[TiGD] Theme Design

I usually start with a theme, abstract as they may be, and then build from there. The theme is important because it helps me decide what the player's goals are, and what problems they will face while trying to reach those goals.

As a player of games I think the theme is most important in its marketing appeal. I know what themes I'm interested in and those are the kind of games I usually look at in the store and therefore buy.

A great game that has the right amount of theme in it is "History of the World". The theme helps drive the game forward during play and it also intrigues player's after playing. I personally have looked up information on many of the empires in that game after playing. This information was not needed in the game, and by leaving it out it made me want to do some research into the theme myself. That is a good goal for any theme, I think. Does anyone agree?

I think that when it boils down to it the mechanics are really what counts. For instance there are a million history based board games, especially war games. But I, or you like specific ones, not based on theme, but on mechanics and gameplay.

This will sound like a dumb answer, but when the game stops being fun, quit with the theme. If the amount of theme in a game isn't adding to the game's fun, I would think it is too much. A post on the Controversial thread said something similar. Does your theme (amount) improve the game?

Is the theme important or…

As I see it: All games consist of four equally important cornerstones:
- Theme
- Mechanism
- Goal
- Art and component design (including artwork, types of components, naming…)

The mechanism and the goal will make the game to work. The art with make the game playable. The theme and art will make the game alive.
A game can work without a theme or the art but the can makes a huge difference:

Example:
Exchange the words mechanism
I try to remove your Black (5) with my Red (2). I have 2 dice with +1. Then I move my Green (1) pawn to the line between your black (3) pawn and the Black square.
With
I attack you Black Dragon with my Fire Wizard. I have 2 attack with a +1 strange. Then I move my Woodsmen to block the road between your Chaos knights and the "Source of evil".

// Johan

I agree with just about everything jwarren said. In fact while reading his post I couldn't help but think of a few of my games that seem to have aspects not following the theme. This brought me to a question.

At what point is it ok for a mechanic to not fully support your theme? i.e. Jeff's Disciples game and the acts.

Obviously, if the game is not playable without the mechanic it either has to stay or a new mechanic must be found that fits into the theme. How long should that search for a viable option inside the theme last? One of my game ideas "Domestica" (see housewives thread in game design) has an entire game stage, the auction stage, that doesn't really fit the theme. But I don't like any of the alternatives I or other members have thought of. At some point you just have to say well this is the only mechanic that works, whether it pastes on the theme or not, i.e. Disciples. When is that point reached.

Another option for the above mentioned question, is to actually keep the mechanics and find a new theme that fits them. This seems a little more difficult to me, since most of my games start as a theme so most if not all of the mechanics stem from that theme. Should we scrap a theme for a game simply because one or two of the many mechanics does not quite fit, though the others do? Seems kind of rash, but if a new theme could be found that fits all the mechanics perhaps it is for the best. What do ya'll think?

For instance if he has to heal a character and instead of a card that says "heal 1" and have the life points as simply life points ...

It may sound fiddly, but in the context of healing it could go a long way to help the theming of the game

I may not have explained myself clearly; I wasn't talking so much about adding a "themed" or "simulation" element to make a mechanic easier to understand -- indeed, as Richard said, the main function of theming is to make the game's mechanics easy to learn.

What I'm talking about is something more like this: you have a game where players are exploring a jungle (say). And you've come up with the cool healing mechanic you described, and want to include it in the game. But now, you need to add a mechanic whereby players can take "damage" in the first place. And then maybe you need to add "weapons" so the players can wound one another. But then you need to add "range" restrictions, and tracking how many bullets you've used, etc.

Maybe you'd truncate it somewhere earlier in the process, but the point I'm making is sometimes, trying to "force" a mechanic for its thematic desirability forces you to include other mechanics that previously weren't present in the game. That's when I think it's time to rethink that thematic mechanic; all of the mechanics in a game should interlock. PR is the crowning achievement of this -- there isn't a single superfluous system in the game. Many games do this well. But I think that designing "theme-first", it's easy to have a situation where you really want a system in there to simulate something, but it ends up making the game more clunky.

-Jeff

Okay I know this is an old thread but I'm new and thought I'd add a little point to it.

The importance of theme may also vary depending on your target market.

If you're aiming at a younger age group of players then some form of story or character is often needed to 'hook' the players imaginations.

The older we get the easier it is for us to play on an abstract level without the need for heavy back story.

I love games like Mancala, go and chess, which I'd say work on a heavily abstract level compared to say - Payday, which my sister loved in her pre to early teens. (I have to admit I enjoy games like Payday too - they're much easier on the mind).

I don't imagine getting kids to 'buy into' games like Othello compared to Payday is that easy.

That's actually got me thinking now, how do sales of abstract games compare to more theme based games in any given year?

And what is the size of the relative markets?

Marketing spend?

hmmm - anybody know a research bod?

:-)

Carl

I try to stay within theme as much as possible.

If I worked for a company, I would be living under deadline and would make more compromises as limited by my creativity to come up with something that worked AND stayed within the theme.

I think I can be inspired by theme or mechanic, and my designs reflect both, so I am no slave to either but try to honor both.

I've observed that the more casual the players in a gaming group are about gaming, the more theme will matter. Conversely, the more dedicated the players in a group are to gaming, especially competitive gaming, the less theme will matter. In fact locally in two of the more gamer-based groups that I play with, there seems to be a trait to apologise for mentioning a theme more than passingly when teaching a game. There seems to be the unstated implication that theme-importance is uncouth. This is somewhat amusing as we very rarely ever play abstract or otherwise unthemed games.

This really doesn't seem to be an example of theme, but rather of graphic design cleverly supporting both game mechanics and theme. Many other representations could have been used, such as a simple scoring track, tokens, cards or whatever without changing the game mechanics at all.

What do you mean when you talk about the amount by which theme "matters"? I think what you mean is something like "I don't care whether the game is about ancient Parthia or modern Guatemala or mythical Atlantis, as long as the mechanics are interesting" and perhaps also "while I am playing the game, I don't conciously 'immerse' myself in the theme or 'role-play'". Is that close to what you are trying to say?

If so, I think it's unhelpful to locate the discussion in a dichotomy between casual and dedicated players; it's probably not as universal as you suggest, and it risks coming off as snobbish.

I think that if nothing else, as a designer, theming is tremendously helpful at inspiring new mechanics and sources of tension. That's not to say it isn't possible to come up with good mechanics in the abstract, but I find themes can be helpful in that they can inherently bundle a couple of mechanics together. That's something I struggle with when I come up with a mechanic in isolation -- "now what other systems should the game have to make it interesting?"

As a game player, I would probably mostly agree with the above two statements that I hypothetically attributed to you, although theme selection does influence my interest in trying out a game. Call it a weakness, but I'd just rather play a game about a subject that interests me than about something "dry" like "programming a VCR" or "doing your taxes". No matter how good everyone assures me the mechanics are, I just can't muster an ounce of interest to try a game like "Ad Acta". I also don't particularly care that much about role playing -- eg, talking in a pirate voice when playing a pirate game -- but I do appreciate a game where the theme, mechanics, and components are all integrated to produce a nice coherent atmosphere.

-Jeff

What do you mean when you talk about the amount by which theme "matters"?

I've added some parenthetical clarifications to my quoted text above which should help. In short my observation is that for Euro/German/Designer games, theme is more important to causal gamers than it is to more hardcore gamers.

Only partly. It is a question of primacy during game selection, not during play. I'm really looking at the level to which the players consider theme to be important or not in deciding what games to play and their retrospectioves on those games, not how they treat theme once they are playing. For instance among casual gamers the question "Is that an XYZ theme game?", perhaps followed by "I don't really want to play any XYZ theme games." is in character for casual gamers. At this level Ticket to Ride is a train game because it has a picture of a train on the cover and theme is often the primary concern. Conversely a more dedicated gamer tends to focus on mechanics with theme being a merely supplemental or faintly supporting item. They ask first about mechanics, "Is that an auction game? Pick Up and Deliver game? Blind bidding game? Negotation game? Route building game? etc" and accept and expect answers phrased in those terms. At this level Ticket to Ride is a Rummy variant or a set collecting card game. "I don't really want to play any negotiation games tonight!"

How you handle theme seems central to deciding on which audience you design for and market your game to. There's a scale there (perhaps more than one), and thus choices to be made. The lighter the desired audience (in gaming terms), and especially the younger it is, the greater the apparent rewards and interest in thick themes. The more gamery the audience the less important theme seems to be. Another contrast might be that at one end games tend to be "cool" and at the other "interesting", but that seems more reflective of social contexts and group language.

I can't claim universality, merely what I observe, and that is obviously strongly self-selected. As for snobbish? Sure, if you want. Or not. It hardly seems to apply as a concern in any useful way.

Conversely I find theme distracting and invasive while working on a game design. I find it much easier to work on raw mechanics along with a theme du jour and then every so often (or more often) throw out the current theme and put a new one on for size. The themes are picked to support the already chosen mechanics, and then discarded and replaced because they no longer quite fit the new mechanics or some other choice of theme is somehow more interesting or suggestive...until it too is replaced. For example one game started out without a name with a vague theme idea of conflicting tunnel building insects, and then got moved to competing the Mongol tribes shortly after the time of Tammerlane (and named Pax Mongolica), and then rethemed to tree roots IIRC (no name, just the idea of chemical warfare among competing root systems), and then rethemed to the late era Viking trade empire across the northern Altlantic, and then rethemed to the Varangian Guard of Constantinople (and named Varangian Guard: The road to Constantinople), and has just had that theme peeled off with several others now trying it on for size. Each change was driven by some addition or change of mechanics that I thought interesting. Through all of this the game has always remained a fairly simple middle-weight route-building area-control and auction game.

Obviously and quite rightly, people vary widely on this area.

I'll confess, I find Ad Acta fascinating. The game just /sounds/ interesting to me. Timing. Logistics. Hand management (not usually a biggie for me). Time and sorting sequences. High prediction/control. Lots of player interaction. All sorts of manipulateable equilibria in there! I'm adding this one to my interested list now. Andrea Meyer is quite a quirky designer -- Mall World was also an interesting collision of decision types.

It makes me wonder why you even bother with a theme at all before the mechanics are finished. ;)

Perhaps working with a theme provides a frame of reference upon which to base your choice and manipulation of the game mechanisms? It seems to me a viable theme is important to your game design process; enough so that, once the mechanisms have evolved beyond the scope of the existing thematic framework, a new framework must be constructed to ensure game remains externally coherent.

My game design process is almost always informed by the theme I've chosen--or more often, the theme which has chosen me. Only once has a game mechanism come before the game, and that, only just; in a serendipitous bit of web surfing, I stumbled across an interesting game theory experiment that immediately suggested a game based on events in the novel I was reading at the time.

Of course, game theory seeks to model human decision making behavior, so no one should really be surprised when life imitates game theory. :)

My most recent game is inspired by a historical "gaming" of the marketplace in Pisa, Italy. In Renaissance-era Pisa, trade ships were owned by the local government. The right to rent the ships was auctioned to local merchants, who then sold space on the ships to their fellow merchants. The auction was timed; at first by a one-hour candle, but later by the locally audible chiming of a clock tower in a nearby town when the city fathers found the merchants waiting until the candle was beginning to gutter before bidding, so as to keep the selling price low.

Reading about something like that, I can't help but try to devise a game to model it. Naturally, the game would center around a timed auction, but how do you make the end-point uncertain? I had no interest in using electronics or mechanical timers, so another method had to be devised. Another concern was what to do with the ship, once it was auctioned--ideally, the players will have goods to ship now that one has access to a boat, but how do they get the goods? I made a crude mock-up to test some basic mechanism ideas and my playtesters made a lot of suggestions ("give it up" "this game sucks"). A number of playtests and mock-ups later, I've got a working game with a decent prototype that, I think, nicely fits my original theme idea. Yay, me!

Maybe I'm lucky enough to be inspired by the obvious stuff (so, it's an auction game that models a real-life auction? how clever..) or maybe most of my ideas never get to the "this game sucks" stage, but I find having an interesting theme to explore really makes the design process fun and challenging, even if the games do not always turn out that way.