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!

Great Expectations and the Enigma of Intent

Let us begin with a question.

What role do our expectations and our perception of the creator’s intent play in our interpretation, enjoyment, and critique of a creative work?

This question can of course apply to all forms of media, but in terms of boardgames I’m trying to be more conscious and aware of my expectations as well as give more consideration to what I think the game’s “intent” is. By intent, I mean the kind of experience the game was designed to achieve.

A tendril I see swirling about a number of the critical discussions here on BGG and elsewhere is that “can’t we all just enjoy the games, who cares if it is bad/wrong/under-developed, if you had fun that’s all that matters!”

By the Numbers - BGG Rank Data + Analysis

So I have a bit of a love affair with Excel. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I’m not a super mathy-type but I do enjoy working with statistics and thinking about data. Probably has something to do with my background in science eh?

Anyway, since I’ve been on BGG I’ve had a lot of interest in running some basic analysis on the game data, focused on the ranked games. While statistics can certainly be manipulated to say just about anything, I still find it intriguing to examine the numbers, make graphs, and pontificate on imagined importance.

So what have I done? I’ve assembled a massive excel file containing game data for all 8000+ ranked games in the BGG database. I’ve started whipping up some graphs below (which we will get into), but I’m also curious about what other people are interested in seeing. Any correlations between factors? Trends? Summary statistics?

Critical Collision Course: Kickstarter, Reviews, and Retorts of Course

So I wasn’t planning on writing, but then I read THIS post, which led me to THIS article from Pete, which led me to THIS and THIS from Matt Thrower. It also related to THIS posdcast that I recently listened to, as well as THIS recent post from Drake and some of my own unwritten reactions from THIS conversation about “fun” (incidentally in reaction to THIS other post). Phew… Needless to say, my reply mushroomed into its own labyrinth with enough twists and turns that I felt it justified its existence as a blog post instead.

This is a bit rambling, but here we go!

The Choices We Make

Preamble

The title of this blog post is “The Choices We Make.” This statement is intended to explore two intertwined manifestations of the statement. First are the choices game designer’s make in how they sculpt a game to meet (and hopefully exceed) their intended goals for their design. Second are the choices players make during the game and how those choices are shaped by the game’s design.

More specifically, I want to talk about different scoring mechanisms/systems employed in games and how the quest for the right scoring mechanism in my own game, Hegemonic (not again!), has slowly progressed. The impetus for writing this was sparked by a reading of this article on the blog “Illuminating Games.” I will cover some of the same territory, but also go into more detail.

An Armature for Critique

Since writing this article (originally posted July 18, 2012) I've since written a few longer reviews of my own over at BGG, and we've also held the second Voice of Experience contest, again making the call for more thoughtful and critical reviews.  I continue to stand-by my thinking described in this post - although a Ludology GameTek podcast on the topic of Criticism did provide another frame of reference.  Geoff made a distinction between a "Review," which is oriented more towards directing potential buyers towards a buy / no-buy decision, and "Critical Analysis," which takes a more scholarly approach to discussing a game in-depth irrespective of any purchasing considerations.  It's a worthwhile distinction to keep in mind - and the post below is perhaps providing more of a framework for Critical Analysis (as is Voice of Experience) than Reviews.  Although I'd be happy to see more critical thought brought into all reviews as well! (June, 24, 2014)

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I was fortunate to be asked to participate on the Voice of Experience (VoE) Review Contest by none other than Martin G (who organized the whole shindig). The VoE contest, among other things, generated some excellent reviews and follow up discussion, in keeping with the Cult of the Critical’s goals to raise the bar on game critique and discussion.

The VoE contest also provided me with a lot of reflection time. I’ve been wanting to write more reviews of my own, as the only official review I’ve written thus far is my tongue-in-cheek review of Antke and perhaps my designers “preview” of Hegemonic’s Decision Space. In addition to those deviations, I have been thinking a lot over the past year how I would want to write reviews, what the focus would be on, what elements would be discussed, etc. This blog post will present a coalescing of many of these thoughts.

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.

The Rise of the Cult of the Slow and Critical?

There has been a lot of conversation recently about the prevalence (or rather deficit) of more critical and "academic" discussions of boardgames across a number of avenues. Sources: (On Gamer's Games, 1), (On Gamer's Games, 2), (QWERTYUIOP, 1), (QWERTYUIOP, 2), (The Jaded Gamer, 1), (Opinioned Gamers Discussion)

To paraphrase some of the salient questions raised in these posts the ensuing discussions:
- If games are supposed to be fun, why are we taking them so seriously?
- What is valuable about a review?
- Who reads strategy guides anyways?
- Should we play 50 new (to me) games or 1 game 50 times? i.e. What's with the Cult of the New?
- How can we discuss games seriously when we don’t even have consistent terminology?
- Is BGG the right place to have critical/serious conversations?
- What’s next?

Of course opinions on the questions above vary dramatically among BGG users. In following many of these conversations, I’ve come to realize that I’m in a minority of BGG users in that that I look for deeper or more critical discussions of the boardgaming hobby and of specific games. I’m also in the camp of wanting to play fewer different games many times rather than inundating myself with every new game I can get my hands on. But while I’m in a minority, that minority isn’t insignificant. There are many who share the same perspective I do.

To help frame the issues, I want to step back and answer the questions above from a big picture standpoint, as I’ve come to understand it.

Towards a Science of Boardgames (Part I)

This post was originally posted January 6, 2012 and was a landmark post for the blog.  It was a coalescing of many ideas I had come across as I dug into the hobby and the various was it was being sliced and diced.  I attempted to pull together a number of key points, from game classification schemes to mechanic categories, to ways of experiencing games.  The post generated a lot of traction for the blog - and in the aftermath helped spawn a number of spin-off initiatives aimed at further developing the "theories" put forth by this post.  Feel free to drop a comment or reflection! (June 10, 2014)

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I’ve been on BGG for a little over a year, and I must say that I’ve learned a ton. The discussions, conversation, and support has been an immeasurable help for creating better games and getting a thorough understanding of the gaming community, exposure to new mechanics, industry environment ... and the list goes on (I guess this my personal thanks to BGG and the wonderful users!).

During this time, I’ve found myself intrigued by a few lines of conversation and discussion that pop up from time to time. I wanted to summarize a few of these threads and provide links back to the original discussions where appropriate. In many ways, these conversations, to me, aim towards the makings of a "science" of boardgames, complete with its own (possible) analytical tools, classification schemes, and technical vocabulary. The size of the BGG database, coupled with a very willing survey audience, opens up a lot of doors for scientific exploration.

How to Takeover the Galaxy - Hegemonic Style!

My Goodness My ...

Great strategy games hinge on creating interesting decision for players to make. Interesting decisions need to have an impact on the game state (i.e. they should not be irrelevant) and there shouldn’t be one "right" decision (otherwise there isn’t a decision at all!). Uncertainty (or risk) in outcomes, a varied decision space, and a balance between short- vs. long-term goals all contribute towards making more interesting decisions.

Over the course of Hegemonic's development, I continually re-evaluate the gameplay to polish the kinds of decisions that players face. And Hegemonic does contain quite a few decision over the course of the game! Below, I’m going to review the primary decisions and associated factors that players need balance during gameplay. I feel that discussing decisions is the best way to convey the feeling of a game for interested players. So here we go!