive playfulness and explorative style that would exist even if he were not the artist of his games. 

How is this useful? Game designs need to not just be mechanically appealing, but aesthetically as well. Because aesthetics appeals to us on an emotional level, playtesting must take the emotional feedback of players into account. By developing a style that matches the emotional response we desire, we can strengthen the emotional impact of a game. 

Remember: theme is fun. Art is fun. Excluding aesthetics from design only shrinks your audience. 

"Scene Work" for Board Game Designers

 I'm frequently struck by the similarities between how board game designers talk about general design approaches and my college acting classes. Frequently, I hear designers talk about the overlap of concepts with film studies classes. For the record, film studies is probably a more efficient class to aid in game design, but I only took acting, so that's what I'm looking at.

[I'm using the term 'scene work', because that covers both acting and directing concepts. Board game designers are like the directors of a game experience (more like a screen writer, but go with me) and players are the actors (conveniently also called players). I'm focusing on basic acting terms for this post.]

Scene work in acting is the breaking down of a scene into all of the motivations, emotions, actions, and so on, for each character in a scene. The result of scene work should be to find the emotional drama in a scene. For our purposes, scene work is when designers break apart their prototypes and reexamine every element. And our goal should be to increase the emotional engagement in our games.

The most important element in every scene is the goal. A goal could also be called an objective, intention, purpose, want, action, or victory. Each actor must have a goal in the scene. Goals must be pursued and must be difficult to achieve. There can be overall goals, such as win the game, and short term goals, such as get resources.

In order to have drama, goals must have obstacles. Obstacles must stand in the way of goals. This creates conflict, which is drama. Games must have obstacles that stand in the way of winning (or just letting the players do whatever they want). The biggest obstacle in acting is 'the other' -the other person in the scene- which translates to board games as the other players.

The methods used to achieve a goal are called tactics. Tactics in acting are used to evoke emotional responses from 'the other'. Tactics often alternate between threats and inducements. Taking actions that resonate emotionally will help raise the dramatic stakes of a game. Tying mechanical tactics in games to emotional responses will strengthen the players' connection to the actions and their ability to remember them.

I have defined beats several times in previous posts. Beats are units where actors employ a single tactic, usually a single emotion. Actors are taught to act out one emotion at a time but to be able to shift rapidly from one to the next. In game design, each type of action has a unique emotional content, outside of the thrill of a well-executed strategy. Chopping lumber has a different emotional content from repairing a mech. Emotional content, for our purposes, does not have to make a player feel particularly happy or sad but rather should draw a player into deeper engagement with the theme. The problem with point salad style games is that the action choices are so all over the map that it is difficult for players to engage with the emotional content of the various actions.

Actors use expectations to make their characters more interesting and invested in the scene. Expectations create energy which is realized as enthusiasm. Interesting characters should expect victory in their pursuit of goals. Players should also expect to be able to win. Additionally, strong thematic ties can increase engagement when a mechanism works the way a player expects it would. In Ex Libris, library books in your tableau must be alphabetized because you are building a library, so of course they should be.

The process of acting hinges on making choices. Actors choose which goals and tactics to pursue in a scene. If you have ever seen different interpretations of Hamlet, you understand how the same script can yield very different choices depending on the actor. Choices provide the inner (or emotional) and outer (or physical) action in a scene. Good choices are made with enthusiasm, are both physical and psychological, and involve other characters. Bad choices are safe, easy, emotionless, unprovocative, and don't involve others. Actors are often encouraged to make strong choices, especially early in the rehearsal process, rather than focus on making 'right' choices. Sometimes choices are 'strong but wrong!' Making bold choices is important in game design as well. Designers should be enthusiastic about exploring unfamiliar territory, even if the results are not stellar at first. Games should make players feel comfortable exploring bold strategies, rather than playing it safe. Bold choices are a sign of enthusiasm, and we want enthusiastic players, after all. Furthermore, designers should weigh the emotional content or cost of different choices. (I know I just said this about tactics, but it bears repeating.) Even from a purely mechanical standpoint, there are different emotions at play in player who pursues multiple strategies at once and a player who doubles down on one strategy.

The more I looked at this topic, the more I realized how much overlap there is between game design and basic acting theory. The biggest difference is that the same concepts that are used mechanically in game design are emotion-driven in acting. Given that humans are emotional creatures, perhaps game design could benefit from a little scene work.

For this post I relied heavily on Robert Cohen's Acting One, available here. 

Instinct vs. Skill

I've been thinking a lot about instinct it as relates to creating art/games/etc. I believe that board game designers could strengthen their design skills by honing their artistic instincts. But I'm concerned that this sounds like I'm advocating for designers to be better visual artists. While that wouldn't be at all terrible, it is in no way what I am saying. So, what do I mean?

I define skill as the ability to make something that is good (i.e. well executed). Skill is learned over time, usually through practice. Of course, skill can develop faster with instruction and mentorship. The more you design deck builders, the better you should be at designing deck builders, assuming you are capable of improving. The higher your skill, the quicker you should be able to iterate toward a playable game. The other aspect to skill development is that you have to learn each aspect of a skill, as skills tend to not be intuitive but something that must be taught/discovered thru trial and error.

In addition to skill and instinct, which I'll get to, there is also taste. Taste is knowing whether something is good or bad when you see it. Supposedly, you develop taste before you develop skill. Taste develops fairly quickly, usually by exposing yourself to the 'best of' in a given genre. Taste is fairly intuitive, but also subjective.

Instinct is knowing whether something will be good before you see it. If you can look ahead, make educated guesses, and avoid the least likely paths to success, you can save time when developing game. Instinct can develop alongside skill: you know something won't work because you've tried it before. Or instinct can develop alongside taste: you think something will be good because it feels on par with other good ideas you're familiar with. Sometimes the source of your instincts can be elusive, but that doesn't mean they can't be developed. Instinct is informed intuition. You don't have to learn every aspect of a subject to develop good instincts.

Why does this distinction matter? When I say board game designers should develop their artistic instincts, I mean separate and apart from artistic skills. Game designers don't need to know how to draw in order to design good games. Drawing, painting, graphic design, etc. are skills that can be taught/developed. Having good artistic instincts can absolutely make you a better artist, but you do not have to be an artist to have artistic instincts. For instance, I am not good at graphic design. I can muddle my way to mediocrity for prototyping purposes, but I'm slow to get there. I don't know the shortcuts or the rules of composure that a good graphic designer would know. In other words, if I were self-publishing, that is something I would need to outsource. However, using my sense of good artistry, I can still make fairly eye-catching and intuitive prototypes. I still have a lot to learn about icon placement, readability, and so on. Those things have to be learned granularly. But my artistic instincts lead me toward clarity and consistency, because everything I have ever learned about design points me in that direction.

There is quite a bit of overlap and nuance here. Skill and instinct are not always discernible from one another. And I'm not sure of the best way to develop artistic instincts. After all, I've had seven years of higher education and eight years working in the arts, which I don't expect other game designers to pursue. What I find about developing instincts, however, is that once you are alive to certain concepts, instincts will often start to develop on their own as you continue to notice the nuances of how elements fit together for different effects. Which is why I think that just talking about visual design principles could go a long way toward remedying the apparent lack of artistic instinct among board game designers.

Shortcuts to Creativity

Every year, many words are generated on the subject of creativity. Everyone feels that being more creative is a good thing, but becoming more creative remains elusive. Much of the advice offered is about the long term building of creative thinking: have a lot of experiences, generate a lot of ideas, know which ideas are good, etc. Not all of the advice out there is bad, but most is vague and doesn't actually spark creativity when you hear it.

After listening to any number of game designers online and in person trying to crowd source creative problems, such as theming and naming, I thought I would list a few practical methods for designing a more creative game.

1. Give yourself challenges.

When I first started designing games, I generated three new themes that could become game ideas every day for a week. I figured if I couldn't come up with more than my first game idea, I wouldn't need to worry about learning all about the industry, because I likely wouldn't spend much time in it. I haven't returned to almost any of those themes, but the more practice I have coming up with ideas, the better the ideas are likely to be. Generating ideas is more of a long term creativity building practice, but there are other ways to challenge yourself. You can challenge yourself to design in a particular genre or with certain components. Famously, Oscar Hammerstein II challenged Stephen Sondheim to write four different types of musicals to hone his craft. As designers, working outside of our comfort zone will make us better at designing, even if our 'challenges' never get published.

2. Impose constraints.

Another was to challenge yourself is to set restrictions on your next design project. A game with no cards (or only cards) or that uses a specific component or mechanism can send you down design paths you might not otherwise take. If you also add time constraints on how long you can spend developing an idea, you basically have a one person game design jam. Again, not all of these designs need to be publishable.

2b. Remove all restrictions.

Go as far overboard as you possibly can. Remember, if you want this design to go anywhere, you may have to cut all of your flights of fancy. However, sometimes it's nice to exercise creativity by just letting your imagination run wild. Once you temper your ideas with practicality, you may discover that you've come up with something new and original. This works best if you aren't coming at the design from a mechanism or component point first, but rather imagining experiences and worlds you want to create for players to explore. I think every designer should have their 'art game' that they designed not to publish but because they needed to design it for their own artistic fulfillment.

3. Flip tropes.

This is the most practical and also the easiest. Take a common idea that exists in lots of games and do the opposite. Lowest score wins, damage heals, the hero is the villain, etc. Mechanisms may not be the best place to do this, as many of the obvious opposites have already been done. But you can do this all day long with theme. Subverting tropes in ways that are delightfully surprising is an excellent way to increase engagement with a theme.

4. Theme the heart of your game.

This is more for either mechanism first people or those trying to retheme. The heart of your game is the bit that if you change it, it will cease to be the same game. Look at that bit. Find its movement. How does the visual appearance of the game change from the beginning of the game to the end? How fast does it change? What physical movements do the players take as they play? Moving a piece slowly around a circle (Murano, Scorpius Freighter) feel different than moving pieces relatively quickly in a straight line (Tokaido). Kinetic feedback that feels thematic will make your game more immersive and easier to teach. After you do this, you can go back and adjust the rest of the actions and components to be in line with the new theme.

Of course, the best way to know if the idea you have is creative is to know what has already been done and not do that. But research is a long term practice for creativity. The above suggestions can be done today, whether you are trying to come up with your next game idea or trying to fix a game you've already invested a lot of time in.