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Fake Board Games as Video Games

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larienna
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After analysing various ways to implement a board game as a video game, I realised that it is much easier to design a board game like video game that break some board game rules than making a strict board game. It might be a bit weird to say, so I'll start with an example:

There is a video game called "advance wars" which is a video strategy game that was reimplemented as a free PnP board game called "Skirmish wars". Some elements like counting fuel and ammo had to be cutt off from the video game to make the game playable as a board game. HP has been recorded by giving units 2 states (full or half HP). It would be possible to still play the game the original way, but it would require bookeeping all the infortation on a sheet of paper with a pen making the game very hard to play.

What I have realised is that 80% of the work of board game design is to actually shrink down concept and ideas and cut down the fat out of them to make it work as a board game. I have the impression that when I design board games, most of my time is spent on figuring how I am going to fit an elephant in a shoe box rather than thinking about the name of the elephant or the color and shape of the shoe box.

It seems that most board game restrictions are due to logistic reasons:

- Information of components is fixed
- There is a restriction of space to display information and place components
- There is a limit to how many components you can place in a game.
- There is a limit to the amount of calculations a player can do.
- The game is limited by time.
- etc.

But it could be possible to remove most of these restrictions in a video strtegy game. But video strategy games still have their flaws:

- There is too much information
- There are hiden information to the player
- You don't know how the information is used and impact the game.
- The play time of 1 game can be very long (50+ hours).

Still, I like how board games abstract certain concepts into simple mechanics to solve problems. But the problem is that it slow down the development time because you need to find/design the right mechanic. So I thought that if I could make Video Strategy Games, I would give them a strong board game feeling while still breaking some board game logistic rules. Now the problem is where do you draw the line.

I have a plan of restrictions that has been set according to the idea that I could use a board game engine as video game where some rules could be bent. Here are a few suggestions:

- Physical reproduction of mechanics: The mechanics of the game must be physically reproducable. For example, you cannot ask a player to roll 9 faced die.
- Space limitation: There must be a restriction of space. IOf Each each city on the board requires a side board to keep track of buildings, then it will require way too much space if each players has a dozen of cities. It will be very annoyong to search for the city side board on the table when there is 50 of them.
- Component space limitation: there cannot be more information than what could natually fit on the piece. For example, you cannot have units with 50 combat stats if only 5 number could fit on a 3/4 inch tile.
- Unlimited components: Thre is no limit to the number of components a game can have, as long as it does not occupy so much space that it becomes umplayable.
- Variables: Variable values are fine. Electronic games makes it possible to change the values on a component when the game progress ( for example, change the HP of a unit on a token when it gets damaged).
- Meaningful information and combat resolution: It must be clear to the player how the mechanics are resolved. So a player must know that he must roll 1D10 + 9 and have a total greater than 12 to hit. This make sure that the mechanics can be reproduced on tabletop.
- No hidden Values or calculations: There should be any mechanics that runs in the background invisible to the player.
- All information must have a container: All information must have a component to be placed on it. For example, if you want random event, place them on cards. If you want to record a player's VP, place them as a variable somewhere on his board.
- Play Time: It must be possible to play the game with real players in a decent amount of time(1-5 hours) even when not playing with real players.

I don't know if all the above make sense, but that could give me the extra flexibility I need to make my games achievable in a reasonable amount of time while keeping the look and feel like a board game. It's like keeping the pro and avoiding the cons of both worlds.

mirror threads

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/10580347#10580347

Lofwyr
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How insightful!

I have contemplated the similarities and differences of both systems in the past and come to similar conclusions. I think the problem is best expressed in your comment "fitting and elephant into a shoebox", excellent analogy.

For myself, combat is a constant point of contention in creating board games. I have found that some of the most fundamental concepts, such as those taken for granted in miniatures or video games, are of the greatest consequence when applied to board games.

As an example, let's take a simple skirmish of tiles. Players would move pawns over a tiled area, measuring range of attacks and movement as they did. While many games simply accept that range is a given value in any combat, it can in fact be removed. If the board were instead divided into(larger) Zones rather than individual spaces for each tile, we suddenly find a massive savings in turn length. This is to say, players that move from zone one to zone two have less to deal with when moving and less to deal with when determining distances (range). Either your target is in the same zone as you or it's not.

While systems like those shown above trim down the overall length of turns when dealing with multiple pawns and combats I do find some players make complaints having to do with "realism". Again I would return to your comment of the elephant in the shoebox. Clean, smooth, realistic mechanics that convey a sense of battle are a complex creature and difficult to get right.

Excellent post.

E

AnEvenWeirderMove
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As a developer of both board

As a developer of both board and video games, I'd have to say that you're correct in identifying "space" as the primary unit of limitation, not only in terms of component real-estate but in terms of "state space", that is, things that some part of the system needs to be keeping track of. In the example you gave, Advance Wars (a fantastic game, by the way!) such statistics as ammo count and HP count are kept track of for each individual unit; while this isn't ENTIRELY infeasible in a board-game environment (say, using Clix-type pieces for units, or spin-down dice as counters) it's definitely unwieldy and what some would consider "fiddly", and usually requires a reduction in State Space in order to make it work; Units in Advance Wars have 10 HP, to make that work in Skirmish Wars it was reduced, essentially, to 2. Ammo would probably need to be similarly kept-track of, or more likely, abstracted away entirely.

Abstraction is one of the tools that is used by both board game designers and video game designers, though in different places; For programmers/designers, abstraction is well known as a programming technique wherein complex systems are simplified by relating them to simpler ones with consistent methods of accessing and changing the systems. All of this is in the back-end, though; too often, video games err towards the side of simulation (I'm calling this an error, though many gamers would disagree) and provide control over insignificant aspects of their systems. A board game designer, having to contend with limited state space and real-estate, may choose to abstract something about the game away; for example, the ammo count in Advance Wars really only has two important states: Some Ammo and Empty, and it's refilled by going to a city and remaining there a turn. Why keep track of exactly how much ammo there is? Why not, instead of keeping track of 100 bullets, keep track of the state of "having some ammo" and some increasing chance that the state will change...

Anyway, you're doing the opposite thing of what I am talking about, implementing a board game as a video game with some advantages of that approach, which is something I have thought much less about... very interesting discussion indeed!

pelle
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larienna wrote: What I have

larienna wrote:

What I have realised is that 80% of the work of board game design is to actually shrink down concept and ideas and cut down the fat out of them to make it work as a board game.

In my experience it is exactly the same with video games though.

Quote:
I have the impression that when I design board games, most of my time is spent on figuring how I am going to fit an elephant in a shoe box rather than thinking about the name of the elephant or the color and shape of the shoe box.

Well, you should do that for video games as well, but maybe that was part of the point of your article?

Quote:
It seems that most board game restrictions are due to logistic reasons:

- Information of components is fixed

Yes, this is definitely something that is easier to do in a video game and that can greatly improve the game.

Quote:

- There is a restriction of space to display information and place components

Video games are even more restricted. Can't compete with all the stuff you can fit on a pile of cards and a table-size boardgame map. And boardgames never hides information below annoying popup dialog windows either.

Quote:
- There is a limit to how many components you can place in a game.

Yes, in a video game this is virtually unlimited, from a programmer/implementation point of view, but the design tends to get really messy if you just add piles of different components instead of keeping it simple and elegant.

Quote:

- There is a limit to the amount of calculations a player can do.

Yes, but when you let the computer do calculations it can leave the player frustrated not having a clue what is going on or what a good strategy to win the game is, so in this case as well it can make a lot of sense to stick to calculations that the player could do manually.

Quote:

- The game is limited by time.

Not all board games are so limited. :)

Quote:
But it could be possible to remove most of these restrictions in a video strtegy game.

I don't quite agree with that, as per above. Technically you can overcome those problems, but that doesn't mean that it is good design to do so, just as boardgames are unlikely to become better if you stretch the limits for what can be physically implemented in cardboard.

Quote:

- There is too much information
- There are hiden information to the player
- You don't know how the information is used and impact the game.

Fully agree!

Quote:

- The play time of 1 game can be very long (50+ hours).

There are 100+ hours long board (war)games as well, and there are many 10-minute video games. I don't think this is good or bad. Sometimes it is fun to have a long campaign running, especially in a single-player video game.

Quote:

Still, I like how board games abstract certain concepts into simple mechanics to solve problems.

Definitely a lot of things that could be used in video games. My favorite that I always mention are the clever mechanics used in many solitaire board games that could be applied to video games instead of designing two-player games with AI opponents.

Quote:

- Physical reproduction of mechanics: The mechanics of the game must be physically reproducable. For example, you cannot ask a player to roll 9 faced die.

I did a quick search and found 7-sided dice and some other odd ones I had never seen, but no 9-sided. But I guess it is quite possible in a number of ways (eg an 18-sided, similar to a 10-sided, numbered 1-9 twice (I have some 16-sided dice that looks like that)). Not sure what you want from this rule, except to make the video game easier to prototype.

Quote:
- Space limitation: There must be a restriction of space. IOf Each each city on the board requires a side board to keep track of buildings, then it will require way too much space if each players has a dozen of cities. It will be very annoyong to search for the city side board on the table when there is 50 of them.

As I mentioned above, video games have a lot less space than a board game, so this limitation sounds a bit backwards to me. But staying within narrow limits sounds like a good idea to avoid forcing the player to scroll a lot of layer information in different windows.

Quote:

- Component space limitation: there cannot be more information than what could natually fit on the piece. For example, you cannot have units with 50 combat stats if only 5 number could fit on a 3/4 inch tile.

I wish more/most video games could do that! Nothing worse than having to select one unit at a time to inspect its values. Of course a result from not limiting the design to available screen space, but pretending there is endless room for information.

Quote:
- Meaningful information and combat resolution: It must be clear to the player how the mechanics are resolved. So a player must know that he must roll 1D10 + 9 and have a total greater than 12 to hit. This make sure that the mechanics can be reproduced on tabletop.

To me this just ruins one of the real benefits of video games: suspension of disbelief. I can pretend to actually do something (eg fighting a war in advance war), not play a game, and that is what often happens when I play a good video game. Being reminded, for no good reason, about dice and combat resolution mechanics is no good. I have seen that in a few video games (eg Small General on Android) and never liked it.

Quote:

- No hidden Values or calculations: There should be any mechanics that runs in the background invisible to the player.

It might be good to let the player know all mechanics actually, just don't show me any dice results. It's a different thing to tell the player how things are calculated and show the probability of some outcome from rolling virtual dice (or playing virtual cards).

Quote:

- All information must have a container: All information must have a component to be placed on it. For example, if you want random event, place them on cards. If you want to record a player's VP, place them as a variable somewhere on his board.

Don't see why. Please at least not make them "cards". No need to call them that or have them in a video game. Display the information in whatever way makes the most sense in any given situation, instead of forcing board game abstractions into a different medium where they do not add anything.

Quote:

- Play Time: It must be possible to play the game with real players in a decent amount of time(1-5 hours) even when not playing with real players.

Still don't see why this is good. Why not let the player decide what size of game is accepted, given that the game can be easily scaled up (like the map size in Advance Wars)?

Quote:

I don't know if all the above make sense, but that could give me the extra flexibility I need to make my games achievable in a reasonable amount of time while keeping the look and feel like a board game. It's like keeping the pro and avoiding the cons of both worlds.

Except for what I noted above, not quite agreeing with you about what are the cons of both worlds, I think it makes a lot of sense to come up with limitations on a video game, because (from own experience) otherwise it is very easy to just keep coming up with new ideas and never end up with a game.

pelle
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AnEvenWeirderMove wrote:

AnEvenWeirderMove wrote:

video games err towards the side of simulation (I'm calling this an error, though many gamers would disagree)

I agree about it being an error, but I do not agree about calling it "towards the side of simulation". Simulation does not have to imply adding detail or complex rules. The book Simulating War (Phil Sabin, 2012) is recommended reading on that subject. What you refer to is more about err towards the side of complexity. It is too easy on a computer to add complex algorithms and lots of data, overwhelming the player and making for very inelegant and difficult to balance games, and there is little correlation between all that added complexity/data and making a better simulator.

Quote:
the ammo count in Advance Wars really only has two important states: Some Ammo and Empty, and it's refilled by going to a city and remaining there a turn. Why keep track of exactly how much ammo there is? Why not, instead of keeping track of 100 bullets, keep track of the state of "having some ammo" and some increasing chance that the state will change...

Well, that increasing chance is in my mind also as state that has to be tracked, unless you mean that the accumulated chance after a number of turn increases. I also find ammo/fuel counting in "simple" games like Advance War or Panzer General (or Panzer Tactics DS) annoying. Board wargames have solved that problem using simple trace of supply lines for decades. As long as a unit has a clear supply path back to a friendly supply source it is in supply, otherwise it is not and get some penalty to simulate lack of ammo/fuel. Very simple, and makes more sense anyway than units running away to refuel every now and then.

AnEvenWeirderMove
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I suppose all of this is

I suppose all of this is "simulation" so perhaps that wasn't the best choice of word, but I believe that in many minds, simulation indicates a desire to very accurately represent reality, an accuracy which necessarily brings with it a large degree of complexity. In the interest of realism, designers spend time making sure that there are a complex array of possibilities which mirror those in the "real" situation... when in fact many of those possibilities are uninteresting or unimportant to many players. Again, I suppose that is a discussion of which is the game's target audience, but this is also the problem I see in many video games.

Tracing supply lines is an example I suppose of something which simulates the logistics of supplying/refueling units without adding much complexity; Somebody, somewhere might complain "but that isn't realistic enough? Surely the supply lines themselves must be fueled! And how does the fuel and ammo get to those supply sources in the first place! And who are the employees in the factory which constructs the ammunition, and how much are they paid? This is hardly a simulation at all!" I also tend to prefer the elegant solutions, but I know that there exists the person who argues that the elegant solution is an insufficient simulation of the inelegant real-world problem. I also believe that as a consumer it is this person who quite often drives both hardcore video-game and board-game design. In video games, this often takes the form of extremely wide varieties of statistics and abilities on characters and items, so that it would be possible, given the right gear, for characters to fulfill a wide variety of roles. This has the effect of making it very difficult for a player to determine which are the most valuable or important, by providing a huge number of bad options, with the good ones hidden between.

pelle
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simulations

Good point, there are people that think you need a lot of detail for a simulation to be "realistic". But I think designers are mostly to blame for that, not players. Well, there is probably some players requesting any given piece of added detail, but I doubt many (any?) want ALL the details included in most games.

The silly thing about the tracking of ammo/fuel for units is how little realism it adds. It seems more like a simple thing to implement and explain to players (and easier for the AI player, not having to worry about being cut off from supply?) and that might SEEM realistic to players that have not read a lot about military history. Also when a game shows aircraft as being able to stay in the air for extremely long times before having to land to refuel, it should be obvious that simulation is not the main focus of those games anyway.

Then even if some detail is realistic to simulate something, like tracking ammo in a tactical game, how realistic is it that the commander can have accurate knowledge of the exact state of all his units at all times? Randomly deciding when a unit runs out of ammo is probably the most realistic thing to do, unless you can make a very detailed low-level simulation of ammo for each unit (but then probably don't tell the player anyway).

larienna
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Quote:As I mentioned above,

Quote:
As I mentioned above, video games have a lot less space than a board game,

I think it is actually the opposite because video games can open tons of subscreens containing much more information.

Quote:
It might be good to let the player know all mechanics actually, just don't show me any dice results.

I played panzer general on Xbox and I think I understand what you mean. It's just long and annoying to see the dice rolls. Still, I had an hard time figuring out how the mechanics worked anyway. So I think having an option to see the rules in details, or at least in a tutorial could be the key.

Quote:
simulation indicates a desire to very accurately represent reality, an accuracy which necessarily brings with it a large degree of complexity.

It reminds me a pacific ww2 game where you could keep track of idividual fighter pilot morale. Why the hell do I need to know that.

Quote:
The silly thing about the tracking of ammo/fuel for units is how little realism it adds.

Mechanic wise, fuel and ammo forces the player to pull back when his ressources are depleted giving an opportunity for the opponent to reply unless the player already had a force to releive the depleted one.

Thanks for the replies anyway.

pelle
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larienna wrote:Quote:As I

larienna wrote:
Quote:
As I mentioned above, video games have a lot less space than a board game,

I think it is actually the opposite because video games can open tons of subscreens containing much more information.

That is what I meant by "boardgames never hides information below annoying popup dialog windows either." Panzer General and Advance Wars and any other game I can think of shows no or very little information about a unit unless you select it and often you need to then bring up a special information window to get all information. Boardgames often show all information on all units immediately (although sometimes you need to look up some information in a table).

Quote:
Quote:
The silly thing about the tracking of ammo/fuel for units is how little realism it adds.

Mechanic wise, fuel and ammo forces the player to pull back when his ressources are depleted giving an opportunity for the opponent to reply unless the player already had a force to releive the depleted one.

The problem is that supply doesn't really work like that. Again using Panzer General as an example, to resupply all you need to do is to stop for a turn not adjacent to enemy units. You can do this no matter how cut off or surrounded you are. This makes the game a lot less interesting since trying to cut off supply for enemy units is a big part of the strategy in most wargames (and in most real wars) and without that it mostly becomes a matter of attrition and paper-rock-scissors-attacks (ie remembering what unit type to use to attack what other unit type).

larienna
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I have roughly identified 5

I have roughly identified 5 restrictions that players needs to juggle with when designing board games, but implementing it as a video game could lift around 2.5 restrictions:

Component Values: In a board game, component values are fixed, but now they could become variables. There are variables in board games, it's just that they generally need a track or a dial to record it which increase the amount of required space to keep track of the information.

Quantity: Board games are limited in quantity of components, as video games there will be no limits unless the game design requires to have a limit. So you will never run out of tanks or planes.

Space: Board games must fit into a certain space. There is in theory no limit to the size of the table in a video game, but if your components spread up too wide, then it will me very annoying to play because you will have a lot of table space to scroll. So the space restriction still partially apply. It would also be able to do some cross referencing by displaying stuff on the screen that is not on the board. For example, hovering your cursor over a unit could display a card in the corner of the screen with it's stats. In that case, the size of the screen is your space limitation. So this restriction must be partially considered, but it will be less restrictive than for a board game.

Time: All time restrictions like total play time, downtime, analysis paralysis, etc remains. The only difference is that some mechanics could be resolved much faster with a computer which could speed up the process and could make the game take less time than a board game.

Mechanics: All the mechanics must be resolvable by a player to keep the feeling of a board game. So this restriction must remain in place. Again, as a video game, the resolution could be faster allowing to use certain mechanics that would have not been used in a regular board game.

MarkKreitler
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An army of straw men

I agree with Pelle that most of the restrictions in the original post are straw men. Your list of 5 is more reasonable, but you've made two important omissions. First, you have not explicitly stated that "video game" means PC game in your discussion. Second you've failed to list the restrictions imposed by the computer medium.

If we acknowledge that "video game" can include devices like the iPhone, then the "infinite board" isn't practical.

As for restrictions of the computer medium, we have:

1) learning curve -- few people program well enough to prototype complex board games. Skill with Photoshop is more common, but far from universal.

2) 3D - if your game has a meaningful 3d component, the programming and art learning curve increases dramatically.

3) Physics - if your game has a meaningful physical component, the programming learning curve increases dramatically.

4) Gesture conversion - those who develop digital games spend a lot of time converting everyday gestures like shuffling cards and trading dice to movements with the mouse or swipes on the tablet. In the iPhone era, "hovering over with the mouse" isn't always an option. In the real world, there are professionals dedicated to this aspect of development.

5) Space -- Pelle already called his out, but you paved over his comment in your list of 5 above. While it's true that you can theoretically support a larger space on a computer, it's not practical. You allude to this, but you're not considering the changes in the digital world. Tablets and mobile phones have dramatically less space and an increasing market share.

6) Multiplayer - if you want a good multiplayer experience in your digital game, you will either need to know network programming or you'll have to work hard on you UI.

In my experience as a digital game developer, I have found most of your five restrictions to be largely irrelevant. Even time, which seems like an obvious truth, is not straightforward. Generally, the time-consuming algorithms in video games involve physics and 3d rendering -- items that analog designers get for free. It is a universal truth of game design - digital or analog - that making complex rules results in less player enjoyment.

Even an extreme case like Unreal Tournament has an analog version that predates its digital counterpart. Give any group of boys some toy laser guns and they will make rules for real time multiplayer science fiction combat. True, it won't be a board game, but it will be rendered in an appropriate analog medium.

larienna
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Quote:First, you have not

Quote:
First, you have not explicitly stated that "video game" means PC game in your discussion

I never implied that. I have no discrimiation for any platform at all.

Quote:
then the "infinite board" isn't practical

This is what I said, even if you could have an infinite board that would not make the game easy to play. So it is a restriction that the designer needs to bother with.

Quote:
2) 3D - if your game has a meaningful 3d component, the programming and art learning curve increases dramatically.

I don't intend to use 3D components due to the fact that it requires much more skills to do 3D models. I could include basic shapes like cubes and disk or I could create 3D 2D components (ex: a thick tile) where a 2D artwork is going to be stuck on the shape.

Quote:
3) Physics - if your game has a meaningful physical component, the programming learning curve increases dramatically.

There is no physics in video board games unless you want the dice rolls to be so realistic that you could even simulate a loaded die. Or unless you want to simulate an accurate cube tower where you check how cubes know off each other.

Quote:
Gesture conversion - those who develop digital games spend a lot of time converting everyday gestures like shuffling cards and trading dice to movements with the mouse or swipes on the tablet. In the iPhone era, "hovering over with the mouse" isn't always an option. In the real world, there are professionals dedicated to this aspect of development.

It's true that for example, a hand of card could be managed differently according to the device. For example, you might scroll through your hand with gesture on a tablet, with your D-pad on a console, or with left-right buttons with you mouse.

MarkKreitler
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This time I won't be such a jerk

larienna wrote:
Quote:
First, you have not explicitly stated that "video game" means PC game in your discussion

I never implied that. I have no discrimiation for any platform at all.

You may not have realized that you did. You made reference to "hovering the mouse over" a unit to get extended info. That implies a PC with a mouse.

larienna wrote:
Quote:
then the "infinite board" isn't practical

This is what I said, even if you could have an infinite board that would not make the game easy to play. So it is a restriction that the designer needs to bother with.

Indeed, you did. My apologies.

The other point I tried to make in that section was that, depending on the computer hardware, you have even less space than a normal board in which to work. That's why I brought up the iPhone. Not only is an "infinite board" impractical, a "board as big as a regular board game board" is also impractical. I was reiterating Pelle's point that, generally, video games are more restricted in space than board games.

larienna wrote:
Quote:
2) 3D - if your game has a meaningful 3d component, the programming and art learning curve increases dramatically.

I don't intend to use 3D components due to the fact that it requires much more skills to do 3D models. I could include basic shapes like cubes and disk or I could create 3D 2D components (ex: a thick tile) where a 2D artwork is going to be stuck on the shape.

Fair enough, but your post seemed to make broad generalizations about "board games" in general. There are board games with 3D components (Chopper Strike, for example). If you don't intend to include this element in your games, that's great, but you should point out the assumptions under which your list was developed.

larienna wrote:
Quote:
3) Physics - if your game has a meaningful physical component, the programming learning curve increases dramatically.

There is no physics in video board games unless you want the dice rolls to be so realistic that you could even simulate a loaded die. Or unless you want to simulate an accurate cube tower where you check how cubes know off each other.

Not exactly true. Most games with a dexterity component require physical modeling. Examples include Jenga (which you may not consider a board game), Tiddly Winks (which I hope you *do* consider a board game), and Taktika and Ascending Empires.

As with 3D, it's fine if you don't want to make this kind of game, but others do, so you should consider these things when making your generalized list, or point out your assumptions when publishing the list.

larienna wrote:
Quote:
Gesture conversion - those who develop digital games spend a lot of time converting everyday gestures like shuffling cards and trading dice to movements with the mouse or swipes on the tablet. In the iPhone era, "hovering over with the mouse" isn't always an option. In the real world, there are professionals dedicated to this aspect of development.

It's true that for example, a hand of card could be managed differently according to the device. For example, you might scroll through your hand with gesture on a tablet, with your D-pad on a console, or with left-right buttons with you mouse.


[/quote]

I admit that my previous post was unfair in many ways. I agree with you that some designs work better in one medium than another. It would be cursed hard to render Star Craft as a real-time board game, for instance. But my point is this: broad generalizations almost never hold, especially when they concern a medium as varied as digital computing. If you define "video game" as "a game designed to run on a computer," you've already lost the battle, because the "computer" could be a PS3 with a wide-screen HDTV or someone's programmable digital watch. The design constraints in these cases vary considerably.

Personally, I dislike the terms "video game" and "board game" because they mean different things to different people. I prefer to think of the game design as an abstract entity that exists independent of the medium, and the media in which designs are rendered as "digital" or "analog." The rendering of a game design into a digital medium will differ from the rendering of the design into an analog medium, just like a 3D model will differ from a sculpture. For that matter, renderings in different analog media will differ just as paintings differ from sculpture (or the sport of golf differs from a board game about golf).

In the end, I doubt our generalizations are of much use. By the time a designer has picked a project and embarked on development in his chosen medium, he'll find the devil is in the details. Yes, he'd be a fool to try to port Star Craft into board format exactly as it plays on a computer, but he could probably make a fun turn-based strategy game with many of the same units. Is he a fool to try? I don't know -- was Picasso a fool to try rendering 3D objects on a 2D canvas? Most people don't think so, even though it violated every "rule" people "understood" about the medium.

Food for thought.

lewpuls
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Limitations vs. fundamental differences

In this interesting discussion you have been comparing and discussing the limitations of the two media, board games and video/computer games, rather than the fundamental "natural" differences between them.

I've written over 5,000 words about the latter, but because my book publisher has an odd point of view about sales, I can't post it online (it will be in a book, sooner or later). If you're interested in seeing and commenting on it, contact me at lewpuls gmail.com.

An early paragraph:
"Let’s recognize first that many games can be made in both electronic and non-electronic versions. Rarely can an electronic game be converted exactly to non-electronic, but it’s often possible to convert relatively simple card and board games exactly to an electronic version. Yes, there is Doom the Boardgame, but it is not the same gameplay as Doom the video game, not even very close, and we can say the same about Sid Meier’s Civilization or Starcraft, that the boardgame isn’t the same gameplay as the video game. On the other hand, Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne can be exactly the same gameplay in video format as they are in boardgame format. (Not having played the video versions, I don’t know if they are indeed identical in gameplay, but they easily could be.) As for RPGs, while some kinds of video games owe a lot to Dungeons and Dragons, and tabletop RPGs have more in common with video games than card and board games do, it’s still the case that the non-electronic and electronic versions of an RPG cannot be similar."

Lew Pulsipher

MarkKreitler
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Video games vs Board games

Hey Lew,

I read your blog posts, and based on what I've seen, I think we have similar professional backgrounds. I enjoy your posts, and in the rare cases in which my opinion differs, I respect the points you make and the way you make them.

Given your preview paragraph, it sounds like this topic is one of those on which we disagree. I'll toss out some of my reasoning, and when I get a chance (probably in a week or two), I'll hit you up for the 5000 words you've written.

In general, I don't find the discussion of video games vs board games to be of much use because the terms are too broad, and, once you try to refine them, the whole thing falls apart. Here's what I mean:

-- What is a board game?
This should be easy, but it's not. Is an RPG a board game, even if it doesn't use a board? What about dexterity games like Jenga and Taktika? If RPGs that have no boards are board games, why isn't a game like Taktika a board game?

-- What is a video game?
This one is murkier. Is it a video game if it requires a computer? If so, then is Chess a board game when I play it with a friend, but a video game when I play it against an AI? If that's the case, how is the game design -- identical in both cases -- relevant to the discussion?

-- How does platform affect the discussion?
It's easy to say something like, "Starcraft is *clearly* a video game, because you can only play it on a computer." But I can't play it on just any computer -- it won't work on my Vic 20 or an iPhone. Sure, we could adjust the design to make it work on those machines, but if we allow design changes to accommodate different hardware, why do we disallow design changes to accommodate other media like chipboard?

-- What constitutes "play experience?"
You assert that the gameplay of the digital version of Settlers of Catan could easily be identical to the analog version, but I'm not so sure. A large part of the Settler's experience revolves around the social interaction of trade. The experience with 4 people sitting around a shared board differs significantly from that with virtual avatars distributed over the 'Net. Assuming one has the hardware to play an "electronic tabletop" version of the game, you can get back to all players around the table, but then you lose the hidden information aspect -- unless you introduce more hardware, like individual mobile phones, on which each player can see his personal information in private.

By the time you have a custom tabletop digital game with individual handheld devices, I'm not certain you can say you've reproduced the identical gameplay "easily."

Hopefully, you address these questions in more detail in your writing. As for me, I've concluded that game designs exist independent of the medium, and rendering the design into the differing media yields different results. This seems to be consistent with other art forms, where, for example, a sculptor and a painter could both render the same subject, and the audience could recognize the subject in both cases despite differences in the rendering.

Mark

pelle
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MarkKreitler wrote: As for

MarkKreitler wrote:
As for me, I've concluded that game designs exist independent of the medium, and rendering the design into the differing media yields different results. This seems to be consistent with other art forms, where, for example, a sculptor and a painter could both render the same subject, and the audience could recognize the subject in both cases despite differences in the rendering.

The core idea of the game is game design, but I think a lot of the work that goes into making that idea work on a specific platform (PC, iPhone, cardboard, vic20, deck of cards, ...) is also what I would consider "game design". It is not as simple as you have a completed game design that exist "independent of the medium" that you can just simply render to different platforms without doing more design work.

I think most attempts at doing that (mostly boardgames converted to PC or tablets) fails because they are not redesigned to make better use of the new platform. Part of it might be because of thinking "this design is good, so we can just render it in digital form and it will be fun to play", but the result will not be as fun, or it will be as fun, but missing an opportunity to be even better.

MarkKreitler
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That's what I was trying to say, but I'm a poor communicator

pelle wrote:
The core idea of the game is game design, but I think a lot of the work that goes into making that idea work on a specific platform (PC, iPhone, cardboard, vic20, deck of cards, ...) is also what I would consider "game design". It is not as simple as you have a completed game design that exist "independent of the medium" that you can just simply render to different platforms without doing more design work.

I think most attempts at doing that (mostly boardgames converted to PC or tablets) fails because they are not redesigned to make better use of the new platform. Part of it might be because of thinking "this design is good, so we can just render it in digital form and it will be fun to play", but the result will not be as fun, or it will be as fun, but missing an opportunity to be even better.

Agreed. Maybe "game design" is the wrong word for what I'm driving at. "Game concept" is probably better.

It gets back to the art analogy: you and I look at the same person. You paint him in oils and I sculpt him. The results differ, as do the skills required, but we painted the same subject. Assuming we're reasonably skilled and rendering somewhat realistically, our audience will realize we've rendered the same subject.

Now consider chess: the work I do to make an analog version differs greatly from the work I do to make the digital version, but we recognize it as the same game. Why? There must exist a collection of abstract qualities we recognize as "chess" independent of the media in which it is rendered.

That, to me, is the "game design." The other parts are the "interface design" (and probably other areas of design I'm too thick to recognize).

pelle wrote:
I think most attempts at doing that (mostly boardgames converted to PC or tablets) fails because they are not redesigned to make better use of the new platform.

Absolutely -- and that's one of the points I'm trying to make about the "video game vs board game" discussion. It's a straw man to talk about "video game" vs "board game" when what we're really talking about is "game rendered in medium A" vs "game rendered in medium B." Of course elements will change to accommodate the medium, but skilled artists should be able to produce recognizable renditions most of the time.

In some cases, it may be impossible to reproduce the results from one medium in another. For example, it's not possible to render all faces of a 3D object on a 2D canvas without distortion. That didn't stop Picasso from inventing Cubism, which is why I think discussions along the lines of, "Here are 'n' things you can do in computer games but not board games" are of limited use.

larienna
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Quote:I prefer to think of

Quote:
I prefer to think of the game design as an abstract entity that exists independent of the medium, and the media in which designs are rendered as "digital" or "analog."

I agree with you except for the terminology. For me, digital/analog refer to the division of the space on a game, so analog are mostly for dexterity games or games with rulers (miniatures) while digital games are games where the space is divided in various area.

I would prefer using Electronic/Printed, or Virtual/Physical keywords.

I am one of the people that board game and video game design are actually only 2 facet of the same medal. There are some physical limitation between both formats, but I rather see game design as a whole that includes any type of media.

As for having less space due to the screen view port, this is true, but It could be interesting in the future to extend that view port by combining devices. For example, a tablet could hold the cards and pieces of the player while the TV shows the main board. So it allows the player to see more stuff at the same time without the need to scroll.

I am also not considering making dexterity board games.

Hi lew thanks for the comments. I still have not bought your book yet, but intend to do so (I need to check other books first). Maybe I'll wait after the christmas rush to pass my order. I am curious to see what is hidden in that book.

lewpuls
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"analog" and "digital"

Please don't pervert the meaning of "analog" and "digital". *Dice* are digital. Use "non-electronic" and "electronic" if you must - I tend to say tabletop and video games.

See http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/2011/10/analog-versus-digital-in...

lewpuls
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Mark, in something more than

Mark, in something more than 5% the length of an average novel, I may have addressed some of your concerns.

Play experience may be different for a computer game than for the boardgame version, though in Catan if people can talk with one another, even if they cannot see one another, it's getting fairly close. But play experience is ALWAYS different, even for each play of the same game (boardgame or video), because you are different, where you are may be different, your opponents are different, and so on. So when I say a video game can duplicate, I mean it can duplicate the mechanics, the rules, exactly. The play experience is always different.

MarkKreitler
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Good points

lewpuls wrote:
Mark, in something more than 5% the length of an average novel, I may have addressed some of your concerns.

Play experience may be different for a computer game than for the boardgame version, though in Catan if people can talk with one another, even if they cannot see one another, it's getting fairly close. But play experience is ALWAYS different, even for each play of the same game (boardgame or video), because you are different, where you are may be different, your opponents are different, and so on. So when I say a video game can duplicate, I mean it can duplicate the mechanics, the rules, exactly. The play experience is always different.

Thanks for the link, Lew. When I get this game out the door, I'll dive in.

Good point about analog and digital, though I fear the inertia of popular culture is against you. Unfortunately, electronic vs non-electronic is loaded, too. is "Operation" an electronic game? Does that make it a video game? :P

Your point about "play experience" is also well taken. We need higher-precision vocabulary, because what you're saying is true, but it doesn't address my point: the social experience of sitting together with players differs substantially from that of interacting with unseen strangers via the 'Net. Both of those differ from sitting around an electronic board and managing your private information on a cell-phone-like device. If we include the design of the "social experience" with the game design, then the computerized and non-computerized versions are very different. On the other hand, if we say the game is only the mechanics, then we're back to "chess is chess whether or not it's rendered on a computer or in wood" -- which is to say the "game" as independent of the "medium."

I'm interested to see what you've written on this.

And Larienna, up to now, I haven't realized your stance on this. I think you and I have also been hung up on vocabulary issues. It just underscores how much -- and how differently -- we all invest in these broad terms.

Mark

MarkKreitler
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Good points

Double post. :(

larienna
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Quote:the social experience

Quote:
the social experience of sitting together with players differs substantially from that of interacting with unseen strangers via the 'Net.

Of course the experience of the same game in electronic and printed game is different. How many times have I seen players quit catan online because they did not expect to win (which is ironical because catan is a game where you can make easy come back). That is something you cannot do with a real board game, unless you want people to hate you. Same thing if the game is boring, you need to suffer the game until the end unless all players want to end the suffering.

So yes, real player does change the experience, and some types of game like negotiation games are more likely to be enjoyed with real players. Another thing with real players is that they could be better or more unpredictable than a AI for example.

lewpuls
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Semantics

I had forgotten about the tendency of online gamers to be terribly unreliable.

Semantics are a crippling problem in discussing games. Use the word "immersive", look at dictionary definitions, define it for your purposes, then get dumped on by so many people who equate "immersive" with "what I like". (Actual experience with video gamers.) Use the word "elegant" and try to define it, and get dumped on by "Ameritrash" gamers who hate the word no matter what it means, because of their experience with BGGers. (Actual experience again.) It goes on and on. Exacerbated by the tendency of people to skim rather than read, so they don't really know what was said.

larienna
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For me "immersive" is similar

For me "immersive" is similar to "suspension of disbelief". It's when you are in a mental state where you actually dream of being a real adventure, pirate, colony manager, etc.

As for elegant, it is a word I have been used when for example, the mechanics fit with each other. I also used this word to replace Christopher Alexander's concept of life (the 15 properties) . If instead of saying that a game has more life, I rather say that a game is elegant.

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