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

[Sammas]

"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. ... 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."

Have a look at the Land of Legends demo - easy to understand, but there's a lot of depth to it.

[Wyatt Hebert]

One small clarification to one of the things I was trying to say. When I say 'mental hold', I am primarily talking about the ability to maintain the current _local_ game state in your mind. I have no problems with large and intricate game _worlds_, but the ability to maintain knowledge about what is going is crucial to many games these days.

As an example, I am a long-time RPG GameMaster. I've run about 12 different game systems in my life, and played in more, and I love large and detailed worlds. However, I can maintain the pertinent game information mostly in my head while playing, and this is merely a subset of the world.

To put it another way, I think very few people honestly are upset when they are out-played. I think true anger or disappointment with games is when they believe that it was an oversight on their part that led to the problem or defeat. In chess, it's easy to see the entire game situation at once, and people still miss the winning and losing combinations. In games of the current complexity, trying to keep the game-state in your mind is extremely difficult, and most likely impossible after the early turns. If I lose provinces due to an oversight on my part, I will be upset that I missed it, and possibly at the game engine for not being clearer.

In any event, this was just an attempt to explain what was in my mind when I referred to 'mental hold'.

Wyatt

[PCarroll]

Wyatt Hebert said:
One small clarification to one of the things I was trying to say. When I say 'mental hold', I am primarily talking about the ability to maintain the current _local_ game state in your mind. I have no problems with large and intricate game _worlds_, but the ability to maintain knowledge about what is going is crucial to many games these days.

As an example, I am a long-time RPG GameMaster. I've run about 12 different game systems in my life, and played in more, and I love large and detailed worlds. However, I can maintain the pertinent game information mostly in my head while playing, and this is merely a subset of the world.

To put it another way, I think very few people honestly are upset when they are out-played. I think true anger or disappointment with games is when they believe that it was an oversight on their part that led to the problem or defeat. In chess, it's easy to see the entire game situation at once, and people still miss the winning and losing combinations. In games of the current complexity, trying to keep the game-state in your mind is extremely difficult, and most likely impossible after the early turns. If I lose provinces due to an oversight on my part, I will be upset that I missed it, and possibly at the game engine for not being clearer.

In any event, this was just an attempt to explain what was in my mind when I referred to 'mental hold'.

Wyatt

Errmmm . . . I thought I understood what you meant by "mental hold" the first time you said it. Now, after your clarification, I'm not so sure.

I certainly agree that the main reason people get upset over a game is that they feel they've overlooked something that they should have noticed. And sometimes (depending on what the player overlooked and other factors) the player will shift the blame to the UI or something outside himself.

But the part I don't understand is when you say, "In chess, it's easy to see the entire game situation at once, and people still miss the winning and losing combinations." That's true, but are you saying that in chess a player does or does not have "mental hold"? Is mental hold "see[ing] the entire game situation at once," or is it seeing "the winning and losing combinations"?

Because if it's the latter, then it seems to me "mental hold" would be undesirable in all games. The whole challenge of playing games is *reaching* for the foresight or insight to see all the winning and losing combinations. As soon as someone attains that level of mastery, the game is no longer challenging. It becomes trivial, like tic-tac-toe (naughts & crosses).

The reason I'm having trouble understanding you this time is that in my mind, there's no difference between being outplayed and making an oversight. If we're playing chess, and you outplay me, it means there were moves and combinations that I overlooked. You may have overlooked some too, but you overlooked fewer of them than I did.

My understanding of "mental hold" from your first message was that either of two things could be a problem: (1) a rulebook too thick to ever memorize in a lifetime, or (2) a game so big and elaborate that it's impossible to consciously take care of *everything* under one's control. In board-wargaming terms, Advanced Squad Leader is an example of (1), and The Longest Day (a monster game with a five-foot-square mapboard and thousands of unit-counters) is an example of (2).

Chess is nothing like ASL or TLD. The rules to chess can easily be memorized, and the most a player ever has to do is choose which one of sixteen pieces to move on the 8x8 grid. Very small and manageable. Perfect "mental hold," in this sense. And yet, comprehending *all* the winning and losing moves and combinations is next to impossible.

So, IMO, it's good when a game is challenging; otherwise it'd be as trivial as tic-tac-toe. But it's bad when the size or complexity or length of a game becomes daunting to one's mental grasp--because then the player tends to give up before he ever gets around to facing the challenge of figuring out winning strategy & tactics.

--Patrick

[Wyatt Hebert]

You got my 'mental hold' concept in one, PCarroll, but to be explicit, I would define it as:

the ability to contain and comprehend the current game state.

This could be stated as a percentage, or it could be simply expressed as the required amount of data required to maintain proper gameplay. My primary point, I suppose, is that Dominions 2, on larger maps, inevitably runs into the problem of being out of scope for almost any player. It certainly, in my opinion, gets to the point that missing command opportunities will be more common, and missing optimal plays will be expected. I used Chess as an example because the 'mental hold' required, while not constant, is bounded to a fairly manageable level. Understanding the game state is not a particularly difficult task, particularly for a basic understanding. Extrapolating from that position is the mark of more advanced studies, certainly, and that's where a large part of the skill comes in, but the ability to retain the game state is quite important.

Wyatt