I was thinking about a time when my department head came to my game design class unannounced to evaluate my teaching, and I wasn’t “lecturing” to the students.  They were working on game projects.  (This was not an introductory class.)  She seemed surprised that I wasn’t lecturing, but that may be because she typically taught introductory computer literacy style classes such as how to use Microsoft Office.  Classes that teach use of specific office software can be taught more or less by rote: if you want to make something bold you highlight it and press control-B or click the Bold button.  If you change margins you do thus and so.  And so forth.

These intro software classes don’t have to be taught entirely by rote but commonly they are, complete with what I call “monkey books”.  These books have students follow steps to accomplish something, but students tend to focus on getting through as rapidly as possible, and when they’re done they don’t know what they did and haven’t learned much.  Like the monkeys who, if they type long enough, type Shakespeare’s works . . .  You can learn from monkey books, but only if you want to learn and make the effort to learn.

Designing games is not and can never be taught by rote.  Teaching by rote is training, not education.  Education is about why you do things, why some things work and others don’t, about understanding what you’re doing.  Training is about exactly how you get a particular thing done.  I recognize that not everyone follows those definitions but I find it very useful to make this distinction, and other people with other purposes when defining education and training may make different distinctions.

Designing games is about education, not training.  Designing games is about critical thinking, and much of it is thinking, which is the antithesis of training.  You’re trained to do things automatically, without thinking.  (Reiner Knizia on twitter recently said, "To summarise my experience: Design is a way of thinking!")

Video game production at the outset can be taught by rote because people are learning how to use particular software, for example Maya or 3DS Max, or they’re learning how to program.  In the long run there is a process of education there, especially for programming, but in the short run for introductory classes a lot of it is simple straightforward “this is how you do it”.  There just isn’t much of that in game design.

But where the Eureka moment occurred was when I realized that an analogy can be made from this to games and puzzles.  A puzzle is something that has a solution, or perhaps several solutions, with the defining characteristic that once you figure it out the solution(s) always works.  So you can teach someone by rote how to beat the puzzle by teaching them the steps required.  It’s possible that those steps require certain skills such as hand-eye coordination levels that the person may not have attained, but once they attain those skill levels they can follow the solution and complete the puzzle every time, or as it is said in video games, “beat the game”.

A game does not have these kinds of solutions, and cannot be “beaten.”  To be good at the game requires something much more akin to education than training.  You have to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and when that isn’t the best thing to do, when something else is the best thing to do.  There is certainly problem-solving in games, but there aren’t solutions to the game as a whole that will always work.  Frequently this is the difference between having human opponents and having no opponent or a computer opponent, though computer opponents continue to become better over time.  Frequently this is the difference between, on th one hand, perfect information or uncertainty that can become predictable, typical in puzzles, and on the other hand uncertainty that cannot be predicted or accounted for by simple mathematical processes–the kind of uncertainty that comes from having several human opponents.

You can teach someone, by rote, how to win at Tic-Tac-Toe, or even Tetris, and you could for chess if anyone had completely solved the extremely complicated puzzle.  The checker program Chinook, as I understand it, plays by rote, playing what it knows to be the move most likely to lead to a win from whatever the current position is–no reasoning required.  You cannot teach someone how to win at Britannia or Dragon Rage, Diplomacy or even Risk, by rote, they have to understand how it all works and then think as they actually play.

This is not a “convention report” per se, as I had no interest in the banquets and awards, nor in the special guests, nor (with few exceptions) in new games and announcements about games.  The featured guests were media people--film and TV--rather than game people, though Wil Wheaton does a boardgame videocast (which I have not seen).  The others were Felicia Day and Adrienne Wilkinson. There were only two game design guests of honor (Rob Schwalb and Jeff Tidball), quite a departure from days past, one artist (Sandra L. Garrity), and one author guest (Aaron Allston, formerly a D&D writer).  SF author Timothy Zahn was scheduled to be around as well.  In years past Reiner Knizia, Richard Garfield, and Jim Dunnigan have been guests of honor, but if people of such stature in game design were present I did not see or hear of them.

The convention has moved from late June-early July to early June.  I heard this was to avoid a clash with GenCon, when they move to earlier in the summer.  But the result, so close to the end of the K12 school year, was that a lot of people evidently could not make it.  Next year Origins will be on 12-16 June.

I was surprised at how few people I saw in the game-playing rooms.  Further, there was a time when most tabletop game manufacturers came to Origins, but not now.  Wizards, Fantasy Flight, GMT, Columbia, and smaller outfits like Avalanche weren’t around.  There’s a lot more room in the exhibit hall than I remember from, say 2005.  I think the entire convention this year would fit into the exhibit hall used at GenCon.

I like the system used at WBC and PrezCon, where you pay your entry fee (about the same as Origins) and you can play any game or attend any event.  But those are boardgame conventions.  At GenCon, as I vaguely recall from my one visit, the seminars were free to attendees, but some tournaments and RPG events may have cost additional fees.  At Origins there are many more additional fees, and they get extreme with a fee for the wargame room, a fee for the boardgame room (though there is also open gaming), fees for so many seminars even though there’s plenty of room for listeners, and so on.  The exhibition hall and art show are free, fortunately, and that helps bring in the people paying the one-day $10 fee.  (The line for the one-day pass was very long on Saturday morning.)

I don’t go to conventions to play games, that’s something I can do much nearer home.  I like to attend relevant seminars and panel discussions, but this year there were fewer than usual (and half a dozen of those were cancelled because of a family emergency for the speaker).  For the past seven years at Origins (excluding 2009, when I didn’t attend) I’ve given free seminars about game design for beginners.  This comes partly from my inclination to teach, and partly (more recently) from a desire to publicize my game design book that’s due to be published late this summer.

There was also a scheduling problem as many seminars that were supposed to be free were listed in the program at $2, and others were listed at $2 more than intended. Only my Friday seminar had the $2 price, and some others that were repeated on the weekend were free then, but $2 on the weekdays.  It was as though someone had done a global addition of $2 to seminars up through 9AM Saturday.  In past years the master event list was sent to people who had submitted events, but this year it was not.  By the time I thought to check, I was able to find it online and then have the error removed, and this was reflected in the computer so that people who registered for the Friday talk were not charged, but at that point the schedule book probably had gone to the printers and could not be corrected.

When a person or group offers to do a seminar (or any other event such as a tournament or RPG session) they choose their time and day without knowing what else might be scheduled.  Scheduling is very important for the seminars, with late Saturday morning evidently being the best time, and Sunday morning the least.  There are also many more people at the con on the weekend than on weekdays.  This year I was able to schedule two hour blocks to allow for lots of questions and discussion, in previous years I’ve usually been restricted to one hour blocks.  (This may also reflect the small number of seminars altogether, there were more time slots available.) 
I was up in the seminar area a lot, and monitored attendance as I did so, to help me figure out the best times for the future.  Most seminars had about a dozen or fewer listeners.  The most-attended seminar I saw was mine at 11AM Saturday about “Starting a Game Design,” with 28 people.  I was surprised at this because by chance, at the same time, a game designers panel discussion was scheduled in the very next room, including some well-known designers who make a living in game design.   The count there was 23.  You might hope that Origins would catch such scheduling conflicts and give one or the other the chance to move to a non-conflicting time, but not this year.

Later Saturday afternoon I attended talks by James Ernest (formerly of CheapAss games) and Kenneth Hite (RPGs), both excellent speakers, but with only a dozen listeners. 
Ernest talked about themes in games.  He much prefers games with themes, disliking those with “themes” added on after design.  As I put it to him in a comment he agreed with, I prefer that a play I make in a game has a clear analog with reality, rather than simply being a move in a game–unless the game is out-and-out abstract.

Though there is no theme in Dominion, Ernest still enjoys playing the game.  I’m more extreme.  When it first came out I watched a game and saw that there was virtually no interaction amongst the players, a puzzle-contest.  People have told me that with certain cards there’s a lot more interaction, but it is still mostly about people individually solving the puzzle of the game, and I don’t care for that at all.  As for the lack of a real theme, Earnest says the theme was added after the game was finished, and in the end they took the medieval clipart they’d been using just to use something, and created the theme from it (which is what I would call an atmosphere, because it has no effect on gameplay or game design).

Hite talked about getting the heart of a genre right in an RPG.  It’s the story the genre tells that’s important, he says.  For example, at the heart of Noir is Sam Spade being beaten up or otherwise thwarted (as in, the police try to stop his investigation), yet from this he learns more information that ultimately lets him solve the mystery. 
I asked if Hite was familiar enough with Steampunk to say what the story is in that (to me) obscure genre.  He pointed out that it’s now more an aesthetic than a genre, the goggles and leather and glass and so forth (and corsets for women?).  Yet he then made an erudite comparison, saying that just as fairy stories helped Victorians reconcile with what was a pretty ugly past (and where the real fairy stories were “don’t go out on the moor at night or they’ll eat you), steampunk helps people reconcile with technology.  Modern technology is a “black box” to most people, but most people can understand that hot steam expands and can move things, and feel comfortable with the steam engines and “clockwork” of Steampunk.  Steampunk helps people come to terms with technology.  A remarkable answer.

I don’t look for new games at conventions, so I can’t say anything about such with a couple exceptions.  I did see two games that caught my eye, published by Catalyst Labs, who are known for miniatures, not boardgames.  Hibernia, played on a map of Ireland although it could be played as well on any map with the addition of a color scheme, is a bloodless wargame.  Using a color scheme on the map, plus the roll of a color die, four or fewer players expand throughout Ireland.   The designer explained it, and my comment was “clever”.  It felt like a traditional Eurogame, if only because it is a clever game and is not a model of any reality.  I first noticed it because I have a prototype “Hibernia” game, about actual Irish history (such as we know) in the Dark Ages; I’ll have to add a subtitle to it. 
Another Catalyst game is Balance of Power.  Though ostensibly about the Napoleonic world, it is even more abstract than Diplomacy, with a traditionally Euroish feel to it.  There is no uncertainty other than the intentions of other players.  With turn-based play, the other source of uncertainty in Diplomacy, from simultaneous movement, does not exist.   Nor is there the significant tactical aspect to it that counterbalances the strategic in Diplomacy.  “. . . Players carefully create and move Kings, Generals and Bankers as they capture territories and expand their empires.”  Bankers?  In Napoleonic Europe?  At first glance it appears that Prussia and Austria are “stuck in the middle” between England, France, Russia, and Turkey.  It may be clever--because of the apparent strategic imbalance I reserve comment--but it is not a model of any reality.   The game does allow secret negotiation, making it more like Diplomacy than games that only allow over-the-table negotiation.   And I’m told it’s a much shorter game than Diplomacy.

In both of these games, maneuver is very limited, and there are not many choices at a given time, as befits traditionally Euroish games.   Boardgames tend to be games of maneuver, but do not need to be. 

To go back to the convention as a whole, one publisher, who sells via Internet and conventions only with few exceptions, remarked that the retail game distribution system is broken.  He pointed out that even at the convention many people now scan the codes on games with their smartphones, then look for cheaper prices online, before deciding to buy.  Game shops are struggling or non-existent, suffering from competition with Internet sellers who sometimes go to extremes (as one US-based seller who offers Dragon Rage for $59, much less than the 50 euro list price dewspite the cost of shipping games from Europe to the USA).  Someone told me about an area of 600,000 people, part of a larger city, with not a single game shop.  I live near a sprawling 230th largest metropolitan area in the US, 300,000+ people with a high proportion of young people, where there are just two tabletop game shops, only one of which offers many boardgames.

When I walk into the Columbus Convention Center for Origins I always think initially, “why have I bothered to come here?” (it’s a thousand mile trip).  I actually skipped 2009.  Yet as in the past, I found some interesting people to talk with, though I missed one I wanted to meet.  People seem to like my talks, and this year on the spur of the moment I even recruited some to playtest a couple of my games.  I don’t know whether I’ll be back next year, it depends on how things go in the publishing world and on circumstances in general.  For most gamers, I have to suggest that GenCon is a much more interesting convention.  If it were an equal distance from where I live, I’d go to GenCon every year and frequently skip Origins.

Do Games have Dramatic “Acts”or “Stages”

[My thanks to “Sagrilarus” of Fortress:AT for the question that stimulated this attempt at classification.]

Phases (sometimes called stages) in a game design are important.  These are distinctly different periods of play through the course of a game.  They provide at least a perception, if not an actuality, of change, growth, and learning.  Phases help the feeling that there's more variety in the game, as well.   They help avoid a perception of "sameness" in the gameplay.  A game that is "too long" may feel too long because there are not enough phases, not because any specific amount of time has passed.  In contrast, many short games have only one phase.

Other entertainments and activities in life have phases.  A horse race has phases, movies have the three (or five, or nine) act structure that changes the focus as the movie progresses.  Life itself has phases such as early childhood, adolescence, and retirement/old age.  In that sense people expect phases in their entertainment and their activities.

What differentiates one phase from another?  I don’t think we can closely define that.  Much of it must occur in the minds of the player(s).  When a game changes from one phase to another the player is thinking about different things, as he or she decides what to do, than he thought about in the preceding phase.  Probably the best way to put it is, the phase changes when the immediate (short-term) objective(s) of the players change.   I’ll give some examples in a moment.

The longer the game is, the more phases it should have.  After all, if a major purpose of phases is to avoid sameness, then the need becomes greater as the game becomes longer. 
Some single-episode games that are easily played “best two out of three” have one phase, for example rock-paper-scissors (RPS).  Tic-Tac-Toe is another such game, with a maximum of five moves for the "X" player I don't know how sensible it would be to talk about phases.  Other very simple games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders often have one phase.  We might be able to characterize short games as "one phase games", although I think we could find fairly short games of more than one phase.

In contrast, Chess can be quite a long game--players are allowed two hours each for 40 moves--so it stands to reason that it needs to have more than one phase.  These phases are normally called the opening, the mid-game, and the end-game.  The opening phase is a consequence of the severe constraints on movement of pieces at the start of the game, given the standard set up, and of the centuries of study of the best moves to bring pieces into the open and control the center of the board.

Contrast this with Risk, where the opening phase is the placement of armies before the conflict begins, and that placement can vary greatly from one game to another.  Even if you use the French setup where the cards are dealt and territories are occupied randomly, you have a setup that varies greatly from one game to another.

Contrast that with many wargames where there is a standard setup, but a player can move every one of his pieces in one turn.  As a result the game moves beyond the standard setup very rapidly, as opposed to chess when moving one piece at a time means the opening phase takes 10-20 moves by each player.

And contrast those with games where you have no units, or no maneuver (where geographical location of assets does not matter).   Often these games are symmetrical rather than the asymmetricality common in wargames. There can still be an opening phase, but it is not related to maneuver of units.



A second reason for the existence of phases in chess, other than the very constrained initial position of pieces, is that the number of pieces gradually decreases while the area of action remains the same size, thus opening up longer lines of play and new possibilities.  There’s a third reason, the piece mix for each player may deviate from the symmetric, from being identical, for example after an exchange of a Knight for a Bishop.  Forces can also become imbalanced when one player gains a material advantage, e.g. being a pawn ahead.  The mid-game in chess is also a change because players are no longer following the standard openings, but have an immediate objective of gaining positional or (more likely?) material advantage.

The end-game occurs as the number of pieces is much reduced.  There is more room to maneuver.  Further, the immediate objective becomes checkmate of the opponent’s king, rather than material or positional advantage.  Players now try to use a material or positional advantage, if they’ve gained one, to end the game.

Every chess game has an opening and a mid-game, though the latter can be cut short by a quick win.  Except when a player stumbles onto a checkmate while still trying to gain positional or material advantage, there will always be an end-game, that is, a phase when players are focusing on checkmate.

What about other games?  Play changes in a simple puzzle-game like old PCTetris because the pieces fall faster.   At some point there is no further increase in falling speed, and a good player can settle into a cathartic repetition until he or she tires and makes mistakes.  We can say there’s the ramping-up phase and then the “maximum fall” phase, a phase only experienced players reach.

Play in RPGs and FPSs changes as player avatars acquire more levels, perks, and loot (especially more and better weapons).  The monsters are tougher, the bosses are tougher, the player(s) have many more options.  In effect, the rules are modified by the loot, by perks, and by new capabilities gained by leveling up in RPGs.  There may also be changes in immediate objective as the story associated with the game develops. 
Setups
Is the setup a phase?  Yes, if players make decisions that affect the outcome, as in American (not French setup) Risk.  No, if they don’t, as in chess or checkers.

Many games have no setup phase.  Every player begins symmetrically (all players with identical situations and assets), and if he has assets that can be maneuvered, they have not yet been maneuvered into significant positions.  Card games are almost always of this type.  Chess and most traditional boardgames are also.  Turn-based and real-time-strategy video games are symmetrical insofar as each player begins with one unit "somewhere", though the sides are not symmetrical owing to unit differentiation.  Most video games are asymmetrical but have a mandated setup.

Historical wargames that might be called "simulations", on the other hand, are almost always asymmetrical (differing situations and assets) in the setup, but sometimes allow players to choose their setup.  Games that simulate historical battles are always asymmetrical, but sometimes the setup is mandated by the game, while other times the players can set up pieces as they like.   More abstract (non-simulation) wargames are often the opposite.  For example Stratego is symmetrical but players can set up their pieces as they like, so the setup becomes the first decision phase of the game.  Risk is the same.  On the other hand, Diplomacy is asymmetrical but the initial setup is mandated by the game.

Video games involving an avatar are severely asymmetrical, with one character facing numerous opponents.  Add the avatar customization opportunities that are so popular in these games and you have thousands if not millions of possible setups.

Phases and rule changes
Phases ideally should not include changes in the rules but may include cases where rules that did not matter earlier in the game come to matter later, or where rules are added through acquisition of loot, or cards, or perks, or levels.  For example, there may be a rule that limits the number of pieces a player can have, perhaps reflecting supply or maintenance restrictions.  This rule may not matter at the beginning of the game but will as players build up their forces.
Ideally the same rules should apply throughout the game, with changes in circumstances leading to changes in phase.  Yet sometimes the story or history of the game demands changes in rules.  In my game Britannia, which represents 1000 years of British history, the rules are generally the same throughout, but the identity of the offensive nations and defensive nations changes over time owing to invasions and withdrawals.  However, the rules are quite different for the Romans at the beginning of the game, and slightly different for the clash of Kings at the end of the game.  We have the phase of Roman conquest where submission rules enable British nations to survive the conquest despite the unique power of Roman roads, forts, and legionnaires.  This is followed after Roman withdrawal by the phase of Anglo-Saxon invasion and domination, followed by the phase of Viking raids and conquest (the Anglo-Saxons become defenders rather than attackers), followed by the clash of Kings where we have additional reinforcements and cavalry, four phases for a 4 to 5 hour game.

In traditional Risk the phasing is provided by the increase in the number of armies received for turn-in of territory card sets.  If you ever play Risk with a low repeating number of armies for card sets, such as 4-6-8-4-6-8, you'll find that it stays in one phase for a very long time.  There is less randomness this way, but there is little momentum toward completion.  The ever-increasing number of armies received for card sets in the standard (pre-2008) rules provides the momentum to complete the game, although it can still take quite a while.  In the 2008 redesign of Risk using mission cards, completion of missions provides the momentum toward completion.  I don’t know whether the new style game has many phases or not.

Even a game as poorly-designed as Monopoly has phases.  The initial phase is the slow acquisition of properties (slow even when the correct rules, auction when a player chooses not to buy at list price, are used).  When players begin to get monopolies they move into the next phase, building houses and ultimately hotels.  The last phase is a lot of dice rolling to see who lands on whose built-up properties without being able to pay the piper.

The bottom-of-the-game-design-barrel social network games on Facebook can have phases, in fact phases are important to avoid the extremes of tedious repetition.  As players progress in Farmville they can expand their farm, automate it, change their principle crops (or animals, or orchards) as new ones are “unlocked”, and so forth.  This provides a feeling of movement and progress in what is essentially a mass-market “game”, working within the rules complexity limits of mass-market games.

Episodic games
Some games don’t have phases, but are episodic.  You play several times rather than just once, sometimes with “best two out of three” determining the winner, sometimes with more complex scoring.  Video fighting games tend to be of this type, but many traditional 52-card games are the most obvious example.

Typically, these card games do not have phases.  You play a hand, the hand is completed, you play another hand, that hand is completed, and so forth, with the game reset to its beginning situation each time, except for the score.  In some cases you maintain an accumulating score (or as in poker an amount of chips that varies from player to player).  In many cases what happens in previous hands does not affect what happens in later hands.  In other cases such as Bridge and poker what has gone before affects each hand, whether through the points and vulnerabilities of Bridge or through the amount of chips/money each player has accumulated (or lost) in poker. Of course, in all of these games players can learn about how others play, and that can affect their own play as time passes.

Flow and learning
Mihaly Csikszentmikalyi’s concept of “the Flow” has been adopted by many (e.g. Raph Koster) as a model for games.  (See my explanation in "Why We Play" http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/625/why_we_.php .).   Ideally, a game should become more difficult as players become better at it.

Koster talks about games as learning in a safe environment.  Phases mean there’s more to learn in the game.  If the phases don’t involve rules changes, all the better, the learning is about how to play well, not about how to deal with new mechanisms of the game.  Phases don’t necessarily mean the game becomes harder to play well, but they may still contribute to “the Flow”.

Repetition
Virtually all games involve repetition, whether it's repetition of turns or something else.  The question is whether this repetition can be conducted in varying circumstances which amount to different phases.  You can play two rounds with exactly the same rules, yet the results from the first round mean that what goes on in the minds of the players in the second round is rather different.  This is most likely to be seen in Eurostyle games with a limited number of rounds in which a lot can happen.

If one round can be, in terms of rules, just like the preceding one, but owing to changes in circumstances it feels different to the players, you’ve effectively increased the variety of the game.  And for 21st century gamers, variety is very much “the spice of life.”

Once again, the phase difference is in the mind of the player, and as such it is not something that we can define rigidly.  But it usually means that the short-term objective(s) of the players have changed from one phase to the next.

Other reasons for phases
Another reason to have phases in a game design is to mitigate the uncatchable-leader problem.  If, after half a game, the player who leads will almost always win, why play the rest of the game?  If the game has distinct phases with different gameplay, that can help other players overtake the leader.

Here’s a final, subtle, reason why phases are important.  Designers are in some danger of having game fans treat games the way some basketball “fans” treat basketball.  These fans only watch the end of a basketball game because they feel that what goes before doesn’t matter to the outcome.  They don't recognize that there are phases and variations in basketball that are as interesting as the results.  They're only interested in the destination, not in the journey.  We see this in video game players who find cheat codes, play only the end of a game, and then say they “beat the game”.  Phases help make the journey more interesting, for those willing to experience it.



The point, for game designers, is to find ways to vary their games so that phases, significant changes in what happens in the minds of the player(s), occur.  This is likely to make the game more appealing, and more long-lasting.  Fortunately, if you're designing a game that lasts more than half an hour or so, it may naturally fall into phases as you work on its other aspects.

In a few days I’ll briefly discuss whether the proverbial "three act structure" that is so often ascribed to films, plays, and novels, is typical in games. 

Several years ago I tried to find out as much as I could about the effect on sales of tabletop games when an online version was available for play.  My conclusion was that not many people were likely to pay for the privilege of playing a tabletop game online, so any commercial advantage would come from the publicity and the ability to “try the online version before you buy” to improve sales of the tabletop version.  I have several games myself that I would like to see playable online as a way to generate interest that might help me find a publisher when I get to that point, but I’m not enough of a programmer myself to make such versions.  See BGG discussion and my blog post.
 
Curtis Lacy of globalgamespace.com has proposed a solution for this and for people who want to find playtesters online for their tabletop games.  He wants to create a program that makes it easy for nonprogrammers to create online games, whether for playtesting or for publicity purposes, or both.

Curtis devised a list of 29 (later expanded the 60) functions that would be required in his software, and explained many of them in interesting videos.  I’m sure he has received further suggestions since then.  These videos are available at globalgamespace.com.

Curtis lists many existing programs (“prior art”) that can provide some of the features he has in mind, program such as VASSAL and Magic Set Editor.  His plan seems to be more comprehensive than any of these programs that I have looked at.

The list of 60 features alone will be interesting to game designers and those interested in the theory of what games are and how they work.

Curtis has reached the point of a Kickstarter campaign to raise money so that he can spend his time creating the full software.  (You’ll see from his videos that he already has mockups.)  The software will be released under a “fairly permissive license” which Curtis calls a modified MIT license, details linked at the Kickstarter site.

I have never supported a Kickstarter campaign, but this is the kind of thing that could be very worthwhile.  It is not a product that’s going to be created through the commercial world because, as I’ve said, there doesn’t seem to be much money in online play of tabletop games in and of itself.