I work in the video game industry. I play video games. (Probably too much.) I enjoy seeing other people have fun with video games. (The brand new family Wii is a great source of fun for the sideline jockeys like me.) I believe that video games have vast potential in storytelling, education, and plain old fun.
Yet, I have a decidedly strong retro streak in me. One of my favorite games of all time is a little tabletop shuffleboard game. (I’ve not played it in years, but so maybe it’s the nostalgia factor speaking, but I love that game.) There’s just something wonderful about a tactile experience in gaming. I love pinball games. I love board games. I love card games. I love volleyball.
There is much that video game designers can learn from other games.
My family has a long standing tradition of playing Rage, and we’ve introduced several other people to it. It’s an awesome party game for “grown ups” who like to have fun but can’t get down and play Candyland. Rook is awesome as well, but I’ve not found many people to play that lately. Magic the Gathering is full of zany ideas and superb game design… and is fun to play, even though I almost never play it any more. My family gave me the Monopoly card game for my birthday, and the Clue card game for Christmas. The Clue one is just as much fun as the board game, and the Monopoly one is worlds better than the board game.
When I designed and prototyped a game, it was a card game. (Though, it isn’t quite like any of those mentioned, owing more to Triple Triad than trick taking.) I still want to publish that game, and make a computer variant of it. Someday.
My wife and I also love Settlers of Catan. We have a variant called Settlers of Canaan, that is just as fun. We got a pirate board game for Christmas that we haven’t tried yet, but are looking forward to.
I appreciate good game design in all formats, even (and especially) looking at how children spontaneously construct games and rules. To me, both the playing and the inevitable study of game design that I do add up to great mental exercise for me. I own Brain Age 1 and 2, largely because I love to keep my mind agile and functioning. (Yes, that could be argued by some, but that’s the way I see it, and this is my blog, so that’s how I present it. Neener neener.) Puzzles of the Mindtrap sort are like mental candy to me.
…maybe that’s why I love Puzzle Pirates so much. It’s certainly why I love digging into game design. I want to learn how and why things work. That’s often as much fun to me as actually playing the game. I can spend hours designing my Tactics opus, having just as much fun as playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
I never did get into tabletop gaming, though I’ve studied Battletech. I’m the sort of geek who would love building a landscape and measuring firing ranges, but I just don’t have the time or money to pick it up. Still, I think that the best of those games offer a lot of great design.
So what? Well, this is just me musing, mostly. It’s a peek into what makes me tick, and why I write so much about game design. (And tangentially, why I’m interested in economics and how they work; it’s a grand puzzle that I try to distill into functional rules of thumb to keep my family alive.)
Beyond that, though, I’ve always believed that the best storytellers are “Renaissance men”; those with a wide range of interests and aptitudes. I firmly believe the same thing applies to the best game designers. Any Cro-magnon cube jockey can come up with the latest and greatest lowest common denominator piece of gaming offal. It takes someone unique to come up with something like Shadow of the Colossus or even Puzzle Quest.
I wish the game industry would aim higher and embrace education and the potential of the genre, instead of cashing in on the GTA junkies. The industry as a whole is too insular and inbred, well deserving of the caricature of a bunch of post-adolescent males who never mentally or emotionally advanced past the perverted teenage stage.
Looking to the distilled game design of a solid board game or card game can bring the focus of a designer back to the things that make games fun. Simple and clean design is often the key to giving players a great experience… and to making money. The simple joys of a childlike mind and sense of fun are much more important to capture than the childishness of the latest “Mature” rated game.
You mentioned BattleTech, while I disliked the latest tabletop series “Dark Age” because of the storyline, I prefered the classic BattleTech novels (some are real gems) a lot, they introduced some nice features:
http://www.tellurian.de/blog/media/MWAN_3.jpg
It is hard to see, but the base also serves to show hitpoints and heat ratios and stuff like that, making pen and paper obsolete. A really good idea!
Lately I have seen mechs painted in colorful and highly detailed patterns, not handmade, but by default from the factory. Some people like to paint their miniatures, but mine always looked… hum…^^.
I barely have the time for tabletop gaming and not many fans interested, but if I ever have children, I will buy them tons of little mechs!
I used to play battletech. It was an absolute blast. Played a lot of PnP games as well, but was never big into D&D (I know, for shame!) – I have always been a Sci-Fi guy. Played Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Rifts, Star Wars.. what makes Battletech shine among those is that it is less roleplaying and more strategic and tactical battle planning.
It has been years, but very fond memories. I didn’t get into the pc gaming series too much – I always hoped for a straight port of the tabletop game that you could play online (as it is near impossible to get together with likeminded people these days).
Interesting that you write all of this because it is the main inspiration for me to turn my little dice game into a program. The game is just tons of fun and the challenge for me is getting the same spirit of the game into program form. Part of what makes the game fun is the interaction between players – the same thing that makes most board/card games fun – that is hard to capture on a computer screen.
The system is against that sort of fun – as you mentioned – blockbuster titles always follow certain formulas. The good news is when many stray from that formula they do get widespread praise (when done right) – the bad news is that most of them have to put out their titles with small support and budgets (meaning lower quality graphics, etc. for the most part), which doesn’t expose the game to the mainstream. Because it isn’t exposed fully to the mainstream gamer, more games like those aren’t built with big EA/Activision budgets.
I think the Lion King called it the “Circle of profits”, or something like that.
I loved Battletech. I still have a folder full of my old ‘mech designs squirreled away so that my competitors won’t find it and won’t be privy to the awesomeness of my forces. I liked Mechwarrior (the computer game) as well, though I’ve enjoyed the later (and more divergent from the Battletech mechanics) versions less.
I remember once, years ago, my Dad deployed a Yellow Jacket helicopter that landed a lucky head hit on my 85 ton ‘mech from across the map with a gauss rifle as the opening shot of the game. Grrr…
Still, there’s nothing like sitting down at a big table and putting down the maps and spending an evening flanking, falling back, jump jetting and blasting the hell out of everyone else.
My first exposure to Battletech was MechWarrior 2 on the PC. Since then, I’ve played several video games in the universe. I loved MechCommander and MC2, for instance, and even chased down “BattleTech – The Crescent Hawks Inception” and had fun with that, and I still have hundreds of cards for the CCG, which was a lot of fun. I just never picked up the tabletop game; I didn’t know anyone to play with. I did spend hours poring over the perfect Timberwolf design, given the constraints of MW2, and started to cross reference it with the official handbooks from the era (when I could find the information free online), so it’s definitely the sort of stuff that I love playing with.
I’ve even adopted the hex grid for the game designs I do. So much of Battletech scratches the game design and play itches that I have, that I really should pick up the “core” game… but I still don’t know anyone to play with. My wife would probably be game, at least for a battle or two, but with a toddler and a four-month old, it’s not likely to be something we do any time soon. *shrug*
Have you tried many “casual” games? I’ve got a yearlong subscription to shockwave.com, and it lets me download a ton of different casual games. There are quite a few that are fun & light, and completely different from the rather intense MMO’s that I probably spend the most time playing.