The Thematic Lightbulb

It's sort of odd; as all game designers are want to do for various reasons, the discussions of theme and mechanics always seems to come up. Whether it's a generalized starting point as a discussion ("What do you start with, a theme, or a mechanic?"), or something that sort of gets sideswiped into the design discussion ("We really should do that, because that's what people expect when you are simulating XXX..."). And I've found this to be quite apparent across various game design fields that I've in contact with over the years. Generally, everyone is trying to simulate SOMETHING; even something as simple as Tetris could be described as a sort of gravity simulation. Mostly because, well, people just understand the nature of how strangely oblong blocks stack up, and that packing them one way will result in very different packing position if you pack them differently.

It does seem like board games is a game subgroup that really doesn't mind having an abstract genre (and yes, I know they exist in video games), but even when you get to something that really is completely abstract, such as pinball, the amount of theming within the rules is astounding from a developer standpoint (and as an ex-pinball guy, I know). Really, a pinball machine is just a set of play mechanics that allow the player to score points based on whatever state various shots and targets are in, but every effort is made to somehow theme each of these states and reasons for why "increased scoring potential" may be active. It all made sense to me when I was in the industry: "This game mode represents "Payback Time" from whatever hot movie license the game was based on." But a few months out of the industry, and I was completely lost.

STORYTIME!

As a case in point, before I was in the industry, I played a pinball machine called "Whirlwind." I enjoyed it a lot. And this was way before the craze of various continual play modes that began in the '90s.

Anyway, as it was frequently done back in those times, various things would advance the scoring of various other things. And in the case of Whirlwind, one of the features was "Jets At Max." First of all, there were no airplanes on the game, and since it was a weather/tornado themed game, I started assuming that Jets meant Jet Streams, and the outer loops had "cloud faces" blowing wind around; that looked like Jet Streams to me! Soooo, I figured, Jets at Max meant that the outer loop shots must be worth big points.

It was only I started working in Williams/Bally did I realize that Jets referred to "Jet Bumpers." In other words,the silly pop bumpers that bounced the balls around were maxed out at big points, not the loop shots.

Alas, what was my point? Maybe it was this: here was a case where the theme, and the search for a logical extension of the theme, caused me to guess completely wrong as to how a scoring mechanic worked.

END OF STORYTIME.

Anyway, as I said earlier, it's a little odd. There's always talk about themes and mechanics, and especially how Eurogames wind up just having a collection of mechanics with a theme pasted on. I know some people like having a brainburning good time fighting with mechanics and searching for optimal mathematical play, but I find myself leaning further and further toward the Fortress:Ameritrash side of things; I want a logical explanation for why things are happening, not "just because" a rule tells me so.

This came most strongly into my vision while playing a prototype recently. Mechanically, it worked fine; he added a few new features to it that felt better than the last. And while the stated goal of the game was often discussed in terms of mechanics and scoring mechanisms, the entire game devolved into operating things solely for the gain of positive points, or avoidance of negative points. And while he had studied up strongly on his chosen theme of the game, and various detailed historical matters regarding the theme he wished to impart upon it, it was clear that the game was pretty much an abstract; you did not feel like you were doing anything that represented anything close to his theme; all actions were solely manipulating little cubes to best scoring results.

The little theme-ing lightbulb turned on in my head near the end of the evening. Basically, one of the new features he added was the addition of neutral cubes that scored negative points. At this point, I realized that those cubes, based on a the discussion which kept coming back to him describing the games theme (which to any other player, doesn't really exist), could actually perform an action that relates to the theme and represenations that he decribed that affected the game interestingly, as opposed to just a point suck.

Whether or not that something like this gets implemented in his game, I do not know. But it did make something tangible to me that was often talked about in rather mysterious terms: what exactly does theme mean within the context of a game? And the answer was a rule that performs as you'd expect in simulating that particular thematic action.

At least until I change my definitions again.

** I know I'm being a little vague on describing the game above. As it's not my game, I don't feel it's right to talk too much about it's details.

Giant Gilded Statues of Yourself

I had someone email me recently asking a few questions about PocketCiv. In general, I find such questions pretty interesting, no matter how insignificant. If someone is willing to take the time to pose a few questions about a game to me, that pretty much means that something about the game has hit a nerve, and that they enjoyed the game.

Ultimately, noone cares about any background or balancing issues on games they hate. Thankfully, I've been somewhat surprised about the amount of email I've gotten, including one from someone who wanted to translate the rules to spanish (YES! PLEASE!).

Anyway, here's the gist of one question that I thought was interesting, mostly from an aspect of where my mind was at the time of a design decision.

"When comparing the costs between a Giant Gilded Statue of Yourself (4 Tribes, 20 Gold, and requires Art, for 15 VP) and Huge Monolith of Impressiveness (4 Tribes, 10 Gold, no requirements, for 12 VP), why would you even bother to build the GGSoY - it requires Art and 10 extra Gold to build."

Well, you know what, he was right. From a pure game design and rules standpoint, there is no good reason to build a GGSoY compared to the Monolith.

But from a esoteric mental image of what's going on in the game world, to me, I'm ALWAYS going to be building GGSoY. Heck, if I'm leading my people around, teaching them such simple things as Irrigation, Engineering, and Law, they better be building statues in my honor! Sure the Monolith may be impressive, but it's not me!

To be honest, I never really have spent much time on balancing the VPs in the game. I was more concerned with if the game played fun, and was hard, but still possible to play through 8 Eras. That was the driving goal of the game to me: to beat the game through 8 Eras and to experiment with differently shaped worlds and figure out the puzzles of which Advances best suited the terrain I decided to play against.



Scoring VP was pretty much secondary. Scoring really only came about because Advanced Civilization had it. I quickly did my best to think out some of the balance for VP to each thing as an after thought.

But I forgot that a lot of other people play games for different reasons. And score is a main fuel for the fire for many people who play.

Instead of seeing GGSoY as the abstract thing that it is (some little chit with text on it that scores 15VP when built), I see it conceptually as an entertaining motivator to canvass your Empire with giant gold likenesses of myself, lording over my little Tribes. Not that I'm this ego driven madman, mind you. I saw it more as a little side quest to do out of pure entertainment, just to be able to say "Look, I've got a little Easter island over here and they al look like me"

I guess you could do the same thing, plopping down Monoliths willy-nilly everywhere. But conceptually, that a series of overblown black bricks just isn't the same a bunch of muscle-rippling, heroically-posed, 50-foot high Scotts littering the view of the ocean.

Of course, the author of the email is correct. While the concept is amusing, that really shouldn't be the thrust of the game. And changing the stats to better reflect the cost of the things doesn't change my mental concept; but the concept itself shouldn't be driving the balance issues. The equations should not include "because you will find it amusing to build this."

I suppose this is why humor-based games fail. Once the joke is told, you usually find that the game behind the jokes is not very good. The equations to often include "you should do THIS because it is funny," and not "you should do THIS because it is a good play for you to make within the confines of the rules."

However, I do think an exception can be made. Maybe it should slightly fit in the equation in a game where you really ARE placing giant, oversized plastic pieces on a board. Because, part of the fun is in actually playing with the giant bits. A lot of the draw to the collectible figurine games have this element. Playing with the pieces is a huge part of the fun. I'm not sure if HeroScape is much fun in a cardboard chit on played on a paper hex map. But man, a large set with a bunch of figurines running around sure looks like a lot of fun.

Alas, PocketCiv has little colored chits that say "Monolith" and "Statue." The math will have to be fixed until otherwise.

Agents are.... GO!

In general, I shy away from the continual re-animating Theme-versus-Mechanics dead horse argument. I' not really sure I care about the chicken-or-the-egg issues that it devolves into (namely, which is more important), as games should be fun regardless.

But I thought I'd add this to the mix.

Early on, the story starts out like this: when the GameBoy Advance came out, I picked one up, thinking that it had the capabilities to do more adult games. Which it does, see Advance Wars. Sure it's cartoony, but it's pretty much a table-top chit-style wargame, with tons of strategic and tactical plays, especially against another human. But generally, the GBA pretty much became the heaping ground of poor games themed with whatever hot kids licenses were around at the time.

But not so with the Nintendo DS. Sure, there are the usual Pokemon games, and Dragon Ball Z games, and most likely Mary Kate and Ashley games. But there are an impressive amount of game available for the system that people over 13 can enjoy.

Games I've acquired so far along these lines are:
Brain Age: Basic quick play puzzles
Advance Wars DS: The DS verison of the cutest game of war and death you'll find
Hotel Dusk: An impressively artistic interactive film noir novel.
Trauma Center: I've already managed to kill a musician during a simple surgery involving lasering polyps off of his throat muscles.

And final game, which probably falls a bit younger than the above, but got me thinking about the theme/mechanics debate: Elite Beat Agents!!

Here's a game that is exceedingly well done at what it's supposed to do. Which is something that I didn't think would work well at all, which is do a Dance Dance Revolution-styled beat matching game using a stylus. But it does it well, and it's pretty darn addictive. Probably more addictive than Guitar Hero, or the original beat matching game, Parappa the Rapper.

But what REALLY pushed EBA over the top is the sheer amount of themed presentation tossed on top of the beat matching mechanics. It's utterly ridiculous the amount of stuff that you effectively never see because you are spending so much of your effort staring at the little "beats" you are trying to hit.

While I've often wanted to watch the little guitarists on screen in Guitar Hero do their thing while playing, ultimately, whatever those guys are doing on stage doesn't interest me too much. They are just sort of running through a set of jamming animations, with a few bizarre Star Power activation animations (however, kudos need to go out to the exploding drummer at the end of the Spinal Tap song).

Really, if all EBA did was just have a bunch of dancing animated guys with some trippy backgrounds during the songs, it would be a good game. But there is sooooo much more to enjoy.

Here's how the story works. At every song in the game, there is some crisis going on. However, the threat level of the "crisis" is sort of debatable. It's usually some personal crisis. Take the first stage, Jane wants the football player at school to ask her out, but the neighbor has dropped off all of the kids for her to babysit, creating a fairly ugly situation for both Jane, and the football player, who can't handle the hijinks of the kids. And as with all the levels, the introductory screen is played out in a comic book-styled storyline, with the main character yelling "HEEEEEAAAAALLP!" at the tops of their lungs.

This cry for help gets picked up somehow on the world scanner at EB control by Commander Kahn, who, with a flick of his wrist, announces that "Agents are......GO!" Which, by itself, always rises a chuckle.

The rest of the introduction is played out with the three Agents getting to the crisis scene (always in a different mode of transportation, often ridiculous). And then the beat matching game begins.

During the game, the upper screen of the DS is playing out the crisis based on how well you are beat matching. Not that you have any time to watch what is going on, mind you. At different breaks in the song, the game gives you time to rest, and let's you watch little vignettes of the story play out; again, based on how well you arematching the beats.

And all of it is completely absurd, silly, and continually cracks me up.

I've not really gotten very far into the game, but some of the nice touches in the presentation are simple things (even though they just add to the insanity of it all), like the shot of the three agents staring stoicly out of the window from the EBA Blimp on their way to the crisis. Typically, Commander Kahn is in uniform when surveying the world for cries of help; during a deserted island mission he is unexpectedly wearing a Hawaiian shirt for no good reason at all. Also during this mission, the three agents ride a large pool toy together to the rescue (still in theirEBA required black suits!), which is funny enough. But upon closer look at the quick scene, one guy has a pool ring around his shoulder, and at least two of the agents are wearing goggles and snorkels!

So, what can we learn from this? While the game is pretty great from a mere mechanics standpoint, it's the lunacy of the theme and presentation that really makes the game shine. Maybe this is why there seems to be some rumbling about "geez, not ANOTHER European board game about building a 16th century town/building." While the mechanics may be good, or great, do you really need to spend time rehasing the same theme again?