Other Wise

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Commentary and processes of J C Lawrence: systems architect, contrarian, theorist, sailor, hacker, virtual world designer, linux-user, aquarist, disquisitor, cat breeder, raconteur, game designer, ludophile, bibliophile, numismatist, speculator and theologiser

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Playtest feedback systems

There has been some delay since I opened Muck & Brass to external playtesting. The delay is because I’ve been thinking about how I’d like to receive and collect feedback.

Historically I’ve used a mixture of email and BoardGameGeek geekmail. That worked fairly well but was also less interactive than I would have liked. In particular the feedback was always private (I’d prefer public feedback) and there was never any cross-discussion among the different groups (a side effect of privacy). (I think) I’d like a more facile system which not only more easily supported discussion between playing groups as well as between the groups and me, but also allows photographs and other non-textual elements to (more) easily accompany the discussion.

There is also the very small question of how to distribute the game files in the first place. The rules, shares and tracks sheet are already freely available. All that’s left is the map image. I’d like to know where the files are going and to track who has them. I can’t do that perfectly of course, but I’d like at least a good notion.

Email works well except for the privacy problem already noted. For large photo or movie sets which were clumsy to send via email1, I’ve provided an FTP site where they could upload the images and then reference the upload in their email. That worked well but the disconnect between the email and the FTP upload was occasionally jarring. I’m a habitual IRC user and am on #bgdf_chat pretty much 24/7/365. IRC is great for discussion and could be used for the file distributions via DCC SENDs, but it has concurrency and ephemeracy problems. I’m likely to have playtest groups scattered about and would like them to be able to communicate to me and each other asynchronously and IRC just doesn’t do that. Another option is to use the comment system built into this blog (Wordpress). Groups would post their feedback as comments. This Wordpress installation currently doesn’t support attachments to comments, so media components would still have to posted via FTP and I’d have to come in later to attach them more directly to the blog. We could also create a game entry for Muck & Brass on BoardGameGeek and have the reports posted there as standard session reports. That seems like an abuse of the system to me but others clearly have different views on that area. BoardgameGeek session reports also don’t come for free as supporting images couldn’t go through moderation, thus requiring them to be either hosted off-site or in contributor’s individual galleries, both of which solutions have their own ephemeracy problems. Movies and other media forms are also not supported by BoardGameGeek unless hosted off-site (YouTube et al), introducing yet other dependencies and problems.

I suspect there is no good easy answer, but I’m still thinking about it. I suspect I’m going to end up doing all of the above while encouraging the combination of this blog and #bgdf_chat as the default venues, the FTP site being used for asynchronous media. Perhaps.

Footnotes
  1. I’ve had groups sending turn-by-turn pictures of their entire games or even movies of several turns or some of the debates or discussions among the players which happened during or as a result of the game (both were highly appreciated) ↩

Limits of expression

I posted the following on BoardGameGeek and was a little surprised in retrospect at its truth:

I suspect that ultimately I will have designed one game, just one game, but it will be a game which has expressed itself in multiple published games, each one a different view onto that one core ur-game. That’s fine. My game design and development activities circle that ur-game, poking at it, extracting and applying ideas, working out various expressions of that ur-game in various splinter games. Some work out, some fail and whither, some meld back into the ur-game and disappear waiting for a more suitable splinter, and that’s all pretty much what I expect of the progression.

Tricky climb

An odd idea, not yet fully enfranchised into a game. Consider a (relatively standard) climbing game, perhaps along the lines of Mu, however rather than players playing cards in sets they would iteratively play them one at a time until everyone passes1. The key element would be that rather than a player’s played cards forming the sets within themselves, they would instead form sets within the space of all cards played for that “trick”. For instance:

  1. PlayerA: Leads an Ace.
  2. PlayerB: Follows with another Ace and is therefore winning with two Aces.
  3. PlayerC: Follows with an 8.
  4. PlayerD: Follows with a pair of 8s and is therefore winning with three 8s. …etc.

Problem:

Initial thoughts:

Footnotes
  1. Somewhat similar to Mu’s bidding round. ↩
  2. Echoes of Mu’s bidding again. ↩

Incontinental gap

Friend: Which is more important: that a game be interesting or fun?

Me, in instant response: Interesting of course!

Friend: Well there’s the problem.

Me: Oh.

Peeling player onions

Attempting a taxonomy of player interaction along a scale of increasingly personal relations:

Absent interaction

The simplest form: there is simply nothing the players can do to affect each other and thus no form of profitable reaction to another player’s choice or inversely, prompt a player to change course in reaction to your choice. Games absent interaction are the poster children for Multi-Player Solitaire.

Recognition interaction

There’s no requirement for understanding or predicting the other players, merely recognition that they exist and have potentials that may affect the results of your game. Dominion (usually) falls in this camp (there are small exceptions). Knowledge of the specifics of the other players is rarely if ever useful, but an overview of the gestalt of all the other players en masse is useful. Do any of them have any of XYZ cards? What is the rate of consumption of the QRS card stack across all players? The answers to such questions can profitably inform play choices.

Predictive interaction

Ahh, the first tremblings of mutual-perception! The question isn’t what effects a player may enforce on another, but rather how correct choice-prediction (and thus correct counter-counter-counter-counter–ad-infinitum-choice-prediction) may be translated into an advantage. The classic recent case is Race for the Galaxy; a game in which there are significant efficiency gains for drafting on other player’s choices. Predictive interaction is a slippery beast as it has a strong harmonic in Personal Interaction and a weaker harmonic in Personal Direct Interaction.(see below).

Direct interaction

Players intimately affect each other, contructively, obstructively and destructively. They may help each other’s success, obstruct success, or directly destroy or foul each other’s success. I sank your battleship! The effects can range from the relatively subtle taking of a limited resource another had planned on taking themselves (eg roles in Puerto Rico, actions in Age of Steam, station markers or track tiles in the 18XX) to the very direct destruction or removal of player value (eg stock trashing and loot’n'dump in the 18XX, conquest and possible elimination in Risk, dumping a high point pain card on an opponent in Sticheln, or almost any player-interaction in Diplomacy).

Direct interaction can be sub-divided into Impersonal and Personal types

Personal Direct Interaction is the targeted subset of Direct Interaction and a weak harmonic of Predictive Interaction (due to the requirement of accurate player incentive/value prediction in foiling player’s personal success). The qualifier is that the subject is explicitly and deliberately targeted. Something isn’t done to all players or to any random player, but specifically to specific player with deliberate (ill) intent for that specific player’s success. Settlers of Catan’s monopoly card card (all other players give the player all their resources of a given type) and calling time in Galaxy Trucker are usually Impersonal Direct Interaction as they are indiscriminate effects. In contrast encouraging a large bribe in Intrigue and then reneging on the implied or promised deal, building walls in another player’s presumed territory, using “their” resources” to cut them off from “their” buildings, or simply conquering a player’s temples and territory and annihilating their military and conquering their territory in Antike is Personal Direct Interaction.

Personal interaction

The return of subtlety. Here the ticket isn’t to recognise or even so much to predict, but to comprehend the player(s) intimately. The challenge is to not only predict their immediate choices, but their patterns, their strengths and weaknesses as players, their intersection of character and individuality with the game and by the advantage of exploiting that intimate and intensely subjective comprehension, to beat them. Personal Interaction is a strong harmonic of both Predictive Interaction and Personal Direct Interaction (see above).

Observations

It is worth noting that the above divisions aren’t quite linear or evenly spaced along the not-quite-a-scale. That’s a problem with the soft-sciences: straight lines aren’t. Most noticeably Personal Interaction is variously orthogonal to both forms of Direct Interaction and the line between Subjective Interaction and Direct Interaction isn’t quite straight through Predictive Interaction.

Apocryphally, women as a gender are commonly said to dislike the destructive sides of Direct Interaction. I’ve not noticed that gender bias but several of the players I commonly play with (mostly male FWVLIW) share that trait: they are only interested in constructive positive-sum games. Additionally different players have various detection and preference ranges for the interaction levels they prefer. While I can detect the inter-player interaction among players of Race for the Galaxy it is too diffuse and impersonal to appeal to me. Similarly Impersonal Direct Interaction has little appeal for me. In contrast one of the chaps I play with1 simply isn’t comfortable with any form of Personal Direct Interaction where-as another chap pooh-poohs and avoids anything which doesn’t operate at the deepest level of Personal Interaction.

Footnotes
  1. Names withheld to protect the guilty (of course) ↩

On top of old crikey

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