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. 

TBM: Ep 5 EXTRAS

This episode betrays how much I want designers to change how they think, and by extension talk, about game design. 

Fortunately, we seem to have moved on from an obsession over mathematical balance. I think we're getting there when it comes to efficiency. 

I see these changes as a move from gamer-brain thinking to designer brain thinking. 

But, yeah, let's also stop demanding designs be elegant (and innovative and immersive). We need to move beyond gamer buzzwords to mature understanding of design. 

TBM: Ep 5 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.

Ep 5: Designing Opposites

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 how designing games involves thinking in opposites. 

There are a few ubiquitous traits that designers strive for that are nonetheless difficult to achieve. A few of these are balance, elegance, and efficiency. Designing games that exemplify these traits can be a daunting task. I believe this task is made more difficult by misunderstanding the role the designer plays in these traits. 

For instance, if I am attempting to design a balanced game, I may already know that the perception of balance is more important that the underlying math to the play experience. But whether I am trying to create a balanced experience or a balanced game engine, I may end up with a game that feels flat and boring. If I see my role primarily as creating an even playing field, the gameplay may be so smooth that nothing interesting happens. 

On the contrary, it is my belief that a designer’s job is to determine the correct amount of imbalance for their design. How off-kilter should players feel? What sorts of decisions arise from having more or less imbalance? Balance is a single platonic state; imbalance is a spectrum that can be dialed up or down. 

Imbalance adds uncertainty and tension to designs. If player’s feel that the stakes are high, there is likely a decent amount of imbalance as well. However, too much imbalance can leave players feeling as though their decisions don’t matter. Imbalance can be added in the form of randomness, asymmetry, or even unequal player skill. The types of imbalance you choose further shapes the play experience. 

Thinking in opposites, such as imbalance instead of balance, is essentially a mindset shift that allows you to focus on an area of design in a way that feels more actionable and is more true to the role of the designer. Additionally, by viewing a problem from a new perspective you may discover new solutions. 

Efficiency is even more important to consider from its opposite. Efficiency is a player goal. The design goal is to create obstacles to efficiency. A designer’s challenge is to incorporate inefficiency into a game in order to create obstacles for the players to overcome. A game’s rules will almost always prohibit the most efficient option, which is to let players collect whatever they want whenever they want it.

Rules introduce inefficiency. This inefficiency may or may not be compounded by the players getting in each others’ way. As designers, player dynamics are as much in our purview as mechanics. When determining the right amount of inefficiency in a game, we must consider how much inefficiency will be added by player interaction versus how much is added by the rules.

Inefficiency is about ensuring that certain things do not happen or do not happen quickly or easily. The danger of too much inefficiency is that the game will feel as though nothing happens and the players do not achieve anything during play.  

Elegance is a more challenging concept. Avoiding inelegance is certainly easier than setting out to design an elegant game. However, we often confuse elegant with merely being simple or uncluttered. While those traits often contribute to elegance, I would like to put forward that the spectrum of clarity to obscurity is more vital to creating elegance. 

I am using obscurity to refer to player confusion rather than hidden information. A lack of clarity in a design is more easy to identify than a lack of elegance, although additional clarity will usually add elegance. Removing player confusion can involve removing unnecessary mechanisms, changing the graphic design, eliminating edge cases in the rules, etc. I referred to this in my previous episode as removing the chaff in a design. Removing or changing the elements that create player confusion will add a measurable amount of elegance to a design. 

Too much clarity may leave players feeling as if there is nothing more to discover after a single play. A small amount of obscurity or uncertainty can intrigue players. This could be implemented as imbalance or inefficiency, both of which can be said to be inelegant in the absolute sense. 

There are other ways of implementing elegance, efficiency, and balance to a design, but thinking about their opposites will get you eighty to ninety percent of where you want to be. One mistake designers make is focusing on clever solutions before implementing simple fixes. Thinking in opposites encourages designers to look at the underlying issues, rather than adding clever work arounds on top of a system that may not be serving its purpose. 

I encourage you to explore other areas of design that can be viewed from the opposite side.

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 4 EXTRAS

You know what? Maybe skip this episode. Not sure why I felt the need to walk people through how my thinking diverges from Made to Stick. 

I got really into the idea of resonance after I explored immersion. This is what I came up with. I've pretty much decided that resonance only caught my attention because it was a buzz word in the hobby for a while and that we've all somewhat moved on from it. 

I mean, I stand by my formula. I just don't worry much about resonance compared to immersion or thematic integration. Basically, I'm tackling this problem from other more fruitful angles these days.