Cognitive load in games: What it is and how to think about it

Have you ever heard someone say, "This game is a real brain-burner," "There are a lot of rules to learn to play this game," or "This game seems too simple"? What they are talking about is cognitive load -- how much of your brain you need to use to pay attention to something. 

There is not a one-size fits all amount of cognitive load that is "right" for games. Different games fit into different zones for different people at different times: 

• Sometimes after playing a heavy strategy game (aka the brain-burner) I want to play something lighter, because my capacity to focus and pay attention has been used up. 
• Sometimes I like to play a very complex game with lots of rules, so I can pull my mind off of other preoccupations. 
• Sometimes I like a game I can play in a cafe and still have conversations with the other players.

How much of a person's brain you hope and need to engage depends on the type of game you want to make and where and how you picture it being played.

It is useful to separate cognitive load into three categories:

1) Learning and Memory: how much brain power you need to learn and remember how to play a game. This will vary by type of game. There is no right answer for this category. Each person has different preferences, and each time and place has different parameters. 

2) Navigating user interface (UI) and information design: how much overhead your brain needs to process information and manipulate game elements. You want this to be as minimal as possible, so that the player can put their attention on the other categories. 

A few things to avoid to reduce overhead:

• Centered text
• Low contrast (See more in Mistakes in Card layout)
• Too many symbols
• Mixing symbols into the middle of text
• Extra clicks, and small targets for UI buttons, etc. (In computer interfaces)
• "Incoherence" - things not being similar in design when they could be.  
  
  Information Design in Board Games, another blog post, goes into more detail.

3) Strategic thinking: the fun, interesting, engaging part. It is coming up with strategies for play, figuring out the puzzle of it, thinking about what you would do differently next time. Sometimes a game is so simple it doesn't have much of this at all, and then I feel the cognitive load is too low. You can't get engaged.

More ways to think about it

Sometimes people think a game requires a lot of strategic thinking but the cognitive load they are experiencing comes from learning the rules and struggling with the interface. Go is a classic example of the opposite. The basic rules are so easy, the interface is so easy, and the strategic layer is incredibly deep. 

Designers sometimes over-simplify the design process. They advise "make fewer rules" or "always reduce cognitive load". I prefer "make fewer extraneous rules" "make fewer clunky, inelegant rules", and to ask "does this rule help the game become its best self?" or "does this rule make the game more interesting?". 

You can make a game that is simple to learn and easy to play, yet has no depth and is dull. You can also make a game that is hard to learn and hard to play, and has no depth and is dull. How to create strategic depth and complexity in your game? Sounds like another post to me!

Sometimes your intention is to create a more complex game, and therefore you may need more rules. George Orwell said it well, "Use as simple words as possible. But NO SIMPLER." Sometimes you need a complex word for a complex idea, or complex rules for deep games.   

Three Main Types of Cognitive Load:

• Intrinsic Load: The inherent difficulty of the material or topic being learned.
• Extraneous Load: The unnecessary mental effort caused by how information is presented (e.g., poorly designed materials).
• Germane Load: The productive mental effort devoted to constructing schemas (permanent knowledge structures).

Impact and Management 

• When the total load exceeds capacity, learning is hindered, errors increase, and focus declines.
• To optimize cognitive load, aim to reduce extraneous load, manage intrinsic load, and promote germane load.

 

How to use these ideas when designing games 

1) have an idea of what types of players, and environments you imagine your game being played by and in. 

• Some games are much a harder to play in crowded, noisy environments. Some are not. 
• Are you making a "pub" game? 
• A social game? 
• A day-long strategy game? Adjust the complexity to fit. 
• Are you making a game that people might play between other deep games? 
• A game couples might play in a quiet evening? 
• Is the game meant to be played a lot of times? You better have involved, complex strategic possibilities, or people aren't likely to return. 
• How old are the players who you think might like to play it? Is it a large range, or small? 
• Can the players read? Do complex reasoning? Have good eyesight? 
• How much memory is required. 
• Lots of questions to ask.

2) What is the medium your game is being played in? 

• Is it a board game? All those rules have to be remembered to make the game play smooth. That means you have to streamline more than on the computer. 
• Are you making a computer game? The computer can automate and remember a huge amount, so your complexity targets can be different, but you really have to make sure your interface is smooth. 
• Are you making a game people play with friends, no board, word of mouth rules transmission, like charades?

 

How I got into the Games Industry

The other night, I was talking to someone while we were sitting around after playing a board game. They wondered how I got into the game industry to begin with.

It is an unlikely story. I was homeless, living in a tent in the woods, and this guy I know who was working on a D&D title for SSI - Al Qadim: the Genie's Curse - needed a play-tester. He knew I used to spend lots of time inventing games, so that's a reason he asked me. This was back before cell-phones and email and all that, so I am not even sure how I got in touch with the guy. Maybe a party in Northampton. Something like that. But I said yes, and that began my career in the computer game industry. 

 

I used to get up from my tent, sneak into a gym nearby and shower, take the bus over to Northampton, MA, and show up for my job as a video game play-tester.

Luckily, I got along with everybody, and I had good design and computer skills. As time progressed, they let me do some design work as well, lay out some levels and side quests. It was pretty interesting work. Al-Qadim was an action Adventure game set in the Arabian Nights D&D universe. What do I remember about it at this point, 30 years later? Not much... there was a big genie, some caves to explore, some oceans to cross, and someone snuck out of the village under a sheet or something. Maybe a cyclops hid under a sheet?

It was a strange time for me. I would get checks and not know what to do, since I had been living a scavenging lifestyle for a little bit. I don't think I even had a bank account at that point. I got an electric guitar with my first paycheck and stored it in a friend's room. They even misspelled my name on the first few checks. "Jim Dubious".

 

After The Genie's Curse released, they signed me up for the next game - Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall, by SSI - as an assistant designer. Along the way of that game's development, they fired the lead designer, and I stepped into the role. 

This was another action RPG, where you are slowly turning into a giant bug, and have to find out the reason why and reverse it. Strangely that is almost all I remember about it. But... I think there were "molemen" that lived in different caves and they were very important to the story. And there was a time traveling spider queen???

It was different coming in part way through a project as lead designer, as opposed to starting off that way, as I did for Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom Sim. I just carried things to completion and made few high level decisions. The interface and engine were already set, the story pretty much determined. Lots of game play tweaks though. That's one of the less glamorous, but vital, sides of game design and development: play it again and again, adjust some numbers, do it again. It is something I have done a lot of over the years. I would say it is central to making games. Especially to making them play well. Here's an example of how I did that with the City of Demons board game.

 

Read more about my history: How I got into Game Design 

Beyond the Ambiguity of "Creating an Experience" in Games

I've heard people talk about "creating an experience," as a way to approach designing games. But it seems like it is so broad of a concept that it could apply to any form of entertainment. 

Experience arises from multiple factors. Some of which are the type of media, and how it is made. Another factor is the context in which the media is seen, which includes location and other beings. Certainly, the experience of watching a movie differs vastly if you are in a theater with enthusiastic fans, or watching it alone on your iPad. And reading a book is different than looking at a painting.

When playing a game, much of the experience a player has is beyond the control of the creator. You can imagine where it might be played, and account for that, but you don't know. You also don't know what the personalities of the players will be like, whether their tastes align with your design tastes, etc.

So "creating an experience" may be a useful reminder to remember that everything will be viewed or played in a context, and that you can influence the overall experience with your choices, but its not very concrete or useful advice about creating games in particular.

 

To contrast the idea of "creating an experience", I ask, "What are the unique elements of a game that sets it apart from other forms of media?" 

It is dynamic, as opposed to static. Multiple times through a game yield different paths. Barring "the experience", that is not true for static media such as books or movies. But somewhat true for improvisational music.

It is controlled by player choices or luck, but not pre-determined.

You can win and lose at games. If you can't it is more like a simulation or a ride or a toy.

It is something you play with as a way of interacting with it. Similar to a toy.

It is primarily rules based. "Conceptual" as opposed to being "sensual" (primarily senses based). Similar to reading, as opposed to watching a movie or listening to music. A player is re-creating an experience that a designer had. It is sort of similar to playing music yourself off of sheet music. This applies way less to computer based games where there are simulated, sensual rich worlds you play within, and much more to Role-playing games.

It is procedural, as opposed to end result-oriented. Other media have a procedure which produces a result, and that result is the point, ie the book, the painting, and so forth. Except for improvisational music, which is also procedural. With a game, you follow procedures to re-create the thing, instead of being given or shown a copy of the thing, or the thing itself that was the result of a previous procedure.

 

As usual, when I get down to defining what a game is, I find it shares qualities with other types of media, and that definition itself can only go so far before everything seems difficult to define clearly. But this is a good way to help distinguish games from other media. A good starting point for defining "Game" as a medium.

Creating a Sense of Place in a Board Game

What makes a board game have a good or poor sense of place? 

There are two areas which contribute to the sense of place: In-game utility, and graphic presentation. 

First, let's cover the factors involved in in-game utility.

Location density:

• A map spreads out possible actions, and contributes to the pacing of the game.
  
  
• On a map there will be a mix of places where stuff happens and places you move along to get to other places. Sometimes the function of a place will be mixed, or vary depending on the game state and the player goals.
  
  
• If things are too close together, it can feel rushed and cartoony, not as much of a real space.
  
  
• If things are too far apart, it can feel tedious -- empty space is not memorable or defining.
   
• I like a mix, a lot of evenly spaced out locations and one further away that people can try to journey to sometimes.
  

Abstraction level:

• The more abstract your map is, the less it seems like a place.
  
  
• So a map with three places to go seems more like action selection than being in a world.
  
  
• I might break those three places down into twenty and increase the player movement allowance so that the time to reach each place is about the same, yet the feel of movement and place is increased.
  

Location uniqueness:

• If you have to go to specific places to do specific things, it feels more unique. If you can do everything everywhere, why even have a map? (Outer Rim market)
  
  
• If things to do in different places are only slightly different it is also too generic to help create a real sense of place.
  

Relevance (aka no dead areas):

• All the spots on your map or place should have reasons and possible actions which make players consider going there sometimes. This makes it feel relevant.
  
  
• When something is relevant, people pay more attention to it, and can recognize and navigate by it.
  
  
• Having spots that you could go to but never do is a badly designed place, and takes away from the sense of place by seeming "irrelevant". 

And a few other stragglers:

• Having dynamic reasons to go places makes it more like a real place. Like a quest goal that moves around the map or something similar.
  
  
• The sense of exploration and discovery helps a place seem more real. So if the map is big enough that you go looking for a place and are rewarded with finding it, it helps.
  
  
• Also, hidden tiles which get revealed help with this feeling. 
  

 

Now let's cover factors related to the presentation and graphic UI. 

• Bad ones are circles and lines overlaid on a nice drawing. (Defenders of the Realm, Clank, Tyrants of the Underdark) 
• If it looks more like chart than a place, then it doesn't help. (Clank) 
• Are you in a place, or on it, aka sitting on the drawing on a board? 
• Grids of squares feel much more like charts than a place.

The ability to navigate by landmarks is a hallmark of human real-world movement. To recreate that in a game, there needs to be enough uniqueness in the utility and look of a place to do it. 

How I Got Into Game Design

 I was out at breakfast with a friend the other day, talking about my current board game projects, and he asked me how I got into game design in the first place. Here's the story:

I played the boxed set of D&D and then AD&D, starting around age 7 - way back in 1977. Soon I started making dungeons, and like everyone else, pored over the various books and manuals for the game. One part I really appreciated was the note from Gary Gygax at the beginning where he said that the book was a guide and that you were free to use or not use whatever section or bits you like, or even invent your own. What a great thing to hear as a young person! This was a game that included your creativity and imagination. I took it to heart, and when playing any game, I always wondered what I might do differently if I made the game. So that was a good perspective to start from. 

The other thing that helped was that my father got a Commodore PET, a (now) ancient computer that had a cassette tape for reading in programs. We got some cassette tapes with many programs on them, mainly games. Everything was in basic, and you could see the code. And even better, modify it! So my brother and I, even before we knew programming, learned how to delete a line or two. We would delete different lines of code and then run the program and see what happened. In one game, Dungeon - a simple kill the monsters and gather treasure dungeon crawler, we found the perfect line to delete in order to change the shape of the dungeon. Instead of rooms and corridors, it made a random huge room with pillars! How fun!
 

 

After that I learned to program BASIC, and was always trying to make adventure games like Colossal Cave. Find the rust remover in a random field and use it on the stuck lever so you can deactivate the electric fence and go somewhere. That was in a game I made when I was 10 years old or so. 

 
From there is was making and playing a lot of games. I am a huge fan of iteration for learning how to do something, and how to refine your designs. 

 

Read more about my history: How I got into the Games Industry 

Accelerating Costs Create Homogeneity in Video Games - and That's Bad.

We've all seen it in those mobile games: the first level of a skill costs 1 point, and the next one costs 10 points, and the next level costs 50 points, and so on, in some way or another.

I'm here to tell you why that sucks for long term play, and why everyone does it.

The second part is the easiest. Why does everyone do it? It arbitrarily prolongs the playing time of the game, so you will be tempted to spend more time, see more ads, buy more gems, etc. It takes less design work to make since you don't have to assess different strategies against one another.

 
Why it sucks is fairly straightforward, but takes longer to explain: If all the level 1 skills cost 1, and there are 5 of them, and all the level 2 of those skills costs 10, then you will most likely get all the level one skills first, then all the level 2 skills, and so forth. Specializing doesn't happen, just general heroing. You have 1 path really. Next game, same thing. The same grindy path.

If on the other hand, level 1 and level 2 skills and indeed all level of skills cost 1 point to get to, then once you have bought a level 1 skill, and you get another point for upgrading, you have an actual meaningful choice still: do you specialize in that skill and boost its level, or do you get another skill. There are so many more types of paths for your skills during the game, therefore more interest, more replay-ability in the future, and more strategies for play.

Forgotten Lore

I ran into a friend from college who I hadn't seen in 30 years. Over dinner he told me that he always remembered how I explained to him that all games could be placed on a matrix. One axis goes from Abstract to Concrete, and the other goes from Chance to Strategy.

I said, "What? Is that really true?" I guess back then it was easy to be over confident, because now, I'm not sure I agree. But I think it is still an interesting way to categorize and think about games.

 

Thanks for the weird graph, AI!

Let's place a few games on the chart to see how it works. 

Poker - Very abstract, a mix of luck and strategy.
Chess - A mix of abstract and concrete, and pure strategy.
Runebound Second Edition - A mix of abstract and concrete, but a bit more concrete than chess. A mix of luck and strategy.
Firefly the Board Game - Similar to Runebound Second Edition
Yahtzee - The most abstract game on the list. More luck than strategy, but not without strategy entirely.
Snakes and Ladders - Total luck! Pretty abstract.
Would a sport be a purely concrete game? Maybe crokinole?

Thanks public domain!

How useful is it to be able to do this, anyway? Maybe its "true" because it is an abstract enough way of classifying games that anything fits into it. Maybe it could help players understand whether a game will be more or less to their liking. Those are the thoughts I have nowadays. 

It can help create a structure for talking about different designs and systems. But I would ask additional questions too, like, "What is the benefit/function of abstraction/luck/strategy in a game?", "Or in this specific game I am making?" Because those type of questions give more useful answers. 

Thanks for the "random" die, AI!

For anyone who thinks luck serves no purpose in a game:

Luck or randomness is a way of introducing uncertainty into a game. A game needs uncertainty, because if you are certain that the outcome will be a specific thing, the game is essentially over. You know who wins. Luck is not the only way to introduce uncertainty, but it has its place, and its players. And you can add it in varying degrees, or use mechanisms to compensate for it, which is important, so you can customize it to the game experience you are trying to make.

More Exciting Items, More Complex Strategy

There's the standard value/event/boost in your game. Let's say it is +3. So you have a sword that gives you +3 to attacks. Maybe ok for one item, but how do you make your items less boring as an overall set? And add strategy to the game as well? Here's some ideas:

The Trade Off

+6 but you have to take 3 damage to use it. It makes you ask questions: "Can I get healed easily?" "Will this damage put me too close to the edge?" and so forth. Adding interest. Would you rather just have the +3 basic sword? Sometimes you would. Sometimes is a good answer. It means you have to evaluate some states of the game to be effective. And make choices.

The Boost

+3 and +1 for each energy you spend. See what I did? It also gives you the same numerical value, but it adds in a question, which is "Is this a good/efficient use of my energy right now?" Therefore, more strategically complex.

The Permanent Boost

+3, but if you are level 3, +6. It transitions into a better item as other things progress. Similar to above, but there is more of a "one time cost" or "long term payment".

The Situational Boost

+3, but +6 in swamps. If swamps are super rare, maybe its +12 in swamps! This is one of my favorite types of changes to make, since it encourages people to change their play patterns if they have an item or power like this. They have to play to it. They have to set it up. There are a ton of ways to implement this, depending on your game. +6 vs Dragons, +5 on cloudy days, and so forth.

The Situational Combo Penalty

This is an inverse boost. +5, but subtract 2 against Goblins. Make it a combo: +3 attack, +3 more against Dragons, -2 against Goblins!

Restricted uses

Once per round, once per turn, once per game. You get the idea. I realized the other day that "once per game" is pretty much the same as "discard to use". So: "Discard for +9 in an attack." Powerful, but you have to decide when is best to use it, which makes your decision making more interesting.

More...

The more complex your game, the more complex these can be. If there are different things to accumulate, like Gold, Experience and Energy, you can make different items boost by paying different costs.

And you can make up many others if you have in mind a general idea of relative worth of different things. How much gold is one point of attack value worth? How many XP equals 3 Gold? This is a generally good idea to figure out anyway because it helps you avoid underpowering and overpowering game elements.

Identifying and Changing Bad Play Patterns

Play patterns refer to the recurring behaviors, strategies, and interactions that players exhibit while playing a game. These patterns emerge as players navigate the game’s mechanics, objectives, and social dynamics.

People often talk of "balancing a game", which is kind of a general code for "making it better". Balancing a game is such a generic idea, and even the actual balancing of game elements against each other doesn't do the whole job of "making a game better." That's where we turn to examining play patterns.

Understanding play patterns helps designers create more engaging experiences. In particular, identifying and changing bad play patterns is important, so I will explain a few of those, and suggest ways to change each one.

Some clues we get about play patterns in a game come from things people say about it:

"You shouldn't play the game that way." means there are some bad play patterns possible. It makes me wonder why they left those in.

“You need to play with the right group” is another thing which essentially means “some play patterns and dynamics in this game are boring and you need to avoid them to enjoy this game”

There is a complex relationship between the varying number of players in a game and the play patterns that emerge. I'll cover that in another post.

 

Types of bad play patterns

Repetitive/boring

It might let you win as often as other patterns, ie, it is balanced against those other winning strategies in terms of length. But it involves boring repetition of going back and forth between two places during the game, or something similar.

What I would try to do to interrupt that is either a) make part of that 2 space loop less valuable, so it is no longer a viable path for winning, or b) introduce uncertainty at either spot, or between the spots, or c) increase the competition between players for one or both spots, so they are naturally interrupting that boring play pattern (I'm thinking of worker placement games here).

Un-intuitive ("I don't get it")

Sometimes there is a mismatch between theme and actions, or how things fit together is hard to follow. In that case, instead of a fun discovering of strategies experience which is a normal engaging part of game play, there are patterns that would be good but no one uses, or the designer or an "expert" player has to constantly remind people what to do. Go back to your underlying structure and ask if the actions are easy to understand, and if they are easy to figure out how to create strategies with. 

If a player goes to the market, and they fight something, or they go to the quarry and they get a sheep, those are obvious mismatches of theme and game elements. But others can be more subtle.

If your game is too complex, or the game state is hard to understand, or the information design is poor, those can contribute to un-intuitive game experiences and play patterns.

Degenerate (the best, or you must)

Sometimes a strategy is more powerful than others, and you must do that to win. Hopefully in this case, you can increase the power of other paths, and balance the winning strategies vs each other.

A variant of this is a case where a certain strategy must be employed or the game is unbalanced. "Oh, if that character is in play, we all have to play this way or lose." People argue endlessly whether this type of situation is "balanced" or not in a game. (See Chaos in the Old World, Khorne for an example) I would say it is balanced, but degenerate, and possibly un-intuitive as well. And definitely limiting and less fun.

Un-dynamic (doesn’t change according to game state)

The game state changes all the time and that is the bedrock of games as a medium. It is what makes a game dynamic. It is what sets games apart from static media. From novels and movies. So play into that strength.

But there might be a play pattern or choice of action where a player doesn't have to interact or understand the state of the game or anything. They just go "I get 3 coins" for their action. That's ok if it occurs after determining it is the best or possible best choice. Otherwise it is probably too powerful. Maybe reduce the payout, or eliminate the choice.

If your game is too boring in general, or players aren't engaged, they might exhibit exhibit similar behavior.

Simplistic (doesn’t use much of the game’s elements or mechanics)

You made a splendid game with lots of fun things... and people just avoid a huge chunk of those to win, or to be engaged. You can chuck those not-used things, it you have the stomach to let them go. Or you can try to make them more essential to the winning strategies.

If these types of play patterns are happening in your game, the underlying structure probably needs a whole lot of work.

Conclusion

Since games are dynamic, there may be play patterns that only occur occasionally, under specific circumstances, or with certain styles of players. That's one reason you need to play your game a lot more than you think. Strive to make all the play patterns engaging and rewarding in your game.

Iterative Design - City of Demons

I met a guy at a convention, and he had developed some games, so I thought I would talk straight-up with him about my current game, so I said, "I like it but I feel like it drags a bit in the middle of the game, and I have played it so many times I am not excited about it." And he replied, "That never happens to me, I have loved every moment of every game I ever made."

I was flabbergasted. Had he made that many games? Was he delusional? How is that even possible? And then I realized that some of my great skills at design are the abilities to be critical, unsatisfied, bored, and impatient. Not everyone has those abilities, apparently.

“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” ― Theodore Roosevelt.

Especially when you venture onto unknown territory, or attempt to do things you haven't done before, you are going to probably make something that isn't perfect and needs refinement. The more games you make or try to make, the more this will happen. And sometimes it is your job to work on something, and it isn't your favorite project, but you still need to do a good job.

When making games, and particularly on multiple plays, the feelings you have as a player and designer are vital to understanding what to do.

Custom dice for the City of Demons.

 

So, back to the game I was in the middle of refining, the City of Demons. "It drags in the middle," was how I was feeling. Other things I felt were "It goes on too long and I get a little bored,", "If I die during the game, I feel dispirited," "I sometimes feel helpless near the end of the game, since its not a close game. I wish there was some way to catch up better."

Here's what I did in response to those feelings:

"It drags in the middle." - Previously, I had shortened the game length quite a bit from the original design. I had removed two levels. I didn't think removing more levels was the right thing this time, because it would make it too short. So I added some free resources that players get when they enter the middle sections of the board. So they can level up quicker and more happens on a turn.

"If I die during the game I feel dispirited." - I drastically reduced what happens when you run out of health. This was an iterative process over many plays. I made it so you are "bumped down a notch" instead of  "sent back to the start". The in-game idea of your piece being "killed" changed to being "stunned".

"I sometimes feel helpless near the end of the game, since its not a close game. I wish there was some way to catch up better." - Previously, it used to let one player get super far ahead of the other, so I had massively changed what happens on a turn, to prevent that. No more of that answer was available, so instead, I added the Underground Tunnels, which is a new sub-system that lets a player take multiple rolls on a turn as a desperate and dangerous catch-up option.

"It goes on too long and I get a little bored." - The things I did for the above problems really helped with this, but I wasn't entirely satisfied yet, so I radically simplified the turn structure. Now the "atomic" level of the game, the player turn, was much simpler and cleaner, and the rest of the game felt tighter and shorter.

Me demoing the City of Demons at Pax East 2024.

 

After all that work, I am very happy with how the City of Demons plays, so all the agonizing feelings led me to address the weaker moments of the game and change it for the better. Now the game never drags on and I don't feel dispirited. Instead, I feel excited and interested to see what happens next.

Two types of Agency in Games

What does it mean for a person to have agency?

In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

Why is agency important?

It empowers players to influence their own path to mastery. By encouraging players to take initiative, you enhance their cognitive ability to take control, increase motivation, and help ensure they  are engaged with the game.

 

There are two ways that applies to games:

The first is imaginative agency, which means the player has the choice to be and imagine who they want to be. Some ways of allowing this are to make synonyms and analogs of items in your game. For example, have a sword and and axe. Thy both give you +1 Attack, yet you can pick which one you prefer. 

Another important thing for promoting imaginative agency in a game is to make sure equal things have equal powers, ie. no degenerative strategies, or unbalanced character classes. Which character class would a player like to play? Ranger, Warrrior or Rogue. They might have different mechanics and powers to differentiate those play styles, but have the same chance of winning. Otherwise, if the warrior is just better, there is a divide between strategy and imagination. You have to pick the warrior to win, but you feel like playing the Ranger. There is a lack of coherence there, and it will turn off both the imaginative player who likes to get immersed in their character, and also the strategic player who likes to experiment with different strategies.

 

That leads me to my next point, strategic agency. Which means you can choose and define your own strategies in a game. This should be obvious, since it relates to meaningful choices, and balanced elements. But if there are one or two strategies that are clearly superior (in the final analysis), the depth and interest of your game is going to be short lived. People might like it while discovering those strategies, and then its over. Having a wider pool of possible paths to victory not only increases the replayability and depth of your game, it helps give people strategic agency. 

 

It makes me think of the meta-game in a Magic the Gathering format. If one or two decks are dominant, then the format gets stale quickly, because you see those decks way more often, and feel forced to take one of those to win. The more types of decks have a winning chance, the more strategic variety and agency there is in a format, which is more interesting for players.

Engaging Game Design

The trick is to make your material so fascinating that you cannot stay away from it, so intriguing that you ignore negative feelings and second thoughts, so rich with interest that the concepts of "good" and "bad" hardly occur to you.

- From 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author

 

While Smiley's words are intended for writers, I found that they offer good insight for game designers as well. Crafting a game is not merely about following design principles; it's a creative pursuit that benefits greatly from engagement with the material.

The Essence of Engagement

At the heart of Smiley's quote lies the concept of engagement—the deep, immersive connection that creators forge with their material. For game designers, this means more than just understanding the mechanics, rules, or components of a game. It's about cultivating a deep interest in the world you're creating, the elements of your game, and the experiences you're crafting for players. When designers are genuinely engaged, their enthusiasm permeates every aspect of the game, from its thematic elements to its game-play dynamics.

Ignoring the Noise

When designing a game, you will often encounter obstacles, doubts, and critiques. Creating a game is involves challenges, both internal and external. However, as Smiley suggests, when you're deeply engaged with your material, these obstacles fade into the background. The engagement with your game propels you forward, allowing you to navigate challenges with creativity, resilience, and determination. By focusing on what truly excites you about the game, you can overcome doubts and second-guessing, and more easily continue the work of developing the game.

Measure your Engagement

Some questions I like to ask when evaluating how engaged I am by a game I am working on are:

• Are there boring or tedious parts? If yes, can I remove, shorten or enliven them? How?
• Do I gloss over any parts?
• Do I get tired of telling any particular rules while playing the game?
• Are there any parts or concepts or themes that I really like that I could expand upon?
• Do I want it be longer or shorter when I play through it?
• Do I want to play again soon?
• Are there exciting discussions after a play? Is there "telling the story of the game" after?
• Are there any "if I only I had done..." statements afterward?
  
• Are players interested in and paying attention to each other's turns, just to see what happens? 

 

Beyond Good and Bad

Smiley's assertion that the concepts of "good" and "bad" hardly occur when deeply engaged with material apply directly to designing a game. While clearly evaluating a game's mechanical merits is essential, being overly preoccupied with rigid definitions about games can stifle creativity and hamper your progress. Instead, focus on creating game experiences that are interesting, meaningful, and that grab your attention. By thus immersing yourself in the creative process, you can ignore limiting notions of what you "should" be doing and other ideas that may hold you back from crafting your game.

Conclusion

Jane Smiley's insight into the creative process serves as a good reminder for game designers: engagement contributes to forward movement and compelling design. By cultivating a deep connection with their material, designers can navigate challenges, keep themselves interested, and continue work on their game. Ultimately, the more time, effort and thought you put into a game, the better it turns out, so finding ways to keep going is essential.

 

Hits & Misses

I've been making games for most of my life, ever since I was a kid. In my twenties I got a job as a professional game designer. After that I created a lot, in a lot of mediums: Web games, Palm Pilot games, card and dice games, conceptual games, board games. 

One thing I've learned is that every game you make can't be your best game. Sometimes due to circumstances, your game is underdeveloped. Sometimes you try a new idea, and it doesn't work out. Sometimes you make a good game, but it falls flat anyway. Sometimes there are hits, and sometimes there are misses. 

This is not to say that your effort has no influence. It's to remind you that there are circumstances and influences in the world in addition to you that affect what happens. Development timelines, funding, marketing, shifting costs and norms, what medium you're working in, who's on your team, publishers and distributors going out of business or being acquired, trouble in your family and personal life: all these can impact your project.

I remember a period of time when I was having incredibly bad insomnia, and was still developing web games. I got through my current one, The Journey to New Earth, and it worked! But afterwards I kept finding very weird bugs and also realized the game needed much more development to play well. So I took the opportunity to revise it.

My games on the Palm Pilot gained dedicated and excited players. Many players of Adventure Solitaire counted it as their favorite game on the Palm OS. And I made a modest living for a while. But then the Palm OS itself got overshadowed by new and exciting cell phone technology -- smart phones. So there went that for me. And yes, I could have ported them to phones, and then other phones, and so on. But learning each phone and OS is a big project, and I decided against it.

I ported one of my web games to Java. It took four months. Did anyone play it? Maybe one guy. So much time, so little result. I ported some Palm Pilot games to Windows. Same thing. They'd been successful on those other platforms, but not on the new ones. So then I chose to make board games, in part to avoid the obsolescence issue for digital games.

Some luck's bad, some luck's good. Majesty wouldn't have been the game it was if it hadn't had several extra years of development due to switching publishers a couple of times, once at least because the then current publisher was going out of business. So that was some good luck that led to a great game.

I think it is helpful to think of your entire pantheon of created games as an iterative, interactive process of design. You can learn something from each one, and that experience contributes in some way to the next one. This view also helps you not get too attached to whether one particular game succeeds or fails. Work as well as you can on your current game, understanding that all the circumstances and events will have effects, and see what happens. And then make your next game!

Information Design in Board Games - Part Two: Shape

Information design is the practice of presenting information in a way that fosters an efficient and effective understanding of the information. The term has come to be used for a specific area of graphic design related to displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively or for artistic expression.

I played a lot of DungeonQuest back in the day, and then got the third edition much later when Fantasy Flight reprinted it. It plays out in a classic fantasy dungeon-crawl setting. A fun overall game where you die a lot, no matter what edition you play! Yet there were some changes that didn't work well in the new edition. One of which was in the information design regarding the shape of cards.

In DungeonQuest there are a lot of different card piles to shuffle and draw from and put cards into the discard piles of. What they did well in the original edition was to make all the cards different interesting shapes. 

Cards from the original edition of DungeonQuest.

 

At first it seems like over elaborate theming. But when you compare the play experience to the Fantasy Flight third edition, where all the cards are differentiated by just an image on the back, you realize the shapes in the original edition serve an important function: they let you know by shape where each card goes back to. This is less relevant when drawing, since you see where it is coming from (but still a little relevant since the shape reinforces the game "function") but it is hugely relevant when you need to know where to discard the card to. 

DunegonQuest third edition. All cards in a row there are the same shape. Different shapes would have helped identify them.

 

In the third edition, when it comes time to discard a card, you look at it, try to see if you can guess which pile it came from, don't usually succeed since there is a lot of overlap in the game content in each deck, then flip the card over to check the back, scan the eight piles of cards to see if the image matches any of them (those murky images didn't help either but that's for another day), and then discard it to the right pile. At the end of the game, you have to check all the piles to see if any cards were mis-discarded, which is often the case, and them put them in the right piles. This never happened in the first edition, since the unique shape lets you know instantly where it gets discarded.

Both editions used shape and size to differentiate the character cards from the rest of the cards though, so it was easy to visually pick them out on the table amidst all the other things.

Character card from the third edition of DungeonQuest. Larger than other cards, also oriented sideways relative to them. Makes it stand out.

Character Card from the original edition of DungeonQuest. Long and thin and larger than the other cards, so it is easier to visually find.

 

 

 

So why does this matter? Because you want a player to be involved in the core aspects of your game, such as the strategic choices, or the imaginative immersion, or the flow of the experience, or the social experience, or whatever your goals for the game are, instead of focusing on the "interface", which in board games is highly connected to information design, as well as rules clarity, game mechanics, and ergonomics.

The less a player has to struggle with, or pay attention to, the "interface", the more they can play the game.

 

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Read part 1, about size in information design, here. Or continue to part 3, here.

Information Design in Board Games - Part One: Size

This is part one of a 3 part series on Information design in board games. Part two is Shape, and part three is Layout.

Information design is the practice of presenting information in a way that fosters an efficient and effective understanding of the information. The term has come to be used for a specific area of graphic design related to displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively or for artistic expression.

The size of something tells us things about it, whether we have designed that or not. The larger it is, the more important and/or powerful it is. The smaller it is, the less important and/or powerful it is. So you can have size hierarchies in a game that tell which things to focus on, be afraid of, etc. Size can be overall size, vertical or horizontal size. Ie, something can be wider or slimmer, taller or shorter, more or less massive.

Good Examples of size hierarchies:

Star Wars Rebellion. Those death stars loom over everything!

 

Star Wars Rebellion - the death star and big battleships are much larger, and it lets you feel and know they are more powerful. Also, the standees with the heroes in them are very large, which lets you know they are an important focus of the game. The standees are cardboard, so they are not in the exact same hierarchy as all the plastic pieces. Also the death star and star destroyers are on pedestals, putting them literally above every other piece. Really great usage of size hierarchy.

Scythe: your main mini is larger. The mechs are larger than the workers. These size differences let you know the focus of the game and story.

Blood Rage Minis. Those monsters are huge!

 

Rising sun/Blood Rage: The monsters are bigger, meaning they are more powerful, more fun, more cool. You feel that when you get a larger monster on your team. That is part of the imaginative immersion of those games.

 

Examples of missed opportunities to use size hierarchies:

Xia minis. Some of these are NPCs, but you can't tell from the height.

Xia: The PC and NPC ships (and comets), all are meant to go on clear stands. If you do that, it is harder to differentiate between the PCs and NPCs, especially since the models are not very iconic, being more realistic. An easy fix is to not use the stands for NPCs and put them directly on the board. It creates a size hierarchy among the pieces, helping you focus on the PCS as well as differentiate them from the NPCs. Another thing that could be done is have the NPCs on half-height stands.

Runebound Second edition. A PC on the left, and an ally on the right. No way to tell them apart from size.

 

Runebound Second Edition: The character cards are the same size (bridge sized) as the items, allies and monsters. If they made the characters twice as large, it would have helped differentiate them when in your play area, find them amongst the clutter easier, let you put more counters on them, as well as help highlight the importance/focus of them in the story. I think in Descent and Runebound Third edition, they did this.

Continue to part two: Shape

More posts about Game Design.

More Posts about Information Design.

I'm Hoping for a Day... (state of mobile gaming)

I am hoping for a day when there will be no more gold, gems and also mega-gems in games. No coins, tickets and also blue super-mega tickets in the same game.

 

I am hoping for a day when there will be no more waiting 5 minutes to a day for your energy to regenerate so you can play the game again.

Don't Do Mystery Math!

I have been playing this tower defense game, Guardians, on the iPad for a few months now, and I am up to level 526 (?) and I was thinking about how a score is calculated in a game. In Guardians, I have no idea. I just finish the level and there is a score. Sometimes 1000, sometimes 10000.

As I was wondering about this, I noticed a "?" in a circle next to my score for the current level. I was like, "Oh, maybe I can click it!" (Which says a few things: 1. I hadn't noticed it in over 500 wins of the game, and 2. I wasn't sure it was a button. Maybe they could have made it larger, and shaped like all the other buttons in the game...) 

 

So I click it and it takes me to a screen which tells me the general idea of how to get a good score: finish fast, use as few towers as possible, and a few other things. And... I am still in the dark about how my scores are formed, since they made a mistake that is particularly easy to make in digital games  (as opposed to board games) which is not showing the numbers. I wrote about that here. 

Without numbers, you can't really evaluate, or weigh the different elements in your score. Was finishing fast more or less important than using fewer towers? I will never know because they didn't show the numbers! That screen would have been a great spot to show the exact numbers for each section, and then the total, so if I wanted, I could try to maximize my score. Which I don't, since I don't care. I just like to finish the levels.

Mystery math is that behind the scenes calculation that comes up with a score for something. Don't do it. Always tell the players the numbers that form their score. Or better yet, ask if you really need a score in your game? Can you just record if they finish a level or not? Or maybe the three stars thing? You know: one star for finishing, 3 stars for finishing without losing any health, and 2 stars for... for... some other random thing. Which I also hate, but it is slightly better than a mystery score.

My favorite thing for tower defense games, since they are real-time, is to simply record how fast you solved it. That encompasses a lot of different elements of the game, and has an easily understandable result.

If that is not the feel you want for your game, is there any other one number element that you think determines the core elements of the game? Maybe the best score in your game equals spending the least money, ie, being the most efficient.

Me and my game night buddies came up with the "Mystery Math" phrase while playing board games on Board Game Arena. Since the end scoring of a game is automated, it just starts adding up behind the scenes things and showing the end result. Albeit usually afterwords with a chart breaking down the categories, which does really help. But in many games the interface is hard to follow and you're still not sure what happened, especially while it is happening. This is a particular interface problem that comes from "porting" a real life game to an online game. Really, new interface elements have to be thought about and added to make the game play well on the new medium. Like light up outlines, and animations to help draw your eyes to whatever element is being referenced.

When playing a board game in real life, you get a better sense of the numbers that add up to your final score since you have to add up the categories by hand. (Sometimes, like in Carcasonne, with those &%$^ farmers, you still aren't sure why you lost or won.) 

I understand why many modern board games obscure each player's total points until the end. It is so that you can't tell who's ahead exactly, and be discouraged about it. It can let a player feel like they might catch up. It can help a player focus on the game dynamics and experience and not the competition. It can keep dramatic tension high until the end. Who will win? But it also feels like mystery math until the end, even though you could often do the math during play.

Its not my favorite, but I don't hate it, at least, in board games. I prefer point-threshold games (when someone reaches X points, they win), and goal oriented games. Or just whoever has the most points at the end wins. No mystery math in those.

 

Mistakes in Card Layout - 4 More Points

This is a collection of other common mistakes made when laying out cards for board games, to end this series on the blog.

1. Low contrast. If you have gray text on light gray background it is going to be hard to read. Make sure you use high contrasting colors between your text and the text background. White on black or black on white is the best.

2. Not enough White Space. White space is the gap between the edge of your text and the box it is in or the sheet it is on. When there is too little, your eye will "catch" on the bounding box, and make reading slower.

The text is too close to the bounding box on this card from Smash Up. They also centered the text which additionally slows down the reading and comprehension.

3. Text Background box over graphics is too transparent. So the fun graphic you put behind the text box shows... but also interferes with the text. Make the box opaque or only very slightly transparent. The goal is the most readable text.

This card from the Resident Evil deck building game is a good example of a transparent text box behind text, done right. They have the right side, where there is no text, more see-through than the middle, where the text is.

One other problem with the layout is: title not at the top. It would increase the immersive feel to have "Jill Valentine" at the top of the card, especially instead of "[Character]" which is dull as well as useless to have there.

This card is never used in a hand of cards, otherwise I would say it has a full bleed problem. See my next point.

4. Full bleeds! This is when the graphic on the card goes all the way to the edge of the card, instead of being interrupted by a border of some kind. It sure looks nice, but it blurs where the edge of the card is, and can result in making it hard to differentiate between individual cards, especially from the back when they are overlapping. If your cards are always face up on the board, and never overlapping, maybe this is ok, but if they are overlapping, held in a hand multiples at a time, then it is not. If you HAVE to have the image go to the card edge, at least put a pseudo border around the edge by darkening or lightening the image there.

 

These cards from Thunderstone Quest illustrate my point. See the middle left of the top card? Very hard to find the edge between it and the card below it, so it becomes a usability issue in terms of differentiating and picking up. But the white text on blue background has good contrast.

See what a solid border does to differentiate the cards? From Magic the Gathering.

 

See the other entries in this series: 

Mistakes in card layout - Titles not at the top! 

Mistakes in card layout - Centered Text

Mistakes in card layout - Mixing symbols and text