Almost 2 years ago, I wrote an article on my site that explains that games should put a player into a dream. This theory was inspired after seeing the inception movie. The article can be found here:
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=DesignArticle.Article20100813...
Now I am trying to push the concept forward and trying to determine what can keep a player in dream and prevent his mind from rejecting the game. I decided to post here first to get more feedback before writing an article.
The 2 problems found so far are:
Brain calculations: If the game requires a lot of calculation from the players, it will kick out the player from the dream because he will not see the game as an experience any more but rather a combination of mechanics that can be resolved with maths.
Illogical with theme: if the many mechanics does not make sense with the theme, the player's mind will eventually reject the dream which will kick him out. This is because the game does not give the immersive experience the player would expect from the theme.
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Why should we keep players into a dream?
If the player is dreaming, he sees the game as an experience rather than a series of mechanics. So a game like puerto rico will feeling like:
"Managing a colony in the Caribbean" rather than "Role selection and resources management".
Managing a plantation in the Caribbean looks like an interesting experience compared role section and resource management.
So by keeping the player in dream, the player is focusing on experience and does not event bother about the bottom mechanics of the game. While if the player is kicked out of the dream, then it's all about analysing mechanics and optimising actions and resources.
It also means that a player would bother less about a game with flawed or unbalanced mechanics if he is still in dream.
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Another things that I could consider is that kids can dream more easily than adults which became too much rational (or boring). So this could be a reason why adults like games that makes no sense and where the theme is irrelevant. It's because they cannot dream. In fact, I think they can dream, but they just don't want to because of various reasons including social stigmatisation.
On the other hand the kids games are too simple and too dumb. Sometimes they have little strategy and sometimes it feels like the designed did not care if their game is bad as long as kids are not intelligent enough to realise that the game is bad. Since kids have a dreaming ability that is so strong, it will exceed the bad mechanics of the game making the bad game good.
The problem is that there is little games that fit in between. This is why, most of my games that I make tries to make the player dreams while giving him enough strategic options. This is why, many of my variants tries to simplify the game or make mechanics have more sense with the theme. The objective is to keep the player in the dream.
This is why I came up the with idea of loose strategy games. Games where there are decision, but where a bad decision will not cost you the game. For adult that cannot dream, that might be seen as a very simple game because it's not a puzzle challenging enough.
I think I am in the category of the few adults that can still dream a bit, but not as much as a kid. It might also be the reason why there is a lot of games out there that I don't like, especially euros, because they are only about mechanics, not dream at all in there.
I don't know is some of you share the same point of view. Else I would like to know what else could kick out a player from the dream.
I talked about it to my girl friend who studied in psychology.
There would be a minority of adult people who would still have the capability of dreaming. People who plays role playing games are more likely to be able to dream because they have the ability to create the world in their head which is not something that apparently everybody can do.
As for if board games can help players learn to dream, the answer is probably NO. Board games and Role playing games are all in the player's head. It's the player's imagination that enhance the game. If players had little imagination, they is no way they can learn that ability from them. But maybe using medias like video games and movies could be easier because they can actually see the world under their eyes, they have little to imagine.
Second, since the new generation of people play more games than the older generation, people are more likely in the future to have a stronger imagination capability.
So as for game design, how do you design games that fit in between? My idea is that you need to have a good game that offers good strategic decision, that is not too long and that does not ask to do heavy calculations. That would make the game playable for 8+ or 10+ years old. So that the younger people with stronger imagination and the adults with dreaming skills would enjoy the game. While the more rational adults, they might be willing to play the game with their kids because it is not a bad game, but it's just not enough challenging for them to play with other adults.
I think that this could be the optimal way to maximise the target audience for that style of games.
By the ways, those who have not seen "the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasus" movie should really take a look. It somewhat talk about the idea that imagination can free you.