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Almost always, when I talk with groups of people about game design, I quote Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Recently as I answered questions after a session, someone told me about a RPG he'd designed and tested, that all the testers said was too complex. "How do I simplify it?" he said.

An assumption here is that the testers, by and large, aren't able to say exactly what must be simplified, they just know that currently there's too much.

First, I said, try to write down the "essence" of the game in a few sentences. This can take some doing, believe me. Ideally you've done it already, but if you had, perhaps you wouldn't be having the too-much-complexity problem to begin with.

There are different ways to characterize the essence of a game, sometimes structurally, sometimes according to what the player does, sometimes in another way or a combination.

Example (Britannia): "On an anvil of blood and terror they forged the destiny of an island!" In this epic wargame four players each control several nations playing at different times with different objectives throughout the Dark Ages history of Great Britain. Romans, Britons and Gaels, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans --they all play a part in the history of Britain. Combat is resolved with dice. This is a strategic game of achieving objectives, not of conquest, though many invaders conquer much of Britain at different times. 4 to 5 hours for experienced players. "Invade Britain. Rewrite history. Rule."

Then think about the various aspects of the game in relation to that essence. If something doesn't contribute to the essence, can it be removed? Surely, at the least, it can be simplified, abstracted, or combined with something else. Every game (tabletop or video), at bottom, is fairly simple, and your job is to retain its simple heart and remove what doesn't contribute enough to that heart.

Second, make a list of the major features or elements of the game, perhaps 10 to 20 of them. Consider again how they contribute to the essence, and how you can remove or simplify or combine as appropriate.

After you have (in your mind, at this point) removed or simplified what you confidently can, give the list of the (now remaining) features to your playtesters and ask them to decide which could be removed entirely, and which should be simplified. (This may not help much if testers disagree about whether the game is too complex.) Don't ask people to rank each feature in comparison to the others, as that can be quite hard. It's much easier for people to divide a group into four parts, in this case from most important to the game down to least important. You might even want to write the features on separate 3 by 5 index cards to make it easy for the playtester to sort them.

Whether you ask playtesters individually or in groups depends on what you think they'll be most comfortable with.

Then consider how you can get rid of the items in the bottom quarter, or even the bottom half if the game is much too complex.

Then playtest the result, of course.

I've listed these in an order beginning with what you can do on your own, to what you can do in conjunction with your playtesters.

As we all know, dividing groups of people into two more or less opposites can be illuminating, certainly in the context of games. It can also be divisive of course, but I hope that will not prove to be the case here. Video gamers have made me realize that there are different ways to approach game playing as a part of your life. "Escapist Magazine" likes to talk about "the gamer lifestyle". I've played games for more than 50 years but I have not seen it is a lifestyle, rather as a part of life. Perhaps because video games have been subject to so much criticism in the past, some videogame players think of the gamer lifestyle as a unique (and in some way superior) approach to the world and to life.

I'm not going to try to explicate that whole business, but I have seen that video gamers often approach game playing quite differently than I have. Simply put, they are Gamers while I am a Game Player, and I'll explain what I mean by those terms.

Gamers prefer game playing to almost any other activity. When they have "time to kill", they'll play games. On the other hand, Game Players treat game playing as one enjoyable activity amongst many. (And they may not think of games as "killing time" at all.) The Gamer frequently asks of a game, though often subconsciously, "is this a good way to kill time". The Game Player approaches a game with the question "is this a good way to spend my (valuable) time". These are generalizations of course, and there are going to be lots of people in the middle as there usually is with any division of the group into two parts.


A Gamer will play virtually any game within broad categories, and could be said to have very wide-ranging tastes. For example, I've known Gamers who were willing to try almost any game "as long as it doesn't take more than an hour". Another example would be a person who will play almost any action videogame, or almost any role-playing game.

Game Players like to play games, but not just any game or not even "anything of a particular genre". They like specific games, or occasionally groups of games. A Game Player may just play one game or a specific category or specific favorite games.

If you ask a Gamer what his favorite game is, he will often be unable to say, or it will be the game he is currently playing. If you ask a Game Player what his favorite game is, he can probably say, and can probably tell you what all of his favorite games have been back to when he was very young, and this number may not have reached double figures even for someone who is a "senior citizen".


Tabletop Gamers are happy to participate in a group where people in turn choose which game to play and they all play it. Game Players rarely do that, unless they're with a group of similar-minded people with definite limits on the kinds of games they'll choose.

A sports analogy might help. The sports fan equivalent Gamer loves to watch sports, lots of different sports. He may be a season ticket holder if there is such an opportunity. The equivalent of a Game Player likes to watch certain sports, and may watch a lot of games, but doesn't feel a need to watch every game even of his favorite team. Life intervenes...

Gamers derive self-worth from being good at playing (video) games in general. If Game Players do, it's because they are extremely good at one game, or a few.

Gamers tend to treat games as a lifestyle or a job (think of all the people who talk about how much work it is to play MMOs). Game Players tend to treat games as a hobby.

So casual game players are much more likely to be Game Players than Gamers. And hard-core game players are much more likely to be Gamers than Game Players. Yet I do not equate hard-core with Gamers, or casual with Game Players. Someone who plays Magic: the Gathering incessantly, plays the game and tournaments, spends a a lot of money on cards, is a hard-core player but he's as likely to be a Game Player as a Gamer.

Are Gamers more passive in preferences and Game Players more active? I can make an argument either way. Game Players have favorite games. Game Players know what they want. Game Players are not just killing time, Gamers often are. Yet Gamers often have very strong opinions about games, and often are willing to have interminable discussions about the qualities of games, which traits are less common amongst Game Players.

Game Players focus their time, hence play certain games only (some play only one game, chess, D&D, Magic, Farmville, match-3 games, e.g.). Gamers tend to be less focused.

Gamers tend to dive into a game immediately. If it's a tabletop game, they may try to learn to play it while they're playing it, and many sets of contemporary tabletop game rules are written in "sequence of play" to make this more practical. Video games, of course, are ideal for diving in immediately. Tabletop Game Players like to study a game, like to read and even study the rules before playing.

Many game designers are primarily interested in making games for Gamers. This tends to mean that the designer need not be concerned about long-term replayability, because the Gamer is likely to soon go on to another game in any case. Those designing for Game Players may have a harder task, because game players tend to play their favorite games over and over again. A lot of published games don't hold up under the pressure of that criterion.

(Warning: Spoilers for George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones) series below!)

I was exposed to Game of Thrones: the Boardgame before I read the Song of Fire and Ice books.

I have the minor curse of thinking like a game designer whenever games are discussed. When I originally wrote this I was in the third book of Song of Fire and Ice as I write, both Robb and apparently Catelyn having died, and to me the essence of the series is chaos and that you can only trust your own immediate family (and I suspect even that will change with the Lannisters): a breakdown of moral values. (I have since finished what has been published, and I seem to be right.)

Game of Thrones the boardgame is instructive now that I'm reading the books: as a simulation or even representation of the books, it's a failure. As a representation of the situation throughout the region where most of the books' action takes place, it does no better than the game Diplomacy does as a representation of World War I.

The boardgame Game of Thrones treats each of the "kingdoms" as a separate monolithic entity with no chance of internal betrayal. The situation described in the books calls for random events and Event Cards, not for something as straightforward as Diplomacy-style. So it could reflect the books much better, but it then would become a game for improvisors (who like chaos) rather than planners (who like order).

The situation just doesn't seem like one that ought to appeal to planners. As I said, chaos is a central theme of the books.

As a Diplomacy-style game the game appears to have a big geographical problem. Peninsulas do not make good settings for that kind of game, as someone ends up "in the middle".

This is not to assert that GoT:tBG isn't a good game. It IS to say it doesn't have much to do with the books, and may have problems as a boardgame.

I have tried a couple of my simpler games with my wife (who has been a game player, but isn’t nowadays) and her octogenarian parents, who play Bridge but not other games. One of the games, involving cards and pirates, was recently played for the first time by a precocious six and a half year old, so the comparisons were interesting. Aside from that session, no one else had played the game. It is so new that it doesn’t have a name, though it is derived from another of my games, so much of it is “set” rather than brand new. (As it has a pirate atmosphere, it may end up being called “Tortuga”.)

The other game, a semi-abstract perfect information space racing game, had been played 28 times, and is very stable. We played the three player version (in other words, I didn’t play). It is much more strategic than the card game, sometimes being compared to Chinese Checkers, sometimes to Chess.

One of the older folks struggled mightily with the rules and strategies of the pirates game. She picked up the space race game much more quickly. Why, I wondered, because she is a person who likes to play standard card games, and this game is almost entirely cards. But the cards don’t have suits or numbers, and there’s a profusion of them (maybe 40 different ones, though many are of similar type). On the other hand the space race game is very “clean” and simple, with eight pieces per player, and only two kinds of pieces.

Since then we’ve played both games with relatives our age (Sue’s brother and wife, also not regular game players). They picked up the card game fairly quickly, but the boardgame even faster despite starting at a late hour.

I can speculate that fewer kinds of pieces, and fewer pieces, both help make it easier to understand a game. Hardly an earth-shaking conclusion. But if you want atmosphere and color then a game using cards, and more different possibilities, may be more effective.

I see lots of Euro games nowadays with lots of bits and cards, and perhaps one purpose is to help strengthen the atmosphere of what is likely to be a pretty abstract game, as most Euros are. (I think of many of these games as “mental gymnastics”, where players are expected to learn complexity for the sake of complexity. To me, if a game is abstract, it ought to be simple.)

I’ve been told by publishers that, unfortunately, purely abstract games are hard to market because there’s no story (atmosphere or theme) to them. Think about it, when people pick up a Euro game in a shop and look at the back, what do they see? They’re told about the atmosphere, not about how the game plays. Frequently there’s absolutely nothing to tell you what the gameplay is like, or there will be a rating of strategy and luck to go along with a listing of number of players and age level.

Aside: an atmosphere for a game is something it is supposed to represent, something your’re supposed to feel about it, but which has nothing to do with how it’s actually played. A theme is similar except that it helps determine how the game is designed to be played, that is, moves you can make in the game often reflect what you can do in reality, as in many historical wargames. Knowing something about the nature of the thematic topic might help you play the game better, though often not; knowing the nature of the atmosphere topic makes no difference at all in your play.

One way to get plastic tanks and other land units, warships, and planes is to buy a used copy of Axis & Allies. But the latest version, 1942, seems to go for quite low prices. I recently received a copy from

"NWS ONLINE GAMING STORE 1-407-925-7782 nws-online@nws-online.net" (you can click on the article title above)

for 19ドル.99 plus shipping, all told less than 33ドル. While there are places where you can buy one color of pieces for 6ドル or 8,ドル this amounts to cheaper if you want several colors.

(For what it's worth, while most wargames with plastic pieces are manufactured in China--the pieces, anyway--Hasbro has their own molding machines and most likely made A&A in their US factories.)

(I posted this May 12, but Blogger had a big hiccup and apparently lost it (Blogger was down for many hours).

I used Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/advanced) to create a word cloud of aspects of games. In the word cloud, words are in a larger font as they are more numerous or more important. The list I used was:

Playtesting: 100
Ideas: 15
Conception: 10
Framework: 10
Prototype: 30
Feedback: 25
Modification: 15
Iteration: 15
Incremental: 15
Creativity: 15
Communication: 20
Get~it~Done!: 20
Trial-and-error: 5



I think that if you click on the small picture, you'll see a larger version.

Originally I used a list that included characteristics of the designer, but I decided to separate those to a different cloud.

Experience: 75
Critical~Thinking: 25
Self~Criticism: 15
Formal~Education: 15
Willingness~to~Learn: 50


I'll have to think about the weights I've given to the various characteristics, and see if I can find more worth including.

Sometimes I have observations that don't require a separate post. As below...

**
I have been reading about the "Lone Wolf" series of books, which I had not heard of, which were the same kind of thing as "Fighting Fantasy" and "Choose Your Own Adventure".

These books were interactive puzzles, not games. There was no semblance of intelligent opposition. And it's not surprising that the authors of Lone Wolf and Fighting Fantasy have gone on to be prominent in video games: Joe Devers designing them, Steve Jackson co-founder (with Peter Molyneux) of Lionhead Studios, Ian Livingstone Life President of Eidos. The puzzle-books led naturally to video gaming.

**
I am working on a couple "block games" at the moment, and am... well, *astonished*, that in none of the existing games I've seen have I found decoy blocks, that is, blocks that don't represent anything at all and are there to confuse the enemy. The more blocks a game uses, the more you'd expect this. I allow decoys in my space wargame that uses face-down pieces (more awkward than, but much cheaper than, blocks). I have to limit the number of decoy pieces or they would be all over the place.

I suppose one or more of these games must use decoys, but I haven't found one yet.

**
"Skills" in video games are often nearly unique to video games. They are improvements in small-movement coordination, sight, quick reactions, perception of things on a screen. Sometimes this translates to real-world applications, usually it doesn't.

**
Tabletop gamers pass the time with friends (acquaintances, family). Traditional video gamers pass the time with a computing device. Jakob Nielsen (guru of Web usability) notes that killing time is a "killer app" in the "mobile space". When I play a game, I ask myself "is this worth my time?", not "is this a good way to kill time?". Many video gamers apparently ask the second question, though often not consciously.

**
To me, social network games are a reversion to early days of video game development, when the typical single player video game was an interactive puzzle, not a game. *Intelligent* opposition has been a hallmark of games for centuries, but in those early video games there was no semblance of intelligent opposition.

Social network games are usually very simple puzzles where the solution is obvious, but where (in many genres) you need to do it just about every day with considerable repetition in order to succeed long-term.

Furthermore, a significant part of video (and to a lesser extent tabletop) game playing is "killing time". It's really EASY to kill time with simple puzzles like Farmville, and you can do it in little bits of time at a sitting.

Many social network games are the new form of solitaire. ("Hold 'em" is an obvious exception.) The "game" solitaire (cards or video) has very little to recommend it, a very simple, mindless puzzle, yet some people play incessantly. A lot of game playing is habit, which sometimes includes playing what your friends are playing.

I hope that over time we'll see "social" video games mean the same thing that is meant by the phrase in tabletop gaming, that is, friends (or people who may become friends) playing a game together at the same time in the same "place", perhaps as much or more for their friends' company as for the game.

(By the way, I try not to call them "social games", because they are usually solitary, and are rarely social.

**

Social network games also appeal to programmers, because they are simple enough that "designers" may not be needed. Just like the old Atari/arcade days when the programmer was also designer and (sometimes) artist and sound person.

**
It would be interesting to know what proportion of new tabletop games do NOT have cards, and what proportion have out-and-out Event Cards.

**
As a game designer you want to make sure (as much as you can) that your game design works when the players are not really paying attention. Because "not really paying attention" is quite common in the days of MP3 players, smart phones, iPads, and so forth. Playtesting with ordinary players should help you test that.

At the extreme, I recall reading one player's comment that he wanted to be able to not really pay attention for half or even two thirds of a game, and still have a chance of winning. That's a characteristic of many family games, and of some Euro games (insofar as many Euros are "family games on steroids").

**
The whole idea of "play a game to completion" and "beating the game" (in video gaming) is foreign to what games have been for thousands of years: something you play again and again and again, not "beat", something that "of course" you play to completion, how else would you do it?

You can beat a puzzle, and then there's no reason to keep doing it. You can also quit a puzzle before completing it.

**
Why do Wii owners buy fewer games than 360 and PS3 owners? Perhaps it's because Wii games, at least the ones that are designed to be played by several people in the same room, do not "wear out", they continue to please, so the Wii owners don't need to buy more games. Whereas the hard core games, which are more like interactive puzzles than like multi-sided games, tend to "wear out" because the puzzles have been solved, so the players must buy more games in order to renew their enjoyment.

Or to put it another way, Wii games, insofar as they are multi-sided games, have much higher replay value than solitaire interactive puzzles.

**
A comment to the beginning designer: "Patience Grasshopper". Most of the time, it takes years to get a tabletop game published. I tested a huge "Barbaria" (all of Europe) game in 1980, when Britannia (then called Invasions) was far along. So I started Britannia around 1979. It was first published, in Britain, in 1986. And while that original Barbaria was much too large (90-some spaces, took 12 hours when we first played it), I have two made-from-scratch games on the same subject that might someday be published.

(You can click on the post title to go to the original article.)

Maxims of Game Design
[02.04.10]
- Lewis Pulsipher


In the age of "instant gratification" -- of the sound bite or video clip -- we often look for shortcuts to understanding. "Maxims" are one form, each one a brief "expression of a general truth or principle". As part of teaching young adult beginners about game design, I've pursued a list of maxims about game design, even as I know that such brief expressions leave out a great deal that's important.

Internet searching for "maxims of game design" doesn't yield much. "Principles of game design" is much more fruitful, but what you find involves a lot of explanation rather than the punchy directness of the classic "maxim".

The most notable set of maxims I know of comes in the "400 Project." This was an effort organized by Noah Falstein and Hal Barwood to collect design maxims from the game design community. The 400 Project evidently has not been updated since March 18, 2006, stopping at 112 entries.

You can read the list by clicking here. The list includes a brief "imperative statement" and an explanation in 250 words or less. I once downloaded an Excel spreadsheet of the list, but I haven't been able to find a link to it in my latest visit.

Some of the entries are more or less repetitions of others, some are very specific to video games while others apply to all types of games, but this list is good food for thought, especially if you want to design standard video-games-as-interactive-puzzles.

Many of the entries are very specific and often related to the mechanics of designing the game, while others are much more general and often related to why games are good. For example, "Make the First Player Action Painfully Obvious" is quite specific, though nonetheless good advice for any video game, while "Keep the Interface Consistent" is generally good for any kind of game, and "Make Even Serious Games Fun" is imperative (if we substitute "interesting" for "fun").

For my classes I've tried to devise a much smaller, general set of maxims that require little or no explanation, at least not by the end of the class! A characteristic of a good maxim is that it can lead to wide-ranging discussion, perhaps because of its combination of brevity and trenchant illumination of some "general truth".

At any rate, I'm going to end this with my current list of use-in-class maxims, and leave further discussion to the readers. I've divided them into several groups without trying to label each group...

* Think!
* In most situations, focus on gameplay, not story.
* There is no Easy Button.
* As with most other endeavors, in game design you probably won't be good at it to start with.
* Keep it simple. Avoid the "curse of more".
* Don't forget replayability, which usually comes from uncertainty.
* What is the player going to DO?
* In a good game there should be both ways to help yourself and to hinder the enemy (and sometimes but not always, both at once).

* Ideas are a dime a dozen.
* It's not the idea, it's the execution.
* You need to WORK to get ideas.
* Ideas alone are virtually worthless.
* If you want your game made, you need to WORK at it.
* Game design is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

* Write it down!
* Don't hide behind the computer!
* Games are not movies. They're interactive.
* If the player isn't doing something, it's not really a game.
* If no one can play your game design, you don't have a game yet.

* Playtesting is the heart of game creation.
* Your prototype will change a lot, don't spend time making it "pretty" or fancy.
* Learn to play your game solo, even if it's for five players.
* Plan, monitor, control, replan.
* Listen most to playtesters who lost the game.
* Get input from people who don't feel a need to keep you happy.
* Playtesting is giving people the opportunity to say your game sucks.
* Games can always be improved, but there comes a point when it isn't worth the time it takes (Diminishing Marginal Returns).

* When in doubt, leave it out.
* Good games take time to mature, regardless of your rush -- like concrete drying.
* You need the patience of Job.
* Game designers don't get to play (finished) games much.
* All games are art -- and the players don't care.

I’m probably not the best person for finding playtesters, but I can give you some ideas.

A friend of mine thinks that when Facebook finally gets its act together about groups then there will be lots of regional/local game groups to choose from. Until then Meetup groups are all over the United States, and usually cost nothing to joining (the organizers have to pay a monthly fee) http://www.meetup.com/. There are general game groups, role-playing game groups, groups for specific games like D&D or chess, and so forth. If you’re willing to pay the monthly fee you could start a Meetup yourself for your local area.

If there’s a college or university around, look for a game club. Search for “game” or “club” on the college’s Web site. For example, North Carolina State and Duke University both have tabletop game clubs, and NC State also has a video game club. Unfortunately that’s 50 and more miles away from me, and my local city colleges and universities don’t seem to have game clubs. Of course you can always try to start one, although some schools make it difficult, especially for someone who isn’t a student or employee of the school. Game clubs may exist in high schools as well.

Many game shops host game nights. In my area (230th largest metropolitan area in the country) there are three shops that hold game nights (or Saturdays). In the much larger Triangle area there are several more than that.

Some game shops will let you put up a notice that you’re looking for gamers. Through a lucky succession of circumstances that’s how I met my wife in 1977.

Some online game communities have search capabilities so that you can look for people in your local area who play games.

Your local library may be willing to host game sessions, although in my particular case I find that they don’t let people reserve a room regularly over the course of a year, so it’s hard the start a regular game meeting at a library. That depends on the policy where you are.

There may be community centers, perhaps at local parks, where you can put up notices or perhaps schedule meetings.

If there is an online community for games something like yours then that may be a source for playtesters. Boardgamegeek is the first place to look, followed by Yahoo groups. For example there’s an entry on boardgame geek for Britannia and a Yahoo group for Britannia (Eurobrit), so if I want to find playtesters for a Britannia-like game those are the first places to look.

For video games you might look for local “game lounges” and other commercial in-person community game concerns.

Some of your friends may be game players and you don’t even know it. Friends are not necessarily good playtesters because they may be too nice to tell you your game has defects–depends on your friends! Mine like to find defects, and that’s usually good.

My experience of finding distant blind testers via various online contacts is that the volunteers rarely follow through and actually give you feedback. But it does happen.

I understand Reiner Knizia has groups that enable him to playtest six nights a week. But that’s Reiner, who is obviously an exception to the norm.

So you’re going to make a game for the very first time

You’ve thought about making games for a long time, but you haven’t seriously pursued it. Until you get serious about it, you’ve accomplished nothing, you’re a mere dilettante. So today you’ve decided to make a game. How are you going to go about it?

First, unless you have well-developed programming skills you’re going to have a much better chance of achieving something if you make a tabletop game, or (perhaps) make a level for a videogame. The most important thing is to get to where you play the game. All the idea generation and other preliminary stuff is effectively airy-fairy head-in-the-clouds daydreaming that almost anyone can do but which does them no good if it doesn’t result in a playable prototype. Without well-developed programming skills or at least a good working knowledge of small game engine such as Gamemaker, you won’t be able to make a videogame prototype soon enough for it to be practical. You may be able to use a level editor that’s included in an existing game to make a variation, and that can be a good way to start.

Second, beginners almost always make a game based on another game. Often the best way to start out is to make a variation of an existing game, because it takes a lot less time and work to get to the point where you can play it. Again this applies to tabletop games or to video games that provide ways to modify them, usually a level/scenario editor. If you can’t bring yourself to make tabletop games then the level editor is definitely the easiest way to start out, even though you’ll have to learn how to use the level editor, a non-trivial task.

Third, reign back your ambition. Try to pick a type or form of game that is fairly common, not one that’s unusual; unusual forms are frequently more difficult to achieve, that’s why they’re unusual. For example, cooperative games are especially difficult in tabletop form because it’s so hard to provide significant opposition. This is much easier to do with a videogame IF you have the programming and “artificial intelligence” skills. But it is still much harder to program a game that can be played by two or more people at the same time, than to program one that is played by one person at a time.

In other words try to choose a project you actually have a chance to complete. This can be generalized to “keep it simple”. Making a game is almost always harder than it seems at first, even for experienced people. The most common mistake of people seriously trying to make a video game is to plan a project that they have virtually no chance of ever finishing, because it will take much too long. Remember, AAA video games take hundreds of man-years to complete for professionals with vast budgets.

Fourth, focus on the gameplay not on the appearance (or the story) of the game. You’re making a prototype, not a finished game. You want something that people can play so that you find out whether they enjoy playing, and how you can improve it. You can’t rely on flashy looks to make games fun, even if you’re an outstanding artist. A major mistake of novice game designers is to make something that’s pretty rather than something that’s functional. If you have something that just looks functional and people like to play then imagine how much more they’ll enjoy it when it looks professionally pretty. You only need it to look good enough that playtesters will be willing to play, and that depends in great part on what playtesters are available, how well you know them, how persuasive you are, and many other factors not related to the game itself.

In most cases, you may be excited about your story, but other people won’t be. Most games are played for the game, not the story (which is often only an excuse to get to the action). If you’re heavily into story, write a novel, don’t design a game! When you’re experienced you may be able to rely on a story to make a game enjoyable, when you start out that’s a big mistake.

Fifth, when you have a playable prototype play it yourself, solo, before you inflict on other people. I say “inflict” deliberately. You may be super excited, you may think it’s the greatest thing ever, but in reality it will be like almost every other initial prototype of a game, it will suck. Experienced designers have a much better chance of recognizing what will suck before the game is played: they play the game in their mind’s eye, so to speak, and anticipate many problems before it’s ever played in reality. Beginners should try to do the same but will be much less successful at spotting the flaws. What solo testing can do is quickly reveal where the game really sucks so that you can change it before other people have to put up with it. In other words, be nice to your playtesters: get rid of the really bad aspects yourself rather than foist them on other people who want to play a fun game.

Some people confronted with the notion of solo playing a multiplayer tabletop game will say they just can’t do it, they just can’t dissociate themselves from one side when they play another side. Wags like to say “well at least when you play solo always win”. Of course you also always lose. But the point of solo playtesting is not to win or lose, it’s to find out whether the game is worthwhile and how it can be improved. And that dispassionate dissociation from one side to another when you play a solo game will actually help you recognize what’s good and bad about the game.

I cannot say this enough: play the game yourself before anybody else plays.

Sixth, if you got this far you’re doing really well. But you’ve only just begun. The really hard part of making a game is a last 20% of improvement that takes 80% of the time. This is a process of playtesting, evaluating the results, modifying the game to improve it in light of the results, playtesting again, and going through the whole cycle again and again and again. This is called the iterative and incremental development of the game. If you want to make a really good game then you are probably going to be sick and tired of it by the time you get toward the end of this process.

Finally, the game is never really done, you just come to a point where the value of the improvement is less than the cost of the time required to achieve it (Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns). Moreover, you might think you’re “done”, and then find out that improvements need to be made either for your peace of mind or because the publisher requires it.

Good luck. And remember: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." --Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery

Summary:
• make a tabletop game, or use a simple level editor to modify an existing videogame
• make something based on a game you know
• reign in your ambition--try to complete a small project, not a large one
• focus on gameplay not prettiness or story
• play the game yourself before anybody else plays, even if it isn’t intended to be a one person game
• iteratively and incrementally playtest and improve the game
• your never really finish

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Every game has an essence, what makes it the game it is, what comes to mind when people think about it, what people are doing (or contending with) when they play. The essence characterizes the game, and can be quite brief. For example Diplomacy is about negotiation and simultaneous tactical movement. Chess is about positional play with perfect information, and about looking ahead several moves. Monopoly (a poor game) is about collecting sets (of properties), managing funds, and random movement. Video game shooters are about killing and blowing stuff up. Some games aren't quite as "pure", of course.

Recently I've been trying to formally write the "essence" of some of my game designs to try to help me see what I should concentrate on, and what I might improve. It's another way to focusing the designer's attention on various aspects of the game: the more (different) ways you can look at a design, the more opportunities you have to find ways to improve it. I want the essence to be long enough that it will tell a person who hasn't played the game something about it. The very brief characterizations I used above aren't very informative for someone who hasn't at least seen the game being played.

So I began by making a list of what ought to be included in the essence statement:

• Tag line (characterizes the game and provides a hook at the same time-the hook is the more important part)
• What is the game obviously related to? (what is it about?)
• What does the player DO?
• How does the game work? (This may not be vital to the essence but most gamers want to know something about how the game works.)
• What is the "affect" (the emotional impact, sometimes called the "aesthetics") on the player? (As emotional impact varies so much from one person to another, I tend to leave this out for games that haven't been played widely, that is, haven't been published.)
• Including time of play is probably necessary these days, when so many people won't play games that take more than an hour, or two hours, or whatever.
• Perhaps a second tag-like line to end it, as playing time is an anticlimactic ending.

While first impressions when playing a game are becoming more and more important, and I try to make notes about what happens in the first 10 minutes and how long teaching and the setup takes, these are more marketing notes than part of the essence of the game.


So let's take Britannia as an example. There have been two tag lines, so I'll include one at the start and one at the end. Notice that the first one, from 1986, talks about what happens, while the second one from 2006 talks about the player's role. The first one is addressed to wargamers, who are interested in the event and in history; the second is addressed to contemporary game players, who are more interested in the feeling of "being there," of what part they play. Both are quite active statements. (And I wrote neither of them.)


Britannia
"On an anvil of blood and terror they forged the destiny of an island!" In this epic wargame four players each control several nations playing at different times with different objectives throughout the Dark Ages history of Great Britain. Romans, Britons and Gaels, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans --they all play a part in this history. Combat is resolved with dice. This is a strategic game of achieving objectives, not of conquest, though many invaders conquer much of Britain at different times. 4 to 5 hours for experienced players. "Invade Britain. Rewrite history. Rule."

I'm not sure that's a very good description of essence, but I'm perhaps too close to the game to judge. Nor am I a good promoter of my own games, so someone else might be able to come up with better.

Here are some other examples, the first three are unfinished prototypes:

AAARRRRRHH! (the Pirate game)
"Fortune sits on the shoulder of him what schemes." Two to seven players are pirate leaders capturing ships on the Spanish Main. Begin with a pirate cutter, recruit more crew, avoid the hunting warships, add ships to your fleet, interfere with your rivals, capture a town or Spanish silver fleet if you're lucky, and accumulate the most Loot to win. The game uses hands of specialized cards (110), and dice. A "screwage" game something like Bang! or Nuclear War but without player elimination. 1 to 2 hours depending on players. "Beware the Black Spot!"

The Rise and Fall of Assyria: the History of the Ancient Near East
"2,000 years of early history in two to three hours". Two to five players control ancient empires as they rise and fall, including the dour, hated, ultimately doomed Empire of Assyria. There are no chance elements in the game other than the choices of the players. This sweep of history game is much less restrictive than Britannia (though there is a four player Britannia-like version) but much more historical than History of the World. 2 to 3 hours. "Pay tribute or die!"

Zombie Apocalypse
"Run for your lives!" The Zombie Apocalypse is here, with each of 2-7 players representing a small group of survivors. The last survivor "wins". The game uses hands of specialized cards (110), and dice. Players often play zombies against other survivors. A "screwage" game something like Bang! but without player elimination (when you "die" you become zombies!). An hour or more depending on number of players. "Send those zombies down!"

Law & Chaos
"Manage the chaos to win the game." While this abstract game can be played by 2 to 4, it is that most unusual game, one that is perfect for three players. You try to establish a pattern with your pieces on a small board, and you can capture opposing pieces, but capture methods and victory conditions vary for each player and can be changed by other players, using cards. You try to anticipate what other players are doing while disguising your own intentions. The game takes as little as 15 minutes with inexperienced players but sometimes one hour and up with experienced players. "A simple game that requires full attention."

This game is under contract to be published by Mayfair.

Dragon Rage
"The dragons are coming!" This two player wargame depicts an assault on a city or ork lair by dragons or other mythical creatures. The attacker must destroy a large portion of the city or lair before reinforcements arrive. Many scenarios and a scenario-builder are included. 90-120 minutes. Two sided mounted hex board, individually die-cut cardboard pieces. "Here there be giants."

This game was recently published in its second edition by Flatlined Games. BGG entry http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3110/dragon-rage. Web site http://www.flatlinedgames.com/

To return to the point: if you as designer write the essence of your game early in your process, and revise it as you go along, this will help you focus on what's important, or what must be fixed. Remember, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

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That phrase, "take no prisoners", makes sense in some contexts, but D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) players seem to take it to extremes. I have almost never encountered a D&D group that takes prisoners (just as I rarely encounter D&Ders who run away). It doesn’t seem to matter which edition is being played. I like to get information about what I'm going to fight (or avoid); prisoners are sometimes a source of such information.

There are spells and techniques (I don't mean torture, which is unreliable even if your world-view approves of it) that have a good chance of getting useful information out of a prisoner (if it's there); especially if you have more than one prisoner.

I suspect that many referees simply refuse to let prisoners provide any useful information. This encourages a hack n slash sort of game. (To me, D&D is mostly about combat (a wargame), but combat informed by good planning, not merely "rush in and slay".)

As I don’t care for pure “hack n slash”, because it tends to be mindless rather than informed with intelligence, I don’t want to discourage planning and thinking. If you can take prisoners, and it makes sense that they know something useful, and you go about getting the information reasonably, then you’ll succeed to a greater or lesser extent. Nor does this involve merely an “intimidation” or “bluff” or “diplomacy” roll (depending on circumstances. Most of my play with D&D was first edition, where no such official character skills existed. In a sense, in third and fourth editions we’ve given players further crutches for not thinking, by the inclusion of such skills and skill rolls.

I mentioned running away. An old mate of mine, having moved away many years ago, recounted a case where he was playing with a new group and urged them to run away from a random encounter. It had never entered their minds; yet all the encounter offered was a chance to get hurt, and to earn a few experience points, it could not further their mission goals. In the end they did run away, and were better off for it. This is another case where a referee (or DM if you prefer) can offer players a chance to use their brains. There is no reason why every encounter should be one they player characters can be expected to cope with. Why not make them decide when they need to run away?

I have recently been playing the “March of the Phantom Brigade” official D&D encounters, to learn about 4th edition (which might be a decent game (though awfully encounter-oriented), but isn’t really D&D). That is a very linear progression, of necessity to keep everyone on the same page throughout the country, of one encounter after another. Taking prisoners might help a little, but there’s certainly no intention that the adventurers should run away. It is quite different from a “normal” campaign, in other words. At least, I should hope your campaign doesn’t work this mostly-mindless way.

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Those who dislike kingmaking, who feel people shouldn't talk about what others are doing in the game while playing, who want to turn it into individual manipulation of the system, really want puzzles (multiplayer solitaire) rather than games.

*****

What I haven't seen discussed much about wargames is the number of players in a typical wargame. Traditionally, it is two. In Euros, it is about four.

Can wargame "grognards" conceive of a game for at least three separate sides--not two sides with more than one player per side--as a "wargame"? Necessarily, multi-player games with separate sides are going to be grand strategic, so that the details so loved in two-player battle games simply cannot be there.

Moreover, most of the games I'm working on have turns at least 10 years long, up to 200 years long. Can that be a "wargame" to the grognards?

Fortunately, when you combine trends toward simplicity, efforts to shorten games, multi-player situations, grand strategic level, and "sweep of history", it all works together. Whether it is acceptable to "grognards" is another matter.

Another consideration is the old notion that "you are there", "you are in command". You can't feel this at a grand strategic level, certainly not in a sweep of history game. That never made a difference to me, I'm playing a game, not living a role, but it seems to make a lot of difference to many wargamers.

If I want to play a role, I'll play a role-playing game (RPG). I think some wargamers are suspicious of RPGs, the rules aren't highly defined, they're too "loosy-goosy". So they find their role-playing in their wargames.

*****

You can design video games that encourage regular, simple activity. And that might keep a person playing the game. But is that what you, as a designer, want, to make a game that becomes a mechanical exercise, a very simple puzzle? Or a form of chemical addiction? Not me.

Ian Schreiber calls it "sticky" games. I call it minor league addiction. And that's not what I want to design. I hope online "social netowrking" games can rise above it.

*****

One of the reasons many people like Britannia-like games is that they are highly asymmetric, yet because you have multiple nations you're not trapped in a particular role that asymmetry might otherwise dictate (such as defend and preserve, or attack and conquer) for the entire game.

*****
Heard at PrezCon: Is it true that Britannia waives the rules?

I'm going to be at the UK Game Expo in Birmingham this June 3-5. While checking out some exhibitors, I discovered that the China Britannia-like game The Dragon & the Pearl is evidently back in print (for 19.99 pounds, though shipping to this country would be expensive). See
http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969

I have a copy of this game, though I haven't played it. It appears to be avoid the major error of China: the Middle Kingdom (which is, limiting action to within modern Chinese boundaries). It is closer to Brit in its rules than CtMK is.

. I was asked to write something for the blog of Buffalo Games, a smallish mass-market game company that, I confess, I had not heard of. They have since abandoned the blog, and posted it on their Facebook page.

They also published a "Q&A" with me.



Game design is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Don’t think that the idea is important. What makes a marketable game is the execution, the creation of a complete game, not the idea. Some ideas are better than others, true, but there are hardly any original ideas–if you’ve thought of it, probably a hundred others have as well. Virtually no publisher pays for an idea, publishers pay for completed games (though they may then change them...). So be prepared to work!

The second most important thing to remember about ideas is, you need to work at getting lots of them: maybe a few will work out well.

Ideas come from everywhere, from all kinds of associations: you must actively seek to get ideas, don’t wait for them to come floating by.

Lots of people have game ideas, fewer make a prototype, fewer still actually play the game. You don’t really have a game until you have a prototype that can be played. It needn’t be pretty, but it must be functional. If people enjoy playing a merely functional version of the game, they’ll enjoy the pretty published version even more. Maybe when you submit the completed game to a publisher you’ll make a pretty version.

You don’t have to have a full set of rules to start with, you just need to know how to play. Writing nearly-perfect rules is the hardest part of designing a game. Trying to write perfect rules when the game is new may be a waste of time, as the game IS going to change. In the end, though, if the rules are inadequate, the game won’t be played correctly, which is usually a disaster, and you can’t leave rules writing until the very end because the rules must be tested just as the game must be tested.

“Playtesting is sovereign”. Play your prototype, probably solo at first to work out the worst kinks, then have others play. And play. And play. Virtually no game prototype is good at first. The key to a good game is to playtest it, revise it, playtest it, revise it, playtest it, revise it, and so forth until the gameplay is polished to a gleam. Change is the norm.

You will probably get sick of the game before it’s “done!” As Reiner Knizia says, it’s easy to get a game to an 80% completion state, hard to get it to 100%. And you may think it’s “done” only to find that something MUST be changed.

Getting your game playtested is an invitation to say it sucks! Your playtesters must be in your target audience (you ALWAYS have a target audience), and you need a lot of them. Your family is not sufficient! You need people who are willing to tell you the truth.

If you just want to design one game at a time, go for it. If you want to be a game designer, you need to be designing a lot of games at the same time.

Unless you are very very lucky, you aren’t going to get rich designing games. Do it because you love it, and perhaps you’ll make some money along the way.

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Some people go to PrezCon to play games for days on end, last year my roommate played something like 19 games of Roborally. This year he was focused on Merchant of Venus, long out-of-print pickup and deliver Avalon Hill game. So he played at least all three heats of the tournament as well as the final, winning two heats and finishing second in the other but not doing as well in the final. He also discovered another level of play. At one point, I think in the final, another player saw where he was going next to purchase goods, and beat him to it to disrupt my friend's entire scheme: a perfect example of anticipatory interaction, something that's quite common in Eurogames. I don't think many people would call Merchant of Venus a Eurogame, but it has some Eurogame characteristics such as no player elimination and no direct or even indirect conflicts. (For me, anticipatory conflict does not even count as indirect; someday I have to finish my description of types of conflict.)

The Britannia tournament had two heats and the final, with 12 different people participating, which is probably more than usual for PrezCon. Mark Smith from Kentucky won for something like the third year out of four or maybe the fourth year out of five!

I watched History of the World quite a bit--the version before the Hasbro plastic piece version--and asked the players, some of whom also play Britannia, why they played. Because it became fairly evident that the distribution of empires in the last round, which has a large random element to it, strongly determined who won the game. The guys really didn't have much to say about that, and I think in the end they enjoy playing because they enjoy the journey, the experience of trying to convince other people that they should attack somebody else, persuading people do go somewhere else rather than toward their holdings, and so forth.

The game itself has very little to do with reality because of the way scoring works. Although you can score extra points for dominating a region, it's more practical to have a presence in several regions, that is, hold at least one territory in that region. So you get things like the Romans, instead of conquering northern Europe, heading all the way to Southeast Asia in order to get presence in several regions. Empires tend to be strung out rather than concentrated. Concentration doesn't help, nor is your defense better when you have more armies in an area or own more adjacent areas. This has very little to do with how empires actually behave, of course. But what this does do is lead to a lot of variation in each game, especially because at least one Empire and possibly two in each epoch (generally out of seven available empires) does not appear. The ideal History of the World game is six players though some of these games were for five.

I should say that there is a new short History of the World game out, and from what I recall reading about it some months ago it may be a much better game.

But studying the game did give me an idea for a way to change how my game Eurasia works that may make it less random and more satisfying; only playtesting will tell.

It's not easy to get people to playtest games at a heavily tournament oriented convention because there are so many tournaments people want to play in. We did get up a session of my pirates card game, and I saw how much difference there is in play between the casual players that normally playtest my games and the "sharks" that tend to come to PrezCon. The sharks are happy to try to twist/distort the text on the cards whereas the casual players will generally take the meaning that appears to be intended. Even though the game is still pretty early and fairly rough, it seems that everybody who plays it likes it. Then again, one guy said "everything's better with pirates".

I also once again watched some Age of Renaissance. At one point a year or two ago I thought about trying to make a simplified "if this game were designed today" version, but it doesn't seem to be worth it.

I watched the only Kingmaker game at the con; for some reason people weren't up for playing Kingmaker, so this game consisted of the convention organizer (who uses kingmaker as his e-mail name), one fellow who had not played before, and two guys who had some experience but did not seem to be sharks. One of them, in particular, did not want anything to do with Parliament because he felt it was boring, though Parliament is supposed to be a big part of the game.

I especially wanted to see the start of the game, which people say is more fun than when the game settles down. Unfortunately this all confirmed what I had gathered from previous observations and from reading about the Wars of the Roses: this game has virtually nothing to do with historical reality. What the players are doing and what the game does just don't correspond to what actually happened or might have happened. So my project to do Kingmaker as if it were designed today will have to focus on the aspects that people seem to like, which are chaos management and negotiation, without actually adopting any of the mechanics of this game. Fortunately I had a long conversation about the game with Jim Jordan, who is the Britannia game master but who also really likes the Wars of the Roses period, and used to be a Kingmaker player but now despises it.

The topic is popular: we have Richard the Third, a block game from Columbia, Wars of the Roses, a Eurogame from Zman, and the upcoming Crown of Roses, another block game from GMT. The block games are for two players. The Eurogame, like most Eurogames, doesn't have much to do with reality, it's for 2 to 4 players. My game will be for 2 to 5 or 6 players. That is, if I ever get to the point of a playable prototype.

I watched some Axis and Allies being played and was struck again with the great variety of play, the different strategies that people employ, and also with the lack of attention to terrain and supply. But it has become, I'm told, a game that lasts as long as eight hours. So I resurrected the idea of trying to do a two (perhaps three) hour strategic World War II game that provides the advantages of Axis and Allies without the interminable dice rolling and the tremendous unnecessary detail. I have always hit a wall on this before, but I think this time I can make it work as a two player block game. The first version will be just Europe in World War II because that should be easier to cope with than trying to do the entire world. The entire world game will be the ultimate goal however. The difficulty with blocks is that I want noticeably different kinds of blocks for sea, land, and air, and I should have noticeably different blocks for five different nations, and that means a heck of a lot of different kinds of blocks! I have Command and Conquer blocks that will do for the Axis, but only one size of three more colors for the allies...

Naturally I asked some people why they like A&A, and the answers have convinced me that I need some dice rolling in this new game. Formerly I wanted deterministic or card-based combat. A few dice are cheaper than cards, at least. (And it must be said, everyone expects dice rolling in a block game.)

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I bought two items at the PrezCon auction store. Those who know me will be unsurprised to learn that they were the same item, because I was buying for pieces, not for a game to play. On my second walk-through of the auction store (later in the afternoon when the prices were sometimes cheaper) there were two copies of Exalted: War for the Throne. I could not place the game in my mind, so I supposed it was one of those self published games that one sometimes sees at small booths at conventions. Someone designs a game, which often appears to be like Risk (conquer the world), often with lots of plastic pieces that they've had made in China, and they go to a convention to publicize the game. You almost never see them back the next year because they found that the trip and booth cost them more money than it was worth. But when I later looked the game up via the Internet I discovered that it's a game published by well-known RPG company White Wolf, tying into their world setting. That helps explain how they could put so many plastic pieces into the game and not lose an arm and a leg, by using a large print run (and only three molds). But this 70ドル list game was being offered brand-new for 20ドル.

When I saw that it included plastic ships that look like Viking ships I decided to buy one copy, then went back to the room and opened it up and check things out, and then went back and bought the second copy.

The game includes 30x5 ships, which on closer examination are galleys, 75x5 medieval spearmen, and 50 “manses”, which look rather pagoda-like. Along with that are 75 cards, 120 small glass beads, over 100 large cardboard “coins”, five very heavy cardboard information plaques for the five aspects of magic, and a few other bits, as well as 10 rather elaborate 10 sided dice. The plastic is fairly hard and very detailed: I decided the ships were galleys rather than Viking ships when I saw the eye bulges on the bow and the rowing superstructure along each side that characterize galleys but not drakkars. And there’s the mounted (but warped) board, which is rather small and plain and cursed with “four-color mapism”. That is, each dominion is colored separately like a typical political map of nations or states, which looks absolutely unrealistic if not garish on a game map. The only other board I can think of that does this is China: the Middle Kingdom, and it looks similarly unsuitable and unedifying.

So buying these for 20ドル each for parts, especially the ships, is a pretty good deal for a game designer. But this made me think about the materialist inclinations of game buyers. If I were buying this as a game, the fact that it has lots of plastic pieces would be relatively unimportant. I want a game that's good to play, over and over again. But in contemporary terms, many people don’t seem to expect to play a game more than a few times, so they’re not as worried about whether they are getting a really good game and more worried about whether they’re getting “their money’s worth” for the parts. This in itself is ridiculous because most people are not game designers and are not going to reuse the parts. But that seems to be the way many people think and talk.

It reminds me of the novice game designers who put lots of time and money into the looks of their prototypes. Manufacturers are much more interested in whether it’s a good game than in how the prototype looks. And designers should make simple prototypes, and spend their time on making the game better. But even here things are changing, because it’s harder and harder to get people to playtest a game unless it looks good. I spend more time on the looks of a game by far than I used to, but fortunately thanks to computers and having thousands of pieces like the ones I got from Exalted: War for the Throne, it doesn’t take me more time to make prototypes that it used to take.

I did read the comments about the game on Boardgamegeek, and read/skimmed the rules. An awful lot of the game seems to amount to spending magical essence to get additional dice rolls. It seems to be a Risk-like game, but better than Risk, or at least it would have been if it had been thoroughly play tested which may not be the case. But I confess that the first thing I did with the rulebook is look at the list of playtesters and see that there weren't many. That may not mean much or it may mean that the testing was insufficiently broad, and so some very effective strategies were not tried or certain situations were not played much.

But for people spending the 70ドル list price (about 45ドル online, compare with something like 30ドル or less for Risk), it’s really important to have lots of nice components. I suspect the game really has appeal only to people who play the role playing games in the Exalted world setting.

Once again I attended PrezCon in Charlottesville, VA. Organizer Justin Thompson says "600 players attended PrezCon 2011 which is a record! We ran 90 boardgames [tournaments] which was a record! Dominion had 84 players which is a non [-standard deck] card game record! We had our 1st Auction store in which we sold over 600 items." As usual PrezCon took place in the last full weekend of February, beginning with pre-cons on Monday and really getting started Wednesday or Thursday.

PrezCon appears to run like a well-oiled ship, you get exactly what you expect if you've been there in past years. It is a smaller version of WBC, heavily tournament oriented with some vendors/manufacturers, an auction, and auction store, and some open gaming. There are no miniatures, no RPGs, no collectible card games: just boardgames and specialized card games. The majority of attendees appear to be over 40 (especially if we don't count their teenage children who are often along). Some people I know don't come to PrezCon because they don't want to compete with the "sharks". Mayfair, ZMan, and GMT were among the vendors.

Most cons don't run tournaments, it seems. WBC and PrezCon, because they are meant to be tournament cons, are the exception. GenCon runs a few big ones, sponsored by manufacturers in many cases (thus leaving me/Brit out). Origins is about individual games, not tournaments.

The PrezCon organizers are running a new convention they have dubbed "National Eurogame Championships" on Memorial Day weekend in the District of Columbia. When I saw "Eurogame" I turned right off, and in any case I have other plans for that weekend. (I am atypical because I go to conventions to talk to publishers not play games.) I'm told there will be more than Eurogames played. There's more potential for a Memorial Day convention than for one at the end of February, but they need a broader title.

A few years ago I was listening to taped lectures about the Roman Republic. The lecturer was a young man who recounted the experience of a much older scholar who was an expert on the Roman Republic’s constitution. The Roman constitution is an unwritten and often puzzling mishmash of traditions. The lecturer said the older scholar described his experiences: when he was young he thought he understood the Roman constitution, but as he got older he felt he understood less and less, so now as senior faculty he wasn’t at all sure how it worked!

The young lecturer found this a little depressing but I can understand it completely, because I sometimes feel the same way about my understanding of why people play games. Apparently some game scholars simply assume that people play games to win, but that’s clearly not even close to the truth, especially for many Euro gamers and for many people of the younger generation. When I wrote a piece about why people play games for my book that’s been printed on GameCareerGuide (republished in this blog ), I listed a wide variety of motivations, but that was only a beginning.

But what’s brought this to mind right now is watching people play two very different games: one is Betrayal at House on the Hill and the other is Hansa Teutonica (HT). These games are about as different as two games can be, yet the players in both cases were late teens and twenty-somethings. I’m pretty sure the players of Betrayal would immediately fall asleep if they played HT. Though I think the HT players would not be quite so put off by Betrayal I think they’d rapidly find it pointless.

Betrayal is a story driven game (exploration of a haunted house) with lots of chance involved; HT has a tacked-on “theme” of traders in the Hanseatic League but is for all practical purposes a rather complex abstract game with no chance, yet of the kind I call “mental gymnastics”.

At the NC State gamers club Betrayal is played virtually every week. Most of the players are as much role-playing gamers as boardgamers. "Casual" would describe them, most don't own enough games to say so (this is a club-owned copy), and play tabletop games once a week for 3-4 hours.

I have been reading reviews and watching video reviews of the game to try to understand exactly what it is that attracts the players. It seems to me that the story-driven aspect of it is what makes it popular, along with relatively short gameplay (an hour). The players don't seem to mind the initial wandering (which the hard-core on BoardgameGeek call "pointless"), but as someone pointed out, it's not much different than when D&D came out and you wandered around a dungeon. And certainly not different from the "leveling up", without interest a larger purpose, that characterizes most computer MMORPGs. Someone suggested that there was a resmblance in purpose to Munchkin, where the game goal is to reach a particular level.

I am not into tactically oriented story driven games--though I played D&D for 30 years, I hated being made to follow a particular story. I do like the sweep of history in games ("story" is part of "history"). But I am not a horror-movie fan. So I'm not the least tempted the play Betrayal.

The players of HT play games several times a week, sometimes for six hours or more. HT itself seems to be a one hour game, with three players anyway. As with many Euro games HT feels to me like a game where you do things for the sake of doing them, where complexity is introduced for the sake of complexity, where there are lots of different things you can do and yet none of them feels like you’re doing something that actually represents anything anyone would do in reality. To me either a game is completely abstract, and should be simple to play but have complexity in playing well, or the game should be one where everything I do can be *easily* seen to represent something that might be done or occur in reality. I don’t try to design simulations but if I’m designing a historical game I often want it to be a representation. Britannia is a representation of British history not a simulation, Dragon Rage is a representation of an attack on a city, not a simulation. In fact I think simulations of history are a delusion and a dead-end, perhaps excepting highly tactical games. (I’ve written two long articles about some of these topics, one of which was recently published in Against the Odds magazine.)

For me, either a game is entirely abstract (chess), or it is a model of some reality, but it doesn't have to be a highly detailed or "accurate" model. HT, like many recent Euro games, is neither, it's abstract but complex, pretending to be a model, yet frequently but not always turns out to be a particularly poor model.

So my reaction to HT is like my reaction to a great many Euro games, “why would anyone bother?” Yet obviously a lot of people do bother, and must enjoy what they’re doing.

* We often say that the essence of a game is player interaction. If so, what is the essence of a puzzle? I'm at a loss.

* I say I like cooperative games (D&D) but I don't go for cooperative boardgames. Why not? Because cooperative boardgames are puzzles, there's no semblance of intelligent opposition.

* I have been thinking I should write an article about game myths. Maybe "10 myths about games", but it could be another number. So far I have (in random order):

Everyone plays to win.

Everybody plays games.

You can gamify anything.

Games are complicated.

Games are all about shooting and blowing stuff up.

Girls don't play games.

Games are like puzzles.

Games are about math.

* Perhaps I ought to write "10 myths about game design" as well...