Chat Transcript - Thursday, 31-Mar-2005 -"Indirect Conf

Huh, I wish I'd been in on this!

For my posthumus two cents, I'd have to describe direct and indirect like this: Direct conflict has a material effect on game actors, such as loss of pieces, rescources, or position, while indirect conflict involves loss of mental or psychological rescources, such as concentration (being distracted by feints, and non-vital threats), or clear assessment (posturing or threatening actions that serve only to interfere with assessment of an action's value, such as making attacking a given piece or position seem riskier than it really is).

As you can see, indirect conflict, in my definition, resides in the mind, while direct conflict is everything else involved in the game, such as victory conditions and play state. Direct conflict is an ingredient in all games, since they are to be won or lost, while indirect conflict is present to the degree of a game's sophistication and the control of the players over events.

Two good working definitions. Very nice.

In a hundred years, these terms will be better defined, or we game designers will have a complex jargon for such specific ideas. I suspect there's already a specific, multi-syllabic word in German that expresses these concepts perfectly!

This seems to me to be the best conceptualization so far. The nut of "indirect" is the idea of some sort of intermediary, an additional element between cause and effect. This idea seems nicely conveyed by the phrase "influencing opportunities."

I see indirect conflict as changing an opponent's context or environment. Everyone (perhaps) can plainly see that something has changed, but it wasn't the target directly. The opponent has the same quantities of stuff, and that stuff has the same physical positions and conditions. Now, however, he must re-evaluate the possible uses of his stuff (which will likely be diminished in scope).

To say it differently, indirect conflict neither adds to nor takes away from an opponent's tools (whether they be cards, draws, special abilities, units, resources, or whatever). What it does, is put the opponent in a context where his tools are less effective. If he has a knife, I surround him with gunfighters. If he has a racecar, I surround him with bumpy dirt roads. If he has money, I surround him with empty shelves.

Since tic-tac-toe came up in the chat, I'll illustrate with it. Every time I choose a square, it changes the context of play for my opponent. I have not suddenly forced him to use my symbol instead of his own. I have not caused him to forfeit his turn. He has the same tools: one symbol and one turn to claim a location for that symbol. His available options for those tools, though, have been diminished.

Also, I think the two-player situation, in most cases, confuses the issue in at least two ways:

First, there is no ambiguity about who is intended to be affected. But the purposeful teeter-tottering of the playing field between two players serves to indicate who is affected ("directly to" or "specifically to"), not how.

Second, having only two turns shortens the postponement of any intended effect. But the quickness with which the aforementioned teeter-tottering occurs serves to indicate when the effect is realized ("directly" or "immediately"), not how.

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