We Didn't Playtest this at all and Chaos versus Strategy

 

Something that pops into my mind every so often was a conversation that happened in a pub a few years ago. It’s niggled me ever since. I’ve never really pinned down why I didn’t just instantly forget it, but it still lives in my brain rent free.

We were playing a relatively lightweight game of some sort and drinking a few beers. It was a  bunch of people interesting in play and games in learning, but still, it was social time and we were enjoying ourselves. Someone started to argue that they didn’t really count the lightweight games (fun, easy to learn, large elements of luck) that we were playing as “proper” games. The only “proper” games were the fairly hardcore “euro” type games (lots of planning / strategy, minimal chance / luck) and the less that chance or luck was involved the better. Their ideal game involved no luck at all, but was purely a test of skill and strategy from the players.

I was playing “We didn’t playtest this at all” with my children the other day, using the “chaos pack” expansion, when I realised why this has niggled me so much. We were working our way through the chaos pack parks and I said something along the lines of “this makes it too complicated and structured – it’s more chaotic without the chaos cards”, which is when the realisation struck. "Playtest" is very chaotic, almost completely luck, very silly, and very fun to to play. It would have been as far away from being a good game as it's possible to be (from that conversation above). But it's the sort of game I really enjoy playing (particularly with my children).

So that person in the pub was defining "proper" games as more like competitive sport than free play - if you've practiced (trained?), are the "best" player, you should always win. It's no fun if anyone could win just through luck. "Playtest" is the opposite - it doesn't matter how much you practice it, you are unlikely to increase your chances of winning (unless you keep hold of a banana - apparantly zombies HATE bananas). So the "structured" game itself isn't particularly important - it just acts as a vehicle for silliness and the comedy of the text and activities on the cards. So it's really just acting as a nudge, a prompt, a permission slip to be more playful. The game isn't important, it's the way it facilitates play that is the point of it.

So, I suppose that's a long rambling way of reflecting that some people see the structures of games and becoming skilled at them as really important - like becoming competitive at a sport. Some of us see the way games give us a structure to hide behind as more important, so it gives us permission to play. Most people are probably somewhere in between the two extremes. But there is no real right answer to how games (including learning games) should work - whether they depend on us building skills, or just enabling different behaviours. What matters is what the players want to get out of it, and for learning games, what the instructor wants to enable.