Interactivity in Board Games
I used to love board games, but these days I find myself more and more bored with them. There is – in my eyes – a huge design flaw with the majority of board games available to us that almost never appears in computer games. You see, I consider board games to be a way to combine social contact and gaming. Only very few people enjoy playing board games on their own, especially now that you could just get a computer game instead. Why is it then that so many (successful!) board games allow for little to no interaction between the players?
The Settlers of Catan - widely appreciated, but really mostly a single player game.
Take Settlers of Catan for example. On my turn I roll the dice and everyone takes the resource cards that die roll allows them. Then I ponder over my strategy and where to build what, decide on something, do it, and pass the turn. Then all I do until it is my turn again is take resource cards when other people roll the dice and maybe respond to a trade request by something. The actions of the other players hardly interfere with my gameplay at all except that once in a blue moon someone will build a settlement where I wanted to build mine.
Settlers of Catan is hardly isolated in this issue. In the World of Warcraft boardgame one team goes out fighting monsters and planning moves while the others do absolutely nothing until it is their turn. Most of the time both teams just fight the game and have nothing to do with each other. This trend can be found over and over again in board games. I would even go so far as to say that the majority of board games works this way. You play against the board on your turn and then are bored waiting for everyone else until it is your turn again.
Uno is a really simple game but it actually allows you to play with others unlike most other board games.
Playing against the board is so incredibly boring when compared to playing a computer game that I consider it completely futile to try to build any new board game on that idea. What board games need is a way for all players to have fun and be interested at all times, not just when it is their turn. The more complex your vs the board game mechanics are, the more time will be spent simply waiting for others to finish up their planning. I love me a complex game, but it should be complex in the grand scheme of things and not in detail. Your possible actions in a turn of Uno a severly limited by the cards you have in hand, still there is a lot of interaction going on with other players because every move you make effects the others directly and influences their reaction. You can still make interesting strategic decisions, but you don’t have to bore everyone else with them.
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Belthil
4 Jun, 2010
I used to love settlers but the more you play it the more you figure out that the outcome is very strongly dependant on the first turn.
A game that i greatly enjoy is robo rally since there is a lot of interaction and a lot of unexpected things can happen.
As far as playing against the board goes the lord of the rings board game does it well if i remember correctly even though i havent played it that often.
Last but not least i like the world of warcraft board game. especially if you play with a group of players that knows the game it can be quite nice.
Tesh
4 Jun, 2010
“What board games need is a way for all players to have fun and be interested at all times, not just when it is their turn.”
Yes indeedy. I’ve come to much the same frame of mind in my own board and card game design experiments. It’s almost the difference between PvP and PvE. If you’re playing “against the board”, you’re just taking turns with PvE (where video games excel), but if you’re using the game as a medium to play against the other player, like Chess, you’re basically playing PvP. Good PvP board games either ask you to do something while your opponent is playing or at least pay attention and try to plan ahead in a move-countermove dance.
In a world where computers can often handle PvE game design better than unwieldy board games, the latter really need to step up their game and play to their strengths; face to face gaming.
Oh, and Cutthroat Uno is awesome. Anyone can match the top card at any time (play picks up in normal direction after the last match is played from that player’s position), making for fast and crazy gaming. Regular Uno is downright glacial by comparison. Draw cards stack… you can sometimes wind up playing Chicken when trying to see who plays the last Draw card (we usually play with two decks mashed together… I wound up drawing 24 cards once). 0s *must* be played if one shows up, and your whole hand is passed the number of 0 cards in play direction, so you don’t even have a promise of keeping the same hand throughout the game.
I love house rules… something that video games can’t do well at all.
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scrusi
5 Jun, 2010
@Belthil: Well I’ve only played the WoW board game twice, but each time I could just twiddle my thumbs while the other team figured out its turn.
@Tesh: We actually tend to play something similar with Uno. In fact I believe the Uno games I was thinking about when writing the post weren’t exactly played with stock rules at all
House rules can be really cool indeed, assuming players know what they are doing. I’ve oftentimes accepted some house rule that seemed innocent enough but later turned out to be quite detrimental. Board game designers are usually quite clever and have reasons for certain rules being in place. Bending them can, in some cases, break the game.
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