written about<\/a> humor in the context of board games, so go read that!<\/p>\nGames can be impactful by doing reasonably well in a few categories or by smashing through the ceiling on a single one. There\u2019s also probably ways of achieving impact that I haven\u2019t thought of.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Impact Scale<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nEver since I came up with the concept, I\u2019ve started scoring games on their impact with a scale of 1 to 10. I wanted to share some of my thoughts on it to illustrate how I think about impact.<\/p>\n
At the very bottom of the scale sits the game I use as an example of nonimpactful games, Glass Road.<\/em> I want to preface this by saying that I think Glass Road<\/em>, like most of Uwe Rosenberg\u2019s games, is an extremely good and challenging game that gives players a lot of options. In fact, this is also a good example of how \u201cimpact\u201d and \u201cquality\u201d are on completely separate axes, as there are terrible games that are still quite impactful.<\/p>\nBut returning to my main point, Glass Road<\/em> is a game about glassblowing set in rural Germany, but you don\u2019t even have\u00a0to blow glass most of the time! I\u2019ve won multiple games by ignoring glass entirely, making a lot of bricks, and using them to buy buildings. There\u2019s a fun gimmick with some production wheels, but I just don\u2019t remember anything about the gameplay except that it was good.<\/p>\nThe other game that immediately springs to mind as a 1 for impact is Hansa Teutonica<\/em>, which was very deep and well crafted but so dry I forgot what it was called a few days after playing it. It has cute little dinner plate tokens, though.<\/p>\nGames scoring 2, 3, and 4 are usually dry games that focus on mechanics. Just having a small gimmick or distinct art is enough to rescue a game from being a 1, like Splendor<\/em>\u2019s thick poker chips. (Splendor <\/em>is a 2.) At the high end of this part of the scale is Castles of Mad King Ludwig<\/em>, where the gameplay is pretty mathematical but at the end of the game you look down and find that, because you focused too much on getting points, the only bathroom in your castle is at the end of an elaborate system of catacombs.<\/p>\nTo reach a 5, 6, or 7, there has to be something in the gameplay itself that\u2019s memorable and exciting. Very exciting Euro strategy games belong here, as well as thematic games that didn\u2019t quite hit the mark. This is the realm of games like Munchkin<\/em>, Exploding Kittens<\/em>, and Red Dragon Inn<\/em>, which enrage some entrenched gamers with their weak gameplay but attract a lot of casual players through their impact. Libertalia<\/em>, my favorite game about burly men punching each other off a boat, is a high 7.<\/p>\n8s, 9s, and 10s are the true champions of impact. Games at this level need to really generate great stories, whether intentionally or unintentionally. A few examples I haven\u2019t mentioned yet: Betrayal At House On the Hill, Spyfall, Cosmic Encounter<\/em>. Special mention goes to Cutthroat Kingdoms<\/em>, an incredibly impactful game I\u2019ve had the pleasure of observing at various cons over the past few years; I\u2019ve actually discussed the topic of impact (without mentioning it by name, as this was before the concept solidified for me) with the designer a number of times.<\/p>\nMagic: The Gathering<\/em>, especially its Limited side, scores at least a 9 for impact because of how many memorable games its variance and capacity for lateral thinking generates. Almost every Magic<\/em> player, including me, could tell you stories about games from a decade ago with almost play-for-play recollection.<\/p>\n\u201cSo if you\u2019re so cool and good at judging other people\u2019s games, then what about yours?\u201d Tiny Trainwrecks<\/em> is a 5, Happy Daggers<\/em> is a 4, and Stand Back, Citizen! <\/em>is a 7 or 8. Let me know if you think differently!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\nFor a long time, I\u2019ve searched for both the kind of games I want to make and the kind of games I think I\u2019d be good at making. By thinking about games in terms of their impact, I feel like I finally have a metric to judge whether an idea is worth pursuing. Hopefully, by the time my next game comes out, it\u2019ll score at least an 8 for me.<\/p>\n
Have some opinions about impact? Want to ask where on the scale I think some game lies? Please let me know however you\u2019d like!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most formative experience so far in my career as a game designer came the first time I tabled at a convention. As it happened, I was seated next to the only other tabletop game company selling there (name withheld to protect the innocent (me)). The first day, someone came up to my booth and I told her about my games. Afterwards, I observed her as she went over to the other booth. As soon as she saw it, her eyes lit up and she grinned. \u201cYou just made my day!\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve been having a hard day and you just made it way better.\u201d I immediately thought, my games need to inspire that reaction. The experience\u00a0taught me something incredibly valuable that I feel a lot of designers don\u2019t pay attention to. Games can\u2019t be evaluated strictly on the basis of \u201cquality.\u201d There\u2019s actually two ways to measure a game\u2019s appeal, and while quality is one, the second, the one that made that person\u2019s day, is something I call IMPACT!!! (Pretend I punched the air while I was saying that.) Impact is a qualitative measurement, so it\u2019s hard for me to put it in words, but roughly speaking, it\u2019s how much a game sticks with you. After playing an impactful game, you\u2019ll want to rush over to your friends who haven\u2019t played it yet and talk their ear off about this cool thing that happened or that hilarious mistake that cost you the game. You\u2019ll be so excited about what you just experienced, you\u2019ll think about it as you\u2019re driving home or drifting off to sleep. It is my responsibility as a designer, someone who makes things that he wants people to buy, to make excellent, high-quality games. However, it is my goal as a designer to make games that are also extremely impactful. How To Make An Impact So what gives a game impact in the first place? There are a number of factors at play, some of which might not be obvious. Theme: You can usually tell whether the theme of a game has impact by giving a sales pitch to someone who hasn\u2019t heard of it before. \u201cYou\u2019re a farmer in 12th-century France\u201d isn\u2019t going to be that exciting; \u201cIt\u2019s an eating contest set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland\u201d is. Art Style: Merely having quality art isn\u2019t enough to give a game more impact if the art is similar to a lot of other games out there. For example, if you showed someone a gorgeous piece of realistic-looking fantasy art, they probably couldn\u2019t tell you where it came from; show them one of John Kovalic\u2019s cartoons from Ca$h n\u2019 Gun$, on the other hand, and they\u2019ll know the answer immediately. Gimmicks: These are aesthetic or mechanical ways of approaching the game that don\u2019t actually change the strategy very much, but make it more fun. The aforementioned Ca$h n\u2019 Gun$, with its goofy foam guns, is an obvious example, but even serious strategy games use them, like Alchemists\u2019 app and Tzolk\u2019in\u2019s rotating gears. Storytelling: Games that tell some kind of coherent narrative through their play are going to stick in the players\u2019 mind much more than ones that are essentially multiplayer puzzles. RPG-lite games like Mansions of Madness are obvious, but theme-first mechanics-second games like Camp Grizzly and Sentinels of the Multiverse use storytelling techniques for impact as well. Lateral Thinking: The other way mechanics can make an impact is when there\u2019s a lot of room in the rules for a player to use lateral thinking to make hilariously unexpected plays. I can still, for example, name some of the famous\/infamous plays from Codenames games I played a year ago. This is also why card-matching party games like Apples to Apples are popular, as they\u2019re essentially \u201cLateral Thinking: The Game.” Humor: The funnier a game is, the more likely it\u2019ll impact you. I\u2019ve already written about humor in the context of board games, so go read that! Games can be impactful by doing reasonably well in a few categories or by smashing through the ceiling on a single one. There\u2019s also probably ways of achieving impact that I haven\u2019t thought of. The Impact Scale\u00a0 Ever since I came up with the concept, I\u2019ve started scoring games on their impact with a scale of 1 to 10. I wanted to share some of my thoughts on it to illustrate how I think about impact. At the very bottom of the scale sits the game I use as an example of nonimpactful games, Glass Road. I want to preface this by saying that I think Glass Road, like most of Uwe Rosenberg\u2019s games, is an extremely good and challenging game that gives players a lot of options. In fact, this is also a good example of how \u201cimpact\u201d and \u201cquality\u201d are on completely separate axes, as there are terrible games that are still quite impactful. But returning to my main point, Glass Road is a game about glassblowing set in rural Germany, but you don\u2019t even have\u00a0to blow glass most of the time! I\u2019ve won multiple games by ignoring glass entirely, making a lot of bricks, and using them to buy buildings. There\u2019s a fun gimmick with some production wheels, but I just don\u2019t remember anything about the gameplay except that it was good. The other game that immediately springs to mind as a 1 for impact is Hansa Teutonica, which was very deep and well crafted but so dry I forgot what it was called a few days after playing it. It has cute little dinner plate tokens, though. Games scoring 2, 3, and 4 are usually dry games that focus on mechanics. Just having a small gimmick or distinct art is enough to rescue a game from being a 1, like Splendor\u2019s thick poker chips. (Splendor is a 2.) At the high end of this part of the scale is Castles of Mad King Ludwig, where the gameplay is pretty mathematical but at the end of the game you look down and find that, because you focused too much on getting points, the only bathroom in your castle is at the end of an elaborate system of catacombs. To reach a 5, 6, or 7, there has to be something in the gameplay itself that\u2019s memorable and exciting. Very exciting Euro strategy games belong here, as well as thematic games that didn\u2019t quite hit the mark. This is the realm of games like Munchkin, Exploding Kittens, and Red Dragon Inn, which enrage some entrenched gamers with their weak gameplay but attract a lot of casual players through their impact. Libertalia, my favorite game about burly men punching each other off a boat, is a high 7. 8s, 9s, and 10s are the true champions of impact. Games at this level need to really generate great stories, whether intentionally or unintentionally. A few examples I haven\u2019t mentioned yet: Betrayal At House On the Hill, Spyfall, Cosmic Encounter. Special mention goes to Cutthroat Kingdoms, an incredibly impactful game I\u2019ve had the pleasure of observing at various cons over the past few years; I\u2019ve actually discussed the topic of impact (without mentioning it by name, as this was before the concept solidified for me) with the designer a number of times. Magic: The Gathering, especially its Limited side, scores at least a 9 for impact because of how many memorable games its variance and capacity for lateral thinking generates. Almost every Magic player, including me, could tell you stories about games from a decade ago with almost play-for-play recollection. \u201cSo if you\u2019re so cool and good at judging other people\u2019s games, then what about yours?\u201d Tiny Trainwrecks is a 5, Happy Daggers is a 4, and Stand Back, Citizen! is a 7 or 8. Let me know if you think differently! Conclusion For a long time, I\u2019ve searched for both the kind of games I want to make and the kind of games I think I\u2019d be good at making. By thinking about games in terms of their impact, I feel like I finally have a metric to judge whether an idea is worth pursuing. Hopefully, by the time my next game comes out, it\u2019ll score at least an 8 for me. Have some opinions about impact? Want to ask where on the scale I think some game lies? Please let me know however you\u2019d like! \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}