Enjoying board games

I don't seem to enjoy board or tabletop games much, or at least not all the time. I'm not sure why this is. Part of it might be that I kind of suck at them, and losing all the time has a way of draining the fun out of games. For me, the process of playing has to be fun, regardless of whether I win or lose, and I don't see that many games with fun-to-play mechanics. The fun is meant to come from winning, but that can only happen for one person, usually. If your board game is only fun when you're winning, then, for a four-player game, that means your audience is 75% not having fun.

Now, for some people, trailing behind has this kind of invigorating effect. Their response to losing is "Must Try Harder, Must Play Better", and that push - the pressure to do better somehow - is a thrilling kind of fun for them. For me ... I don't know. Maybe I'm over-competitive in my own way, but losing at a board game and knowing that I'm losing is pretty disheartening. It doesn't spur me on to greatness, it puts me down in my place. "Look, you're losing! See how much you suck? This is how much you suck." It might be and expression of depression, too. Even knowing that depression lies, though, is not enough to pull me out of the losing-and-sucking funk.

So what do I do? We only have about 4 games that even work with two players, which is how we find ourselves most of the time, and most of those fall into the "win or no fun" camp. Many of the games we play also seem to derive their fun from composing and enacting a complex and cunning strategy for winning, and I guess I'm not quite there yet, either. I need more games that are just fun to play, win or lose, or at least games that could be won or lost right up to the very end, and it's anyone's guess who the winner might be until then.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also don't seem to play many video games.
PPS - That's probably more because I have so little time at home on the computer.

Arimaa

I'm kind of interested in the way a game was created specifically to be difficult for computers but easy enough for a 4-year-old to play with standard chess pieces, called Arimaa. It's an interesting goal to push computer game-playing research further, and it seems to have worked. The game was invented in 2002 and then a computer won the yearly human-vs-computer tournament this year (2015). On the one hand, this might represent massive gains in processing power and algorithmic research since the game's invention, or it might represent an unforeseen weakness in the game design. Most likely, it's a bit of both.

My question is: what comes next? Does someone else design a new iteration of game that is really tricky for computers to play but comparatively easy for humans? Do we modify Arimaa to bump up the computer difficulty? When do we reach the point where "easy for a 4-year-old" also means "trivial for computers"? If it takes decades for computers to beat human grandmasters at chess, but only one decade for computers to beat human Arimaa masters, how much difficulty can we expect to squeeze out of a new iteration of game difficulty? Probably a year or two, I'd think, given the pattern.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd love it if a computer designed a game itself to this goal.
PPS - Which, I guess, would make that game a kind of CAPTCHA.

Board games on mobile

I really like the idea of board games playable on mobile devices over the internet where it doesn't matter how long each person takes to play their turn. Because it can be hard to organise a group of people to get together all at once to play a game, this way everyone is always playing, and the game just goes on, even if one person delays a bit. It will take a lot longer to play a game through, but who cares? The fun is still there, and you've got other games to play, too. This is just a way to play specific games with friends that would otherwise take a lot more effort and commitment to play.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wish there were more of them.
PPS - And that I could play them. Obviously.

All you need to prototype a card game

If you're desperate to prototype a card game, you can make basically anything with a label printer and a normal pack of cards, with the added bonus that they're very cheap. You're welcome.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been meaning to get a label printer for ages.
PPS - And I have lots of cards.

You're allowed to correct your outdated trivia game cards

If you play trivia games, you know that sometimes the answers can get outdated, such as "Which movie holds the record for the most Oscar nominations?", depending on when the game was published. People become angry or discouraged at such outdated answers, but why not correct them yourself? You don't need the publisher to produce a whole new version just for you. If you know the answer is wrong now, you could break out a label printer and just stick the right answer on the card, over the old one. Would that be so bad? Yes, you'd be "defacing" the game, but would you rather have a game card that's pristine and wrong, or one that's right?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Somehow it gains more weight when someone else prints things for you.
PPS - I can see this becoming less of a hangup in the future.

Peer-to-peer MMOs

Since City of Heroes shut down - or even since the announcement, really - I've wondered about how to make MMO games robust against that kind of existential threat. When such games become unprofitable, development ceases and the servers are shut down. That's just business. The obvious answer to that problem is to host the game itself on a peer-to-peer network of player machines. Then, no matter how much the game grows or shrinks, there's always enough server capacity.

However, running a game like that on a peer-to-peer network raises some other challenges. For one, there's the matter of trusting the server code and preventing cheating. If the players, technically, have access to all the server code running on their own machines for each other, there's no central, trusted arbitrator for tasks like random number generation and application of the rules. I've outlined before how some trust can be established between peers for generating random numbers, so it's possible it could be worked around, but it requires a lot more communication than an implicitly-trusted server does. It's also probably not the full story for everything that's needed for a trusted peer network of this type.

Still, I'd like to see it attempted, if only to know that, in the future, there's a definite way to save these games from destruction when they become unprofitable, or for smaller, niche games to get a leg up when they're starting out and can't afford dedicated server hardware.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - On the City of Heroes front, a new game called Valiance Online has started open public testing.
PPS - Which is a long way from a complete game, but more than I've seen in a while.

Gaming comics

The reason I prefer Penny Arcade over Ctrl+Alt+Del is that I'm not a voracious consumer of games. I have a casual association with games, though not in the sense that would necessarily make me a "casual gamer". These days that means you only play Candy Crush. Anyway, because I do not, as my life goal, aim to play ALL THE GAMES, I don't always recognise a significant new cultural artifact a week after it pops up. Ctrl+Alt+Del does a comic about Rust, but to me it's just two naked guys in the woods discussing the merits of guns over pants. Which is fine, I guess? But when Penny Arcade references Rust, there's a comprehensive news post that goes along with it, incidentally explaining what Rust is and what they think of it. To be fair, Ctrl+Alt+Del does often also put up a blog post with it, though not always, and I'm not in the habit of reading it or looking for it, because it is so often absent.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm much more likely to read a book than play a game, in general.
PPS - Depending on the book and the game.

Videogame brain health

Videogames may be good for your brain in certain ways, but it still matters what you're using it for when you're not playing games. You can't spend all your time on games and expect to come out a genius, even in very specialised arenas. You need to put your brain skills to use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As I clearly ... have.
PPS - I word good all time.

Blank board game supplies

Just on a whim, I went looking for blank playing cards online, and I was delighted to find a whole range of blank board game equipment for sale: blank playing cards, plain white game boards, blank-faced dice with stickers, plain coloured pawns. This makes me very happy just because it's a kind of midpoint between total DIY and professionally-published games.

If you've got an idea for a board game, obviously you can find some cardboard and do a lot of cut-paste-draw-write yourself, but after some play testing, maybe you want your home-made game to look a little more professional. Something you can bring to family and friends game nights. This is just what you need. If I ever hear of a kid who is into board games and is pretty creative (as kids often are) then I will order a bunch of this stuff for their birthday or Christmas, probably along with some professionally-published game too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think the world has enough good board games.
PPS - I also don't think there is enough good board game software, but that's another story.

Blackjack

Playing on some fake blackjack tables for our company's Christmas party, I started wondering about dealer systems. Do casinos have a simple set of rules that blackjack dealers are to follow? Say, if hitting one more time on your own hand, the dealer's, might be safe a lot of the time, but you've already beaten half the table, it would be better if you don't hit and pay out half the table rather than hitting, busting and paying out the whole table. I'd be astonished if there weren't several such simple systems for blackjack dealers to follow, all with their own names, special rules, advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, a quick web search shows up lots of results for player systems rather than dealer systems.

I also gained some respect for people who are able to count cards, even in a very simple system. Those cards come quickly on a busy table. If you're able to keep track of a deck score by registering each card, counting up or down and still keep track of your own hand, deciding whether to hit or stay based on the deck score, your cards and whether you still need to beat the dealer, and do it all quickly enough not to raise suspicion, my hat is off to you, sir.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If systems exist for the dealer, they're buried under a lot of chaff.
PPS - It wouldn't need to be secret information for the casino, though. They'll win regardless.

Video games are sort of okay, we guess

Video games have gotten a better rap in recent years, but I don't think all forms are socially acceptable yet. Anyone who gets very serious about video games is going to be treated with pity or scorn, and if you're a man in your 30s who plays games, you're going to be ridiculed. If you play violent games, you will be treated with some measure of fear, and if you have a family and play any form of games, you will probably run into some disgust. This says to me that, although it is not seen as socially unacceptable to play games at all, it is still seen as an anti-social use of your time. It is something you may do, but it is not something that productive members of society do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not at all like watching football, which is totally valuable, because of reasons.
PPS - Maybe in a few decades it will be more acceptable.

Turn-based vs real-time RPG combat

Many years ago, as my beloved adventure games were slowly consumed by role-playing games, I resented the very idea of RPGs on several levels. I had never played an RPG properly, and I was absolutely convinced that turn-based combat would be essential for my enjoyment. Now I have had the experience of playing three types of RPG: the MMO City of Heroes, which was an action RPG, all real-time, and the two very different styles that were manifested in the Penny Arcade Adventures series. The first two episodes had semi-real-time combat sequences, and the third has turn-based combat, but with a time line to determine whose turn it is next. Now, prepare to eat my words, younger self, because the real-time options absolutely wipe the floor with turn-based combat.

When you can literally walk away during a battle and be in no danger at all, something is lost. You don't even have to pause. It drains all of the excitement and tension out of the game for me, making it all about what weapons or spells to choose next. It also means that the game designers can go absolutely nuts with the number of options in combat, and they do. In the first two Penny Arcade Adventures episodes, you had three characters with one pre-equipped weapon each, capable of an ordinary attack or one of three special attacks. There were also about 15 different items you might use, and most of those were different strengths of the same type of item. There's no time to sift through a dozen sub-menus, because your characters will be dead by then.

In contrast, the turn-based Episode 3 has each character with one built-in class, two equipped classes and an upgradeable weapon, each with at least four different possible attacks or spells. There are so many new options every time someone levels up that I just stopped reading the post-combat summary and decided to learn my attacks during combat. After all, the names aren't going to tell me what they do. The mechanics of turn-based combat meant that the game designers added a lot of complexity to the play mechanics, and those start getting in the way of the fun.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So there you have it. For me, at least, turn-based combat bad, real-time good.
PPS - Based on the third Penny Arcade Adventures episode, I may not buy the fourth.

Videogames for the elderly

When people retire and have very little to do with their time, can't move around a lot but still want to socialise, the internet can help fill that need. And what better way to use it than designing videogames for grandpa? Think about it. They probably won't want to or won't be able to handle the same twitch-spasm FPS titles that appeal to the core demographic of 14-year-old boys, but their brains could use the workout other games have to offer. Something designed specifically to appeal to the elderly, without being insultingly simple or too similar to overwrought "educational" titles, should do really well. And how do you keep those 14-year-olds from coming in and beating everyone, ruining it all? For the most part, they'll be too busy in their own games, injecting caffeine directly into their hearts to shave milliseconds off their reaction times, all to earn the right to call each other names. Games written for the elderly simply won't appeal to them, either because they're boring or because they won't be competitive enough.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I would love to see games where the elderly simply out-perform the young.
PPS - That would be pretty satisfying for everyone.

Braid review

I really liked playing through Braid. It was short and used a unique play mechanic added onto a familiar genre - in this case, time control in a platformer. It makes a big difference to the way you play when, instead of dying and restarting the level, you just rewind time and try again. I was much more reckless and willing to try difficult or dangerous things, because progress is never really lost. It is still a challenge, though, because there are the time mechanism puzzles, playing with the concept and twisting your brain. Lots of fun, though I had to consult a guide for a couple of puzzle solutions. One in particular was the way a puzzle display in the background acted as an extra platform, and I just didn't notice.

The ending, the very final level, was where the real "wow" factor came in, though. I don't want to spoil it, in case you feel inclined to go and play it yourself, but it was, to me, the cleverest part of the entire game, and put a new spin on everything that came before. So do go and play it now.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I realise this is not the newest of games.
PPS - I just wanted to say what I thought of it.

Solving hard problems with games we already play

Someone needs to work on encoding our hard problems into games we already play. If all those hours spent playing Solitaire on Windows could actually also be used, completely invisibly, to get people to figure out how proteins fold up, that would be an amazing gain.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have no idea how to do that, though.
PPS - Probably the game mechanics are usually too different to be twisted into solving problems.

Saving online games from shutdown

An online game can only be saved from cancellation and abandonment if it is peer to peer or runs on an open server architecture. Otherwise, the power to turn it off resides in the hands of one company, and they can do what they want with it. And if it is already running on an open architecture or community-controlled servers, then nobody can even threaten to shut it down in the first place, so it never needs to be saved in this sense at all.

As time goes on, however, such a project still runs the risk of being outpaced by updated hardware. What used to run on Windows 95 and Pentium chips now has to deal with Windows 8 and ARM chips. Interfaces that were designed for hardware keyboards and mice don't work so well with touch screens. The software may live on, and the core concept may never die, but unless it is maintained and updated, it won't continue to be usable. Keeping software alive and functional requires constant effort, and that effort might not be best spent on maintaining old versions instead of writing new software to do the same job, or writing something else entirely.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This has been on my mind since City of Heroes shut down.
PPS - All the community effort to save it was in vain if the company wanted it gone.

The value of in-game items

Do virtual game items have value? Well, that is just asking whether people are willing to pay for them, and that depends on the game and item in question, but in general the answer is "yes". Does that make them "real"? Perhaps that's the wrong question, but people ask it anyway, usually when trying to show that physical goods have more value compared to virtual items in games, or that physical objects are the only kind of property that can have value.

Your bank account is not physical. It's an entry in a database that says you have access to this many dollars (or pounds, euros, yen, whatever). There's not some vault somewhere with a bundle of notes in a pile with your name on it. You put in real work and time to earn that money, and if someone took it off you, you'd be livid, because it is yours. It is real, it is valuable, it is important, it is owned by you, but it is not physical in any way. How is that different from in-game items and gold?

Now imagine that every day when you go to work, if you do badly or if someone else swoops in and finishes your project before you do, they get not just your salary for the day, but some of your bank balance too. That is the kind of risk that games add to this kind of non-physical property. The only difference between the game items and your bank balance is the population of people who consider them valuable and would exchange goods or services based on that value.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And that, so far in most social circles, game items are not taken seriously.
PPS - Suggested reading: the novel For The Win by Cory Doctorow.

The end of City of Heroes

So City of Heroes is coming to an end. It was the first MMORPG that I played, and I have a lot of love for it. Some people will be able to shrug at this, uninstall and move on, and some others will weep at all the "wasted" effort that went into their now-defunct characters. I'm somewhere in between those two extremes. Character creation was a pretty big part of this game, which naturally led me to invest a lot of creativity in my characters. They are dressed and named as if I were bringing a story to life. Now that they are being corralled and euthanised, I feel bad for them. I took screenshots and some notes to preserve their stories.

But it's not just the characters. I will miss playing the game. I've tried World of Warcraft, and it just doesn't feel right. Not bad, just uncomfortably different, like someone else's clothes. City of Heroes, because it was my first, set my expectations for all other RPGs. Everything else feels funny, possibly because this particular fictional subgenre is not well represented in games. Most others, Western RPGs in particular, like to focus on Tolkienesque fantasy. That's never really been my thing. I'd rather be a superhero.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I took it with me on a recent business trip.
PPS - I played a quick solo mission to say goodbye.

Trust in the role of game servers

Board games by mail are a good analogy for why we need game servers when chance is involved. When you play chess by mail, you can send your moves directly to each other, because there's no chance involved, and nothing is hidden. You don't need to trust that your opponent rolled the dice honestly or shuffled his cards as well as you did. When you do have an element of chance - for instance, drawing tiles in Scrabble - you can't just send your moves to each other directly. You need a neutral third party who manages the bag of tiles, draws them out for you and tells each of you in secret what you have on your rack. This game master takes your move, checks it against what is possible, given the letters in your hand, and passes it on to your opponent if it's legitimate. That's what a game server does online, whether it's for Scrabble, Monopoly, poker or whatever else you are playing. When you're in the same room, you trust each other, at least in part, because you all see what everyone else is doing. You know the dice were rolled properly, so there's no dispute over that. Online, you are separated, so you need a neutral server to handle the chance and secrets for you.

The really interesting question is whether this neutral, trusted third-party role can be spread out among the players. Could you somehow arrange a dice-rolling mechanism where two people each produce part of the result, and they can both trust that the outcome is still based purely on chance?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have a feeling it might be possible.
PPS - But I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.

Not so many board games online

Board games were practically made to be digitised and the internet was made to connect people of similar interests. This should be a new age of board games. And it is, in a way, but only in the sense that niche board games have found a bigger market globally. Digital board games are rare, and I'm not sure why.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Possibly because games that belong on computers are different to board games.
PPS - Different medium, different possibilities, different outcomes.