Themes in Games

Dunno whether it's better to post this here or in the other thread, but: Chris Farrell, best board game writer bar none for a decade now, has been talking about this kind of theme, and even this kind of theme as it connects to Lost Cities, since 2008:
Games, Theme, Lord of the Rings, and Lost Cities

This thread is dripping all over me.

Michael Barnes wrote: No no no no no...I'm not combining theme and mechanics, except in instances where the action described is conveying meaning.

Think about this from another angle. What is Moby Dick "about"? Is it about Ahab and the white whale, or is it about obsession? The theme is obsession, not whaling ships, harpoons and sailors.
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But I don't think that undermines what I'm trying to get to...that some games can be "about" something other than what you do and what is shown on the table.

What would the theme be if Ahab killed his whale in the first pages?
What would be the them of Mall of Horror if someone decided to pick a favorite and create a personal goal to make sure that person lived? Or teamed up with someone to survive as long as possible just waiting for the moment to turn?
What would be the theme of the following Crusoe games:
-Game 1: Solo, everything comes up favorable, very little challenge, completes building the wood pile without major issues.
-Game 2: Four players, calamity befalls them every turn, dead by the end of turn five.
-Game 3: Three players, it is touch and go the entire way, a roller-coaster ride with ups and downs, but in the end their hard work, focus and a bit of luck paid off.

Hell, six people all playing the same game could draw six themes out depending on their position in the game and their life experiences.

Despite how the OP may have interpreted my questions posed in the other thread, I am not saying that theme, as defined in this discussion, cannot exist in games. I reject this attempt at redefining "theme" though because of the common usage of the word.

I also reject that a game can be pinned down to a general theme as the interactions from the players with the game as well as with each other creates a different narrative. Take BSG for example, "paranoia" was the theme described, but I'd argue that only applies to the non-cylon players. The Cylon(s) have a different theme that develops which is deception and manipulation. Different themes from the same game from different players.

With theme being a product of the players interacting with the rules and each other discussing theme is no different than five people staring at a 6" slightly misshapen circle on a 24" x 36" slightly off white canvas discussing the theme and meaning behind the piece when in reality the only person that knows is the artist, and he knows its nothing more than an anus.

Chris Farrel is usually right at some level.

Imo theme is about feeling rather than stuff. I can best illustrate this with my experiences of FFGs starwars roleplaying game. My in game experience is being a background no body character committing petty crimes in the starwars universe. Its fine, but its not really starwars. Why? Because starwars for me isn't about wookies and droids, its a family drama/character story that draws in all that nostalgic sugar from the old tales like evil empires, wise old sages etc. To me, stuff does not create a theme or a feeling, it is the flow of the narrative, the type of decisions, the mind set the game puts you into. For instance, in AGOT, when 3 people are trying to merc me as Stannis, I stare at the board and try desperately to find a way out because in know my people will get massacred if i don't. This isn't really a mechanical thing here though. In other games it is. In Netrunner, the way the corps data fortress are laid out and encountered really brings out the Neuromancer source material to me, its a mechanic producing the theme here. I'm not really sure there are hard and fast rules and do think the eye of the beholder does matter. I would consider T&E thematic, but also some games based on card text such as Talisman. But equally there are some euros that just feel dry and abstract and some card text games that just feel contrived. Some stories (simple trashy ones) can run through card text, some epics can be told with tile flipping (broad brush with a deistic distance).

Well, what Barnes call as "theme", I refer to them as dynamics.

Theme is, well, pirates, fantasy, alien, etc. While this may not be accurate, what use would a definition if only you use it?

Dynamics is the actual thing you do in games as combination of multiple mechanics and possibly theme also.

For example, in Call of Duty games, the dynamic is, shoot, hide when wounded, shoot again. In Agricola, it's supply chain/logistic, and blocking if possible. In C&C, it's hand management & tactical formation. In Kingdom Builder, it's s spatial puzzle.

This is something that I've been thinking a lot lately. Most game designers start from mechanics or theme. I'm of opinion that it's much better to start from the dynamics you want. How would you want the action to be? Is it frantic? Methodical? How would players interact each other? For a game about war. Do you want it to emphasize maneuver? Battle of attrition? Chaos?

One of my best friends was having a discussion with me. Some random game design. We love to do this. It's about fantasy races in sci-fi (theme). Then he made the mechanics... activation, combat, AI...

Then I asked about the dynamics. How would he want the game to feel? Is this tactical combat between elite forces? Few vs horde? Do you want attrition (which is like the norm in co-op games)? Or puzzle-like challenges? Or just easy experience game?

It's an interesting concept, starting game design with dynamics.

I've been thinking about a lot of different games in relation to this discussion and I keep coming back to the card game War, which I think might make Barnes' argument for him better than any other game... but I still think he's wrong.

I don't know anything about the history of the game "War" but I'd bet real money it was created by either sailors or prisoners who were too drunk or too tired to play something like Gin and started flipping cards up at one another and came up with the simplest game they possibly could think of. Higher card wins, in the case of a tie, flip another card.

I'd bet it didn't have a name when it was first created, either, but sometime later someone said "hmm, it's kinda like a battle. Get a slight edge in tactics (higher value cards) then slowly wear down your opponent through attrition" and hence, War.

But then I remembered that the "wars" in War only happen when a pair comes up, and I started thinking of War as a political or diplomatic contest where rivals send representatives to the other side. Most times there's a better negotiator and he talks his opponent to his side, but every once in awhile they're so evenly matched the swords come out.

And then I realized, War is pretty thematic, if you want it to be.

But what if War were called... anything else? Does it retain the theme? I'd have to argue it doesn't. If the name of a game ALONE is enough to dictate theme by this definition, then I think the definition is pretty flimsy. Ditto the GIPF games.

For the sake of this post theme refers to the literary sense, setting will refer to theme as commonly used.

As I think about this some more, what is being missed in this entire discussion is the assumed themes associated with a setting. For example, if I were to say that the game was about Moby Dick, then the assumption would be the game would represent obsession to some degree. If I say the game was about zombies, then the assumption is that the game would reflect themes of exhaustion, limited supplies and reliance on one another against long odds.

So, in a way we're coming full circle back to square one where we're asking "Do the mechanics match the setting?" Which in other words means, do the mechanics capture the themes associated with the setting?

Which means I'm starting to reject that the common usage of theme doesn't match the literary theme being discussed.

So yes, the theme of Of Mice and Men isn't migrant workers, but if a game were to use Of Mice and Men as the setting of the game you'd expect the themes in the book to be captured in the game. Otherwise if it didn't then the setting would be unsuccessful.

Now it is possible to take a game like XWing which doesn't focus on the themes of the movies as a whole but focus in on themes of being a pilot in the Rebel or Imperial Navy. And to that degree it is successful in the setting and therefore successful in the themes.

Which means for me when you look at a game and apply the common usage of theme and ask if the mechanics feel connected and representative of the common usage theme then by default the literary themes are successfully captured and represented as well.

Here's another Farrell comment about theme from a BGG thread asking about the theme in Lords of Waterdeep, from just YESTERDAY:
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/16015270#16015270

The beginning is:

These discussions are always difficult because, as gamers, we misuse the word "theme" in a way that is incredibly confusing (I blame David Parlett). Theme is a word with a clear meaning in every other artistic endeavor - visual art, music, literature - that we have redefined to mean something that we can't really clearly explain and is meaningful - to the degree it has meaning, which is not much - only to us. I've really tried to stop using the word outside of its actual meaning.

Farrell is still the man, that guy is by far one of the best commentators about board games there's ever been.

...yet I don't agree with the vast majority of his opinions.