More About Rules Complexity

In a previous post, I talked about ways rules complexity can eat away at your complexity budget. I want to delve a little further into my point about memory. 

When I play games with my parents, my father has an especially hard time learning the rules. He doesn't have a lot of experience with board games and only plays them when I am around. There are several lessons about rules complexity that I can glean from trying to teach my dad any number of supposedly gateway games. 

The biggest one is that number of steps matters. Quick turns with fewer distinct action options is by far the best method for lighter weight games. Where I think designers can get tripped up is that we are unconsciously chunking a number of steps into a single unit. Chunking allows experienced gamers to learn games faster when familiar elements are present. However, designers cannot rely on chunking when teaching new players, particularly at the beginning of the game, because every player will have a different set of game experiences to draw from. Instead we must view every mechanism as its component parts. Deck building, for example, is a mechanism that includes card drawing, playing, acquisition, and shuffling. That's a minimum of four steps before you include any other rules. Worse, card shuffling may not occur every turn. Any step that does not occur every turn should be considered higher in memory load than the steps that occur every turn. 

Games where base rules are quite simple and the complexity is revealed via board state or conditions on cards are generally easier on new learners, with some caveats. Number of icons should be considered a part of rules complexity. Each icon is a piece of meaning that has a relationship to the rules that must be memorized (or listed on the player aid). Intuitive icons can decrease rules complexity—like a hammer to represent a building action—but very rarely will this be true of all icons in a game. The worst offenders are space-themed games that have no intuitive icons whatsoever. 

One way to know that you have exceeded your complexity budget is if your intended audience cannot pay attention to their progress toward the endgame because their attention is wholly focused on the procedure of taking each turn as it occurs. Not every game needs to be mastered on a first play, but turn procedure should be sufficiently clear after the first few turns. 

If you are designing for more casual audiences (or looking to reduce memory load), don't hide endgame scoring conditions in the rulebook. Make sure all scoring is represented in some way on the table, even if some conditions are represented by face down cards. Having to check the rulebook to find out who won at the end of a game is a bummer for new and casual players. 

I'm a fan of games that you can learn as you play, especially with casual players who aren't used to a long teach. However, even some casual players would prefer a full rules explanation to just getting started. Either way, reducing memory load is an important design step to making a game easier to learn. And remember that you cannot rely on chunking when writing rules. 

Generally speaking, games have more rules than designers think they do. This affects how easy they are to learn and the overall perceived complexity. Awareness of this issue can help you to tailor your design to your intended audience. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

Nov 12-19 I will be at Tabletop Network and BGGcon in Dallas. Stop by the Unpub room if you're there. 

Next Game Blues

Most creatives know that at some point in the process they will suffer thru feeling like their work is terrible and they should just give up. Knowing that this is a part of the process can help you push past this feeling and get your project to a place where you can be proud of it. However, one thing I think we don't acknowledge enough is that moving from a finished project to a new project magnifies the bad feelings. 

When I have a game in the late design stages, my tendency is to believe that I have grown enough throughout the process that all subsequent games will be easier. I will be a better designer and each design will be better than the last. This is, unfortunately, not how it works. I have plenty of bad ideas and abandoned designs. I may never have a better game idea than Deadly Dowagers. I may never sign another game. However, any future success I do have will be because I pushed through the suck. Showing up, making bad games, and accepting feedback is the only way to eventually produce a good game. 

I get particularly down when I am starting a new design after having spent a lot of time polishing a nearly finished game. The "next" game will always be the hardest one. There will always be new challenges. And for those of us with modest to low design output, it may be many, many years before the "next" game gets easier. 

This is where I see a lot of designers give up. If your first game turned out to be a pretty good concept, you may not be prepared for the struggle to find the fun of your second game. And successful designers don't spend a lot of time talking about the designs they've trashed along the way. 

Learning to tolerate being bad at something is how you stick with a skill long enough to become good at it. Producing bad designs gets you to the good designs. But importantly, most designs start out "bad". As designers, whether to others' games or to our own, we need to tailor our feedback to helping get a game to where it will be fun rather than focusing on the ways it is bad. Because of course it's bad. That's how the process works. Let's be more charitable to ourselves and others. (But also, let us not be so nice that a design doesn't make the necessary changes it needs to become good.) 

Designing bad games doesn't make you a bad designer. It's a part of the process of becoming a better designer. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

Oct 21-22 I will be at ATX Protospiel in Austin, TX. Nov 12-19 I will be at Tabletop Network and BGGcon in Dallas, TX. Come say hi if you are around. 

Boring Themes

Usually when we talk about boring themes, we are talking either about personal preference or about overdone themes. Certainly, themes just looking to cash in on the latest fad but with nothing new to say can be said to be boring. But today I want to look at what makes a theme boring within the context of playing a game.

Many themes seem like they should be boring, but players end up loving them. Many people point to Wingspan as the surprisingly enjoyable theme, but there are many other games with themes that are a great deal more surprising. Eurogames tend to have very boring sounding themes, although you can argue that their fans don't care about theme. However, some euros, like Pipeline or Barrage, are very theme forward in spite of the theme centering on a topic few people would claim casual interest in. These themes are not a draw in themselves, but they catch the imagination when learning to play. The water physics of Barrage especially keep the players engaged with the thematic level of gameplay. 

The point is that boring topics aren't necessarily boring game themes. This being the case, boring themes must have a different cause. A player might say, "The theme didn't add much for me," or "I didn't care about the theme." But player feedback like this does little to illuminate why the theme didn't positively add to the experience of play. In general, players are good at knowing how they feel during play, but not why they feel that way. It is up to the designer to diagnose the cause of a boring theme. 

What causes boring themes? I argue that themes that don't engage the player's imagination or impact the mechanics are boring because they are easily ignored during gameplay. However, let's get a bit more specific. 

Your theme might be boring because it doesn't provide purpose to the player's actions. If all of the actions are stated in a purely mechanical way and feel purely mechanical, your theme isn't adding much to the experience of play. (Where are the "letters" in Love Letter? I am going to die on this hill.) Themes should provide a sense of purpose to the actions that are taken in the game. And because I apparently can't go a month without saying it: the win condition of the game should align with the thematic objective. 

Your theme might be boring because it doesn't give an identity to the players. This one usually goes with purposeful actions, but a major way to add interest and decrease confusion is to make it clear to the players who they are and what they want. Lack of player identity isn't likely to be the sole reason a theme is boring, but it can be a contributory factor. 

Your theme might be boring because it is not dynamic within the game. This is the reverse of actions that are impacted by the presence of theme. In this case, the theme responds to the actions taken. What does this mean? It means that when actions are taken, there are thematic results not just mechanical results. Water flows downhill, unless a dam is put in place. Birds lay eggs that hatch into more birds. Letters get delivered to the intended recipient. 

Boring themes are themes that don't relate to what occurs during gameplay. These themes are boring largely because they are irrelevant. As designers, we can do better. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

The Abstraction of Space

I talk a lot about how human scale phenomena are more resonant and thematic-feeling because those events/things are more easily accessible to our imaginations. We can be transported by them because we have a clearer sense memory of them, or a clearer idea of what it could be like if it is something we have not experienced. Representations of gravity, temperature, speed, weather, smells, and more all evoke our own lived experiences. Themes that rely on human scale experiences tend to be more evocative. 

Even themes that are unrealistic, such as high fantasy, tend to be grounded in familiar settings, such as medieval Europe. Forests, farms, and walled cities are all very human scale and familiar. The same goes for eldritch horror: gas lit streets are not very far removed from the historic sections of those same cities that can be visited today. Magic is not as easy to make evocative, because the concept of magic is meant as a shortcut or alternative to natural processes. But as long as some part of the setting remains human scale, the theme can feel anchored in some sort of logic. 

It is the themes that eschew a familiar human experience that have a more difficult time, regardless of whether those themes represent real phenomena or not. The best example of this is games that are set in space. Space is, of course, real. And a small handful of humans have experienced what it is like to leave our home atmosphere. But the scale of space and the change in physics (gravity, air, speed, etc) give the setting of space a baseline that is beyond what the vast majority of us can imagine. Added to this, most space-themed games include "magic" in the form of fantastical technology: wormholes, faster than light travel, etc. There is nothing to anchor the theme's physics to a familiar experience. 

The result is that space games are more likely to suffer from feeling abstract. The most thematic space games likely feel thematic because they rely on thematic elements other than just vessels in space. Mars at least has gravity. The abstraction of space is exacerbated by game boards with black backgrounds only decorated by round objects in the form of stars and planets. Many true abstracts are also presented on a plain background with round tokens, which is a much more familiar sight to many of us than large scale stars and planets, and certainly more human scale. Thus we associate the form factor with abstraction more strongly that with real celestial bodies. 

Of course, space-themed games sell well. Many people enjoy techno-magic. Thanks to decades of science fiction, space is also associated with diplomacy and negotiation, which translates to game mechanics that feel appropriate to a space theme. Many people like certain aspects of the more abstract qualities of space as a theme, such as point-to-point travel. And the concept of space has always been aspirational, so there is an emotional component. While I don't care for space as a theme for the most part, I have no problem with the people who enjoy it. 

Rather, the point of this post is to illustrate that just because a theme is "realistic" does not mean it will feel thematic. Likewise, fantastical themes can feel grounded in reality. Understanding the relative abstraction of a setting can help designers calibrate how thematic the game is likely to feel. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

Thematic-feeling Mechanisms

There is a difference between the logic of the theme informing the design of the mechanics and those mechanics actually feeling thematic. Sushi Go!, for instance, does not feel particularly thematic despite the drafting loosely representing a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. The metaphor of the conveyor belt is entirely escapable; it does not add to the experience of play. 

When we attempt to design highly thematic games, we must implement one or more "inescapable metaphors" (or simulative actions). In general, the more representational the action the more the players can access the theme. In this regard, simulative and literal actions work better than mere metaphors for driving home the theme. Most players will not have degrees in media criticism that they put to use by teasing out how the setting impacts the available actions. They will know when a game feels like the theme and if it doesn't they will call it abstract. 

There are three primary ways to make a game feel more thematic. 

• Mechanisms that evoke sense memory. When I talk about theming the physics of your world that is because human scale physics are not just familiar but will produce a visceral response in players. The game will feel more "real" if even one element reminds players of how the real world works. Heat, gravity, etc. are powerful tools that when modeled in games will make the world of the game seem grounded in reality. Importantly, the mechanisms must remind players of the sense of feeling hot, cold, vertigo, thirsty, and so on. The goal is to evoke sympathetic sensations as opposed to scientific accuracy in the theme. This method gets used a moderate amount. I see it most often in smaller games modeling simpler ideas. 
• Gameplay decisions that evoke the theme. Most detective themed games involve players solving mysteries in some way or other mechanically. The closer aligned the decision space is to the theme, the more thematic the game will feel, even after multiple plays. There is a lot of rich territory to explore here around player agency, loss aversion, other player psychology topics, and how those topics can be integrated into various themes. This method is very underutilized (except in the detective genre), and I want to see much more attention paid to the theming of the decision space of a game. 
• Themes that evoke emotional reactions. This method is the most used in games. However, the emotions typically evoked tend to lean toward "I find this art/subject matter to be appealing." I think we can do better. Instead of asking players if they are interested in playing a generic nature game, find an aspect of that thematic genre that has a strong pull for your intended audience. For example, a game about baby giraffes trying to complete an obstacle course, which is difficult because they're still learning coordination. The goal of compelling themes is to take the reaction from "Yeah, ok, sure" to "Heck yes, I want to play that right now!" The major caveat here is that that response tends to only get you to the point of a first play. In order to maintain a sense of theme throughout play, you really need the other methods and/or simulative actions that fall outside of those methods. 

Sense memory, decisions, emotions. Thematically integrated games will feel thematic if they get inside the players heads. To feel thematic, theme need to exist not only on the table but also in the players minds. This is the power of a thematic-feeling game: to get under the player's skin and make them feel. To me, this is the pinnacle of design. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

A Game's Conceit

A brief description of your game that's meant to grab the interest of players or a publisher is a hook. A description of the central actions that players take over and over throughout the game is a core loop. If you are describing the fictional or historical subject and setting depicted in the game, that's the theme. You should be able to describe all of these concisely when asked about your game, plus at least one more aspect: the game's conceit. 

A conceit is the basic idea of what is happening in a game. This includes the main decision point(s), the main objective, and possibly a little of the theme and/or mechanics. For example, the conceit of Clank! is for players to try to amass the most treasure without making too much noise then escape the dungeon in time. How players do this is by deck building, but while deck building is the main mechanic, it is not really part of the main conceit of the game. However, the conceit of Dominion is build up a deck, then pivot to buying victory points. Basically, a conceit is the answer to "What are we doing in the game?" without going further into the description of "how." 

When describing the objective of the game, you can describe the mechanical objective or the thematic objective. However, I would use whichever makes the most sense for the crucial decision points in the game. The pivot in Clank! shifts from plundering treasure to rushing to escape. You could try to frame that mechanically, but it makes more sense in thematic terms. In Dominion, the pivot is the shift to buying victory points, so mentioning the theme doesn't add clarity. Pivots are an obvious decision space when thinking about conceits. On the other hand, you may not want to bring up a pivot if you want players to discover that moment for themselves. The important thing is that if there is a single decision point that stands out in the game as vital to progressing toward the objective, it likely belongs in the description of a conceit. Whether that decision point is framed mechanically or thematically depends on how it is framed in the game. 

I consider a conceit different from just explaining the objective of the game. When players ask about the objective, they want to know the threshold for winning and nothing else. Again, a conceit is "what you do in a game." That should include the objective but also a hint of the action and decisions that will occur. Objectives are usually framed as "be the first to do X" or "get the most of Y" without letting you know what that will look like. Being able to state an objective simply is important but only useful when attempting to teach the game (or on a sell sheet). Clearly stating the conceit of the game is useful when introducing the game to players, marketing, etc. 

So, what's the difference between a conceit and a hook? A conceit is always, only the one sentence description of what happens in a game. A hook could be a mechanic or component or thematic element. The conceit could be the hook, but a hook is the most interesting part whatever that part is. The conceit is only ever the main idea of the game. Knowing both will allow you to talk about your game in a way that clearly highlights what the game is and what makes it interesting. 

Referring to the main idea of a game as a conceit is not a hill I'm going to die on. I usually borrow terms from literature or theatre when trying to name what I am describing. I don't insist on the term or any term I've coined. I suppose I bring this up now because I really don't see designers adding "conceit" to their lexicons. That's fine. I care more that designers get better at describing their games. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

On Attribution

It puzzles me that listing playtesters is generally accepted as a practice in an industry where writers, developers, editors, etc often don't receive credit for their work. I think we think that because playtesters generally aren't paid, their payment is credit in the rulebook. But because developers, writers, etc were paid, they don't also need credit. I believe every rulebook should have a credits section, even if that section is in fine print. It is especially important to credit people who were paid for creative work. If that work was valuable enough to receive payment, it should be valuable enough to receive credit. 

I have no problem with people who choose to do creative work under pseudonyms, provided that the pseudonym covers a specific person or persons. If you want to use a studio pseudonym, the best practice would be to also credit your creative team by name in a credit section. 

Why is credit important? Obviously, designers who are uncredited can still list games on their resume in order to procure future work. Is credit just street cred or an ego boost? 

No, crediting creatives is important for documenting, studying, and criticizing bodies of creative work. Currently, only a few board game developers have a reputation outside of being known to certain publishers for being good at what they do. And the current system of becoming more well known is word of mouth. In addition to recognition, crediting developers consistently across all the games they work on allows critics greater insight into the creative process. Designers and artists are often not the only creatives who work on a project. Give credit to the ones who make good games great. Board game historians will thank you. 

Providing full credits also conveys to the consumer the reality of making a game. This is never a one person project. (Unless you're hand crafting your own components. I only know one person that applies to.) Games take way more work than most people expect. The timeline to get a book published is around half that of a game. Listing everyone who worked on a game conveys the amount of work and money that went into creating it. This is very similar to why movies have credits. 

Lastly, people really do deserve recognition. Especially people who belong to marginalized groups and people just starting out in the industry. Creative output is the unique work of individual imaginations. That is irreplaceable. The reality is that the pay is never going to be enough when margins are as tight as they are. So, the least you could do is also provide proper attribution. 

If you are reading this and have failed to fully credit creatives in the past, I urge you to go add as many names as you can to the expanded credits section on BGG. It's never too late to recognize people's work. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.