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Do you believe in " game experiences"?
- Erik Twice
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Or is it? What do you think? Do you believe in games that are more of a "experience" or do you think it's an excuse for bad design? And why? What games come to mind?
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Among my games, the closest is probably Talisman.
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- Black Barney
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This discussion might have arisen from your comment about Android in your game recommendation thread. Although Android has a visual similarity to Arkham Horror, the majority of the game does not offer a strong sense of narrative. You move around the city in your flying car to various suspects and crime scenes, but that generally only results in the drawing and placement of evidence tokens. Or you manipulate the conspiracy puzzle, or screw with the personal stories of other players. The only time the game takes on the sense of an experience is with your own character's personal story. But because the relevant card may not show up if your opponents leave you alone, or you personally don't pay much attention to your personal stories. Or maybe you do, but then sometimes irrelevant cards related to a different story come out instead, or your story cards come out in a disjointed way. Either way, your stories may not strongly affect you in a given game, so the experience is not a strong factor. What makes Android more interesting is the wide range of possible actions each turn, the very flexible movement system, and an interesting mix of mechanics implemented in a novel way.
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If I’m playing a game, I want to make meaningful choices and win.
At its ideal something like Sentinels of the Multiverse can be both like when my angel paladin dropped the space warlord’s ship on his head for the win, but far more often it turns into Fluxx and I just do what the game tells me to.
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Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: Mushroom Eaters
This. I totally subscribe to the notion that some fantastic designs out there sit more comfortably as an experience.
The idea of a game has specific connotations and baggage and that don't necessarily apply. These "experience" games are some of my favorites.
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But it doesn't need to be a narrative story. It can be a moment of cleverness, or tension, or fiero, or whatever. Jenga can give an experience.
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I really hate middle-weight Euros because they just don't seem to know what they want. They masquerade as being something more, or training wheels for "real" worker placement or something, but they're vapid. A game as simple as Kingdomino is something I can play with my son, or play a ton of times with my wife in between waiting for the dryer to go off, but the LoW and Stone Ages of the world just seem like too much hassle for too little payoff. I'll take Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, or Nexus Ops over these any day because they create more meaningful interactions between the players.
When you base a game around an experience, it has a higher chance to fall flat (or hit an emotional high note). Something like Betrayal At House on the Hill can be super fun if people are in the right mood for it, but if you care too much about who wins, you're doing it wrong. At the same time, one time I got a bit drunk and played the entire game with an outrageous accent, and I think I was the only one who really thought it was that funny...
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Jexik wrote: Something like Betrayal At House on the Hill can be super fun if people are in the right mood for it, but if you care too much about who wins, you're doing it wrong.
Specifically about Betrayal, I think you also have to care enough to be invested. My regular group I play this with takes time to figure out a strategy and discuss a plan of attack after the reveal; then of course things go horribly wrong and people do whatever they want and that's fine. But it's enough to draw me in. Once I played at a retreat with a new group of people, and they didn't take time to plan anything after the reveal, just started taking turns, no conversation, nothing. It was a terrible experience and I suddenly realized how some people could hate the game!
ubarose has talked before about how some folks need to point at something in the game and say "this is me; this is mine". Maybe my experience with Betrayal is an extension of that.
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I do agree that trying to win and plan a bit is a good idea, but winning at all costs is rarely the correct path. Especially in a 1 v many game, the many winning is almost always the desired result, as long as they kinda felt like they had to work at it or they deserved it. Maybe I've DM'd for too long now.
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iguanaDitty wrote:
Jexik wrote: Something like Betrayal At House on the Hill can be super fun if people are in the right mood for it, but if you care too much about who wins, you're doing it wrong.
Specifically about Betrayal, I think you also have to care enough to be invested. My regular group I play this with takes time to figure out a strategy and discuss a plan of attack after the reveal; then of course things go horribly wrong and people do whatever they want and that's fine. But it's enough to draw me in. Once I played at a retreat with a new group of people, and they didn't take time to plan anything after the reveal, just started taking turns, no conversation, nothing. It was a terrible experience and I suddenly realized how some people could hate the game!
ubarose has talked before about how some folks need to point at something in the game and say "this is me; this is mine". Maybe my experience with Betrayal is an extension of that.
It should be easy for somebody to point to their character in Betrayal and say "this is me." But maybe some people are so completely brainwashed by BGG dogma that they can't enjoy a game unless it comes with a brown box, a historical setting, and an elegant set of mechanics involving the generation of victory points.
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