American Style Board Games
Board games. A social endeavor that many children encounter as some of their first games. They can be used to learn colors and counting and even just social skills. But as with many other kinds of games, there are the good, the bad and the ugly. Today I will discuss 5 of the classics from the “adult” category : Scrabble, Monopoly, Yahtzee, The Game of Life, and Sorry. When I say adult here, I mean not a game meant for preschoolers. Also, this Best of the Best will be a two parter. To find out which is truly the best of these 5, tune in Wednesday of next week.
Scrabble
First up, Scrabble. Scrabble is based on the idea of crossword puzzles, where you have words connected to other words in a grid pattern. The major difference is that instead of being given clues about the word, you just have letters and have to come up with the best word out of those letters that you can. So I suppose its more like a Fill-In puzzle without a word bank. Either way, each letter has a point value and certain squares on the board have bonuses to points. Scrabble is a great game for practicing spelling and really rewards people who know obscure words, especially if it has an X or a Z. The one major downside is that this tends to result in the adult players scoring way, way more points than the kids unless the kids have excellent vocabularies.
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An american-style/ameritrash board game is one focused on drama and excitement in gameplay. Major ways that this is accomplished is through employing game elements such as the use of heavy themes, luck, player conflict, detailed miniatures, player elimination, etc. Playing the Game. Whether you are recreating the Cold War or playing through the War of 1812, there is a board game for every interest. You can refight Jutland, or recreate Trafalgar with your ships spread across the table. Let your dice rule the map as you take the battle to your foe.
I’m a fan of Scrabble. The rules are simple and it rewards the player for being smart and creative. There’s a strategy to it and while there’s randomness to what letters you have, there is also a lot of skill involved. Scrabble gets a 4.5 out of 5 hearts.
Monopoly
Monopoly. How to explain my feelings towards Monopoly. We own something to the tune of six different versions of the game at my house, most of which date from when I was in elementary school or prior. I can’t really remember a game of Monopoly that didn’t end with flipped tables and tears, unless it was being played by my parents and grandparents. Even then, it got competitive to a terrifying level. The story of Monopoly is that you’re a real estate tycoon in the twenties (Read as landlord scumbag) and you’re trying to get a monopoly by putting the other players out of business. If you’re playing by the actual rules of Monopoly, there’s no trading and the items belonging to a player who has declared bankruptcy go up for auction. Monopoly is one of the most house-ruled games in existence.
You can probably guess that I think rather poorly of Monopoly. If there is one thing that the game really has going for it, it has to be that there is just so much history, so many people learn to play Monopoly as one of the first games they encounter. For that, it ends up getting 2.5 out of 5 hearts.
In a previous post I touched on some differences between so-called “European style” board games and “American style” board games. There are some fascinating differences between the two genres and although I will try to be as objective as possible in this analysis, I will tell you now that I find the European style to encompass much better design choices in almost every respect.
Let’s take a few games to exemplify the genres. We will pick what are probably the two most popular classic American board games to represent “American style”: Risk and Monopoly. For “European style” we will consider Settlers of Catan and Imperial (two games featured previously on this blog).
So let us begin. One of the most prominent mechanics inherent to European games is that players are never thrown out of the game before it ends. Anyone who has played Monopoly enough has experienced the irritation of being the first player to go bankrupt. It could be hours before the game is over and you can reunite with your friends, so your best bet is to go cry alone in the corner while you wait. The same argument can be made for Risk: someone is bound to be eliminated sooner or later and stuck twiddling their thumbs while the rest of the game grinds to an end. THIS IS BAD DESIGN. The point of a game is to have fun, not alienate your friends. If 30-40% of the man hours put into the game is spent doing nothing, then we have some serious design issues. Settlers of Catan and Imperial, on the other hand, have absolutely no mechanic for ejecting a player (in fact if a player leaves for any reason it will seriously upset the game balance). This guarantees that all of your buddies will be hanging in to the bitter end and will all, technically, have a chance at victory. Now doesn’t that sound like more fun?
Now it’s time for a crash course in feedback systems. A feedback system is any system that can influence itself. The classic example is a thermostat system. When a room gets too hot, the thermostat senses it and controls the flow of cold air into the room. When the room gets too cold, the thermostat sends a flow of hot air. The net result is a room that is always nice and comfortable. This particular system is a negative feedback system because when the system strays too far from one state (too hot or too cold) it is pushed back toward the other state. As you can see, negative feedback systems are inherently very stable. The room cannot get too hot or too cold. Imagine now the analogous positive feedback system: the hotter the room gets the more hot air is pumped in, and the colder it gets the more cold air is pumped in. Obviously this makes no sense. It’s an extremely unstable system that will have you spontaneously combusting or freezing to death in a matter of minutes. Positive feedback systems are always unstable.
Ok let’s apply the concept of feedback to our games. Monopoly is a great example of positive feedback (as is capitalism in general). The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The problem with this in Monopoly is whoever gets an early lead is more likely to have more money to weather disaster and invest more. This leads to more money from more investments, which leads to more money, etc. If you fall behind early on, you’re pretty much screwed by the opposite reasoning. Again, the same model applies to Risk. If you get an early lead on owning a whole continent or two, you will have more units than your opponents which you can use to capture even more territory and get even more units. THIS IS BAD DESIGN. Basically, this mechanic imposes winners and losers on the game right from the very beginning. The winners are usually going to be someone who has been winning the whole time. Hopelessness is not enjoyable.
American Style Board Games Download
American Style Board Games Ideas
European games, on the other hand, tend to impose negative feedback. That is, the further ahead a player gets the harder it is for them to stay ahead. In Settlers, not only does the winning player face discrimination and even trade embargoes from other players, but they will also likely be the one consistenly dealing with the robber, and losing cards when 7’s are rolled. In Imperial, the better your country is the more attractive it will be for other players to steal it from you. In fact, the winning player is going to be the one in constant fear of losing his winning status. Negative feedback is extremely important in any game system because it keeps outcomes upredictable and keeps all players engaged in the game.
American Style Board Games
There are many other factors at work here, but these two are the big ones. complete participation and negative feedback are the biggest identifiers of a European game over an American game. They are two obvious choices for a better design and ultimately produce better games. It’s a shame that most americans have grown up knowing little more than Risk and Monopoly, and tend to write off board games as a feasible form of entertainment as they get older. I can’t say I blame them, I mean after all, these are goddamned terrible games.