Post-Elegance Companion Interviews
Appendix for the Post-Elegance Thesis
This is the Appendix for “Post-Elegance: Experimental Aesthetics In Tabletop Game Design,” which can be read here.
1.
Interview with Wolfgang Kramer.
Wolfgang Kramer answered back to my email interview questions on November 8th, 2019. Here is the full interview:
pilleater: What is the origin behind Heimlich & Co.? Were you influenced by Clue (the board game) or another game? Was the theme supposed to be about spies?
Wolfgang Kramer: The idea for Heimlich & Co. I had when I stood in a traffic jam next to a church. I saw the church clock and immediately had the idea to make a game in which the values rise to the value of 12 and then drop suddenly down to 1, and then gradually rise to 12 again and drop down to 1. During the game there should be scores that trigger the players. There are as many points per figure as indicated by the field (1-12) on which they stand. This was the starting point for the development of the game.
My first prototype was abstract. He was titled "Quick 60", that means, who has 60 points first, was the winner. The points were still written down.
The second prototype was titled "Oldtimer Race". On the inner part of the board was a speedometer, which went from 0 to 120. Outside the board was a racetrack with 60 squares. In a scoring, one pulled his oldtimer as many fields as the speedometer indicated. Example: If the blue figure stood at 40, the blue car preferred 4 spaces. I must not write down the points. This was the beginning of the “Kramerleiste”.
PE: How did you create the Kramerleiste? Do you remember the day you created the score tracker? What were you thinking in the process besides adding on a score tracker to Heimlich & Co.?
WK: I showed this prototype to a publisher. He said that he likes the game, but not the topic. I searched for a suitable topic for more than a year until I found the agent theme. Now I built the third prototype with the title: “Incognito”. I changed some game mechanisms into the agent theme. When I offered the prototype this time, it was taken. The publisher then decided to take another title and chose "Heimlich & Co.". The game was received open-heartedly by the players. It was a completely different game than the previous games and won several awards including the award "Game of the Year".
PE: Heimlich & Co. also introduced the Action Point Allowance System, which later appeared in your game Tikal. How did you come up with this mechanic?
WK: During the development I decided that the agents are incognito and that each player can move each agent. The dice shows how many points are available that can be split between the agents. At the time, I was not aware that I had created an action-point-system. For me it was only dice points that can be distributed to figures.
PE: Was there a game before this one that used a similar mechanic?
WK: I don’t know. I had not investigated.
PE: Were you thinking of a different way to move the spies in the game instead of rolling a die?
WK: Yes, I've been thinking about which movement mechanisms might be appropriate for the agents. I also tested one or the other idea. Ultimately, I opted for the cube. Today, I might have given each player the same set of cards to reduce the luck element.
PE: Do you originally have in mind a 7 players game for Heimlich & Co.? How did the game fit so many players?
WK: My previous games are mostly for 2-6 players. I always wanted to lure more people to the gaming table. These games are usually more lively and relaxed. I also wanted agents to play that are not owned by a player. During the tests, it has been shown that the game works also well with 6 or 7 peoples.
PE: What came first in Heimlich & Co., the mechanics of the game, or the theme?
WK: As I said at the beginning, the game mechanism was first available and I was looking for a suitable theme.
PE: Who was interested releasing the game and was there any criticisms in the design process?
WK: I only offer a game to one publisher. Only then, if he declines to relocate the game, I offer it to the next publisher. There are no criticisms in the design process. But the development process spanned over a year and a half. Only then did I offer the game to a publisher.
PE: Would you say Heimlich & Co. has influenced (or created) an entire genre of board games?
WK: No, I don’t think so. Perhaps it has influenced the one or the other designer a little bit.
PE: Have all Eurogames taken influence from Heimlich & Co.?
WK: No, I don’t think so. There were several games that led to the name "German Games". Then came game designers from other European countries and the name "Euro Games" was born.
PE: Would you redesign Heimlich & Co. in the future? Or is it perfect as it is?
WK: There are no plans to redesign Heimlich & Co. Games are a matter of taste. Therefore, in my games, I often offer variations on how to play the game. Then everyone can choose what he likes best. I also think it's alright if someone changes a game a little because it pleases him even better.
PE: Do you think the current board game scene is reaching an “end point?”
WK: No, there is no endpoint. It will go on and on, as well as in literature, music, painting and film. There will always be new impulses and new genres will be invented. This can be seen clearly in today's gaming world, which today is much richer and more diverse than it was 40 years ago. The number of people who like games is growing slowly but steadily. This can be seen clearly in the many games events that exist today and attract more and more visitors.
PE: Are all original designs mimicking your games and not reinventing themselves?
WK: It is true that today there are many new games that are not significantly different from previous games. But there are always some games with completely new elements and ideas, e.g. Roleplaying games, communication games (Just One, Codenames, Dixit) games with resources (Catan, 7 Wonders), games with majorities (El Grande), trading card games (Magic), cooperative games (pandemic), worker placement games, games with own deck of cards per player (Dominion), new card games (Take 6), new dice games (Qwixx).
PE: How influential is Heimlich & Co.? Would you say started the modern board game industry?
WK: No, no way! Heimlich & Co. is only a tiny little contribution. I am happy that I could contribute a little bit to today's large and rich game scene. By far the greatest influence on today's game scene and on the game production has and has been the "Game of the Year Jury”, founded in 1979 in Germany. It has resulted in the game getting into the media, and publishers have made more effort to transfer good games with excellent illustration. This has resulted in more sales, more media response, more games inventions, more gaming events - for example, the Essen show has grown from 1,000 (1983) to nearly 200,000 visitors (2019) - to more games honors and game awards. In Germany, the gaming market has grown by 10% annually since 1980. The countries in Europe have become aware of the success of the German games market. In each European country new, small game publishers were founded. This development also affected other continents. It developed a two-part game market. On the one hand the games for the masses, on the other hand demanding complex games for the experienced players.
This development is best shown by the game fair in Essen:
1983: 1,000 visitors, 12 German publishers, 20 new games.
1919: 200.000 visitors from all over the world, more than 1.000 publishers from all over the world, with 1.500 new games.
END.
2.
Interview with Peter Olotka, Bill Eberle, and Greg Olotka (Excerpt).
This podcast interview was originally conducted on February 12th, 2017 for The Stark Truth program. It can be viewed here at this link.
Peter Olotka:
...Did you play online, did you play Cosmic online?
pilleater (PE):
Yes, I did. My name was Greg Warpish.
PO:
I remember you! So Greg [Olotka] was our guy on Cosmic online, sort of honcho, that whole thing. And Bill wrote the AI for the aliens for the box. We want that little thing, it just died of it's own accord.
PE:
Now that there's Cosmic Encounter Connector on Steam, that's a whole new universe.
Bill Eberle:
It's better because what people want is everything. There you've got everything. We couldn't give you everything in Cosmic Encounter online.
PO:
...We always battle artists about what these things should look like. Because generally, when we've run into people trying to draw this stuff they want to make it, A, they want to give them all guns, and, B, they all want to make them look, like Hasbro... it's the great example of the worst art.
PO:
When we did the game, when Hasbro published it in 2000, the guy who did the art made it look like the alien in the movie Alien. Then he copied that same alien and changed the hew of it and about half the aliens in the game look like the alien in the movie Alien. The Diplomat looks like, they all look like the alien in the movie.
BE:
...We usually said what we wanted. We didn't always get it. Actually with Fantasy Flight we really feel like we're getting some decent art. We love the art. What's her name?
PO:
Felicia Cano.
BE:
Felicia Cano! We love her art. It's just fantastic. The latest expansion set Eons, she did them all. She's just fantastic. And they're different.
PO:
I think without our intervention all the aliens would have a gun. I'm serious. We make aliens
that aren't all shooters. It's one of the things about this game is that we're trying to... we try to tell people about the audience for Cosmic. Here's what we learned. People who like Cosmic Encounter are smart and they have a sense of humor and they don't take themselves too seriously. When you have those three things, you love this game.
BE: Right.
PO:
If you're a gamer who thinks, you're better than everybody and can't stand it when something goes wrong, you're not going to like this game very much. It's not designed for you to act in a way that will dominate everything. It's designed for you to be able to figure out what to do when you find yourself in this strange situation with all these things happening around you and to you and because of you. How do I deal? Do I have to make a deal with that Eberle guy, you kidding me?
PE:
Have you guys ever thought of making a cardless version of Cosmic where it would be more dice and social interaction? Where you could get rid of the encounter cards, but instead it's all through words or dice rolling as if it was a role playing game?
PO:
No. I think there are probably games like that now. We don't play a lot of other people's games. A, because we're probably doing more work now than we have in maybe, I don't know if forever, but for a long time.
BE:
Thirty years.
PO:
Yeah, I mean it's been quite a while since we did this much work.
PE:
...I met my last girlfriend playing Cosmic Encounter actually.
PO:
There you go!
BE: There are those of us who have beards and are not heavyset.
Greg Olotka:
Listen, every great game design team needs a fully fledged bearded gentleman on the staff. It doesn't happen otherwise. Bill's got that locked. I've known my wife for, what, six years now. I finally got her to play with my sister-in-law, she comes over every Friday and they used to watch the Bachelorette. Well, I said, one night we're playing Cosmic Encounter. What actually happened is at the time she was dating a guy who played Munchkin and he goes, "Ew, what's Cosmic Encounter?" So I said, "Well, bring him over." So for a little while there we had these great game nights where I actually got them into it.
GO:
My wife and my sister-in-law, they said, "Hey, that was actually fun." And they weren't just being polite...
These are only selected cuts from the interview, and not the full.
3.
Interview with Keith Burgun (Excerpt):
The full interview has been submitted to The School of Visual Arts. Here is only an excerpt from the audio interview:
pilleater: Has elegance influenced the video game market or has this just been recently influencing video games? Because you describe that video games do need elegance in order to succeed in that video game market, compared to board games.
Keith Burgun: So most of my work... It's been a little while since I reread some of my first book, but most of my work is not terribly concerned with specifically the goal of selling copies of games. I think that if that was what you were interested in primarily, I wouldn't be the top... My work would not be at the top of the list for whose work would be most useful for that. I'm very interested in an art-slash-academic pursuit of a particular kind of system for its own merits that may or may not have market value on the other end.
You know, I like to think that these things can be translated into market values and there absolutely have been times when that has been the case. One that comes to mind, one of the most popular games of all time, is a pretty elegant thing, which would be Tetris.
A game that has just like microscopic amount of rules and yet has a pretty decent amount of emergent complexity. So I would say video games tend to not actually be very elegant. They tend to be very expensive to make because they're extremely complicated in terms of their components, in terms of their rules. They tend to have a lot of stuff and theirs tends to be about that stuff largely. And there's emergence, but emergence is very much like a second order thing for most video games. There are strategy video games where that's become less true and they become a little more elegant in that way, in terms of emergent complexity over inherent complexity. But typically most video games are not really going for elegance and they're not very elegant and they're operating on a totally different plane.
So strategy video games tend to be better. I don't think that it's necessary for a strategy video game to be elegant to be successful in the market at all. I think that's very visibly apparent. And when you look around at popular video games... Well, I do think that pretty much every video game can benefit from elegance. So you can take any game. In fact, a good example might be something like if you compare the latest to huge Zelda games, big Zelda games. So like I think it was like Skyward sword was the second to the last one. And then Breath of the Wild. And Breath of the Wild is a much more emergent complexity system where you have physics, interactions, and you can sort of do more exploration and interact, like jump off mountains, and do all these sort of emergent behaviors.
Both games have a lot of inherent complexity. I'm not sure which one has more but I might actually guess that if I had to guess, I would actually say that maybe Skyward Sword has more inherent complexity, but the Breath of the Wild has far more emergence and far more emerging complexity and therefore is a more, what's it called, a more elegant game, I think, a little bit than Skyward Sword. But it's obviously a very popular game, too. So I do think that there is something that even these big triple A developers can take away from that theory and apply it to these sort of things. I think that a lot of... but it's not necessary. There's all kinds of different ways that a game can become popular.
PE: Has elegance influenced the video game market or has this just been recently influencing video games? Because you describe that video games do need elegance in order to succeed in that video game market, compared to board games.
KB: So most of my work... It's been a little while since I reread some of my first book, but most of my work is not terribly concerned with specifically the goal of selling copies of games. I think that if that was what you were interested in primarily, I wouldn't be the top... My work would not be at the top of the list for whose work would be most useful for that. I'm very interested in an art-slash-academic pursuit of a particular kind of system for its own merits that may or may not have market value on the other end.
You know, I like to think that these things can be translated into market values and there absolutely have been times when that has been the case. One that comes to mind, one of the most popular games of all time, is a pretty elegant thing, which would be Tetris.
A game that has just like microscopic amount of rules and yet has a pretty decent amount of emergent complexity. So I would say video games tend to not actually be very elegant. They tend to be very expensive to make because they're extremely complicated in terms of their components, in terms of their rules. They tend to have a lot of stuff and theirs tends to be about that stuff largely. And there's emergence, but emergence is very much like a second order thing for most video games. There are strategy video games where that's become less true and they become a little more elegant in that way, in terms of emergent complexity over inherent complexity. But typically most video games are not really going for elegance and they're not very elegant and they're operating on a totally different plane.
So strategy video games tend to be better. I don't think that it's necessary for a strategy video game to be elegant to be successful in the market at all. I think that's very visibly apparent. And when you look around at popular video games... Well, I do think that pretty much every video game can benefit from elegance. So you can take any game. In fact, a good example might be something like if you compare the latest to huge Zelda games, big Zelda games. So like I think it was like Skyward sword was the second to the last one. And then Breath of the Wild. And Breath of the Wild is a much more emergent complexity system where you have physics, interactions, and you can sort of do more exploration and interact, like jump off mountains, and do all these sort of emergent behaviors.
Both games have a lot of inherent complexity. I'm not sure which one has more but I might actually guess that if I had to guess, I would actually say that maybe Skyward Sword has more inherent complexity, but the Breath of the Wild has far more emergence and far more emerging complexity and therefore is a more, what's it called, a more elegant game, I think, a little bit than Skyward Sword. But it's obviously a very popular game, too. So I do think that there is something that even these big triple A developers can take away from that theory and apply it to these sort of things. I think that a lot of... but it's not necessary. There's all kinds of different ways that a game can become popular.
PE: Well, this would probably lead onto another thing which I'm focusing on. A background of what I'm doing on my own project is understanding how games like Heimlich &Co. by Wolfgang Kramer from 1984, which introduced things like the action point allowance system mechanic and as well as the Kramer lease day, which is basically a built-in scoreboard around the game board, which you now see in Eurogames in the past 30 to 40 years. And you've seen so much of that that there's almost an influence into the realm of hybrid board games where it happened and Americans now doing Euro board games. And this leads to the question of... Most people when they think games, they think video games, and it just leads onto one thing. You see video games becoming more like Euro board games or is this kind of a a fad right now in the past few decades or as things becoming more operational, like whoever has the highest score wins and whoever makes the best use of their action points wins and becomes more like a non-interactive IQ system?
KB: Yeah. So the one thing that immediately jumps to my mind in terms of the question, if I read it properly, you're sort of asking if there's any convergence between this world of video games and Euro games? Is that like sort of the essence to your question?
PE: Yes. And if there's an evolutionary path we're seeing right now.
KB: Yeah. So the thing that pops in my mind that everybody's talking about is Dota Auto Chess and to me that game is, it's quite board gamey, particularly for something that is a mod for a highly video gamey system, that being Dota. So it's a drafting game, basically. It's sort of a card drafting game but has like a video gamey resolution system. But inherently it takes, it feels in some ways like... I've heard it compared to Magic the Gathering Cube Draft or other kinds of drafting games.
And it's also very... so video games tend to be very themes first. You know, like you have your characters in your world and all that sort of thing. And then you sort of have mechanisms that sort of back that up and they're clearly following the theme. And everything is quite literal in video games, whereas this game is very abstract and very numeric and sort of explicitly rules in a way that we are used to seeing in board games. And so that to me is very promising. I think that the fact that all these Dota players who are playing real time online actiony sort of a video game are now very happy to switch over to this turn- based thing. Granted, there's already been things like Hearthstone and of course Magic that already were very, very popular video game E kind of card games but they still had the aesthetic of a card game. Whereas this is, where it sort of feels like its own little animal that's like off to the side.
It’s like they have card games and everyone likes card games, whereas this is not a card game. There's no cards involved. And yet we have this really abstract, weird original rule set that's very explicitly designed and just very unlike video games and so I do think that there's some influence there from drafting games. And I do see that as a good sign that in the future, which is something I'm really looking forward to in my view, video games have for too long really not embraced original systems design in a way that board games, particularly Euro games, have over the last 20 years. A lot of people call Dota Auto Chess a new genre. And I sort of object to that because I feel like actually what it is is just a new game design idea.
Whereas in video games we so often... New games come out and they're really just a sort of tweak on one of the existing ten or so video game game designs that we've had laying around and that has been constantly reproduced. So to wrap it up, I am very pleased to see that. I do think that we're going to see more of that in the future. Another example that comes to mind is the Civ Six designer was a board game designer and I think that it shows in some of the decisions that were made in terms of... There's very like ruley rules in that game that if anyone plays Civ... One of the things that Civ has always had is workers and workers can go around the map and they can do things, they can improve tiles and whatever.
And what's happened in the end of every Civ game is you just have all these workers going around. They don't really have anything left to do. So they're just automated making little minor adjustments. And in Civ Six, each worker has three charges and then they just disappear, which is kind of, to me that strikes me as a board gamey kind of rule where clearly the system itself and the functionality and the health of the system is driving the car. It's sort of the thing that's making the decision. So anyway, I saw some real board game design sort of aesthetic and in Civ Six and that was designed by a board game designer. I am forgetting his name at the moment. But yeah. So I think that there is going to be more and more of a convergence and I'm looking forward to it.
PE: It's been some time since you made commentary on elegance, but do you see any criticism right now with the concept of elegance and would you change or add on to the concept?
KB: Yes. So well for, and it's also a lot of my work in the past, is that it's important to correctly contextualize all of that formal design theory stuff. I think it is all very useful, but it has to be taken in and applied in the right context. So, something like elegance as I've been trying to say in this conversation, it wouldn't be really fair or useful to apply that to certain kinds of systems. Like some small little art theme about, it's like a visual novel or something, that it's maybe impossible to imply elegance as a metric to that. But even if you could, it's beyond the point of such a system. So that's one thing that I would really press is I'm really talking about within strategy games.
...And so in that context, how I really implore people to use it, I actually would say that even within the context of strategy games, tools such as the elegance ratio can be overused and can be as sort of a blinding factor to other elements of the design. All in all, at the end of the day we're making art, we're making things, creative projects that go out into the world and these lack of people in a giant complex way that we can't ever completely fully understand or calculate or predict. And so it's important to maintain that as you design use these tools, step in and out of these tools frequently, and remember that there's much more going on than just your elegance ratio. And that sometimes theory must be broken and sometimes the right answer is to have a pretty darn inelegant thing. But yeah, so it's really just... All the attitude is just stuff about the proper application of theory and the improper application of it because that's something that I've struggled with myself over the years.
These are only selected cuts from the interview, and not the full.
4.
Interview with Andy Looney (Excerpt):
This podcast interview was originally conducted on January 12th, 2017 for The Stark Truth program. It can be viewed here at this link.
pilleater: ...I have a copy of Nuclear War, but I've never got to learn to play it. It's just there hanging on my shelf actually.
Andy Looney: Well, it's certainly a hilarious classic if you're in the right frame of mind to kill millions of people.
...Well, yes. Fluxx is easily my biggest hit. We sold a couple million copies of it at this point in its various flavors. But how I came to invent that, you have to go back to another of my biggest game projects, which is these little gaming pyramids, the Icehouse system or linear pyramid system we call it now with the brand new released Pyramid Arcade. It culminates 25 years of developing games for these, these colorful gaming pyramids I long ago envisioned. But it's been hard to get them made. We got quotes in the early days, it was going to cost us molding investment money that we didn't have.
And one day my wife was complaining about how difficult it was to try to get these pieces made and she said, why don't you invent a card game? I can get a card game printed so much more easily than these pyramids. And the next day I invented Fluxx, and it should have just popped out overnight. I had some ideas that all came together real quickly. I wrote up a memo that described them and dated July 24th, 1996. And set forth many of the ideas that are the core elements of the game. I wanted a game that would be about change, that would change as you play it.
A game that would be different every time, but it would be very easy to learn because the rules would get a little more complicated as you go, instead of needing to learn everything up front. And a game where you could change the rules, that sounded fun. The idea of I was changing the rules. Everybody talks about it, but rarely do you actually get to do it. And so I did have some specific inspirations I can talk about further, but I feel like I've answered that question enough or the moment. Kick it over to you again
PE: How much have drugs influenced the way you think about games? Would you describe yourself as the Timothy Leary of game design?
AL: Wow. I would never thought to describe myself that way. I usually don't talk too much in favor of it really. I mostly just speak out against the prohibition. But if you're calling me to be honest, I will have to say that I do feel as though it has helped influence my creativity in a positive way. And it's funny, it's like it's right there in the stereotype of the stoner. It's like, "Whoa, man, what have you been smoking?" Someone will ask when you've come up with a crazy harebrained idea. If you're in the business of inventing things, if you want to make a habit of creating, it can be viewed as a tool towards that creativity. Something that seems to help you have crazy ideas. How is that not going to appeal to an inventor? And when you then have some crazy ideas that actually are pretty great and I can look at games that I've designed whilst under the influence and ask the question, would I have had these ideas if I weren't under the influence?
PE: It makes me think. One game that I find fascinating is Cosmic Wimpout. And in one book, I think it was 100 game backgrounds. I think you wrote a part about playing or go play Cosmic Wimpout. And I actually went to go buy it because of your advice to go play it. And I found it a really fascinating game and it definitely has a cultural background too in it. Can you talk about a cosmic wimp out and tell it like it relates to such acts like The Grateful Dead and the history behind that?
AL: Yeah, sure. Well, Cosmic Wimpout is another thing that... Obviously as you know since you read the essay, but for the benefit of those who haven't. It had a big influence on myself and Kristen independently. We both discovered it in high school and thought, "Wow, this is a fun underground whacking game." And thought it was really cool. And then years later when we got together and we were talking about, "Hey, maybe we should start a game company." We both thought back and talk and share with each other how cool we thought it had been, what Cosmic Wimpout had been doing and how maybe we could do something like that. So first that the game itself is wonderful. It's just five dice, so it's very portable and easy to play anywhere.
And it's a simple press your luck game. It's actually there are other games out there, very similar. You may have heard of Farkle. I think it's basically the same game as that. It might've been known as a 10000 as a point, both are played with regular dice. But what's fun about Cosmic Wimpout is that it has these interesting dice with weird symbols on them, so it's bizarre and other worldly. And four of them are white and one of them is black and it's got a weird symbol on it too. And it's just, there's this sense of being indoctrinated into a secret brotherhood of a secret society of people who know about this fun, interesting game that you learn about it from word of mouth and it's got a bunch of strange rules, but it's still basically easy.
If you know for somebody else who knows, "Hey, yeah, let's play Cosmic Wimpout." And they also had a newsletter back in the days, as I said, when we got into it. You can get on their mailing list and they would send out this is Xerox mailing list newsletter with cartoons of morphic dice playing the dice game with each other, and stories about tournaments and rules and things like that. And so we thought that was really cool how they were really building a community and being in touch with their players. And that was how they helped build their fan base.
...And you mentioned The Grateful Dead. I didn't actually know too much about that angle of it. But apparently either Dead Hajj or the dead themselves or somebody associated with the band or something. Somebody was into it there and it had this hippy appeal, so I can see that. But also, they did this marketing thing where they give out stickers that just had this art from the games weird symbols on it. And maybe it said cosmic wimp out and maybe it was just the wimp out symbols. And they would give out these stickers and people would stick them all around on the tour bus or on tour places, I guess. I don't really know. But somehow, this helped spread through The Dead community, which has its own tight knit community as you know.
PE: I still go to a board game night and it's usually an odd day of the week, Monday, Tuesday or Thursday. And it's usually a group of friends that eat together. We play games and it comes from different backgrounds too. I mean, if you're in the city, most younger kids will play Magic: The Gathering. When there's an older audience, they will play Eurogames because they have an interest in economics. And so I think that's a very vast audience depending what games you associate with.
AL: As I said, I've been playing games my whole life. And to me, that's how I associate and relate to people. I like to play games in any social situation and I'm always... One of my favorite times to squeeze a game into the slices of life where you can find time for is over dinner. If you're at a restaurant, you're waiting for your food to arrive. That's the perfect time to play a quick game. But I believe everybody likes games, but it's hard to get people to stop and play them all the time in our busy society.
PE: In the Kobold's Guide to Game Design, I really liked your piece, which you did about how to design games, especially the drawing you had where you have this concept. When I was trying to make my own games before then, I actually would look at that and if there's anything I've learned from that. It seems to me that rules are just an interpretation and rather it's just a bunch of things and then people make up conceptions about those things and then you play the game or something like that. Do you think you’re a way of how you make games have changed since 2011? Would you critique or at least change how you make games and give a new updated edition of that?
AL: No, I don't think so. I feel like the principles I laid forth in the flow chart are still what I follow. I don't have it right in front of me, but I don't feel like anything's really gone out of date in the way I've been doing things in the last few years.
I don't think it's necessary, but I do feel like my computer background helped me a lot. I have some analogies about how humans are like computers and yet they're not. When I was writing software for computers, it's great because you know the computer will do exactly what you tell it to. Now you gotta make sure your code is telling it to do the right thing, but the computer will actually do it every instruction. Now, on the other hand, games are like software for meet space for computers, human computers execute the program of how to play a game in a way that's like a computer running code. But the problem is, the humans won't necessarily read the code correctly.
They might skim over a passage, they might not read the whole sentence that's got an important clause in it. They might not even read the back of those. So no matter how perfect the code might be written, if the humans don't look at it properly, they're going to get it wrong and the program is going to crash. This is the challenge of writing code. I mean writing rules in a way that gets the players to understand. Because it's one thing to design a game, it's another thing to ensure that the people who get it are playing the game that you designed and not some incorrect interpretation of that game based on not really reading the rules or not understanding them.
PE: The best a book I've ever read on game design and it's my Bible, I used to love a few years ago, is Richard Garfield's Characteristics of Games. It's a big heavy book and it definitely has... In an abstract anti math way, it really tells you how to become a game designer without the necessary need of understanding background. I always feel like if somebody wants to design a game, I always lend that book, characteristic games to any friends and I find that book wealth of information. Have you read that one?
AL: I have not read that one and I guess I need to get it on my shelf, because I'm not even familiar with it.
PE: It's Richard Garfield... What's his name? He's long time friend with Garfield. I can't recall. I'm sorry, I'm blanking out.
AL: It doesn't matter. I can look it online as can the other listeners. But certainly Richard Garfield is a name and a guy a I know. But knot too well.
PE: Yeah, it's an interesting-
AL: But yeah, I'll look that up.
PE: ...yes, I'm a huge fan of the book. It's actually about four years old now and it still, I would say have some longevity to it. It definitely is a huge book of [inaudible] goes by, like it says, characters is games step-by-step. And basically if you understand and read that book, I think you can apply it to anything and then just make a game from it.
AL: Yeah. Well, maybe so. I should check it out.
These are only selected cuts from the interview, and not the full.
5.
Consumer Interviews
Original interviews conducted on location for research.
1. Guy # 1 (The Uncommons)
Liked Board Games: Love Letter, Carcassonne, Dominion. “Are no limitations to how many board games I love.”
Love/ Hate: “Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Cosmic Encounter. Monopoly is a game that was made to show how bad capitalism is and it really does show it. Settlers of Catan, I really love though.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “It all depends on what you're in the mood for. I love good story-based ones, so like legacy games where you actually go through a long-term story mode. Those are a lot of fun, especially with the right group of people to go through. Mechanical based ones, that don't necessarily have a story mode, are also fun.”
2. Girl # 1 (The Uncommons)
Liked Board Games: Pente, Chess, Carcassonne.
Love / Hate: “So not Cosmic Encounter because I don't know what it is, although possibly just because it sounds interesting. But I think Monopoly is very boring, so Settlers by default.”
Mechanics or Narrative: "I mostly get into games that feel more mechanics-based to me. I haven't really done many role-playing sort of story kind of games, but they are intriguing from afar. But yeah, I'm more on the mechanic side.”
3. Girl # 2 (The Uncommons)
Liked Board Games: Azul, The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pente, Agricola.
Love / Hate: “Settlers, because I am very competitive and I enjoy winning and Monopoly is too long and doesn't have enough strategy in my opinion... I guess I don't like statistic sort of strategy as much and it's more of a statistics heavy game. I don't know what the last game is.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “I like games in both categories. No, actually... I like games that are either mechanics or mechanics and story. I don't like story only. I think that the best games have a good story surrounding and I don't think... I don't know, even Agricola would be the same if we were just playing with anonymous pieces rather than having the little pigs reproduce and losing more props and the whole story around, like the shift in the economy structure.”
4. Guy # 2 (The Uncommons)
Liked Board Games: The Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Ticket To Ride, Codenames, Monopoly.
Love / Hate: “Probably Catan, just because I'm most familiar with it and I haven't played all of those before.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “I don't really care for the story part as much, I'm more interested in the mechanics I think.”
5. PhD Student (The Uncommons)
Liked Board Games: Cards of Humanity, Exploding Kittens.
Love / Hate: “ Cards Of Humanity, Exploding Kittens. They're fun because you get to know people a little bit more and their humor.” ...”Probably Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. Those are just classics and you can't go wrong.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “Yeah, so narrative and storytelling-based. I think it makes more sense than just something mechanical.”
6. White Boyfriend (Hex & Co.)
Liked Board Games: Monopoly.
Love / Hate: “I guess lately I've been playing Monopoly again. I like it because they have a lot of themes that reminisce with like my childhood. I just bought the Disney Monopoly and I like having those characters of familiarity. ...I like Risk and Monopoly, because I know how to play them for one. And two, like I said, they have a lot of themes to them, so they're really fun. Both Risk and Monopoly have multiple themes that spread across all sorts of genres. So it's fun to play those.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “I guess, when they're a story-based, I think that makes more sense. ...I guess mechanical games it's a lot of setup and it's just... I don't know, the stories are more fun and it allows more for imagination, I guess, to take over. ...As long as they're just fun and they're not too challenging. The more people that can play it quickly, then the better I like it.”
7. Asian Girlfriend (Hex & Co.)
Liked Board Games: Monopoly.
Love / Hate: “I play Monopoly, because I know the rules. And I just started playing board games and I don't really know all the kinds and everything. So I just picked the easiest one. I would do Monopoly, just because of the reason I just said, I know the rules and it's simple and I have no idea what the other ones are.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “Theme... because I don't like pick games because the rules are fascinating or something. I just pick the games because they look fun and the themes look fine, so maybe that. Yeah, that's why. ...If there are characters that I know or if it's related to the movies or books that I read or something like that, yeah.”
8. The Veteran (Hex & Co.)
Liked Board Games: Battlestar Galactica, Great Western Trail, A Feast for Odin.
Love / Hate: “I play a wide selection, Eurogames, adventure, Ameritrash games, party games. My favorites, ...Battlestar Galactica, the board game, Great Western Trail, A Feast for Odin, and there's a bunch but those come to mind... I've been in this hobby for a dozen years. I enjoy games. ...Root, of those. And then followed by Cosmic Encounters. I'm not a fan of Monopoly, but Root has a lot of re-playability because you can just play all the different... There are at least four and potentially up to eight different ones you can play. So the novelty factor of playing new mechanics I enjoy. One thing I don't like about Cosmic Encounter, which to some extent... I'm probably being hypocritical because Root suffers a little bit from that, but Cosmic Encounter, from the games I've played, can be very one-sided. It can be very.... certain sections are much more powerful than others.”
Mechanics or Narrative: “You see it's more like a narrative-based, like this game or mechanic-based, like a Eurogame, like El Grande. The story part is sort of on top of the mechanics and it relies on the mechanics. I think probably my favorite games had to be more mechanic-oriented and if there's any story it's layered on top of the mechanics. So Battlestar Galactica, it's got a story to it. ...Right, it's a cooperative game. You're trying to get some mission, there's a story to it, but the design is mechanical as well as... both mechanical in terms of what actions you can do and you have different players, some of who are secretly trying to do something bad and the story comes out of that. I think mechanics, I would lean towards mechanics. Or theme to a game? I like both. I don't tend to like abstract games as much as games with themes. But I would lean towards mechanics.”
9. The Hobbyist (Hex & Co.)
Liked Board Games: Brass: Birmingham.
Love / Hate: "Well, one of the game that we're about to setup is called Brass: Birmingham and that's been one of my favorites from the last few years. I enjoy it for a couple of reasons.”
Mechanics or Narrative: "I'll be difficult and I'll say I'll say both. I prioritize mechanics probably, but a game with really nice mechanics and no theme, nothing to tie things together, often seems very dry to me and I will sometimes lose interest in it if there isn't enough flavor and art and visual elements. I really like city building games, I like historical and economic games. And in terms of mechanics, one of the reasons that I really like Brass, is that it has certain elements that are almost semi-cooperative. You kind of do things for other people, sort of accidentally, and you are kind of reacting to the opportunities that other people provide to you.”
10. Guy # 4 (Hex & Co.) [Did not want to be recorded, instead, notes were written]
Liked Board Games: Risk: Game of Thrones, Cards Against Humanity, The Settlers of Catan, Codenames.
Love / Hate: “I am really into Codenames right now. I’m always up for anything new. I don’t really hate any game. I love them all.
Mechanics or Narrative: “I would definitely choose theme. Mechanics can suffice. I mean, I like drafting games. That counts, right? ...I enjoy a games with horror elements. Yes! I also like... um, Eldritch Horror? ...That is something I would play over again. ...If more games could be like that, sure, mechanics can be a good thing.”
—
END.
Appendix revised on July 7th, 2023.
Originally published for School of Visual Arts in May of 2020.