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Apparently my review was a little unclear on this point, but I find James Ernest’s Give me the Brain! to be a really fun card game, with a unique central mechanic that makes it feel like a non-digital version of rugby. With fast food. And zombies. It’s worth playing. You should play it.

I’m going to be rolling out a whole slew of reviews of Cheapass Games for Off the Grid, and I’m wondering if it might be prudent to implement a scoring system for my reviews. Part of me wants to create a simple “yes” or “no” system, referring to whether people should or shouldn’t bother to play the games. Another part of me really detests scoring systems, and wants to subvert the whole mess with a oblique scoring system that changes its vocabulary on a weekly basis.

At the moment, I’m leaning toward the latter. So I give Give me the Brain! 3 gold stars. Shaped like brains.

» photo from ravsitar on Flickr. Thanks!

So, that’s over. Good four years, though. Went in fancying myself a writer; came out fancying myself a game designer. In between, lots of missteps, parties, classes. Beautiful scenery. Bard really was a place to think. I did a lot of thinking there.

Next step? Summer in New York City. Try and find clever ways to publish non-digital games. Design more. Write more. Learn to cook.

One of the reasons it’s been a particularly game-centric semester for me is that I’ve been preparing for Bard’s second annual Tech/Action conference, which this year was themed “Games, Simulation, Conflict.” The conference lasted two days, with activities on the first day and lectures and presentations on the second.

The “big deal” of the conference was the inclusion of Buckminster Fuller’s The World Game, a large-scale simulation of global economy originally designed for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. Now referred to as the “O.S. Earth Global Simulation Workshop,” the game has become a educational/team-building tool brought to schools and corporate retreats across the United States. There’s a lot I could say about The World Game, but I’ll summarize by calling it a weak game, and an underwhelming simulation. The data used was ten years old, and the game’s odd bartering mechanic, and emphasis on wealth, made it unclear what differentiated an impoverished country from a human interest organization.

On the second day of the conference, a number of speakers talked on topics relating to simulation, games, and conflict. Bard’s own Gautham Sethi talked about Game Theory (which I still don’t entirely understand). Kathleen Ruiz spoke on the role of empathy in games, with examples from her own work (including the beautiful, quest-oriented “Stunt Dummies”). McKenzie Wark discussed his book Gamer Theory (which I recently reviewed).

Eddo Stern introduced us to Darkgame, an in-development title based on sensory deprivation. Bonnie Ruberg asked “Are Conflicts Sexy?” and presented her argument with numerous examples. Ed Halter spoke briefly on various Muslim games, and their relationship to American war games. Finally, Alex Galloway gave an interesting talk on Guy Debord’s Kriegspiel, and his own work to restore the strategy game and develop a fully playable, digital iteration.

I also presented at the conference, doing a short, ten-minute presentation about the role of conflict in game design. A slightly modified version of the slides is available here in PDF format for anyone interested. All in all, the conference was an interesting experience, and a great opportunity to meet a lot of people who are seriously thinking about games.

Also, I’m graduating next week. More on that later.

Proper noun, mind you. I’m talking about game designer James Ernest and his Seattle-based crew of non-digital developers. I fell in love with Kill Doctor Lucky last year, and I’m just now starting to review more Cheapass Games for Off the Grid starting with three of the company’s Hip Pocket Games, which are lovingly distributed in ziploc bags like so many drugs. It’s a valid comparison.

I’m a big fan of Ernest’s approach to game design. Zimmerman and Salen commissioned him to design a game for Rules of Play, and he came up with a playing-card game about magicians called Caribbean Star. Here’s what he had to say about his process:

Whereas some game designers prefer to create a game mechanic first and then adapt that mechanic to an appropriate theme, I prefer to start with a theme whenever possible. This gives me more creative ideas when trying to invent game mechanics, and it makes for a game whose mechanics seem better suited to the theme. When a storyline gets added after the game is designed, you can really tell, especially when a play that seems reasonable in the storyline is not allowed in the game.

How awesome is that? What’s more awesome is that the inverse is also true: design a game whose storyline supports the mechanics, and you can create definite “aha!” moments for players, as well as assist in the understanding of the rules. Ernest’s games have been very influential for me, as have his instructions for those games. It goes without saying that I would love to work at a place like Cheapass. If I was planning on being in Seattle for the summer, you’d better believe I’d be knocking on his door (in a friendly way, not in a stalker-y way).

More Cheapass games are enroute to me now. I’m looking forward to playing them.

At least, this is the conclusion I reach in my review of McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory, published as part of my Off the Grid column on Joystiq. Wark developed the hypertext version of Gamer Theory first, later including the first round’s comments and criticisms into a print-based version published by Harvard University Press. In tandem with the dead-tree issuing, he also introduced Gamer Theory Version 2.0, which re-opens the commenting system for the digital text.

The result of this dual-publication is the inevitable comparison between the two mediums. In my opinion, hypertext clearly comes out on top. The text is made stronger by its original format, and the accompanying commentary serves the text better when offered simultaneously, rather than being pushed to an endnotes section.

Arguably, however, the hypertext version is stronger because the content was originally conceived as hypertext. And Wark has already commented on my review, stating that “are supposed to be different reading experiences. The former stresses the role of the comments more while the later ‘hides’ them a bit to produce a more linear reading feel.”

Still, I do wish that Wark experimented more with the print medium, rather than intentionally working within convention. His decision though. Wark’s (hopefully) coming to Bard toward the end of the month for a small conference on games and conflict. I look forward to meeting him.

Also, the senior project is done. I plan on posting some of the material on my site in due time. I’ve already looked into installing MediaWiki, and my host doesn’t support it (yet).

Here’s something I’d like to add to this site, once my Bard senior project is good and done: The Scottypedia.

What is the Scottypedia? Well, to explain it best, here’s a quote from me:

The Scottypedia is a MediaWiki encyclopedic website, in the style of Wikipedia, and editable only by me, Scott Jon Siegel. Rather than articles being objective, they will instead be entirely subjective, based solely on my opinion of various topics, such as games, music, television, technology, and family and friends.

There you have it. On a more intellectual level, the project would an undertaking in a personalized encyclopedia, a unique method of recording and presenting biographical information about me on the internet. On a less intellectual level, it’s a totally self-important, egotistical endeavor, which will likely never get off the ground due to (oh, I don’t know…) minor technical issues with getting MediaWiki to run on the server.

Has this been done before? Probably. Will I do it this time? Maybe. Either way, I’ll keep you posted. Back to sproj I go.

My review of Fluxx is up today at Joystiq, as part of my column. Fluxx is a fun party/family game, and I talk about it being a rules-focused game. But is it about rules?

Arguably, the central mechanic of Fluxx isn’t a player’s ability to twist the rules and set new goals, but instead the creation of clever pairs of Keeper cards. The vast majority of “Goal” cards are about the player who has both The Milk and Cookie keepers, or the player with both War and Death keepers. The augmenting of the rules certainly makes the play experience more interesting, but it’s the Keeper card mechanic that grounds the entire game, and Keepers are the only cards that aren’t about creating exceptions to the initial, simplistic starter rules.

Just something to chew on: what would a game that’s truly about rules look like? Maybe Nomic, or 1000 Blank White Cards. What other games could be made?

This desperately needs to be the topic of a GDC session. It doesn’t apply to most digital games, but it’s indispensable in analog game design, and a valuable communication skill in general.

The rules of a game are the most important aspect to convey to a player. In non-digital games, if the rules are not understood, the game can not be played.

It’s important to write rules that leave no stone unturned; a player shouldn’t be questioning what something means, or unsure of how to interpret something (unless, of course, the ambiguity is intended). At the same time, brevity is key, and no player wants to read a tome every time they play a new game. The writing — the designing — of the rules is as crucial to the play experience as the design of the game itself.

I’ve been writing a lot of rules lately, interspersed with some digital design docs that will probably go nowhere. Regardless, the intersection of the two has given me some new insight into the creative process. Here are a few tips for writing clear, cohesive rules.

1. Flavor first: If the game has a narrative tying the mechanics together, make that narrative clear immediately. The metaphors will be helpful in explaining and justifying the game’s logic and mechanics.
2. Get the boring stuff out of the way: List the materials needed for the game next, followed by any pre-game instructions for setting up. If it gets wordy or over-complicated, slim it down and add an illustration or two to help explain.
3. Begin with the end: The first rule you should give the players is the winning condition of the game. Tell them what their objective is. From a logical standpoint, all the other rules serve the winning condition, and will make more sense when described with regards to it. It also makes it easier for players to find when they forget how to win.
4. Go from general to specific: Think of it like newspaper journalism, or an inverted pyramid. After the objective, describe the broad, overarching rules before describing the instances and exceptions. If it’s Mille Bornes, explain placing mile cards before you explain the hazards and remedies, explain the hazards and remedies before you explain the safety cards, and explain the safety cards before you explain the coup fourré‘s. Another way of saying this would be to explain the things that happen most often in a game first, and the things least likely to happen in a game last.
5. Tell players what they can do, before telling them what they can’t: Somewhat related to the previous point, you should always explain the least constricting rules before explaining the most constricting. Rules explained earlier therefore become the primary rules, and the rules following are the instances and exceptions where the primary rules change or don’t apply.

In addition to these rules, remember to use short sentences with low-level vocabulary. When necessary, use illustrations (sometimes nothing beats a good drawing).

White space is also crucial. A page full of text looks intimidating. Use bullet points and short paragraphs to keep the reader/player from getting overwhelmed.

Finally, don’t be afraid to be friendly! Unless it’s entirely antithetical to the style of your game, use a light-hearted tone with your rules. I’m slowly learning that seriousness isn’t exactly a staple of this industry. When the purpose of a product is to be fun, then describing it should be fun as well.

I wanted my latest column for Off the Grid to be under 1,000 words, and I succeeded. Like, by a lot. At a hair under 400, it’s the shortest column I’ve written yet. There’s something to be said for brevity (I say this as I’m worrying about my senior project being too short).

RoboRally is Richard Garfield’s board game that he created after conceptualizing Magic: The Gathering, tried to sell to Wizards of the Coast before pitching Magic, but didn’t get published until a year after Magic got published. <-- [note to self: crappiest sentence I've ever written. I'll let it slide this time, but Never Again.] Confusing, I know.

It’s a really fun game experience, designed for up to eight people but still a blast with only two. RoboRally‘s biggest drawback is its sheer complexity, with dozens of pieces to lose and a complicated but crucial play order to each of the five “registers” in a turn. The complexity is all designed to give the game a more robotic feel, however, and in the end it pays off. Little touches like registers which “lock up” once a robot is sufficiently damaged give the entire game world a stronger sense of unity. And the randomness of drawing movement cards can make for some unusual turns; as I was playing last night, there was one turn where my robot was stuck spinning in circles, with my opponent repeatedly moving onto a conveyor built which kept pushing her right off again. Nothing was accomplished, but it was worth the laugh. Silly robots.

At $50, the game is a bit pricey for most (I managed to get it for 25 at Barnes and Noble), but given the replay value and multiplayer capabilities, it’s as worthwhile an investment as any video game worth the same.

I discovered the hard way that large-scale social games are more difficult to pull off than simple dice games or card games. I intended on debuting Vicious, my cruel and emotional game, at a reading of past contributors to Verse Noire. It didn’t go well. The following are reasons why:

1. The rules were too complicated: There were too many stipulations as to what players could and couldn’t do, and I managed to forget a few of the rules as I was explaining. Everyone got confused, including me.
2. There were too many materials to distribute: Every player needed a name-tag, several sheets of paper to write on, and a writing implement. These materials had to be passed out at the start of the game, which ate up time and gave the players that much more to get confused about.
3. The expected arrangement of the room wasn’t flexible enough: I wanted two teams of equal sizes sitting in circles, with the team-members facing each other. But this was a literary reading event; all the chairs were in rows, facing forward. I could either rearrange the entire layout of the room (taking more time), or I could try and fudge the gameplay based on the actual arrangement. The gameplay depended on the team members being equidistant to each other, and being able to read the name-tags. When I left the arrangement of chairs as it was, the game became virtually unplayable.
4. I didn’t think about time: This was a big one. The game was supposed to last around ten minutes. The rules, however, were far too complex to have the entire game play out in this amount of time. The game would have been much better suited to a longer time-frame.
5. I didn’t playtest: I should have, but it was difficult to gather enough people in order to try out the game (ten players was the absolute minimum designed for). This is no excuse, though. I should never have tried to publicly present a game that wasn’t thoroughly tested.
6. I choked in front of an audience: I got completely stuck when I realized things weren’t working right. Why? Because I didn’t plan out my presentation. I spent so long on the rules and the aesthetics of Vicious that I never bothered to write a script for introducing it. For some people, this might not be an issue, but I discovered that I really can’t ad-lib in a tight situation. Having even an index card with bulleted points would’ve helped immensely.

All-told, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Next time, I’ll have some ideas on how to build a proper social game, with less whining and excuses.