The theme of a game is something that needs to be considered carefully,
as I tried to prove the last time I tackled the topic, pointing to issues that
turned out to be somewhat problematic when it came to reception of some games.
Sometimes navigating through what rubs players the right or the wrong way turns
out to be surprisingly difficult, as a small misstep can make some of our
potential customers unwilling to buy our product, regardless of the quality of
its mechanisms. So, maybe dropping the theme completely would be a better idea
altogether?
 |
Image source:
BoardGameGeek |
The obvious answer is, well, no. Themes are there for two important purposes. The first one relates our
game to other games already present on the market, allowing it to either stand
out, or fall in line with similar products. This is a little bit like sending a
message: “If you like games like Puerto Rico or Caylus, you will like this game
as well” or “This might tickle your fancy if you like Talisman style fantasy adventures”.
The second purpose is of a seemingly different nature, as it is a more
practical one. A theme is something that helps us learn a game. It uses shortcuts
that help our brain process all the new information we are feeding it in order
to finally sit down and have some fun around a gaming table.
Now, I know that at this point some of you might say that a lot of games
do not have a theme and they are doing pretty well. However, even in some of those
cases rudimentary theming is often also involved, especially if the game comes
with six types of pieces, with each of them using different movement rules (and
as a side note: while I would never try to argue that Chess is thematic, once
you read The Flanders Panel, you will never look upon Chess the way you had
looked at the game before).
 |
Image source:
BoardGameGeek |
However, if you try to completely remove a theme from a more complicated
(rules wise) game like Agricola, you will quickly see how ungodly difficult it
would be to teach it to new people. Just think about trying to make new players remember that
the yellow and orange pieces are multiplied through placing them on brown
squares (which you first place on green squares), while the white, black and
brown pieces are gained through placing them on green squares which need to
be either surrounded by your sticks or need to contain a cube of your colour before you are actually allowed to place them, and any
multiplication is performed only once every four, three or two rounds.
The two above reasons make some of the most abstract European games,
excellent titles like the classic Goa, Shipyard or Yspahan cling to their theme,
hoping that even with a significant number of disassociated mechanisms, they
will still be able to make use of the ones that make some sense, and give new
players a foothold, that will allow them to actually learn the rest of the
game.
In short, the theme of the game is there to translate a bunch of
complicated mechanisms into a language we can easily understand and relate to
something we already know. Farming, building a castle, constructing ships,
sending good overseas – all this help us make enough sense of some wooden cubes
and some strange symbols to actually have fun while pushing them around a board. And the memory of this process also allows us to choose efficiently while making purchases, which brings
us back to relating our game to other games on the market.
 |
Image source:
BoardGameGeek |
A proper theme of a game announces what we can expect inside the box. A
ship, a sheep and a sad guy on the cover will tell us that we will most probably be
optimizing our moves, exchanging cubes for other cubes and preparing a nice
point salad. A dude with an oversized weapon, a fiery dragon or a charging army will
tell us that we will most probably be rolling dice, playing “in your face”
cards, putting narration over common sense and relying on both strategy and
luck to win the day. Altogether, the box tells us then, if the learning process will be aided by
a positive filter, or hampered by a negative one.
Finally, it all boils down to our likes and dislikes yet again. I know a
very aggressive gamer, a fan of extremely confrontational games, who suffered
through an explanation of Istanbul and ended up really liking the game, after
he had powered through the somewhat stunted learning process to appease his wife. I
also know a very multiplayer solitaire centred gamer who decided to give Combat Commander just one try and ended up having lots of fun leading her troops, but
only after overcoming her aversion to aggressive gameplay and World War II
history.
And as much as the above cases tell us that many gamers can actually
enjoy games towards which they were initially reluctant, the publishers should probably learn a completely opposite lesson. Because in fact, most people will not play a product
they are not fond of right from the start, and with the abundance of games on
the market today, no game will have a first (not to mention the second) chance to make a good impression –
and very rarely will there be another person around to help with making the
first one really count.
__________________
FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook | BGG
