I read an article a few days back on the different types of game
players and designers that there are in the world, it separated us out into
those that enjoy games on an emotional level, those that enjoy it on a tactical
level, and those that enjoy it on a mechanical level. While I can see the points raised by the
article as being valid, I also think that it was missing something...
For me, playing games isn’t about the mechanics of the game, although
if the mechanics don’t work, I’ll not be playing the game more than a few
times. It’s not about tactics, although
if you can’t employ tactical play, it’s about as much fun as flipping coins,
and I don’t get emotional about games in general, but If the game doesn’t move
me on some level, I also won’t be playing it for very long.
Which led me to thinking that on some level, a game must satisfy on all
levels to be something that’s going to succeed as a game, and by succeed I
don’t mean sell millions of copies, I mean be a good game, and I wonder
sometimes if that message is being overlooked by a lot of people out there who
aren’t in the world that we’re in.
And what world is that?
The world where we understand that Monopoly and Risk are not the
pinnacle of rolling dice and moving pieces, the world where sometimes the
simplest subjects can be made into the best games, and the world where we can
see something new based on the same set of rules and still get the same
enjoyment out of it as we did when we played the first version.
For me, its games like Smash Up that show the points of what I like
about games. The basic concept is put
together any two decks and play the game from there, first to fifteen points
wins and any deck can be used with any other deck. Sure, some decks work better than others, but
at the core of the game, any of the decks can win if you use the right
tactics. The reason why it works for me
is that while the aim of the game is the same in the end, the tactics and
therefore the game change every time unless you play with the same decks all
the time. As for the emotional side of things, I find that when I’m playing
that game, I’ve played it enough to recognise if my opponent has a particularly
good combination of decks and more importantly, if they know how to use it well.
Just the thought that they’ve got a deck that will prove difficult for me to
beat is enough to get a response from me.
One of my biggest bugbears in games is when the rules are so numerous
that you have to spend either a month learning the game or have to refer to the
rules book every five minutes to make sure you’re getting it right. I play games to play them, and I like to introduce new people to games, and that to
me is the biggest problem when you’re trying to tell anyone that games are fun,
it’s the point when you sit them down after getting them to consider the
possibility that games could be fun and then start to set up the board,
glancing up to see that the enthusiasm they had might have already starting to
wane because while they’ll spend half an hour driving to see a movie that’ll
last three hours, the idea of spending half an hour setting up a game to play
for three hours is beyond what they signed up for.
And then I thought back to the original article, and I started to ask,
what gets people into games in the first place.
All of us started somewhere, for me it was Ludo, then Chess, and from
there I got the idea that games with rules and tactics could be something
fun. Then I found Go, and I learned that
the simplest rules in the world can make the most tactically complex games if
done right, and that’s what I look for now when I look at new games.
1: Can I learn the game in less than ten minutes?
2: Does it take longer to learn the rules than it does to play the
game?
3: Will I still be finding something interesting after the fifth game?
If it fulfills all three of these, chances are that I’ll be picking the
game up and playing it, if it misses one of them, that’ll put a doubt on it,
and if it misses two or more, then I’m likely to leave it on the shelf.
What about everyone else?
