Max Impact Games

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I'm actually working on a game that has a similar issue to Arcs, given the interconnectedness of the mechanisms, any general advice on how to lay out information when it's interdependent on other systems?

A lot of the time it feels like trying to pick the best way to orient the attached picture:

I agree in the sense that it's not an inherent good, but it's also just generally good advice, albeit a little lazy.

Question for you: Is this why your games generally have "first game" tutorials the way they do, with a rolling teach?

My view is that it's both easy criticism to say "simplify" when something is misunderstood, and it's easy for designers to initially make something more complex than it needs to be.

I think it goes both ways, it's easier to make something more complicated than it needs to be than the inverse, and telling people to "simplify" is also an easy catch all criticism when something doesn't gel.

I also don't think what Cole is saying is really oppositional to what Eric is saying.

That said, I do think designers generally overvalue "simplify" as a catch all criticism for any game that they don't immediately understand or prove expertise with. It's easy to say "this is hard to understand, simplify it" rather than asking "how can I teach this complex thing to people".

It isn't to say that you shouldn't make complex games, rather that games naturally trend towards complexity because of a lack of thought around why you are making certain decisions or designing out of exceptions that arise from iterating on the same underlying system.

There's a lot to unpack here, but people telling others to "simplify" in these instances are almost always correct, because the manner in which game designers design is with the assumption people want to sit down and learn their game in the first place, which is seldom the case.

One assumption I think can get lost here specifically is that John Company is an incredibly complex game, but the onboarding effect of the game is one of a rolling teach (much in the same way it's done in video games). This has little to do with why people tell designers to simplify.

Video games do not have the same barriers to entry because the act of learning is always an implementation of the game itself. Rules are enforced by the underlying system, and until we are able to make the movie version of Jumanji in real life, board games will always have this onboarding issue.

Hobby board games ARE unintuitive to new players, but that's simply true of learning the rules of any system. More often than not it's not an issue of the game itself being too hard for someone to understand, but rather they don't think the act of learning a new game is worth the resulting "fun".

But I think it's worth emphasizing that the disconnect between people "in the hobby" and those outside of it has much less to do with the complexity of the game as a whole, and more on the difficulty of onboarding people into playing ANY new game.

I didn't want to fill Cole's replies with a giant essay, so I'll just write my thoughts here as it relates to game design🎲✂

I think these two points aren't really in as much opposition as they seem at first glance, Designers tend to underestimate their players, and learning games is difficult...🧵

While I think this is often true, it also elides another critical point: professional designers often don't realize how smart and capable people are, espeically people who don't play games. 🧵

He had an incredible run from 1997 to 2007, his later films are still good but I don't think they are as interesting as what he was doing in the turn of the millennium.

Prototyping 🎲✂️

congrats!

My favorite part of the creative process comes after all the important parts of the game have reached “fun” level.

After that, once every part is fun, we can work on each part and make it better than it was before—critically analyzing that part versus how it appeared before.

But yeah, thanks for the clarification. Really interesting insights for sure!

It's "unbalanced" in the sense of when you get to engage with it, and sometimes you'll have more fun being attacked than you would by not being in a combat.

I just thought of a good example, Forbidden Stars.

It's a really great game if you're looking for that kind of game, and its combat system is REALLY cool and fun, but it also has the reality of making two people sit there and wish they were playing the cool subgame with the engaging players.

I'm not necessarily talking about conceptual misalignment, but more "this cool thing IS cool but I don't have the space to engage with it enough because of the larger needs of the overall game"

Can't think of any good examples off hand other than Magic cards that are like rorshach tests for whoever is playing them (Wheel of Misfortune, Stasis, Scrambleverse).

I've seen it a lot in other people's prototypes, stuff that's really cool but doesn't "fit" the game.

Yeah, I'm aware of cole's essays/interviews on the subject and I sort of assumed you were talking about it in the same sense.

Have you run into cohesiveness issues with larger designs that have really fun subsystems that don't really gel with competing subsystems?

I think I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what you mean here, are you saying you maximize fun in lieu of the rules/systems themselves first and then pound the rules out into the most digestible version of it, or are you saying you take the entire supersystem & make each component maximize fun?

As someone who is interested but would only see it with my wife who hated Uncut Gems for being too intense, what's the likelihood the same tracks with this one?

Playtesting Tales from the Supernova with the Central Ohio Game Designers group at Dragon's Lair.

Very cool lines of play from a new player with maxing out their loyalty and building a ton of ships.

The new win condition worked well although the card itself needs to be clarified. 🎲✂️

Part of the reason I moved away from using social media and into creating things in the real world is because the distortions of digital space have this way of making people more antagonistic against each other for things they would never once feel emboldened to say in person.

Illusion of Gaia aka Illusion of Time (PAL territories) and Gaia Gensōki (Japan) clean artwork used on Famitsu magazine, issue 254 from 1993. Image depicts Will carrying his flute, and Princess Kara who's carrying her pet piggy Hamlet, running from the castle with some mountains and trees on the left side, and some clouds and the moon in the night sky.

A piece of #IllusionOfGaia aka Illusion of Time (PAL territories) and Gaia Gensōki (Japan) used on Famitsu magazine, issue 254 from 1993. Usual upscale/clean/retouch process applied. No clue on the artist, any info let me know!

I was surprised in my research that I couldn't find a single one. Everything else I've seen requires some "third man" component.

Basically this disqualifies games like LOTR the Card Game or Arkham Horror the Card game because the scenarios aren't built out of the player's individually created decks.