I have all idea I want to throw out for public viewing on how to understand and cut up games. I call it the machine model. I want to know how things work. Beyond all the pretty boxes and flashy advertising, I want to know what makes one game "better" than another. This is what I see as the main aim of (the oft cited but seldom seen) "Game Philosophy". Games are mysterious things. Wrapped in pretty boxes, touted in flashy advertising, it is very hard to know whether this game is "better" than that one. This is one of the goals of the oft-mentioned but seldon see "Game Philosophy." Unfortunately, attempts to get beyond the out side of the box are few and muddled. I understand muddled; I get muddled whenever I try to analyze too many things at once, so headachs are a natural when I try to compare the quality of a role play game to a board game. They are apples and oranges, but they aren't. They are both games but beyond that It Is hard to say much more. People try, of course, but it mainly boils down to bias and politics, neither of which explain much. The machine model is my attempt to escape from the muddle and get a glimpse of "the big picture." The less people know of their laws and sausages, the happier they will be. --Otto von Bismark Imagine you receive a new MACHINE in the mail. Maybe it's a computer or maybe only a meat grinder but it is a neat machine and you try it out. You fill "stuff" into it at one end, manipulate it in the middle and come out with altered "better" but it begins to turn out inferior stuff. I believe the same thing happens when we get new games. What if a game was like a machine? Would it need to look any different? (Gears and pistons, in the counters.) I don't think so. In fact the game would not need to look any different from the way they do now. This is because games don't crank out ground meat, they churn out information. Games, no matter what the genre, are machines that manipulate information, the act of which DOING is called playing the game. Maybe I move lead figures, or maybe I record a ton of numbers and dice rolls, but when I do this I am cutting up and fitting back together information about the situation I am gaming. The act of DOING this is as much like a machine process as grinding up Sausage is. For example, what is the difference between the following moves? The British Grenadier figures storm the gate and drive the French Militia figures back into the town. The figures are picked up and put in boxes for the drive home. Both involved figures being moved, but one tells a story and the other doesn't. It is all a matter of cranking out information changes about the boys in red, i.e. a game, or something you do that changes nothing informationwise. Obviously, different games grind up information in different ways. This is what marks the dividing lines between the different genres. But since they all deal with information and humans they have a lot in common. For instance, they all produce the same thing: 1. fun and 2. solutions to problems. So what else do they have in common ... Twoyears ago, I would have said that all games had numbers as the root of their systems. I no longer believe this. Diplomacy, Chess, Tic Tac Toe, and Matrix Games, do not require any numbers t0 tell you a story. What they have In common with other games: A structure to store information. They have a predictable process for changing information. And they use humans to make decisions based on the above two. Some games may have loose open ended structure (like Matrix Games and Role Playing) and others may be more determinlstic like Chess and Diplomacy). Some have simple orders of play (like Tic Tac Toe, and Chess) while others would baffle the wisdom of Soloman (like monster board games, and some number heavy RPGs). Then there are the people, always the weakest point. Without them the games may work (like a computer playing Chess with itself but it doesn't produce much fun that way. The Machine model looks at the problem points in how games fit the above things. Different game's problems arise from how they DO information storage, info processing, and human interfacing. This, hopefully, will open the pretty colored box and stand all games up to the same "objective" test. I see the following points as the problems: static, overload, friction, and waste. STATIC: This problem creates confusion in the players as to what information is stored, the process it is worked in and what I am suppose to do. Static comes from poorly written rules, and games that have not been adequately playtested. Confusion is the norm in playtesting. It is good since it points out the flaws in the game. This allows the game maker to correct them. If this does not happen though, the game falls to work since it can't transmit information if you don't understand it. Much like shoving meat parts in the wrong hole and expecting bratwurst to come out. The old adage "when in doubt read the instructions" comes to mind. But with static, the instructions don't help. OVERLOAD: Researchers in the 1950s discovered that humans can store up to 7 "bits" of inforamation in their mind at any one time. With a little education you learn how to combine ideas to seemingly increase this total (like learning the preposition song, or an idiot savant learning a phone book) but the 7 bit limit remains. If you throw more information at a person than they can use, then it starts mounting up and overload sets in. An overloaded player, becomes even slower at taking in new information (le doing the next turn) because he is still working on last turn. If he tries to keep up, he does so by intentionally ignoring incoming information, and consequently is not getting a complete picture of what is going on. He will blindly walk into an artillery barge. Finally, the player will become bored (since he is not really understanding or participating in what is going on). Boredom kills fun, and prevents problem solving. The referee is often more at risk for overload than the players. If this happens then everyone suffers, since they can justifiable say, "you're just making it up as we go along!" FRICTION: Overload causes friction. It Is like trying to shove a whole cow into the grinders at once. The work slows down and undergoes a lot of stress. Friction also happens when the game's process of play is physically slow. For example, moving 5000 counters one inch every turn, or retrieving what the combat factor of the artillery is that is on the bottom of a stack of ten counters. Friction often occurs when a game nears a critical moment. May times in playtesting games breakdown at this point due to internal inconsistencies. Another good learning experience. But in a normal game I want it to go smoothly. This means having clear simple events which tell a definite story. Games filled with friction causing unclear rules invite players to add their own amount of friction In the form of bias, prejudice and rules lawyering. Most friction comes from where two sides met and one of them is not going to walk out of the encounter. WASTE: Waste is the natural outcome of all of the above. If the game is like this then it is often a waste of my time. Time is an important commodity for me since I don't get to game all that much. It is also infuriating to have spent hours getting my men to battle only to have all the information I have been playing with be useless. Boredom, slow game mechanisms, and irrelevant smoke screening information, waste my time since they do not give me the fun. Three Categories of Gamer Novice Unskilled. Isn't any good at. Experienced Is skilled at understanding games, and who craves certainty/"realism" in games. Experimenter who understands games but who wants something different. Due to a lack of space I will limit this description to only one genre of game. I have chosen Role Play games because they are probably the most commercialised and least understood games out there. So let's see how this sucker works ... Novice STATIC: This is always a problem for novices. RPGs are almost always filled with static. But this does not matter too much since the player is not required to know too much about the rules. Also RPG character creation is usually well written. OVERLOAD: This too is a normal problem of novices. Again though, since most of the rules can be ignored and is not a big problem. A kind GM can even limit the information to just what the player can take and in so doing truly engage him in the game. FRICTION: The critical point in most RPGs are combat and magic. Many systems are relatively fast but friction is still a problem for many novices. I believe it is because man to man combat is imaginable that so many players are not driven out of gaming. WASTE: A well delivered simple RPG, is seldom a waste of a novice's time. They can do what is in front of them and by so doing be indoctrinated into game system thinking which "the experienced wargamer" is adept at. Experienced Wargamer STATIC: This is seldom a problem for most experienced gamers. Not only do they know the rules but many have figured out how unimportant most rules are. The unfortunate point of static that most old hands get into is to become true believers of ONE set of rules. All other rules are branded heretical, and bias filled the air with clouds of self made static (hopefully not in the vicinity of novices - who have no idea what you are getting so worked up about!) OVERLOAD: Many gamers learn the process of remembering vast quantities of numbers while playing games. This often leads them to believe that they have excellent memories. Well, I wish it were so, but it has more to do with having learned to cluster those numbers into big "bits" of information than anything else. Whenever the game requires players to keep track of players' information (player stats plus where you are plus the past damage on your armor plus the location on your body of fifty weapons, potions,etc. plus the exact activation words for each item etc.) It is a very common occurrence for old hand gamers to get overwhelmed in a "realistic" game. FRICTION: Again, experienced gamers are not as plagued by this because of the learning they have about the game system. Really this is one of the reasons why I believe games are like machines. A gamers efficiency at playing a game increases with practice, the same thing happens when that same player begins working on an assembly line. WASTE: Experienced wargamers know what to expect when start playing an RPG. In fact, the game is often secondary to just getting together with friends. Then there are those who really enjoy the mental activity of manipulating a bulky hard to play game. We all know rules lawyers and game- accountants. Experimenter STATIC: The price of becoming aware of rules making is that the static of other games becomes painfully obvious. Unfortunately, most RPGs are very unclear. They tend to center around character creation and combat. They all claim to be more "realistic," but their reason for that seems to come from having more tables and charts than the next guy. I find that RPG "rules" are mainly best ignored, least you begin to think the are serious. OVERLOAD: Experimenters are open to overload a little faster than "old hands." This is by and large due to experimenters tendency to dabble in many systems rather than specialise in one. In addition, experimenters tend to analyse games to death and come up with useless theories about them, like the machine model. FRICTION: Once you begin to analyse games for their qualities friction points become more obvious. RPGs tend to break down when the players try to deal with the "big picture" of the world. This puts TOO much on the GM. If he is honest, he will cut the players off with a simple I don't know. Or maybe he is a story teller, who is willing to make it up as he goes along...but can he keep the story straight? It has more to do with the personality of individual. Get a good group together and the game follows. Back to Experimental Games Group # 5 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com