Links: Incorporating Synergy in Game Design, Relating Games to the Meaning of Life & R.I.P. Allan B. Calhamer

My journey into the world of European-style board games began with two iPad apps. Board-game companies are increasingly flooding the iPad market because it's a reliable form of promotion, and they can make a little money at it at the same time. Tablet players likely won’t just buy the initial app. If they get well and truly hooked, they'll buy expansions and add-ons and new items. The trick is releasing a full enough game with the initial purchase that it invigorates players, while not making it so full that they feel bad about spending more for a new board to play on, or new complications to add into the mix.

One of these two apps is the best gateway drug for European-style board games I've seen: Ticket To Ride.... It's simple enough for casual play and deep enough for someone who’s really into the robber-baron era being depicted.

It has a lot of hexes. It looks like a cross between a math textbook and motel room art. You hold it in your hands, uncertain whether to immediately insert it into the bin. But you don't. You invite your friends over, and...it's exhausting.

This makes no sense. You've flown spaceships and commanded armies. Why are little sheep tiles bringing you out in a cold sweat? Look at you all now—heads down, threading together fragile economies, loosing unthinkable trade combos, narrowly avoiding mistakes that would halt your progress like a bicycle going into a concrete wall. Being tested – really tested – for the first time in your gory board game careers.

And you'll see the truth. Eurogames aren't boring, despite their themes ("developing a postal service", "trading with 15th century Latin America", "who can farm the best beans"). They're simply free. Free from the need to immediately appeal, to lurch out from the shelves like Nyquil hallucinations, and to keep everybody entertained in an unstable tornado of cards and dice. Eurogame designers are free to make nothing more, or less, than a great game, a rich game, that'll get better every time you play it.

Reading and game playing are both about personal growth, but they approach it in different ways. Reading is about being exposed to ideas, expanding your horizons, and finding new ways to view the world. Game playing, in contrast, is about testing one's self and growing through skill acquisition. You play games on the most basic level to test yourself and improve.

People try so hard to run their lives based on their intellect but, in the end, we are ultimately run by our emotions. Let me tweak it slightly for game design. Players think the intellectual pursuit is why they play games but, in the end, what makes us most enjoy a game is connected to our emotions.

The reason this all is important is that synergy does a great job in one aspect of emotional fulfillment. When playing a game, players want to feel good about themselves. The reason for playing is partially to test themselves, so it feels good when they can get a sense of accomplishment. Discovery leads to accomplishment. "Hey, look what I found!"

Another of synergy's benefits is that it makes players feel good about themselves because the act of discovering synergy is itself emotionally rewarding. Remember that good game design allows your players to take claim for their own advancement. (And blame luck for their failure.)

Calhamer designed the game in the mid-50s; it was published in 1959. I was introduced to it in 1970 when I entered Rice. The commonest game around the lounges was Risk, and there was always chess, but if a group had a few hours for a serious game, Diplomacy came out. It was never a "light" game. Even among good friends, there's always a certain real tension in Diplomacy, because you simply will not win unless you lie, and before it's over you'll stab someone in the back. Probably several someones. And yes, the "fun" of negotiation, trust, and betrayal was one of the inspirations for Illuminati.