Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

Wyatt Hebert said:
. . . The whole problem I think is that people see computers as the fix to minutiae of a game... which they easily can be... no dice-rolling, no keeping track of counters, just making the decisions. However, the main problem is that with that ease people aren't paying attention to two other major issues: attention span and mental hold. I've noticed in myself that when either of those limits are exceeded, my fun factor starts going downhill.

. . . [In a game like cribbage,] I only have to hold so much in my head each time I sit to play, and it doesn't exceed my attention span. I believe I have larger than normal attention span and mental hold (by which I mean the ability to hold the current situation clearly in mind). . . .

Thanks, Wyatt! I've never seen the problem put so succinctly before. I think that's exactly it.

I've been a big fan of board and card games throughout all five decades of my life so far, and I've enjoyed games of all kinds. I was an avid board wargamer from 1968 to about 1994 or so--but even during that time I was always struggling with the attention-span/mental-hold problem. Though drawn to big, complex games, over time I found I couldn't really enjoy playing them. I'd pore over a monster game--or a thick-rulebook game like Advanced Squad Leader--and *admire* it; but it was hard to make myself actually play--and even harder to keep playing and enjoying it. So, I kept falling back on simpler wargames.

I think there's some real tension there--between a desire to immerse yourself in a detailed, realistic game-world (participating in the *theme* of the game) and a desire to mentally grasp the game-system itself (minus the theme) and learn to play well. Designer Jim Dunnigan, back in the heyday of SPI, took an extensive survey and discovered that most wargamers were just "reading" the games, not playing them. Admittedly, that's what I usually did: I'd lovingly open the box, look at the components, read the rules, and play a practice game or two by myself; then the game would start gathering dust on a shelf.

The home computer at first looked like a solution to the problem; and as you say, it many ways it was. Setup time has been reduced from many minutes (or even hours, for monster games) to a second. Game play is speeded up. Online help and prompting saves searching through a rulebook. Combat calculations are automatic and instantaneous. And so forth.

But the basic problem still remains: if there's enough of a detailed theme to satisfy one's desire for imaginative immersion, there is also going to be a lot to hold in one's mind for a long time.

Until now, I hadn't noticed how simple the problem is. I don't have a solution either, and I'm not sure there is one. But it's nice to just be able to finally see the problem clearly.

The more I've played wargames and computer games over the years, the more I've come to appreciate the elegant simplicity of classic games like backgammon, checkers (draughts), chess, cribbage, and dominoes. No wonder these games have crossed over into many cultures and remained popular for so many generations. They've been refined to the point where they're just right in terms of size, length, pace, ease of learning, and level of challenge. Some (like chess and checkers) can be daunting to master; but you don't have to master them to enjoy playing them.

Dom2 (or Dom3) can't possibly solve the problem we're talking about, of course. By nature, it's an epic game with a fairly complex underlying game-system. So it's going to appeal to those who still want the imaginative immersion enough that they're willing to strain to wrap their minds around something too big and long to really be comfortable. To each his own. I've been there and done that, so it's easy for me to understand that desire.

At this point in my gaming life, however, I think maybe it's time to turn to some of the classic games I named above.

--Patrick