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!

Searching the Depths: Strategy, Tactics, and the Deception of Complexity

Ah, this was a fun - but tricky - post!  The thinking I developed here has carried with me well on my design endeavors as I try to accentuate and emphasize the strategic depth of a design without adding unjustified complexity.  It also clarifies, for me at least, some of the key distinctions between strategy and tactics and how those relate to goals and shaping the decision space of a game.  Enjoy! (July 3, 2014)

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Gamers often discuss the concept of depth - and along with it strategy, tactics, and complexity - with a great deal of fervor. I am guilty as charged. For a while now, have been ruminating on the nature of depth and I how I have come to understand it. I’m driven by an interest in putting my thumb on what qualities in games tend to relate to depth; how our understanding of depth applies differentially to the concepts of strategy and tactics; and how the idea of uncertainty and complexity plays into the greater discourse on depth.

Earlier in my investigation of depth, I asked a few questions in this thread, and received many insightful replies. I will be quoting and referencing a number of the responses in the course of this blog post. But, I believe I’ve arrived at a point where I can put forth some basic hypotheses that summarize my thinking on the matter. And as with all my blog posts, this is merely the start of a new thread of inquiry - I’m interested to hear your reactions and how you may have been, or continue to be, searching for depth yourself.

My Collection After the End-of-the-World Didn’t Happen

I’ve done a bit more speculation over the nature and make-up of my collection, following from my prior blog post (Collection Recollection). In particular, I was interested in sorting out all of my games into more-or-less discrete buckets building off the gestalt method described in the prior post. That is, to think about how different games can be classified in a way that’s easily understood from the context of “choosing what to play” based on what the gaming group “is in the mood for.”

Here’s the breakdown with descriptions in some arbitrarily logical order. Note that the categories also consider the importance of weight, as a function of rule complexity, strategic depth, time, or any combination thereof. I was also curious to split up my collection between what might be considered more mainstream (i.e. can you find it on the shelf of a big box store?) versus what is more in the “hobby” side of the line.

Never too Late to the Party! Skunkworks Update 2012

Last year I made about post covering the current state of my various game design projects and where they stood. I thought it would be interesting to circle back again this year and see what ended up being worked on and what other ideas are on the cooker. Also – I can’t help this feeling that my designs and concepts are just a hare late to the party – that some idea I have ends up gelling in my mind at the same moment someone else releases a game aiming at something similar, either thematically or mechanically. Who is scanning my brain waves while I sleep? Reveal yourself! 

Anyway, onto the business at hand.

Collection Conjunction - What’s your Recollection?

Preamble

I haven’t been in the modern board gaming scene, with both feet, for very long. I played mostly video (PC) games over the years, did a few turns with Magic the Gathering (1993 to 1997 or so), and played Warhammer 40,000 (and related Games Workshop trappings) on and off for about 15 years.

I put one foot in the modern boardgame door circa 2000-2003. Games that got a lot of play time included Illuminati, Munchkin, Drakkon, Honor of the Samurai, and a handful others. These games don’t get the most love here on the Geek, so to appease the masses; yes we did play Settlers of Catan a few times. I also started designing a number of games during this period of time, mostly card based games.

I brought the other foot through about two years ago after stumbling upon the geek (fall 2010). I certainly knew about the assortment of modern boardgames having frequented various hobby stores over the years, but I didn’t really “know the scene” (you know what I mean?). Since finding BGG and getting into the hobby more I’ve built up my game collection, from about 50-60 to around 100 in total.

 

Hegemonic on Course for Publication!

Good news for those who have been following the progress of Hegemonic’s design + development, the game has been picked up for publication by Minion Games!

Minion Games has released some great games, mostly recently The Manhattan Project, and I feel they will do a great job with Hegemonic. I will continue to be involved throughout the process of finalizing the design and other aspects of the production, which Minion Games and myself are both very excited about. Nothing is set as far as release a date goes, but we are aiming for somewhere in the latter half of 2013.

For the time being, I want to thank everyone who has given their input and feedback throughout the design process. The game would not be where it is today without your enthusiasm and encouragement, so please stay tuned for more updates and details in the months ahead!

Feel free to drop a line here or in this thread.

Modes of Thinking

This post remains one of my favorites, and presents a framework for understanding how different games make us think differently.  The logic of the "modes of thinking"  still holds up well (I think so anyway!) and I often circle back to the diagram when thinking about a new game and where it fits. Enjoy! (June 25, 2014)

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Often I find that attempting to write a blog post about one thing ends up leading to half a dozen other lines of inquiry, muddling the whole intent and clarity of the initial proposition. Most recently, I’ve been struggling to write a post about game collections and ways in which one might define unique “niches” within their collection that satisfy the requirements of particular (and preferred) gaming situations.

While no doubt that magnum opus will land on my blog eventually, in the meantime I want to consider one of the side roads of inquiry I found myself rambling along; specifically, the idea of “modes of thinking” in games. By modes of thinking, I mean what kind of thoughts/decisions/considerations do players need to make in a game and what are the associated mental resources?
In part, this concept was attempt to combine two traits under consideration in the game genome project; genre (as defined and explored by Selywth’s alternative classification system) and player skills, the individual faculties that are called upon when playing a game. In exploring various ways of grouping genres/skills, I came upon the broad of idea of “modes of thinking” as a way to understand the relative balance of skills that are required in different types of games, and by association what typical genres tend to be aligned with a particular set of skills and mode of thinking.

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?