The Waxing & Waning of My Gaming Obsessions

 

Consider this blog post an acknowledgement that I’m eternally flitting between micro-obsessions when it comes to the gaming hobby. More specifically, my gaming habits follow a pattern where at any given moment I’m knee deep into one (or maybe two) distinct “niches” within the hobby. But a moment later, one leg (or both legs) hopscotch over to another niche undertaking.

And often, these efforts take the form of some type of “project” that I’ve undertaken. And even more so, these “projects” often connect me to other niche communities (on the web or otherwise) in which I immerse myself for a period of time until the “project” is done. Then I find myself in an aimless period before settling down into the next niche hobby project.

Board Games Make Better Strategy Games

The title of this essay is a declarative statement. It’s of course open to debate and I’m not suggesting this is an unequivocal rule. But at least in my experience, when I think about the “crux” moments that are the pinnacle of strategic intrigue - where the fate of everything is hanging on the line or where you wait breathlessly to see if your gambit pays off - board games provide both a greater “density” and a greater “diversity” of such moments in comparison to strategy video games.

There are, I believe, a number of factors that contribute to this situation. There are things unique to the design needs and expectations of board games that enable “deep and interesting decisions” to come to the forefront. There are also things, on the video game side of the table, that frequently distract, diminish, or are otherwise at odds with their capacity for deep strategic gameplay. I want to explore both of these dimensions in an effort to tease out, if possible, some poignant ways that strategic video games - especially 4X games - might better capture the strategic depth they aspire to.

Before we get too deep, let’s consider for this article what I mean when I talk about deep, or interesting, or compelling strategic decision points (or the “crux” moments). Principally, I feel these moments exist when: (1) having read and understood the “game state” you are faced with having to decide between mutually exclusive courses of action; (2) these decisions are consequential and have a traceable link to your eventual victory or defeat; and (3) predicting the outcomes of your decisions are laced with enough uncertainty that player skill, experience and heuristics matter for good play (i.e. you can’t just look up an optimal build order and call it a day).

This definition is a lot to unpack. But let’s explore two facets of it.

Delusions of Grandeur (Part 2)

PART 2: The Fresh Smell of Administrative Air

My delusions continue from Part 1 of this series, which provides teasers, spoilers, and other amazing ideas I have for creating my very own, not-another, space-based 4X game. Last time I outlined the big vision for my 4X game, Transcend, which is built around the notion of guiding your civilization to transcendence while avoiding any number of galactic threats that want to eat you and your citizenry for a midnight snack. I also talked about some specific design goals, around trying to eschew the usual 4X complexity for something built around simple numbers and a relatively small number of total turns. In other words, a more finely tuned game all about hard decisions and big consequences.

In this installment, I’ll be talking about a few core elements of the design related to the structure of your empire and its management.

This Thing Called Strategy

Geopolitical strategy, circa 1675

For the past few years, a question has been haunting my dreams: What is strategy? A narrower follow up question is: What makes a compelling strategy game?

One reason this question has been bothering me, particularly in terms of 4X or Civilization-style games, is that so often the gameplay does not feel like what strategy is or ought to be, at least for me. If the gameplay isn’t strategy, then what exactly is it? And if I’m not getting what I want out of a strategy game, then what in the heck do I really want?!

I have a number of pet theories floating around these troubling questions, which might help me work towards an answer. Fair warning though, much of this article will be spent in the realm of “pontification” or “theorycrafting.” Back in the old days, we called this “BSing.” You’ve been warned!

A Shattered Dream: Critiquing the 4X Genre

I’ve been struggling to write a holistic critique of the 4X genre for a while. On one hand, I ask myself “why is such a critique even necessary?” On the other, I feel that the genre is at a crossroads. Different tensions, for good or for bad, pull the genre in different directions. Trying to understand these tensions, which shape the genre’s landscape, will (hopefully) illuminate more challenges and opportunities in 4X design. Of course, I have my own aspirations of making a 4X videogame, so understanding the current “state of affairs” is important for designing in an informed manner and navigating through this messy environment.

Thankfully, a recent Three Moves Ahead (3MA) podcast on 4X games gave me the needed kick-in-the-pants to get me writing. The 3MA episode, intentionally or not, provided a rather scathing critique of the entire 4X genre and its failings, as well as highlighting a few small bright points of promise. I felt myself doing the proverbial headbang dance as I listened to the podcast, as many of their reactions and sentiments echo my own. Engaging in the 4X genre is a bit of a shattered dream, where we sift through the shards in hope of finding that one perfect game. But so often we cut ourselves on the glass.

Off the Shoulder of Orion - Sid Meier's Starships at First Blush

Sid Meier has been hanging out in different waters these past many years, designing somewhat more streamlined games often intended for mobile platforms (or to go cross-platform). After a relatively mixed reception for Sid Meier's: Beyond Earth (that wasn't the Alpha Centauri successor we were looking for), in which Sid Meier had very little involvement, Sid Meier's Starships was announced - and there was much rejoicing.

Starships released today on PC, Mac, and iPad. Herein follows my very initial impressions after a short while playing on EASY difficulty to figure out what was going on. Note, that I'm playing on my iPad Mini 1st gen, which is the same hardware as iPad2 - so I'm assuming it plays fine on iPad2. Yay!

Let's start at the beginning ...

The Snowball and the Steamroller: Fundamental Challenges in 4X Game Design

4X games are predicated on exploring some unknown geography, expanding your control into newly discovered regions, exploiting resources from those regions, and using those resources to build up forces and exterminate your opponents (who are trying to do the same to you!). Typically, 4X games aim to convey the machinations of entire empires, and hence have a large geographic scale in mind.  

This basic premise of large-scale empires fighting for resource control to fuel a military domination struggle creates some fundamental challenges for 4X game design, which has been central to whole quest to make the net big 4X game to live up to Master of Orion 2’s legacy.  I covered some of the failings of 4X games in an earlier post, A Failure to End, but want to expand on some of those points in this post. As I see it, the challenges are inter-related, but stem from a set of relatively simple issues:

- Issue #1 - City Spam & Snowballing
- Issue #2 - “One Big Battle” and the Steamroller
- Issue #3 - Micromanagement, Tedium, and Drag-out

These three issues are, I feel, the central challenge of 4X game design. And how the design of different games in the genre handles (or fails to handle) this interlinked challenge does as much to differentiate titles as to account for a game’s overall success, failure, or lasting legacy.

Edit: The awesome crew over at eXplorminate covered this topic from the perspective of the "endgame" experience: The 4X Endgame and its Follies and their article is also worth looking at in light of this fundamental challenge perspective.

Starbase Orion: The Brightest Star of All

Note that this review was originally published for iOS Board Games on July 24th, 2013.

The Pre-Ramble
The 4X space game genre – eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate for those scratching their heads – has in many ways been a problematic genre. Fans of the genre hold Master of Orion II, a game from 1996, in exceedingly high regard; and rightfully so. MoO2 struck a fantastic balance between complexity, level of detail (or micromanagement), meaningful player choice, and strategic diversity. For decades, designers and developers have been chasing the dream of making the “next” Master of Orion game – and there has been no shortage of valiant attempts.

While a great many games have been developed and released to varying levels of success, an undercurrent among fans is that there hasn’t been a title that quite got the right mix of elements. Each game draws its criticisms: too much or not enough emphasis on combat; lack of diplomacy or other non-military mechanisms; too much (or too little) micromanagement. The list of critiques goes on…

Starbase Orion, by its own admission, is an iOS 4X game intended to be a spiritual offspring of Master of Orion II - AND designed to be imminently playable in multiplayer formats. A lofty goal! So how well does it reach it? This review will take an in-depth look at the game, where it is successful – and most importantly why gamers, including boardgamers, should take a good look at Starbase Orion.

The Stars My Destination – An Armada 2526 Retrospective

The quest for an exemplary space 4X game feels like chasing a ghost. Just when you think you have it captured, it glides through your fingers and disappears back into the closest. Or under the rug. Or whether else spectral spirits like to go.

You see, we 4X gamers are a fickle bunch and are knowingly unwilling to have our cake not be able to eat it. The cake, by the way, is a deliciously complex and multilayered affair – and the act of eating it is to be wrapped up in an amazing and evocative space opera while simultaneously getting our deep strategic gameplay fix. Unfortunately these dueling desires are at often at odds with one another. So the poor schmucks charged with creating these games are left in a sort of limbo state where it is hard to satisfy the fan base across all of their clamoring, confounded demands.

If its sounds like I’m ripping on 4X fans – I assure you I’m one of them too, embattled in my own internal conflict between wanting a wondrous narrative to open up before my eyes while also taking no substitutes for challenging strategic gameplay. I have a pet theory that there are in fact two camps or mindsets among 4X gamers:

Camp 1: 4X gamers that are drawn to the simulation aspects of watching their empires grow and unfold over a long period of time, at an epic scale, and at relatively relaxed pace.

Camp 2: 4X gamers that are drawn to interesting, consequential, and challenging strategic decisions where players are fully in control and games play out in a competitive and concise manner with lots of varied strategies to pursue and refine.

It’s possible (even likely) that any individual 4X gamer will have a hand or foot in both of these camps at the same time. And while not strictly speaking opposites, the gameplay and design implications of satisfying the two camps are often at odds. What makes a game more appealing from a simulation and narrative perspective tends to make it overwrought and weakens the strategic dimension of the game.

What’s a 4X gamer to do?

The Wondrous Ages I Have Known

It’s been a while since the last post, and I feel an update is in order so you all don’t think I’ve succumbed to a game avalanche tumbling down out of my closest or that I've been dragged into Real-Life by some demon spawn. No – it’s been far more ordinary than that: family, work, deck (re)construction, traveling, and general chin scratching. All this, plus Age of Wonders 3 and some trepid steps towards a possible expansion for Hegemonic (more on that in the next blog post). As for this post - it's all about my reflections of Age of Wonders 3, a PC 4X game I am enjoying more and more by leaps and bounds.

Orc Sorcerer owns you!

The Gulf Between: Civ vs 4X Games

I am always interested in 4X or Civilization style boardgames. I was thinking earlier about what aspects of these games makes one game a 4X game and not a Civ game. Or another Civ and not 4X. And another game a bit of both, or neither. I took a stab at outlining some of the key traits that distinguish and these two genres from one another.

Of Finding Civilization in a Barn

A few weeks ago I was rummaging around in a family friend’s barn where they have all manner of amazing stuff stored - as befits any proper barn. Heaped in a storage stall and buried beneath all types of barn-stuff were some decaying old crates filled with ….. BOARDGAMES!

And specifically boardgames from at least 25 years or more ago. This included a number of old wargames in giant foggy plastic bags (our family friend was apparently a wargamer in the old days), a copy of the 1976 Avalon Hill edition of Acquire and … wait for it … Civilization! I mentioned that Civ in particular might be worth something, and that regardless these shouldn’t be kept in the barn where all manner of calamities (no civ pun intended) that befall barns might begat upon the treasured games as well. He looked at me sideways and said … “why don’t you just take them”.

Begrudgingly I said thanks and accepted the games, promising to get at least some of them to the table and invite him over as well. He had never played his copy of Civ, and to my surprise it was only about 30% punched out. I started drooling.

So last night, in a rare more of quiet and solitude, I poured myself a gin-and-tonic, opened the box, lovingly punched out the components, imagined myself back in the year 1981 (except I was only 1 year old at that time!), cracked open the rules and got to seeing what all the Civ fuss was about.

A Failure to End - Too much "What" and Not Enough "Why"

When it comes to games, I want gameplay genuinely deep in strategy. I want the question of what the best strategic choice is at a point in time to be significant. If there is always a clear path forward, the game isn’t about formulating a unique strategy to match the moment, it’s about following a prescriptive pathway. That’s not depth, its optimization. I don’t want to play Empire Manager: Spreadsheet Edition. I want to play Empire Uberlord: Mastermind Edition.

This post considers a number of things that I feel 4X games (computer games specifically) aim to achieve but routinely fail to deliver in the pursuit of “deep” gameplay. In large part, I believe this is a result of game developer’s spending too much time working out the “what” of gameplay instead of working out the “why”.

This is going to sound cynical and snarky, be prepared!

4X’ing the 4X’s

This post is going to be about exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating some 4x games, which of course are games about exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating your way around the galaxy. See it all makes perfect sense!

Disclaimer: I love 4x games, but I’m also a dabbler in the genre. Much of this blog post will be filled with gross generalizations and conjecture. Proceed (and retaliate) at your own risk!

UltraCorps - The Boardgame That Isn't

This review / strategy discussion of UltraCorps was published back in May 2012.  UltraCorps continues to maintained and hosted through Steve Jackson games.  It's interesting seeing other browser based 4X games come and go (Neptune's Pride 2 is a popular one at the moment).  I've played a number of them but UltraCorps is the one I keep going back to.  It is a great design and despite the old-school interface and UI design, remains a deep and interesting to play.  If you are up for a game, shoot me a tweet and we'll set one up! (June 11, 2014).

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If you haven’t heard of UltraCorps, I’m not surprised. While it isn’t strictly speaking a boardgame, it IS a product of Steve Jackson Games, so that counts a little right?

UltraCorps is a free simultaneous turn-based, multiplayer browser/web game with a space conquest theme. I feel it is relevant to talk about here at BGG for a few reasons:

(1) The line between boardgame and video games is blurring rapidly, particularly with e-versions of boardgames becoming common place and online play for many boardgames a frequent occurrence.

(2) It’s quite an interesting game and one that I think would appeal to many people here based on the kind of gameplay and decisions that occur (mostly what this article is about).

(3) It demonstrates, rather nicely, how the depth and strategic of elements our many of our beloved boardgames can be augmented and implemented in interesting ways in a digital format.