How do you make an Abstract Game?

With abstract games different things than theme shape them.

When i created Cannon i was attempting to devise a movement and capture mechanic dependent on formation rather than piece type, this is something under explored in abstracts games.

For OP-Position, my entry to the Shared Pieces Game Design Competition it was simply the rules of the competition that guided my design and the desire to create something that had never been done before.

If you play tile games your going to have tile game ideas, same goes for abstracts. That's why there are so many chess variants. Try spending some time playing some of the classics like chess, fanorana, reversi, Go, or Tafl. If you want to get in over your head try this site

http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/%7Ejpn/gv/

There are enough abstract games ancient and modern there to choke a knight.

I was told that an abstract strategy game must have the following attributes
1) For two players only
2) Turn based
3) No luck components like cards or dice.
4) No hidden information

I never heard that they can't have a theme :oops: (my bad), although I always thought chess had somewhat of a theme. Then I would suggest making a game from a theme point of view (if that's how you design) and then drop the theme when you are done so the game is pure mechs.

I would argue that ALL games are abstract games until you start adding art or text that tries to equate it to something tangible in the 'real' world. At that point, all you are doing is covering the abstractness with a varying degree of themeness. But the abstractness is still always there.

Of course, when you get into the "is Chess just a really simplified themed war game" or "wargames are just really complicated abstract games" argument, things get hairy...

So, if you want to design an abstract game, make a themed game, but then strip all of the components down to just things like color and shapes.

I normally hate to do symantic arguements, but I think there is an important distinction here. All games are 'abstractions' not all games are thought of as 'abstract'. An 'abstraction' in this sense is a simplification of a real world idea or object into a game piece or mechanic. 'Abstract' games are generally where this simplification process is done severely and the result does not resemble the model as much.

Take my game Tourney. (see GDW of weeks past, plug plug) No one is going to claim that you are actually Jousting and playing with swords. So the game is an abstraction of the theme. The contests are 'abstracted' to single plays of cards. There was a comment that the game wasn't quite realistic because most every event itself is a set of rounds. I abstracted the events to single card plays (more or less) to get a reasonable view of the whole tourney experience.

A game of Chess is a heavy abstraction of war and or political intrigue. It is so heavily abstracted that the theme isn't really there. Checkers (draughts I guess in Britain) is So heavily abstracted that the theme is even harder to fathom than in chess.

So I think when some people say 'abstract' they really mean these heavily abstracted games, which is why the arguement of little or no theme applies. But I get the feeling when doho says that all games are abstract, that the idea of abstractions from reality applies. The next arguement is which direction you design. From mechanic to reality adding detail, or from reality to game abstracting concepts into mechanics and peices. I for one do the later.

I hope this helps. At least it helps me to understand this way.

Andy

I don't know much about Abstracts, and don't have a burning desire to design one, but for me, the "separation point" between whether I consider a game "abstract" or "themed" is usually the game board. Abstracts, almost without fail, have some sort of non-descript board, typically a square grid. Themed games, almost without fail, have a game board that is a "map" of some sort. Of course, this is very loose and full of holes, but it's a starting point...

To that end, I would consider Brykovian's game "Castle Danger" an abstract, despite the fact that the moving pieces have names and act in a manner that is roughly evocative of their theme. There are some "themed" games that come very close to the line -- Leo Colvini's games, for example. However, I don't think I'd formally consider them "abstracts" -- rather, I'd just say they do a lousy job of evoking the theme they purport to evoke. There are plenty of German games that are flimsily themed, yet I'd tend to consider them "abstract", but not "Abstracts".

I think Torrent is right, this is somewhat of a symantic point. In my case, I'm sure my bias is causing me to miss a lot of good games, but for me, a game where you place and/or move little stones on a square grid holds very little appeal, yet a game where you move pawns around on a map is much more likely to potentially be something I'm interested in. Call me crazy, I guess.

-Jeff

OK, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree about this one!
I understand that at some fundamental level you are perfectly correct - you can strip everything theme related off and produce an entirely abstract game with almost any title (and, of course, some games are nearer to that than others.) Indeed, I did just that with the "Fate of Atlantis" game, after Chris had commented about the theming, in an attempt to see if any alternative theme came to mind. And the end result was that I became more convinced that the original theme was correct; albeit needing some extra stuff added.

You can reduce All for One to those abstract levels, but there would be no real "game" left behind: pretty much the whole experience is about the theming of the bits, although what that theming is is not restricted to the one I chose. In that sense it falls into the same category as Knizia's Lord of the Rings game - remove the theming and you get an abstract concept that doesn't really work, but will work fine if you paste something entirely different on top (cf. my "Harry Potter" reworking somewhere on the forums.)

And that's what I think differentiates an "abstract" game from a "themed" game. Chess isn't any better or worse if the pieces lose their names. Go and Backgammon don't even name their pieces. The games in the Gipf Project work just fine. (I suspect that most Piecepack games qualify under this category too.) By all means add names to the component parts and make an experience out of it, but those games work fine without that. And my postion is that that's not the case for every game - that you can distinguish between them.