A Theory of Board Game Design: Definitions of Terms

In early 2003 I wrote a series of what would eventually become 20 or so articles on the topic of strategic game design. They appeared in my continuing Skotos column, Trials, Triumphs & Trivialities, and I later reprinted them as a group in my now-defunct RPGnet column, Thinking Virtually.

It's now been almost three years since I finished up the core of the series, and I haven't quite decided what to do with it. I've learned a lot about board game design since, so I could revise them quite a bit for posting here, but on the other hand there's enough material for a book if I could find someone to publish it.

So, I'm leaving those articles in stasis for now, but at the same time I do want to talk about some of the ideas I originated there. Thus, I've decided to write up this article, which is a summary of some of my design ideas, and a general outline of how I analyze board game design, part-by-part. Consider it a definition of terms. (And if you prefer to go read the entire original and somewhat out-of-date series, it's available at Skotos.)

Broadly I think a game can be defined using the following elements: components, activity, decisions, luck, and victory.

Components

Four types of components define most games: environment, tokens, markers, and randomizers.

Environment is the board upon which a game is played, though it may actually be a tabletop, a score sheet, or something stranger. You can have abstract environments (like a chess board), representative environments (like most Euro boards), randomized environments (like Settlers of Catan), evolving environments (like Carcassonne), and more.

Tokens are pieces which are placed upon that environment. They differentiate themselves from environment by the fact that they're dynamic. They enter play, leave play, move, or in some other way change. Broadly they're often "pawns" and they're defined by who they belong to, whether they move, and what they depict. You can have personal tokens, shared tokens, public tokens, dynamic tokens, static tokens, representative tokens, and many combinations thereof.

Markers are game elements which exist outside of the environment and which effectively replace a tic upon a piece of paper. They usually help you keep track of some quantity, such as dollars. You can have scoring markers (VPs, money), trading markers (goods), and more.

Randomizers are game elements which also exist outside the environment, and which in some way introduce luck into a game. See the discussion on Luck, below, for different types of randomizers, but the most common types are random randomizers (dice, spinners) and arbitrary randomizers (cards). Randomizers can sometimes combine with other types of components, such as the Carcassonne tiles, which are arbitrary environment and the Diceland dice, which are random personal tokens.

Tokens and environment tend to be the two more important types of components. By cross-referencing them you can usually say a lot about a game. For example, you could define The Settlers of Catan as using "personal representative tokens on a randomized environment" while some The Seafarers of Catan scenarios instead have "personal representative tokens on an evolving environment". Which is a fancy way of saying you have settlements and cities in both, but in one the board is randomized, but set at the start of the game, while in the other the board is randomized and can grow during the game.

Activity

I define activity as the mechanics that describe component interactions in a game. In other words they're the rules that say if you're allowed to change one marker into another ("wood for your sheep?") or if you're allowed to remove someone else's token ("die evil red army!").

I'm not entirely happy with my activity descriptions from my original article, but I still think they inevitably are classified by different ways that you move your components around. Following are some off-the-cuff definitions that I'm using for the moment.

Token activity might include: token conflict, where tokens directly affect each other, like Risk; token movement, where you're moving your tokens, often to some deliberate endpoint; the simpler token placement, where you're placing tokens on-board from an off-board position; or token removal, which is often a type of token conflict, but with a predefined result, such as when a dragon eats a meeple in Carcassonne: The Princess & The Dragon.

Environment activity usually centers on environment exploration (and/or environment placement), where you're trying to figure out what's in an environment and/or take advantage of it, such as in Anno 1503 or Goldland. It could also include environment conflict, if you're having environment in some way fight each other, though I can't immediately think of any games which meet that definition.

Marker activity includes almost any type of logistical game and most resource-management games. I usually classify them as marker collection and/or marker placement. The Settlers of Catan, Parthenon, and many others feature one of these as their main game activity.

Inevitably the activity within a game is defined by activity points (or "action points", to use their more common name), which define how many activities you can take during your turn. There are two degenerate cases which actually define most activity: where you have 1 AP, and can thus do just one thing; and where you have infinite APs, and can do do as many things as you want, subject to resource exhaustion. These cases usually don't actually define their activity as using APs. However, many gamers' games (particularly those by Kramer & Kiesling) make their APs explicit, and give you 2-10 to spend on a turn.

Decisions

Decisions are what make activity interesting, because they offer different choices for you to make. You can usually define activity as a set of decision sets, each of which has two or more options.

Decision sets can cause Analysis Paralysis, which can be the downfall of a good game, and thus it's important to constrain them and thus make them more manageable. Some of the constraints I suggested in my original article include "constraint by turn phase", "constraint by game phase", "constraint by ability", "constraint by needs", "constraint by attractiveness" and "constraint by results".

The purpose of all of these constraints is the same: to reduce an infinite set of options to decisions sets which have 7 or less options each (using the psychologist's "Rule of 7" as a good thumbnail for what an individual can easily concentrate on). It's much preferred to have a 5-option decision, followed by another 5-option decision, then to have a single 10-option decision, and that's where constraints come in.

Luck

Luck is primarily used to determine the outcome of an activity. As I mentioned recently, in my second article on luck, I define four broad categories of luck.

Randomness is essentially selection with replacement. You get a random result from a set that never changes. These are dice.

Arbitrariness is essentially selection without replacement. You get a random result from a set that shrinks as you select from it. These are cards.

Chaos is the way that other players affect you & your plans.

Uncertainty is centered on hidden information, which is to say things that you don't know, but that other players do, which could have affected your decisions.

Dungeon Twister was a game that struck me last year for its claim that it has no luck. But it does: primarily chaos. Your placement of characters and items and your opponent's selection of the same can dramatically benefit one of you or the other through no real strategy. There's also some arbitrariness related to the placement of the room tiles. If my opponent's Dragon ends up on a big open square where it can flame lots of nearby rooms, and mine ends up on a square that's surrounded by walls no matter where he goes, then my opponent got lucky and I didn't.

Which is a long way of say that no dice doesn't mean no luck.

Victory

Just as activity is defined by activity points, victory is defined by victory points (and thus victory markers). Some games define a single victory point and some define five or ten required to win, but most constantly give you VPs throughout the game, and you call that a "score". Perhaps more confusingly some games use victory points as a resource within the game too (such as in Oltremare and many others where victory is money).

Victory Points are usually given out for component interactions (or, to put it another way, for certain types of successful component activities). Broadly, VPs are awarded for: token creation, destruction, collection, or movement; environment creation, destruction, control, or exploration; or marker creation, destruction, or collection.

As with activities, my definitions of victories have changed a bit since my original articles, and they're probably not quite settled yet.

Conclusion

This week's article was mainly intended to be a glossary. I suspect I'll refer back to it when I talk about game designs, starting with an upcoming series of articles on the design of Carcassonne(s). I hope I didn't bore too much; clearly defining everything here should pay off in months to come.

No Easy Answer

I saw a question recently on the Geek: If I like Ingenious, will I like Through the Desert? This kind of question comes up occasionally and isn’t always easy to answer, especially if it isn’t accompanied by other information like what kind of other games you like and how many players you usually have.

Sometimes the games are so alike that it’s almost a given like Gemblo and Blokus which are, at their core, the same game. Other times there’s a superficial similarity in the play or feel of games, like Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence. These games both have a fairly complex interplay of components, offer different strategies and patterns of play to explore, and if the Geek ratings are to be trusted, the answer is a fairly confident “yes”. (I know some of you will want to complain and debate my comparison of these two games so go ahead; at least I’ll know someone out there is reading this!)

When games have almost nothing in common, it’s not so easy to give a useful answer. “I’m looking for a train game. Which one should I get?” I’m sorry, but without a lot more information to go on, there’s no way to answer that question with any confidence. Train games aren’t really about trains most of the time. They’re about collecting stock, point-to-point connection, moving goods, set collection or not going broke. They range from light, family fun to heavier, strategic brain exercise.

Even when games seem to have an important common element, the answer may be harder to answer correctly. I’m not a fan of auction/bidding games but I’ve enjoyed my online games of Amun-Re. If I were new to board gaming and was looking for suggestions with Amun-Re as my only tidbit of information, you might immediately think of Goa as a likely match. You would be wrong. Goa has my most-dreaded auction, the once-around.

There’s no way to compare Ingenious to Through the Desert except they both have neat pieces and the rules are pretty easily explained. The only answer that might be of help is, “I like them both so maybe you will, too.” In fact, I like Through the Desert much more than Ingenious.

There is no magic formula to answer the question If I Like X, Will I Like Y? But you’ll get much better opinions and more suggestions if you include as much information about your tastes and needs as you can when asking this question. After that, it’s a crap shoot, isn’t it? Hey, if I like Craps, will I like Roulette?
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Until next time, keep your cardboard dry.

Mary

Generic mainstream news articles, so you won't have to read all those other ones

1. "The next Monopoly"

Board games have been in steady decline since the early 1980's, when console gaming and computer games took over the gaming industry. With the exception of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Cranium, and a few other old standbys, board games no longer sell to today's youth.

In this day of flashing lights and video games, plain old dusty board games sit in the closet like platform shoes and polka-dot mini-skirts. Now ______ _______ wants to change that. He/she has invented a new board game that he/she hopes will become the next Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit.

"People today don't spend time together anymore, whether it's fast food, computers, or television. It's nice to have an actual board game for people to sit around. We're all really hungry for social contact."

The brainchild of __________ is the game ________, which combines the strategy of _____ and the luck element of _________. ________ created the game after being laid off at his/her current place of employment. He/she says that he/she can teach the rules in only thirty seconds, but that the game has lots of depth and is fun to play over and over for kids and grown-ups, alike.

Asked whether he thought today's kids would really have the patience or interest in playing an actual board game, he said that they would. "I was surprised at how good a reception the game got. When I first showed it to my kids, they weren't that interested. But when they started playing they were like, 'Wow! This is awesome!' Then they wanted to play again, right away. They brought their friends over to play, too. They can't get enough of it."

______ says that the game is not only fun, but can teach kids important concepts, such as pattern recognition/aiming to achieve a goal/economics/colors/ecology/how to sit still and pay attention.

______'s family raised the money to produce the first 2000 copies, which he/she is now trying to convince local game sellers to stock.

2. Board game group tries to revive the art of face to face games

At a local coffee shop, a group of adults huddle together over a table in furious discussion and laughter. They're not reading the sports section of the newspaper or discussing local politics. They're playing a board game.

Remember in days gone by, when families use to sit down together to play a board game? Well, this local group is trying to revive that old tradition. The _______ group meets every ______ to play board games.

In these days of computer games and video consoles, getting together with real people is a rare and welcome luxury. Board games are undergoing a resurgence in popularity, thanks in part to game groups such as this one.

"People think we're crazy, but there's a lot to be said about board games. Board games are good for you," says ______, the group's founder. "They teach strategy, get you thinking, and require you to deal with a real live person. They teach you how to sit still and pay attention. They're also a lot of fun."

People are rediscovering the old games that they/their parents once liked to play. Great board games to play are the classics: Monopoly, Clue, Snakes and Ladders, Candyland, and Sorry.

"People really connect to each other when playing a game," says _______.

3. The latest board games go digital

In this day of video games and computers, the old fashioned board game is having a hard time competing. Board game companies have found new ways to breathe life into the old classics, by marrying these old games to the TV screen.

"Kids nowadays don't relate to a flat board game. It's boring. Frankly, I don't blame them. They need fast moving pictures and electronics. And they have to be able to play the game in five or ten minutes, tops."

New games to bring out the budding board game player in your children include Scene It(tm), World Poker Championship, Candyland DVD, and Clue: the DVD edition, which are played using your DVD player. Each game comes with a disk which you simply pop into your DVD player. After the DVD starts up, away you go.

Kids love television, so these games are a natural fit. They are also educational, teaching kids to recognize colors and shapes, and offering basic counting and pattern recognition skills.

These games also offer the convenience of being able to play solo, when you can't find a partner. However, they are best enjoyed with company. The games only take 5 or 10 minutes, and they can be paused and resumed later, if necessary.

---

There you go, Ward. That should free up a lot of your time.

Yehuda

the "Doctor" is in the 'hizz-ouse"!

YES! We're finally getting this T V 'show' airing here on a regular basis NOW! I had caught just one episode before this, upon a 'Canadian' station-(thank you "Oh Canada"!), and they graciously had shown '2' of these back to back last Friday night upon the "Sci Fi" channel! Since WE here aren't having any sorts of "UNcommon Destitute Gamings" going on, then it was nice to be able to relax and take in this at a leisurely 'pace'. While I know many have even gotten out to take in a 'movie' such as "V for Vendetta"-with a few having regretted such already-then it is hoped that many anew "fanzoid" for THIS, will get behind the rest of US on the matter as well. So I wonder WHY the "good Doctor" don't figure out a useful 'means' for them "Daleks", such as roving "street lights" with them going around and 'saying' their 'bit' instead as "I-L-L-U-M-I-N-A-T-E-!" eh? Since we'll have to await for the NEXT "Season" for "Battlestar Galactica", then this ought to fill the 'void' in the meantime. "South Park" is going to be having theirs this upcoming Wednesday night as well, so keep that in mind for you "fanzoids" of theirs. While just now I'm watching upon the "Gladiator" movie and of course I don't take this too "literally" and barely "figuratively" for that matter. We' ve got a "nice day" going on around here as well with the "SUN" making a full day of this, while yet others "below & around" are having "Cyclonic" fits in their parts of the World, so take care down there.

I also take *note* of "Cavedog_pdx" bringing up within a "list" of his on the "Geek" about some folks desiring upon some "Heavier Strategy" types of games. It seems to ME that there already ARE plenty available these days, what with "Europe Engulfed" or even "Caylus" from what I'd 'gathered' about such. I know that he's just trying to bring UP this 'topic' to alert those "idjits" around the 'industry' upon this FACT, but don't hold your collective "breaths" for anything spectacular, what with the more recent spate of "releases" and the 'let downs' that they've managed to elicit. Yet again, then I have to point OUT to many about this concerning just since YOU are "giving away" YOUR hard earned 'monies' for this 'stuff' on a regular basis-akin to 'feeding' your "wallet" some monetary "Ex-Lax"-then you are getting what you 'deserve' eh? Yep, them "fools" and their "moneys" are 'parting' at "Ludicrous" speed! I didn't wish to put up with their "crap" any longer, so that is mainly WHY I don't "buy into" this any longer msyelf. But then of course, I've got plenty to keep me "busy" in the meantime as well, so that's really of little consequence regarding 'moi'. This also brings to mind for ME about what is the "delay" upon having MY "game submission" becoming "approved"? hmmm? I 'devised' that "MEEP" "WARZ!" game for use IN their "chat" and we've even been conducting some "gamings" of this, although our "room" is so 'lag ridden' as to make that more like some sort of "Snail's PACE" for the time being. I would write to 'them' upon the matter, except that a "gnat fart during a Hurricane" would probably obtain better 'notice'!

I shall also bring up about HOW this 'blog' tends to have its share of 'problems' every so often and many HERE know of what I 'speak'. I don't have any idea just what is going on for that, and no quick 'answer' about this is forthcoming. Sure, they could be working upon this somewhere and 'whomever' just happens to be the "unlucky" 'person' being subjected to such at the moment. It is just another "thang" that we have to put up with and since this is FREE, then we have little "room" to complain about it all.

Here's my "shout out" to them 'good guys' of "Scott & Jason" over at "Point 2 Point" for their "grognard" podcasts! They've even gotten UP a "webpage" for that now and here's a couple of LINKS for this:

"Point to Point"

"Point2Pointsource.com-webpage"

Keep up the "Good JORB!" you guys, along with the many others out around the WORLD doing their 'part' for the benefit of many others!

A quiet night at Gamers@Dockers or the night Twonky got his guns

The spectre of street closures and parking chaos due to the Commonwealth Games meant that numbers were down compared to usual, although local readers should note that there were no particular transport problems at all. Note to American readers - the reason that the English threw the American War of Independence was so that you would not get invited to the Commonwealth Games, which is basically the Olympics for old English colonial countries who did not fight wars of independence.

First off was a three player David and Goliath with Tim, Greg and myself. Tim said he had played it once or twice before. They way he casually destroyed us time and time again implied that either he is a natural at the game or has played it a few more times than he admitted. To add insult to injury on those rare occasions that Tim deigned to let us build a legitimate scoring pile he gave us 1's or 2's from his seemingly limitless supply of low cards.

Luckily for Greg and I, Ben arrived and we switched to four player where despite a concerted effort by Greg and myself Tim still did very well.

We were now up to five people and broke out Paul's Avalon Hill version of Robo Rally. By the time we had decided what board or boards to play and had almost set up we were up to seven players.

I have played the original Robo Rally quite a few times over the years, but this was my first time with the new version.

The addition of the player mats and the starting board are very useful. I am not entirely sure why the virtual bots were removed, but I can live with it. The opinion of the table was that the 30 second timer was useless. If it is to be started as soon as the penultimate player has finished then it should be only 10 or 15 seconds, alternately you could make it 60 or 90 seconds and start it before people look at their cards.

We played that nobody started with any option cards (I am not sure what the standard rules for this actually are).

We had two or three newbies and played the board that has four square fast conveyor belts, quite a few rotating gears and a number of lasers. In fact it looked almost exactly like this except that the main board was rotated 90 degrees and the third flag was one square closer to the start board.

The start was peaceful enough, but by the third turn things started getting hectic. Most people had cleared the starting area and encountered either each other or the speedy conveyors which general played havoc with their programmed movement. With seven bots in play the most direct route to the first flag soon became crowded and naturally a lot of pushing, shoving and shooting ensued. It was rare for anyone to be positioned at the end of the turn even remotely near where they had planned to end up.

The first deaths were quite early, Paul pushed Ben off the map and was moving so fast that he followed him off. The mayhem continued with a large number of power downs required for people to keep moving in a vaguely controlled fashion.

Paul was the first to reach the first flag, Frank was very close behind after being pushed and having a locked register due to accumulated damage he found himself careering off the edge of the board the very next turn.

Having taken the long way around to make a pass at the first flag I (Twonky) got pushed and found myself on a speedy conveyor belt and waving bye-bye to the flag in a fairly damaged state. At this stage I decided to power down whilst enjoying the ride around the conveyor belt. When I powered up again my cards were not going to help me reach the elusive first flag, so I decided to visit the repair place and pick up an option card. I did this and got the howitzer (five optional shots which push the target bot one space in addition to the normal damage). My next pick up of cards had all turns except for a Move 1 and a backup. I wasn't going to be able to get near the flag, but I could return to the repair spot and pick up a second option card, so I did and got Fire Control (instead of causing damage you may choose to lock a register of your choice on the target bot). It is worth pointing out, that I was the only player to get any option cards during the game. They did give me an advantage, however it had cost me two full turns to pick them up.

With some new cards and my newly installed weapons I was now ready to strike out towards the first flag and possibly cause some havoc along the way. By this stage Paul had already left the second flag behind and three others had completed the first flag and were heading there way towards the second flag. A few more deaths had occurred by this point. Paul had pushed Frank off the board and soon after he had been caught in the crossfire of two other bots and been shot to pieces.

Unlike my first attempt at the flag, my second attempt was successful, avoiding being pushed by the other bots and getting there with nothing other than a few laser hits. As I left the first flag, Paul was zooming up the edge of the board towards the third flag. I decided I may as well move out and position myself for some opportunity fire towards the third flag, especially since I only had two Move cards to play that turn.

As my luck would have it, the instant I turned towards the third flag Paul appeared in my sights. He was on the edge of the board about to win the game, what is a poor young bot with a brand new howitzer meant to do? Fire One! Yes, I shot him with the howitzer, pushed him off the board and he was eliminated from the game.

During the this time, three people who were new to Gamers@Dockers had arrived. Greg explained David and Goliath to them and helped them play in between his turns.

Quite a bunfight was brewing around the second flag. I couldn't resist the opportunity to shoot Tim with the howitzer to push him into Greg who was then pushed off the board. During another entanglements Frank ended up being eliminated.

After David and Goliath finished, Frank and Paul started up a five player game of Ra with the new people.

Tim made it to the to second flag as I powered down just near it and then he made a good run towards the third flag. On the way towards the third flag, I irritated any other bots that got into my sights by using the Fire Control to lock one of their registers, usually a fun one like U-turn or Move 3.

It was a race to the third flag between Tim and I and Tim was a fair way in front. I positioned myself to be coming up the map on the speedy conveyor belt that had direct line of sight with the third flag. The phase that Tim reached the flag, I had just come around the corner of the conveyor belt and had a shot lined up, so used the howitzer and pushed him off the flag. The next phase Tim turned and I was still on the conveyor belt facing the flag and Tim. This time I used Fire Control and locked his first register, which was Move 3. His final card was a turn that left him facing the edge of the board. He was now two spaces away from the edge with a locked Move 3 as his first card and thus went sailing off the edge to return to flag two. I had the right cards to sail off the conveyor belt and straight on the third flag to claim victory in a damage filled game.

The game of Ra was continuing at the other table, so the surviving bots (Tim, Ben, Doritos and I) broke out Alhambra. Neither Ben nor Doritos had played before, however in a tight finish Doritos pipped Ben by a point who in turn pipped me by a point. Tim was a bit further behind, but he had a very symmetrical palace, which may have been worth a few style points, but no victory points.

A very pleasant eveing, no problems with the Commonwealth games, three games played and three new people to Gamers@Dockers. Thanks as usual to Frank for the lift home.

Gaming from 60 B.C. to 1 A.C/The pre-history of modern games

60 years before Catan to the release of Catan.

The modern era of boardgaming began during the Great Depression. Prior to the widespread release of Monopoly in 1935 themed boardgames were viewed as a childish pastime. Boardgames often had a Biblical theme, or were merely tools to help teach children to count and read.

Most of the readers to this blog know that the following story is a load of malarkey, but for our purposes it will suffice. Actually, this small snipette of the story is probably true.

According to the popular story Charles Darrow was making copies of a game in his garage for his friends. Soon demand was greater than he could meet in his home workshop. Charles took his game to Parker Brothers who after several refusals eventually picked up the game and started mass producing it under the name Monopoly. In doing so boardgaming would make an epic shift for the better.

Who knows why popular culture takes the turns that it takes? In the case of Monopoly it seems to be a matter of timing.

During the Great Depression Monopoly provided a diversion which allowed adults to momentarily forget about the poor state of the economy and to play with large sums of money, albeit play money. In times of economic downturns people tend to be more inclined to stay at home to find entertainment, hence the traditional increase in birth rates during times of economic downturns (the Baby-Boomers being the notable exception to that rule). These two forces; the fantasy spawned by tossing around money frivolously and the economic impetus to stay at home converged (a convergence in the forces if you will) to make Monopoly popular with adults.

Who knows all the reasons Monopoly caught on with adults? I suspect there is probably a certain amount of truth to both of the reasons I presented, but I doubt that either can account for the current popularity of Monopoly. However it happened, catch on it did and our culture has changed for the better.

More boardgames designed with adults in mind followed in the wake of Monopoly. The Monopoly Stock Exchange Add On in 1936 (which may be the first game expansion); Stock Ticker in 1937; Tripoley in 1938; Scrabble in 1948; Yahtzee in 1956; among many other games captured the fancy of many adults.

The release of Tactics II in 1958 marked another turn in popular culture. Not only was Tactics II a game designed for adults, it had no pretensions about being a family game. With the release of Tactics II we see the coalescence of tactical wargames as another branch of boardgames. Charles Roberts, the creator of Tactics II, founded the Avalon Hill game company in 1958 and promptly released another wargame, Gettysburg. Diplomacy and Risk were both released the next year and the era of popular wargaming was officially underway.

Although renown for its line of wargames Avalon Hill published many types of games many of which were targeted at a young adult (read: college students) and older audience. AH published the original 18xx Railroad games, Rail Baron, Shakespeare, the Status Pro series, numerous race car games and other games too numerous to mention. In 1974 AH acquired the rights to many games in the 3M line including the venerable game of Sid Sackson design, Acquire.

Acquire was first published in 1962. At the time of its release Acquire was considered to be a pretty good game, and stayed in print for the next 40 years. Acquire wasn’t a game that changed boardgame culture on its own, but its influence has been felt for decades after its release. I have often considered Acquire to be the “Velvet Underground” of boardgaming. Brian Eno once said of the band Velvet Underground: “Only a few thousand people ever bought a Velvet Underground record, but almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band.”

I doubt anybody was inspired to start a band after playing Acquire, but the game has come to be known as a very inspirational design.

Acquire has only recently, within the last 10 years, become widely recognized as the original designer game or German game. No one gets eliminated in Acquire. Each player is in control of his own destiny and not at the mercy of dice. Skillful players have an advantage, but random tile draws give new players a chance to win and keeps each game fresh. Players don’t actually control game tokens in Acquire, players own stock in companies and can only influence companies in a small way each turn. Several players can own stock in the same companies. This concept in game design, arguably, did more to influence future game design than anything since the invention of dice.

That’s a lot of innovation for one game. At some future time I will argue that Scrabble actually did several of those thing prior to Acquire, but no game designer ever put all those elements together in the same game as successfully as Sackson did with Acquire.

By the late 1980s boardgames were again considered to be a childish pursuit in most circles. Dungeons and Dragons had long before started its meteoric ascent and a slew of role playing games designed for the teenager and very young adult would appear in its wake. Most importantly the era video games, both arcade and home versions, was in full swing. The wargaming arm of the boardgame hobby and possibly Scrabble were the two exceptions where adult players still thrived. Luckily in Germany boardgames were still considered a family hobby.

Game design in Germany developed along different lines than the rest of the world. In Germany the topic of war was taboo. Wargames were taboo. Not only were wargames taboo, but game boxes that depicted certain German WWII insignias were illegal to import (and still are). This aversion to war games, coupled with the fact that more games are produced and sold in Germany than any other country, eventually lead to a new worldwide shift in the way adults think of boardgames.

In the mid to late 1970s the era modern "German games" was starting to bloom. The German designers had scrapped the traditional "roll and move" mechanism, and were designing games with no player elimination. Some of the other hallmarks of a German game were, and still are; simple rules, clever mechanisms, <2 hours in length, if there was any luck in the game it was managable, lots of player interaction, and quality production.

In 1978 the German game industry created the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award to promote the best family games coming out of their country. The first winner was Hare and Tortoise (Hase und Egal) in 1979. In the years since the Spiel des Jahres was established it has become a mark of excellence. Today a winner of the SdJ can easily sell a quarter million copies.

By the 1990s games of German origin were starting to make their way out of the country and into the hands of game enthusiasts in other countries. Word of mouth and small publications like Mike Siggins’ Sumo helped spread the word about the “German games”, but the rise of the internet in the mid 90s was the real turning point for German games. Or should I say; the rise of the internet coupled with a minor game that you have probably never heard of called “Settlers of Catan”.

The internet became a point for enthusiasts of boardgames to congergate and exchange information about games. With the internet a gamer in Jerkwater, Alberta could read a review about a game produced in Germany, and buy it from an on line store. Not only could he read a review, but an English translation of the rules would eventually get posted, and reposted to other boardgame websites. Gamers who had never heard of Sumo nor Mike Siggins could now easily get information about games produced around the world.

For many (self included) the internet opened our eyes to a boardgame world that we never new existed.

Just as the internet was becoming a household word the spark that was the German boardgame industry turned into a blaze with the release of Settlers of Catan. How odd that Monopoly, the game that gave legitimacy to boardgames for adults, would come to be viewed as a child's game in the wake.

But again, who knows why cultures take the turns they take?

The Problem with Luck II

Last year I wrote about luck in board games, with attention to the fact that most well-designed luck in games actually asks you to balance risk versus reward.

Last week I played two luck-filled board games, Parthenon and The Settlers of Zarahemla and in each case I lost due to some "bad luck". But, I was entirely happy with the results because the losses were ultimately the result of me risking and losing, and that's exactly how I think it should be in a game with a random factor. Thus, I'd like to use these two game sessions as case studies, to show what good, controllable luck looks like, and how you can risk and lose.

In the process, I'm going to talk about several different types of unpredictability in games: randomness, which I define as sample with replacement, such as a die roll; arbitrariness, which I define as sample without replacement, such as a deck of cards; and chaos, which I define as player interaction. (A fourth type of unpredictability, uncertainty, which depends on hidden information, didn't really come up in either game.)

Case #1: Parthenon

Parthenon was one of the more interesting games released in 2005. I wouldn't say it was high profile, but that's mainly because it came out from Z-Man who is still building their Eurogame creds (though they came out with a pile of great games in 2005). Nonetheless, if this game had been put out by Rio Grande, everyone would have been talking about it. Parthenon got quite a bit of good, early press as either a Civilization-light or a new Settlers of Catan. Then, as it reached a larger audience, people started complaining about the randomness, saying that it ruined an otherwise good game. As of today Parthenon is still ranked #586 on BGG, which is entirely respectable, and in the same area as Relationship Tightrope and Around the World in 80 Days, both good games. I personally gave Partheon a solid B.

The basic idea of Parthenon is to build 16 buildings on your home island. This is done through resource management. You collect various goods, among them the hard-to-get gold and papyrus, and use those to build your buildings, and at the same time you're influenced by current events, and the harbor status of the ports that you want to trade at.

In my recent game of Parthenon I had a very strong position going into year 3. By the end of the first season I had 15 or my 16 buildings built, with my second Wonder of the World being the only obstacle. But when I drew the plans for that second Wonder, I learned that the conditions for building that Wonder were very difficult given my particular setup and the particular conditions of the game.

In order to finish the Wonder I had to give away one gold, then one papyrus during the island trading phase. Unfortunately I didn' thave either in hand at the time, and the papyrus was very hard to get. It could only be traded for at Egypt, and Egypt had a "tribute" harbor status, meaning that you could only carry two goods there to trade, unless you had an army to protect them.

I had no army which meant I was indeed limited to those two goods in Egypt. I further had no way to build an army because I'd elected not to construct the Fortress building which would have allowed me do so. Since I was limited to trading just two goods in Egypt, I wouldn't be able to trade for both gold and papyrus on the same turn, and I'd further never built a second ship, which meant that I couldn't trade for gold somewhere else on the same turn that I got papyrus from Egypt. Oh, and the other players were embargoing me because of my strong endgame position, which kept me from trading for basic goods that I could have used to create gold at my marketplace. In other words, I was all-around out of luck. It would be at least season 4 before I could finish up my wonder, and if I met a single hazard-related setback, I'd never finish at all. And, I did.

It would be easy to say that I ended up in such an untenable position because of a bad card draw, and I suspect that many detractors of Parthenon's randomness would say exactly that. However, looking closer, I think it's pretty clear that my downfall was entirely my fault. Parthenon is at heart a logistical game of efficiency, as many resource management games are. This means that you try and make better use of limited goods and turns than your opponents. I had chosen to try a path of minimalism during this game. I hadn't bought any armies (or gifts of Poseidon or warships), because that would have slowed my path to victory. I hadn't bought any extra ships for carrying my goods for a similar reason.

If I'd drawn a better Wonder plan, I might have won in year 3, season 1 thanks to my superb efficiency to that point. Contrariwise if I'd taken a safer path, it might have cost me a season or two or efficiency, but I would have been in a better position once I got the Wonder I actually drew. With a ship or an army I had an opportunity to win the season after I drew that plan.

I didn't lose because of the card I drew. I lost because of the risk I took.

As I said in my previous article on luck, good luck in games should be controllable. There are a large number of different luck factors in Parthenon, but I believe every one of them is controllable. You takes your chances and you reap your rewards. Or not.

Here's a chart of those luck factors, which will probably be more meaningful to people who have played the game:

Element	Type	Control
Events	Arbitrary	Negotiate with the Archon. Build appriopriate structures. Hold appropriate goods. Buy Nihilism.
Hazards	Arbitrary	Buy Gifts of Poseidon, Warships. Buy Stoicism.
Harbor Statuses	Arbitrary	Buy Armies, Warships. Buy Epicureanism.
Wonder Plans	Arbitrary	Buy plans early. Buy Materialism.

One of the players in our Parthenon game mentioned that Stoicism is often the first Philosophy bought, because hazards come up so often. However, I'm no longer convinced that's the best strategy, because hazards can be controlled in other ways (especially through the all-purpose-hazard-avoidance Gift of Poseidon card), while other arbitrary card draws are much harder to control. If I'd purchased Materialism instead of Nihilism, I would have been taking my chances with events, but I would have been able to finish off my Wonder.

Before I close out on Parthenon I'd like to mention that the risk/reward structure is slightly more complex than what I discuss above. You have to expend resources to purchase the various cards which can allow you to offset risks, as I already mentioned. However, for all the aegis cards (that's the Army, Gift of Poseidon, or Warship) you actually have to put it on a boat, taking up one of your 6 cargo slots, in order for it to take effect. Since I've often had cases where I needed all 6 of my cargo slots in order to achieve the trade I wanted, this can be another large risk/reward decision.

Of course you can have your cake and eat it too. You just buy a second or third boat (cost: 1 or 2 gold), and then you will have to buy the correct aegises to protect that boat too, and you're set; you can now carry an extra six cargo, minus the slot(s) for those aegises. Of course you've spent more resources at this point, to lower your risk further.

Because of its multiple levels of risk decisions, I increasingly think that Parthenon is a very fine example of this particular genre of risk/reward game.

Case #2: The Settlers of Zarahemla

The other game that I played on my "lucky" game night was The Settlers of Zarahemla. It's a licensed version of The Settlers of Catan that I'm more likely to carry around when I'm interesting in a Settlers game because it's very beautiful and it has one slight addition: a pyramid to build, with a 2-point "best builder" VP bonus in contention. There are a few terminology changes: instead of sheep you have water as a resource, and they call ore stone.

As is often the case in Settlers my bad luck came about because of my setup decisions. I was greedy, and I made my initial placement decisions in order to try and corner two scarce-looking resources: stone and water. In the process, however, I placed my two settlements pretty close together, and right in the center of the board.

As the game proceeded I very quickly realized that I was in a bad position. I was getting cut off in multiple directions and every time I started to build in a direction, someone else got there just before me. I eventually had to build four road segments (off of a bad production of brick + wood) before I could get a third settlement down. I don't know that this all cost me the game, per se, because we had some strong players, but it definitely ensured that I was out of the competition.

Now I'm sure a lot more people are familiar with Settlers, and it's thus a lot easier to see some of my decisions as plain bad. For a start, if I was going to put myself in a board position where I needed to build out quickly, I should have made sure I had the brick and wood to do so, not the exact opposite resources. Further, striving for longest road (which I did, and which I held for a time) was pretty dumb when I had no wood resources. Instead I should have been working on the temple, which took brick and ore. I had brick, and as you may recall I made an effort to corner the ore market.

However, I can also measure my choices as risk/reward. I took a bad risk--hoping that the other players wouldn't cut me off before I really got my resource machine going--and I'd balanced it against a questionable reward--grabbing a set of resources that I'd decided were nice. And this is how risk/reward games are often lost: in measuring your risk or reward incorrectly, not in drawing the wrong card or having an opponent cut you off at the wrong time.

During my game of Settlers I also got hit by the robber 2 or 3 times, losing my hand when I had 8 or more cards. As with my building choices, this often comes down to greed. I was building up for the big win, rather than buying a development card or doing something else less efficient. If I'd taken a more tactical approach to the game, I might have been able to inch ahead a bit, but instead I took the risk of long-term strategy, and lost out.

As with Parthenon, the luck and the control of Settlers can be mapped out in a chart:

Element	Type	Control
Development Card	Arbitrary	None. (Or perhaps: Buy more.)
Die Roll: Production	Random	Spread out settlements by production number.
Die Roll: Robber	Random	Build, even if it's suboptimal, to keep hand size below 7.
Opponent Blocking	Chaos	Spread out settlements by geography.

Controlling the luck of Settlers doesn't map out quite as cleanly as controlling the luck of Parthenon, but it's still there. You just have to work a little harder to achieve it, and you have to think a little more about it because the game system is a bit more tightly woven, and thus you don't hae elements that scream out, "I'm here to control luck for you", as is the case with Parthenon.

Conclusion

Luck is a fine element in a game if it can be controlled, and Parthenon and Settlers provide two great examples of games that were designed with controlling luck in mind; if anything writing this article has assured me of how deliberate this design was in Parthenon.

If you can't deal with randomness, fine, but let's stop hearing about how you lost due to bad luck, when there were options for control that you could have taken advantage of and opted not to.

Miss Manners: Online Play

I was playing an online game with a stranger the other day and although I tried to strike up a conversation, I received no reply. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I consider this bad manners. I enjoy the chit-chat of online gaming as much as I do the game itself otherwise it feels like playing against an AI.

The regular group of gamers that I play with talk about everything from the weather in their corner of the world to the newest games they’re looking forward to. We throw trash-talk at each other and make sure to congratulate the winner. It’s as close to face-to-face gaming with friends as you can get and turns even a crappy game into something special.

Another thing that I think is rude is joining a game which is specifically set up for a certain group. Some online sites don’t allow passworded games or invites, so the best you can do is put in a comment that it’s for so-and-so group or such-and-such friends and the next thing you know you have a stranger where John Doe should have been. Is it so hard to read the comment? Do you just see an open game and join without regard to the wishes of the person who created it? If there are no open games for you to join without stepping on virtual toes, you should create one of your own; it’ll be filled up in no time.

Lastly, I’ve heard of people who register on a site with 2 different names and use both in games cooperatively in order to raise their standings. I’m sure it doesn’t happen often since most gamers play for the fun of it rather than the prestige and have too much honor to think that any rankings gained through such subterfuge is worth anything. But there will always be a few who find a way to cheat and think it’s alright to do so no matter how little value is placed on their gains. These people are the most pathetic, lowly, contemptible, worthless, under-handed, miserable, cowardly waste of gamer life on the web. If that’s the only way they can win, they should sell all of their games in favor of a stack of jigsaw puzzles and an Exacto knife.
~~~~~~~~
Until next time, I’m trusting you to keep the vampire population down.

Mary

Do You Like Brussel Sprouts?

I think Bohnanza is a kid's game. So do most of the players in my gaming group. Greg Schloesser doesn't agree. In fact, neither do most of the people not in my gaming group. But let's not talk about Bohnanza.

Thinking about my game group's Bohnanza preference sparked a whole lot of other observations about my game group:

* Everyone who likes Puerto Rico in my gaming group likes playing with my expansion buildings. In fact, we almost never play without them. Yet just about no one else around the world has picked these up (with a few exceptions here and there).

* Games in my gaming group often take 1.5 times the maximum length on the box. Games in many other gaming groups take about the minimum time on the box.

* None of us liked Citadels. Almost every other group everywhere likes Citadels, and some groups consider it one of their absolute top games.

What is going on here? Are we just strange?

I don't think so. I'm willing to bet that just about every group of players has several unique characteristics about it that distinguishes it from other game groups.

Why?

One of the basic questions we hear all the time is, "Why do people like games?"

There are a number of articles that try to answer this question. These articles group players into categories of reasons, such as: self-mastery, escapism, socializing, roleplaying, competition, and so on. People are then grouped into one or more of these categories. Other articles tend to lump players according to their culture, e.g. the Spanish like to play this, or Mexican women in the 18th century played games like that.

These answers are too simplistic because the question is too simplistic. Think about what games you like, why you like these games, and how you tend to play in a certain way.

The answers are not really straightforward. That's because the games you like now are probably different than the games you liked when you were 2, 5, or 13. Not only that, but the reasons that you like games changes over time, too. In fact, what games you like and why you want to play a certain game can change from one minute to the next. It can depend on your mood, what you just ate, what you just played, and who you are with. How can you say why you like games, when the answer today is going to be different tomorrow?

Here is a better question: what factors induce people to want to play a particular game at a particular time?

Instead of, "Why do some players play slowly (analysis paralysis)?", try, "What factors contribute to a person playing slowly?"

Similarly: What factors contribute to people giving more or less advice during a game? What factors would result in a person being more or less likely to enjoy a certain style of game?

In other words, the questions must be defined as a complex interaction of contributing factors. Because no person "does or does not" like a wargame. Each person chooses to play or not to play the game at any particular moment. Each person derives more or less enjoyment from a particular game based on what has happened to them, what is happening to them, how they feel, and who they are with at a particular time.

Without quoting any real data, I would guess that a whole lot of the factors that directly determine what games you like and how you play are cultural. Games and play styles tend to bunch up around certain cultures.

For instance, players in a particular age group tend to enjoy certain games more than others. Player of a certain sex tend to enjoy certain games more than others. And so on with regards to family, game group, city, country, year, decade, century, civilization, social status, and even economic status. Of course, there are games that transcend some of these groups, some more and some less. But I bet that the reasons that people in each subgroup enjoy a particular game, even the same game, and even how they play that game, tend to be different.

Where does an individual's preferences come in? There are plenty of games in our game group that one person likes, while everyone else hates it, and vice versa. I'm sure the same is true with every group. Without discounting the reasons listed in those articles, I would guess that some combination of the adaptive and rebellious tendencies within a person at any particular time shape that person's play style or likes and dislikes for certain games.

When a person adopts an adaptive personality, they want to fit in to the group in which they identify, and will tend to like or dislike the game for the same reasons that others in that group like or dislike it.

As an example, when we were playing Citadels, one person said that they thought the game was unengaging, and it snowballed from there. Other people who were playing then noticed the same problem. The game was played with little enthusiasm and remarks about how problematic it was.

Possibly, if one of the people who ended up disliking the game had instead been playing with a group that already liked the game, that person might have ended up liking it. The group would have been playing more enthusiastically, laughing, getting involved, and the new person may have had a great time.

The flip side is that when a person adopts a rebellious personality, they will stand out from their group's opinions. If you are in a mood where you balk at the idea of being influenced by others as they all march to a certain tune, you may retain a presence of mind to judge the game by yourself. Maybe you will imagine what the game could be like if played with other players with sensibilities more similar to your own. Of course, there is a social danger in being rebellious, in that you will find yourself just slightly alienated from your current group ... unless you can drag some other rebellious people with you.

Each person not only meshes both aspects of these tendencies, but also flips between them depending on the circumstances. I'm sure that many times you weren't in the right mood for a particular game. Or something about the way someone taught the game bugged you. Or you clicked with it, but didn't know why. Or had a great time playing a silly game. Many of you have played a game that you loved the first time and then hated, or hated and then loved. Or hated with a certain group but then loved with others.

So is it cultural taste that makes you like or hate blind bidding, or personal taste? Obviously, it is some mixture of both. I think that the cultural and environmental influence is strong, although we still maintain our own personal likes and dislikes.

It is not a coincidence that a large number of people in one culture will like violent games of confrontation while a large number in another culture won't. The same for play styles, such as slow, confrontational, or lots of table talk, and the same for games with adult themes, gambling, certain types of sports, and so on. Yet, within that culture, an individual's particular taste will be unique.

As a weird metaphor, the model for cultural bias in determining a play style or predisposition to liking a style of game seems to me to be a lot like the old double-slit light experiment. When you let light photons through a screen with two slits one at a time, each one appears to hit a second screen in a seemingly random location, apparently uninfluenced by any other photon. Yet, as the photons continue to accumulate, you see patterns of waves start to take shape. Apparently photons are a lot more like people than we realized.

Of course, it may be that what looks like patterns to me is only the result of stereotyping. Research needs to be done.

I would have thought that a single game group is too small a sampling to really produce a style of game likes or dislikes or play style; but then how do you explain one game group where they all give advice freely and another where table-talk isn't allowed? Or why some groups think that Puerto Rico is always won by the first player who takes Hospice?

I think that, ultimately, our adaptive personality takes precedence over our rebelliousness.

Yehuda

What's NEW "pussycat"?

Yeah, I'm trying to 'get' that "song" imbedded into your HEAD here, for the time being. It leads into what I'm going to relate here for ALL to benefit from, and for which a few already have "experienced" as well. For those fortunate ones, then they even now are quite familiar with "broadcasting" over the "intarwebz" with various 'systems' out there. Our own fair "Melissa" has even been doing a "heckuva JORB! 'brownie'!" with that too, and I implore upon one and ALL to check out hers firsthand to 'see' and 'listen' to this for yourselves. I can even imagine where a SET of back & forth responses can then become "recorded" within an "interview" sort for this, and then permit others to actually HEAR the 'person' responding in this 'manner'. You can discover HOW this is going abouts with what they're 'doing' over upon "the Dice Tower" with their "call in" phone number here: 1-866-203-1407 and yes, I 'plug' this "show" along with many others. From what I understand upon that "phone number" then it is ONLY accessible for those folks in the USA & possibly Canada for the time being, but I've been on their tails about having an 'International' sort for this as well. Then they'll get to 'deal' with ALL kinds of "accents" from you ALL for this, and that ought to be worth the whole 'shebang' eh?

Okay then, here's the 'answer' for the album cover that you 'see' here, and just a couple of folks will recall just WHAT the featured "artiste" here is most famous with. I've 'played' a "tune" of HIS that most are not at all aware of, while some of our fellow "Geeks" have had the 'pleasure' of hearing that particular 'one'. They weren't able to discern that this WAS of his`ns at the time, as it is so radically 'different' from his usual "stylings", that you'd be amazed as well. We accomplished this little 'feat' with the use of the "Google TALK" program, while a few of them have 'dubbed' such as "GROG-radio", and it is NOT at all like "I'm onna 'Mexican' R-A-D-I-O!" either! Although 'they' can at least proclaim that: "they 'heard' IT! they 'heard' IT! they 'heard' IT! on the 'GROG'!" or something to that 'effect'. I even got to give a listen to some of the "tunes" of others in this fashion as well, while I won't divulge their 'secret' favourites unless they don't happen to 'mind' if I did . The quality of the "sound" will depend upon the variables of the 'speakers' or 'headset' that you happen to have, as well as the distances involved, since we've noticed that over vast lengths with these transmissions, then this is fraught with little *pops* & 'clicks' due to whatever. We even 'discovered' that you could 'play' a music CD in your computer just as long as your 'mic' can transmit this decently enough for its purpose and is a great means to enlighten others upon varying 'tastes' in this regard. It might even encourage others to obtain-('legally', I might add here) those "tunes" later on, from where they can. I have even associated certain "songs" with particular "Geeks" here, and they KNOW who they 'are', while I shall continue to 'imbue' yet others with like-minded demeanor. Now, wouldn't it be NICE to then give a 'listen' upon WHO is 'with' which "tune"? That way YOU to could appreciate their 'distinction' of such, in addition to many others that already are doing just that! Oh yeah, and I've "laid claim" upon the 'Jefferson Starship' "song" of "Familiar Stranger" for myself, just so's you 'know'!

I'd even be inclined to suggest that possible 'playings' for like CHESS, or GO, or others like this, could become "playings" while engaged upon the "Google TALK", where it is possible to 'relate' the positionings as they transpire. With others, then there would need to become a 'grid' created upon their "playing surfaces" for this utilization, while I could imagine it for the likes of "PLOY" or even "Feudal" for those who desire this. I know that there have been such as 'this' "procedure" conducted by some enterprising folks for their own 'playings' of various "gamings". Now, we're just awaiting upon the "web-cam" group to do likewise in this regards for the 'posterity' of the matters, while it will sometime soon then become the 'norm' for those who can manage to bring this ALL together for their's, and other's enjoyments!

One 'item' that ole "Koldfoot" failed to 'mention' upon IS to AVOID what this 'fellow' is actually 'doing', and that is to:
"doncha EAT that 'YELLOW' snow!"





"Happy Day-AFTER-Birthday" wishes to ole "OTTO" away "under & around" where SHE is 'at', and keep UP the "Good JORB!" of 'digesting' those "games" for which YOU are most 'fond' of, while it would probably be a good idea to get some of them "Gummi Meeples" for this too.

Where the Geek and I (occasionally) disagree

Another audioblog. (about 16 minutes long, 3.8 MB)

I think the sound quality is not very good on this one - I should not try to record while the rest of the family (including interstate guest) are sleeping.

Happy third birthday to my gorgeous little Otto.



This week, I steal an idea from John Farrell a.k.a. Friendless and talk about the largest disparities between my ratings and the BGG averages:

Largest 10 Disparities
Name	Melissa's Rating	Average	Disparity
Medici	1.0	7.09	6.09
Basari	3.0	7.04	4.04
Snakes and Ladders	6.0	2.64	3.36
Captain Treasure Boots	3.0	6.04	3.04
Imaginiff	3.0	5.98	2.98
Ys	5.0	7.49	2.49
Werewolf	9.8	7.33	2.42
Nobody But Us Chickens	4.0	6.39	2.39
Crocodile Pool Party	7.0	4.65	2.35
Nightmare	3.0	5.30	2.30

Tell me what you think - and have a great week,

Melissa

Count Your Blessings

I was going to post an audioblog and an audioblog primer today. Fortunately for the readers of Gone Gaming the gods of blog boredom intervened and I was unable to post anything this morning. I kept getting a message saying you are unable to connect to Blogger, click here to try again, please.

I picked my kids up from school this afternoon and headed over to “Ice Alaska” home of the “World Ice Art Championship”.




The weather was brisk to say the least, but ideal for ice art. My four and six year-old had to go to the snack shop 2x to warm up with some hot cocoa, but I completely filled my digital camera with 66 pictures and was wishing I had more space. I decided to scrap the audioblog primer and upload some pictures of ice art. Hope you enjoy it.

Competitors in the multi-block competition were still putting the finishing touches on their sculptures. Teams were from all over the world. Russian (or some Russian sounding language of eastern European origin) was probably the prominent non-English language I heard spoken this afternoon by the various teams.



The single block competition was over. Yes, those sculptures, some of which are ten feet tall (3 meters) were sculpted from a single block of ice.







The “Kiddie Park” is generally the busiest part of “Ice Alaska”. It was too cold for the teardrop spinners to spin, but there was no shortage of slides. There was an ice slide every 20 feet.




I haven't been to Ice Alaska for several years, but I am glad I went and even more glad that I remembered to bring my camera. Forgetting the camera is a classic, patented Coldfoot move.

CF

A Theory of Computerized Board Game Design

Last week I wrote up mini-reviews of six different computerized board games. This week I'd like to enlarge on that topic a little bit by describing some lessons learned: my own personal "do's" and "don't's" list for computerized board game design, offered as advice to future computerized board game designers.

Choosing a Game

To start off with, I think there's a very specific type of game that works best as a computerized board game. It has to have good depth of play and variability, though I'm not sure that straight-out complexity is needed (or even desired).

The reason for this is that a good computerized board game will get played a lot. For me my most popular tabletop board games might rack up 10-20 games a year. Contrariwise a computerized board game could easily score 10x that many plays. In January I had to build a new computer system, and since then I've played my computerized version of Carcassonne (plus expansions) a mind-number 252 times. That's 3-4 times a day.

If a game's too light, or if it doesn't change enough from game to game, it won't stand up to that many plays, and thus it's not an optimal choice for a computer version.

Contrariwise, as I said, pure complexity may not be the way to go. There's something less visceral about playing a computerized version of a board game, and for me at least that makes it harder to keep track of what's going on in a game with a lot of variables.

Looking at the games I reviewed in my previous column, Samurai was on the slightly too light side, El Grande and Puerto Rico were on the slightly too heavy side, and Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Iron Dragon were all dead-on what I think works when choosing a tabletop board game to convert.

Displaying a Game

The first tricky question in converting a tabletop game to computer form is figuring out how to display it. The average game player, or at least the average game player who plays these games of ours, has a fairly small monitor. According to current stats at RPGnet, 53.9% use 1028x768, 18.26% use 1280x1024, and 8.99% still use 800x600. It's pretty hard to fit a four-panel or six-panel board onto less than a million pixels.

Computer games tend to have two solutions for this:

First, some scrunch the board down into the resolution available. This can be the best solution if you've either got a fairly simplistic design to start with, or if you're willing to simplify the design to make it look better on the computer screen. Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers actually redrew all of its tiles in the computer version to make them much clearer and easier to read.

Second, only show part of the board. This works best in a game like Iron Dragon where you really do only need to concentrate on a small part of the board at a time. Still, you have to keep a player apprised of what's going on in other parts of the board, or you start to isolate your player from the game. (Samurai, contrariwise, was a game that didn't jump to different parts of the board when other players took their actions, and it was to the games' detriment.)

Computerized board games also tend to have a unique problem: they use pregenerated, hand-drawn artwork, and so they might not display well at different sizes. This is notably a problem on LCD screens, which often can't resize on the fly the way a CRT can. We've seen this issue on the recent releases of both Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico. A first fix for this problem may be to offer the graphics to your game in a few different pre-generated sizes. A second fix is to not run your game full-screen, particularly if you're running on a screen larger than your game can really support.

Offering a UI

Ultimately it's the User Interface (UI) that makes or breaks a computerized board game.

To start off with, you have to make it really easy for a player to follow what the other players are doing. Here's some ways to do this:

• Show all opponents' actions as animations, with cards moving across the screen, pieces moving onto the screen, etc. Our eyes are attracted to movement, and so this is an easy way to get players' attention.
  
• Always include delays in AI moves, preferably with that time filled with your animation. This ensures that players have the time to see what's going on, but the animation makes them feel like something's really going on, and they're not just sitting around waiting. Also, let players adjust this delay as they see fit.
  
• If it's at all possible, highlight the last piece that each player played or moved, and keep it highlighted, so that when it gets to be a player's turn he can easily scan the board at that time and be reminded of what all was done.
  
• Do include an action log listing the last few moves, and use emphasis to make that action log easy to read. You might note different player's actions in their player colors or note the starts of new phases of action with bold or with a blank line. You don't want to go overboard, but almost every action log I've seen is useless because it's a solid block of text, like a book with no paragraphs. Samurai is a rare game that did a good job by using different colors in its log and by separatin turns with horizontal rules.
  
• Always let a player acknowledge taking his own action, even if it's obvious what has to be done, because a player needs to know when his personal status changes. If you're afraid of slowing the game down (for multiplayer play), put a timer on that acknowledgement and then take the action if a player hasn't responded by then.
  
• Alert players when they need to take an action with high-contrast, easy-to-read text or graphics that always appear in the same location. You don't want them to scan the whole screen because you've decided to put different notices in different places.
  
• Also make good use of audio effects. This isn't just about making your game sound cool; instead audio effects should be used as a secondary method to convey information. Have a standard sound to mark the start of a player's turn, and use clear, obvious, and distinct sounds to mark actions that other players take which the player should know about.
  

One of the biggest failures of a computerized board game can be a feeling of isolation. Using video and audio cues to help a player keep track of how the game is progressing can dramatically overcome this.

The other side of UI, how a player actually takes his actions, doesn't deserve as much attention; game designers tend to have a better idea of how to do that because the same rules apply to computer programs of all type.

There's one notable rule for computerized board game player actions, however: always give players a chance to undo. All the way up to the end of his turn (or a point where he finds out the result of a random die roll or arbitrary card draw) a player should be able to undo a mistake that he made. Most games do this pretty well, but the ones who don't are that much more painful.

Offering an AI

I'm astounding by how bad the Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on many computerized board games. Otherwise good games like El Grande, Ticket to Ride, and Iron Dragon are hampered to various degrees by AIs that win very small amounts of the time.

If you think AI isn't important, you're wrong, because if there's one thing that all these computerized board games have taught me, it's that it's very hard to actually develop a good online community of players. Of the six games I reviewed in my previous article, Ticket to Ride succeeded dramatically at developing their online community (and had done so even before their SdJ win). None of the other games have. Even at Days of Wonder's own site, it's hard to get people to play their Fist of Dragonstones and Queen's Necklace.

I've played around with some expert-rule sets, but in general I don't know how to program good AI (despite taking a class in the same back in college). I have to presume that it's a pretty hard task, to some extent depending on the openness and the strategies of the game. But my advice here is simple: if you don't know how to either, get someone who does.

Offering Ranking

When you develop your computer game, you're probably going to want some way to record player wins. My simple advice here is: use ELO ratings. I've written more extensively on them elsewhere in an article on competitive rankings. ELO is a mathematical construct which measures the probable result of a game, then awards a player more if he defeated a better opponent and less if he defeated a worse opponent. The math is a bit hairy, but a computer's taking care of it for you, so who cares? ELO ratings work particularly well if you have multiple levels of AI, as is the case with the Carcassonne games.

The purpose of rankings (using ELO, or any other competitive ranking system) is to give players a metagoal to strive for. They're not just trying to win an individual game, they're also trying to improve their ranking until it's better than their opponents'.

If you don't want to use ELO rankings, you should still include some type of metagame. From worst to best, you can: do nothing; post high scores; post high scores divided by specific type of play; use win-loss rankings; and use full ELO rankings.

Managing the Aftergame

Even after your game is out, there's going to be a few additional things you have to deal with.

The first is the inevitable technical support. Hopefully you tested your game pretty extensively, but even if you did you're going to run into some problems. The more clever developers nowadays build ways to auto-update programs from the 'net, which resolves all but the worst crashes in a way pretty invisible to the users.

As more and more games are sold online, an increasingly big problem is that of how to manage license files. Before I changed machines in January, my "Program Files" directory on my old machine was wiped out, and so when I got onto my new machine I had to rebuild everything from scratch. This involved redownloading and relicensing the six computerized board games that I had on my computer at that time: three versions of Carcassonne, El Grande, Iron Dragon, and Samurai.

Downloading all of the programs was a snap. In each case I just had to go to the site in question and click a link. Relicensing Carcassonne and El Grande was pretty simple because my full license info was available at the website I bought the games from. For Iron Dragon and Samurai I had to email the developers to get new copies of my registration & licensing info. An automated website, where I could have saved the information with a standard login & password would have saved everyone a lot of time.

(And, do you want an idea for the next great dot-com company? It's "savemyreginfo.com", where you can login and save your registration information each time you purchase a new product. It's paid for with a micropayment, just $1 each time you login to record one or more registration numbers at the same time. I'd like a 10% cut of the company if you think this is a great idea and go and do it.)

In any case, think about the aftergame, and make sure you have good, automated ways to update your game and relicense it.

Conclusion

As I said in my previous column on this topic, I hope to see a lot more computerized board games in the future. They're not a replacement for real play, but they're a nice complement. However, before I see a lot more games, I'd like to see a lot more people actually applying the lessons learned thus far, and delivering the right games, with good displays, good UIs, and good AIs, because a bad game can be a lot more frustrating than none at all.

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I also write a biweekly column for my game company, Skotos, called Trials, Triumphs & Trivialities. It centers on game design and other issues surrounding an online gaming company. I usually keep my TT&T and GG articles separate, but in this case I've crossposted this article over to Skotos because it straddles the line between online & boardgames. If you enjoy discussions of online games, you may want to read TT&T and the rest of the Skotos articles.