Games and the Western Mind
Some recent psychological research, mentioned in the NY Times, has confirmed that not everyone in the world thinks like westerners. This is not surprising, though apparently many psychologists have hoped their work was universal, even when only American college students were used as subjects. Regardless, the new work identifies particular differences. The unsurprising: strong individualsm, in particular identifying the self with traits rather than a role in society. The surprising: The western for fairness seems uniquely strong.
The most ambitious role-playing games aspire to stretch our minds a little: to see ourselves in another place and time, with different motives and ideas than we have. Aiding such explorations is difficult: games often struggle to evoke even the physicality of another world believably. It is especially hard because, as the article suggests, so much of our thinking is unconsciously—but very substantially—influenced by our society. Can games hope to evade such biases, even a little?
That was partly my intent with City of Birds which, for instance, has characters with no abilities, only social roles. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it has been successful with people who disliked role-playing previously (especially women). Clearly, games do not have to be as individualistic as they usually are, or concerned with material gain and utilitarian do-gooding; with dice and the numerization of everything. I wonder, though, if role-playing—as a hobby—is somehow uniquely western at its core. If so, there may be limits on what it can do. But we’re far from any limit now, so let’s keep pushing.
Aug 26, 2010 | Filed in design
| Tagged: analysis, anthropology
Die Mechanics Revisited: Summation
Some years ago I wrote an article on the basic statistical properties of common die-rolling mechanics in games. It was one of the more popular articles on my site, but also contained errors and omissions. I’ve been wanting to do an updated version but found the hurdle of completing the entire article at once too daunting. Therefore I’m publishing it in pieces, as I have time.
I’ll consider a variety of common uses of dice, from their basic statistical properties to how they might be applied in a game, including what tone or psychological impact they might bring. We start today with the simplest of mechanics: summation.
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Mar 24, 2010 | Filed in design
| Tagged: mechanics, rolling
A Call for Brief Imaginative Games
Many a gamer has discovered that, suddenly, he no longer has the time he did in high-school; that he cannot play an epic role-playing campaign spanning months; that he cannot commit to play every week, or for ten hours stretches. The constraints of the outside world are often the blame, but so too is the gamer’s own development: he has other things to do with his time, for fun, and cannot put up with a flabby gaming experience: every minute must count.
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Mar 19, 2010 | Filed in design
| Tagged: indie, strategy
Competition and Role-playing
Serious competition around an idea of simple winning is problematic. Players want to have their success determined in a non-arbitrary way: not by anyone’s subjective decisions. So victory is then logically tracked, made dependent on mechanics. This reasoning cascades from the final victory conditions to every other aspect of the game, leaving something that is primarily about strategy, little about role-playing. Even where joins are suggested by the game text, they will — very logically — be ignored, because they are tangential to the real goal of the game. I see but two solutions.
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Nov 24, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: play, structures
Role-Playing Structures II
In my previous essay, I introduced what I see as the two major “structures” of role-playing, mechanisms and imaginings. Here I’ll explore them further: their components, their interaction, and their use.
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Nov 03, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: analysis, indie, nouns_verbs, play, structures
Defeating the Accumulation of Advantage
“Accumulating advantage” is a general term, describing the tendency of the rich to get richer though positive feedback. This happens in many strategy games, in two slightly different ways. First, the rewards of success, like money, can be turned into an engine for later success, like the purchase of factories. This is positive feedback through accrual. Second, there can be positive feedback through loss, where reductions in initial resources create disadvantage. Many naval wargames show this behavior. They demonstrate classic attrition warfare: nothing like terrain or morale complicates a relatively straightforward game of inevitable resource degradation.
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Oct 13, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: mechanics, strategy
Role-playing Structures
I’ve often struggled with the definition of games. What is it that makes role-playing role-playing? How is it different from board-gaming or wargaming? These terms may be useful but the boundaries they set are fairly arbitrary, and they could be abandoned.
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Sep 20, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: analysis, indie, play, structures
Exchanging Nouns for Verbs
RPGs have generally organized things into nouns and verbs. This is the distinction Chris Crawford makes regarding computer games—and I’ve written about applying this framework to RPGs—but it is tacitly done already.
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Sep 07, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: nouns_verbs
D&D and the Goal-Unit Gap
In my article Goals and the Units of Play, I suggested that a gap between the theme of a game’s units and the actual goals of the players might enhance play—and its lack could make a game go flat. Could it be that persistent critics of new-style RPing are reacting against the absence of gaps n new games?
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Aug 23, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: DnD, units
Games are the next comics
In the last few months, graphic novels have appeared sporadically in the pages of the New York Times’s Book Review (e.g., 1, 2), and have been given their own bestseller list online. More amazing still, a multi-panel comic appeared in the Book Review not as subject, but as a method for reviewing a book. The Grey Lady is conservative in its style and content, so this, to me, seems a watershed moment. Something has changed to make cultured people think of comics as a legitimate artistic medium. I think the same will happen to games.
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May 13, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: comics
