Mathematics, how much is too much?

The amount that would be considered "too much" depends on your audience. But it's almost a moot point. Most games involve moving small physical pieces onto, around the surface of, and off of, a playing field.

How would you teach a child math? Probably not with paper and pencil, at least not at first. You would teach them with piles of tokens that they could count and move around. There is so much of math that can be represented in a concrete way- as a series of actions to be taken on physical objects.

My own arbitrary opinion is to expect people to have math capabilities around that of a third grader. If there's anything more complex than third grade math, then try to convert it into physical processes. Those physical processes must of course themselves be subject to a standard of simplicity, but you can get away with more. Even adding can be replaced with moving a counter along a labelled track.

It is not an impossible task. One thing that mathematics is really good at is showing us equivalencies. Use your mathematical ability to find simpler-to-execute operations that are equivalent to what you had in mind to begin with. There is the possibility that your game designs are so general (they admit so many possibilities) that they create a variety of complex calculations that would each have to be simplified, on a case by case basis. That would be a tough thing to deal with, and you might want to just consider that to be a game to play with other math majors.

The more frequently an action is done, the simpler it should be. You can have people add to your heart's content. Subtraction should occur less often, and my own preference would be that multiplication and division only ever occur once at the beginning or end of the game. Condotierre is one example where multiplication is used repeatedly throughout the game (with the drums) but since it is specifically doubling, it's easy and they can get away with it.

You might not be able to get a single, explicit answer to this question. You may need to iteratively develop an understanding of what most people want in terms of mental effort in a game, through a repeated process of trial and error. Not elegant, but that's what we get for trying to work around real, physical objects like human brains :)

I have two math card game, one is out now and the other I hope will get out before 2006 if not in 2006. Math scares most people and it really scares companies. The one thing I was told is that they was not using the word math in the title. But you must keep it simple and fun ( game flow able to keep moving) can't have people needing pencil and paper. One of my games no number is higher than ten(10) and the other 20. I guest there is a market for more deep math games, but you may have to put it out yourself. There are some companies that deal with alot of education games that may like and try harder math games, specially if you found a way to add good gameplay. So if you can keep the game moving you should still give it a try. GALT AMERICA is a company that does educational games (203)876-7289 and Game Development Group inc.
www.gdg-games.com, not sure if you want to contact anyone but I 'm just passing on alittle info. good luck.

Perversely, I actually like having a little math in the games. SiegeStones requires the player to do addition, as does its sequel, Charge.

Our new card game Calaboose has the advanced players doing both minor addition and subtraction (gasp).

Having said that, I think the key to math is keeping the number of calculations to a minimum. In playtesting, we've found that the stress seems to appear when the players have to hold things in their head.

In SiegeStones, for example, players can just count the stones and skip the math. Sure, it takes a few seconds longer, but it takes the "pressure" off people who feel like they can't do math. In Calaboose, the "math" arrives when comparing scores - all of which are written on the cards.

In contrast, if you have the situation that kanati described, where a player has to add the bonuses and remember the total and add penalties... that's where we've found playtesters check out.

IMHO, it's not the players' capacity for doing math that you have to worry about. It's their reaction to math that's important. If they feel intimidated by it, or if it slows down the game, or breaks the mechanic, then you've got a problem.

So, my (long-winded) recommendations would be:
1) Make sure players aren't forced to hold too many numbers in their head. I don't have a good reason for this one. It's just what we've observed in playtesting.
2) Use printed material (or game counters) so that nervous players have some other option (i.e., counting stones, comparing card values, etc.). This relieves some of the "scary" aspect to math.
3) Try to give the numbers some meaning within the theme of the game. This helps players forget they're doing math.

I'm working on a game about divorce (a light hearted one!) and that's sort of a concern. Part of the game revolves around playing Charges (such as "you cheated on me!") which tilt the percentage of the settlement towards you - the judge hears how awful the other person was, and decides you deserve more. So at the end of the game, there's all these assets on the table, which you add up the value of, and then split it based on that percentage. I'm gonna need a table to do that. Who wants to figure out offhand what 35% of $1200 is? I'm hoping that won't be too rough of an element, because up until that endgame moment, the game is very light and silly (it's actually a fairy tale divorce game, see who gets to keep the pumpkin stagecoach, glass slippers, etc). There's already a little board used to contain the percentage meter and the happiness gauge, so I'll just stick the table on there somewhere.