Rules, Death, Happiness, and Schadenfreude: UNO and the Art of Game Design

I want to tell you a story.

I want to tell you a story about a board game experience that began to open my eyes to what board games are, what they do, and what they tell us about ourselves and each other.

"Wow!", you must be saying to yourself, "That's seem like lofty goals there. What is this paradigm-shifting experience that you had? It must be a game of staggering design to be able to elicit such a response. Surely it must be the most grandiose game of all games to cause such a pondering!"

First off, those were some ace Scrabble words you used there! Part of me is impressed, part of me says you should calm down a little.

And second, the game was UNO.

Stick with me.

It Happened One Night

It was a Saturday night, and my family and I had just finished a game of Carcassonne. The evening was obviously winding down, but we weren't quite done yet. We needed one more game to cap off the evening.

My 70-year-old mother was given dealer's choice, and she chose UNO. This would not have been my choice, but I understood why she would gravitate towards it.

Like most people who have taken a hard dive into the board game hobby, I grew up playing mass-market games, but with both of my parents being teachers, the games we played would trend towards the "educational". Instead of Monopoly, Sorry!, and Parcheesi, I grew up playing nerd-faire like Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit at nine years old, with some card games thrown in. My parents would bend the rules a little and help me along the way, with the primary goal being not to win but to improve, to become smarter.

It obviously didn't work.

Insert joke about wild and crazy night here

Back to present day. My foray — oh, look, another Scrabble word — into modern board gaming had only recently begun. Mom enjoys playing games, no doubt, but these hobby games were new and rules heavy, and some were turning out to be quite complicated. She needed to go back to her home turf. She needed something familiar and comforting.

So UNO it was!

The Butterfly Effect

Now, none of us had played UNO in forever and couldn't quite remember the rules. We could have looked them up, but how hard could it be? Play a card that matches either color or number, first one out wins. I suggested we play like I remember when I was a kid, where if you didn't have a card to make a match, you kept drawing until you could.

The game started fine, but as it progressed, a certain chill filled the room. One of us would be down to two cards, then on the very next turn would have to take ten cards to get a match. It was funny at first, but then it became maddening. Over and over. More and more cards. A skip turn or a reverse used as defense soon became a plea of forgiveness: "I'm sorry, it's the only one I could match!"

But what really struck me was the mood around the table. At first we were laughing at playing such a silly game. That turned to annoyance. Then frustration. Then despair. Two cards would become twenty, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. What was once holding on to last pairs became a desperate hope that we would die soon to put us out of our misery, and that soon turned to the cold hard realization that the only way to have that sweet release of death was to take the cards and sli...

...so we looked up the rules.

Turns out, you're supposed to take only one card if you can't match. Not all of them.

Whoopsie.

Sigh

As Good As It Gets

We picked up where we left off, but playing with the correct rules — and it was here that I noticed something. The table state had changed. Not the game state. We still had three hands, a draw pile, and a discard pile, but our frame of mind as group had changed. What was once a frantic mess of anguish and pain had become much calmer, thoughtful, and considered. Choices now became apparent and useful. Instead of solely focusing on our hand, we were paying attention to others. If a Wild came up, what was called became extremely important.

The game had become interesting and pleasant.

I mean, it was and is a simple card game, but at least it wasn't painful.

But here's the thing that hit me and is the whole reason why I'm writing this essay: There's something to learn here.

Now the obvious thing is that the game design defines the experience. One simple rule change clearly highlights that. Playing one way was an excruciating experience for all involved, and playing another led to a pleasant half hour in which we enjoyed finishing the game.

But here's the other side of the coin: The reason we were playing by that first rule was because that's what I remember playing as a kid and enjoying it. Many kids do. So much that many people think those are the actual rules.

So the question is why? Why do kids play enjoy playing that way?

Groundhog Day

As any parent of a toddler will tell you, and really any one that has been near a child knows, they love repetition.

This is not because kids are dumb or annoying. I mean they are, but that's not why. Studies have shown that the love of repetition is actually a learning process. Seeing and saying and doing something over and over not only brings comfort; it helps them learn how the world works.

Take the game of peek-a-boo.

One of the most universally played games by babies everywhere — it's a game of no consequence for the adult, but the entire world for the baby. Literally. When their eyes are covered, then uncovered and everything is still exactly the same, the babies are learning that the entire world doesn't disappear when they close their eyes. Everything is still there.

Peek-a-boo helps a baby learn object permanence.

selbat nurt eht woh ,hO

When a kid is playing UNO, they aren't learning object permanence. Instead, when they see that someone has to take a huge stack of cards, they are learning that the pain of someone else is funny.

Someone else has to take a stack of cards? Yep, still funny. Now you have to take a huge stack of cards. Yep, that's funny, too.

Schadenfreude. The kids are learning and reinforcing schadenfreude.

Maybe they aren't dumb, but kids sure can be jerks.

About Time

All of this begs the question, "Isn't it ridiculous that you are doing that deep of a dive into the game of UNO?" And I would say, "Abso-freaking-lutely!"

But does that necessarily make it wrong? I don't think so.

A game is designed in a time and place.

That game is then played by people in a time and place, and not necessarily the same one.

But the decisions made by both the designer and the player, the creator and the participant of an experience are a reflection of those people and of that time and space.

Games that were played in ancient Egypt are different from games played in Victorian England, which are different from games played today — but people can play those games and get another viewpoint of how someone else viewed what they considered fun.

And that look and reflection doesn't always have to be deep and philosophical. Sometimes it's just fun or funny.

The funniest part of UNO?

UNO was invented in 1971 by a barber and his son after an argument about, get this, the rules of Crazy Eights. He would sell UNO out of his barber shop, and his son would give them away at school. When other local businesses started selling it a year later, he sold the rights to a group that was headed by someone who owned, and again I'm not make this up, a funeral parlor.

So apparently, UNO involves a long-standing history of not remembering the rules of games and hoping for death.

Or as I like to call it, Monday.

This essay original appeared on Cardboard Reflection. If you would like to read more of Jeff McLeod's essays and reviews, please consider a visit.