The Culture: The Source Of Bad Games Revealed

(Following from yesterday's post.)

The pattern that I've put out should now be apparent: there are very few Games out there on the shelf, but a lot of Brands wrapping around those Games.

There are few viable models for fantastic adventure wargames, which is why that list is so short, but within each model there is room for variation- sometimes to great effect, sometimes not. That's why there are few Games, but many Brands.

The Difference

It's about how it's done.

Dungeons & Dragons has a heroic quality to it derived from what began as a very sensible and logical method of organizing units and quality (classes and levels), and because that underlying logic retains that simplicity to it you have a Game that is very hard to screw up- and man, have a lot of people tried over the generations to date. It turns out that this was also useful as a content pacing mechanism, as programmers found in when the leap to videogames hit, which had its own negative consequences.

Traveller has its own internal logic, leading to a more-or-less static state of play that makes it very easy to learn and run because the game doesn't change its feel over time or grow overly complex. It's why so many Brands used this as a basis to wrap themselves around.

Runequest is for those seeking the experience of myth and legend, even when those ends turns out to be tragic ones, and in a very real way engage in Narrative Warfare.

Amber took a proven idea (Kriegspiel, Braunstein, Diplomacy), built it out a big, and refocused it into something suitable for playing out intrigue-laden dynastic power struggles with a side of soap opera melodrama. This would go on to become the basis for one of the most popular non-contact LARPs to date (h/t to all those boffer boys out there).

Each Game, therefore, is a purpose-built machine for achieving a specific outcome from gameplay. Each of these Games are wargames. Each of them would spawn derivatives--so many derivatives--varying the baseline to fine-tine the performance (in theory; not so much in practice) to achieve a specific outcome. The best such examples include Pendragon, and the worst include Multiverser.

The Implication

The inability for designers and publishers to consider the outcome has turned out to be a major flaw in the hobby. The inability to see how the form of the machine cannot help but to be informed by the desired outcome of using it; you aren't getting the ability to travel underwater for long periods without making something recognizable as a submarine, so you're not getting this or that gameplay experience from anything but a Game that is designed to deliver it.

Turns out that that function and form are linked, and the link is the outcome achieved by using the machine. There is no more obvious example of this in action than the various forms that the adaptation of Uncle George's Space Opera took from 1987 to the present.

Each adaptation was a Brand reskin of a different Game. Each adaptation had different experiences of play, produced different outcomes (producing plenty of complaints), and each one tried to represent itself as the definitive hobby game for fans of the Brand. Furthermore, there have been unofficial adaptations as early as 1977 (for Traveller), which adds more noise to the cacopheny.

The Conclusion

No one sat down, looked at the machine as one looks at the cutaway view of--for example--a Glock in action, and tried to compare what that Game did against the Brand it was meant to be used with. No one looked at the Brand's source material, picked apart how it worked and what its audience got out of it, and compared that against the Game proposed to be associated with the Brand. No one sought to ensure that Game and Brand would harmonize and thus produce a mutually-beneficial outcome- a synergistic outcome.

This is uncommon, such that it is notable when it does happen; we keep coming back to Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon for this reason- that harmonization happened.

And we can trace the source of disatisfaction due to dissonance between Game and Brand, to a mismatch of expectation (because that is what we're talking about here), and the Brand failed to achieve the goal intended by having a hobby game because it attempted to reskin a Game that was an ill fit for what the Brand is about.

You will find this at the source of all success or failure in proper hobby game design. Those Brands that are not good for hobby games need to be kept out, and of those that remain many need to be paired with Games that achieve the desired outcomes by the Brand's audience- and not what they are yoked to now.

And once that sifting and sorting is done, we can expect that most of the products on the shelves--being revealed as unfit for purpose--will go away while more will shrink to a self-funding hobby (e.g. Basic Fantasy) which would be better for the hobby as a whole. No more consumerism, no more unthinking publishing decisions, no more bad games.

A better hobby is possible.