a memorable experience
Part two in my series on the four ingredients that make a good game.
You can find the introductory post here:
To recap, these are the parts that I believe make a game good
Memorable experience
Engaged player(s)
Important choices
Satisfying outcome
Now, let's focus on the memorable experience aspect.
Nostalgia plays a big role when it comes to marketing. Folks just love the things that harken back to the good ol’ days of yore—the simpler times, the happier times. At least that’s the hope.
Memory is our brain’s way of storing information it has deemed important. And we tend to like familiar things. So it’s no surprise that we have an automatic connection to anything that looks or feels familiar.
When it comes to games, many people have a special place in their hearts for their old childhood classics, and not necessarily because of the quality of the games themselves. Much of it has to do with the memories tied to a game.
So, with that in mind, what is it that makes the experience of a game memorable?
For starters, it has to stand out as different from other games. Otherwise, it’ll simply feel too familiar to be worth forming strong memories over. If important things get remembered then a game that is very similar to many other games just doesn’t stand much a chance of making it into the important category.
Among hobby gamers, there is an ongoing joke about someone coming up with a game where players take on the role of traders in the Mediterranean, and then everyone groans. This gets a chuckle because there are so many games with that theme nowadays. Even if a particular game with that same basic theme may offer something entirely different from the others, it’s going to have a harder time getting noticed.
But standing out requires more than just a novel theme: it’s all about the way the game is played.
While this is certainly not my favorite type of game, Twister comes to mind as a great example. Games have had a spinner as a main component for quite a while, but in Twister, the players become the game pieces, in a sense. This paves the way for many memorable (and often hilarious) interactions.
Even though it has some of the same elements, Twister is worlds apart from the multitude of other games where players flick a spinner and then move their piece on a board. The key here is interaction.
When looking at a game, consider: how does it create opportunities for interaction, both between players and with the game itself? And what sort of interactions does it create? Games that provide unusual interactions have a higher chance of sticking in the mind—they put a spin on the usual fare.
Settlers of Catan is old news now (and not even one of my favorites), but when it came out, it brought something new to the (actual) table. Players could use resources to build little wooden buildings on a modular board, blocking off and grabbing up territory, and also trade goods with one another (which were acquired through a unique dice mechanic). That’s a lot of new and different stuff in one game, but let’s look at the interaction specifically.
Catan has two very different kinds of interaction in the same game: one more aggressive (blocking people from gaining resources or building) the other more cooperative (trading to the benefit of both parties). This came as a stark contrast to other games like Monopoly, Sorry, and Yahtzee.
Let’s dive deeper. Besides just looking at the type of interactions in the game, there is also the emotional experience to consider. Is the game a “mean” one like Diplomacy where players scheme against one another, a push your luck game like Farkle or Can’t Stop where players have to decide when to take risks in order to beat their opponent’s score, or a cooperative game like Pandemic where all (or most) players are on a team trying to beat the game itself?
Each games carries its own varied emotional flavor. The stronger the flavor, the more it stands out. But not everyone has the same taste. Some folks really love chocolate and some are quite content with regular vanilla. And then there’s the few but proud strawberry people.
Games like Cranium and Quelf are highly social and extremely silly, but for the quiet introvert, that’s about as appealing as clubbing seals is to an animal rights activist. Now if we’re talking about going to a club where seals are present and playing Cranium…that’s another story entirely.
Studies have shown that following any singular event (such as a vacation or a visit to a friend’s house for dinner) only two parts tend to stick in our minds: the best and the worst. We compress everything that happened into just those two extreme moments while everything else fades into a gray blur.
While working on pitching my upcoming game (one with explorers in an ancient trap-filled temple), I had to think hard to figure out what it was that made the game tick. What sort of emotions would players feel or expect to feel during the game? I realized that traps and the uncertainty of what would happen next really was the heartbeat of the game. The emotional high, if you will. So I spent some time working on the best way to emphasize that particular aspect.
This is where a game can really excel in the memorable department: if it offers some high highs and low lows. That can mean really good things or really bad things happening to players (in the context of the game, hopefully not real-life). However, this is also where it can go off the rails.
Those strawberry people might not like to be figuratively backstabbed by their real life friends right at the end of a game. The chocolate folks might not want to link arms with their compadres as they waltz off into the sunset, having rid the world of infectious diseases. Perhaps they instead prefer to be the antagonist, the lone wolf fighting it out wit-for-wit against their opponents as in the game Fury of Dracula.
There are many other aspects that can make a game memorable (such as the artwork and components), and not all of them are easy to determine just how big their impact will be on players (or whether it will be a positive or negative one). Being memorable doesn’t always mean being extreme. Not every game needs to have people laughing hysterically or weeping into their tea to be a good one, but sometimes it helps. Especially if the tea is very bitter.
While no single game can appeal to everyone (and there are some people to whom hardly any game appeals), everyone can appreciate a game that offers something new in the way of memorable interaction.
Sometimes that means trading two wool for a brick and sometimes it means frantically shouting incoherent babble at your spouse in an attempt to prevent your spaceship from having a front-on collision with an asteroid. Just don't serve up any astronaut ice cream. I think we can all agree that stuff is memorably bad in every flavor.