On Player Frameworks
Well, it has been a bit of a long hiatus, hasn’t it? One of the greatest joy and deepest annoyances of freelance life is getting/having to say “I can’t tell you what has been keeping me so busy, but it is really cool! And you’ll get to hear about it… someday! Actually, I have no idea when it will be announced!”
Fortunately, my work schedule is returning to a more steady pace. Oh, I’ve still got some cool projects on the horizon, but I should have more time for blogging again. In fact, blogging will be playing a role in one of those projects…
But for today, let’s talk about the lenses through which players see games.
Why Lenses?
Lenses are a common framework by which the inherent context and assumptions of a piece of literary analysis can be assessed. To give oversimplified examples, a gender studies analysis of a book might compare how gender identity and societal gender norms impact the lives of the characters, how this compares to these topics in other books from the same time period, and how norms from the book’s period of writing differ from contemporary thoughts about gender. A Marxist analysis of the same book could focus on how economic factors impact the lives of the characters in the story and how the economic system of the day shaped the writing of the book. A Freudian lens would focus on how the work maps onto the ideas and archetypes presented in the writings of Sigmund Freud, probably leading to a few things being called “phallic.” These lenses are obviously more nuanced than this quick gloss, but essentially, each one is a way to delve into a particular aspect of a work by establishing a context for comparison. A lens lets a critic narrow their focus to explore a particular topic deeply. Works of literary analysis don’t always profess to use a particular lens, and many compare and contrast multiple lenses to interrogate a work from different angles.
Game design also frequently puts things in terms of lenses, especially thanks to the widely read book The Art of Game Design, a copy of which Andrew Fischer was kind enough to lend me years ago. It looks like the book of lenses comes in a deck of cards too now - this post is not sponsored by Schell Games, I just think it’s neat that they’re challenging the form of the codex. Schell’s book focuses on the different experiential frameworks through which one can look at a design decision. As with literary lenses, Schell’s book doesn’t offer any one framework as the be-all, end-all route to some greater truth, but rather that each one offers unique insights.
But what about the lenses players bring to the playing of a game?
What Are Player Frameworks?
I would define player frameworks in much the same way as literary lenses: a player’s inherent assumptions and context by which they understand their experience of playing a game. Most players don’t think consciously about the lens through which they are perceiving a game, but they nonetheless have a significant impact on the way they process new games. For most people, these frameworks are a set of expectations amalgamated from the games they have played most in the past. Unsurprisingly, this means that the most common frameworks are those that stem from the most widely played games.
Within the hobby market tabletop game space, the games most commonly contribute to people’s sent of lenses are probably Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000, Dungeons & Dragons, and perhaps Catan for board games. Of course, genre shapers also like Dominion or Seven Wonders often become baked into players’ assumptions for later games in the genre. Really, any game can be treated as a framework that affects people’s experience of playing other games, but some are more commonly used this way than others, mostly due to the wide exposure people have to them.
Hobby market games as a whole can also be seen as a framework. What are some of the commonalities of hobby market games that influence how people see other games?
Exception-driven gameplay (simple core rules with complex exceptions for individual game pieces)
Use of a syntax (with varying degrees of consistency, intentionally or otherwise) to create a logical system by which answers can be derived
Heavy emphasis on novel and/or refined aesthetics
Expectation that the rules will reflect a theme in a substantive way
Limited or very deliberate use of dexterity and memory mechanics
When working within the hobby market niche, it can be easy to forget that these points of context aren’t necessarily shared by everyone who plays and enjoys board games. Every time I play a game with my parents, I’m reminded that their primary games framework isn’t hobby market games at all. A lot of the base assumptions of my predominant player framework simply aren’t part of the framework they think about. Instead, my parents tend to think in terms of classic board games like chess, card games like bridge, and (gasp) sports. They look at games through a different, no less nuanced lens I’ll broadly term “classic games.” And what expectations define this framework?
Complex rules with few context-based exceptions, which must be memorized to play correctly
Information conveyed purely symbolically, with no “syntax” to use for interpretation
Aesthetics tend to be defined by tradition
No expectation of theme in the rules
No convention against interweaving dexterity and memory mechanics into games freely
Another major framework for experiencing board games is, of course, video games. “Video games” as a category are vast and varied, of course, but there are still some expectations they tend to foster in people who have played a lot of them, such as:
Complex rules for adjudication are presented relatively more simply to the player thanks to the computer managing the back-end
Heavy emphasis on novel and/or refined aesthetics
Expectation that gameplay outcomes (rather than “rules,” which are hidden from the player) will reflect theme in some way
Dexterity and/or memory mechanics are often at the forefront of gameplay
While obviously people don’t necessarily expect every game to behave according to the paradigms they already understand, many people understand their experiences with a game through the terminology and mental framework they already hold. Most people don’t spend a lot of time interrogating this framework deeply. After all, games are (mostly) played for fun.
Why Does This Matter to a Designer?
From the perspective of a designer, understanding player framework is helpful for the same reason any other design lens is helpful. Just as knowing about psychographic profiles like Bartleby’s taxonomy (explained nicely here) can help assess the diversity of enjoyment experiences, thinking about common player frameworks can help a designer assess the diversity of intuitions about game convention that different players will have. Your game will always exist in conversation with other games. If you’re going to make a design choice that defies the expectations of a lot of your audience with a game, you want this to be intentional.
Dissonance from expectation can be a powerful tool if used properly. For example, while legacy games may be old hat to most now, many players reported being instructed to “tear up a card” as being almost “sacrilegious” when they first did it in Risk: Legacy. There was a lot of power in that moment of uncertainty, getting the player to ask “am I even allowed to do this?” A designer who understands the unquestioned assumptions of the players can create powerful experiences for them.
On the other hand, dissonance from the unspoken expectations of potential players can narrow the appeal of your game. That isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but obviously it’s a choice a designer should make consciously.
Of course, this can sometimes be a paradox. Different player frameworks will perceive different design choices as orthodox or heretical. Many dyed-in-the-wool Magic players see “RNG” (“Random Number Generation,” in this case, used to mean any randomness placed AFTER making a decision) as a terrible slip-up in design. Talk to even a competitive miniatures gamer, though, and dice rolls are just accepted as a cost of doing business - and too much post-decision certainty can be a downside leading to stagnant play. If you’re making a game, you’re not going to be able to optimize everyone’s happiness. And that’s not even getting into how a player of non-hobby market games might see exception-driven play as burdensome, while hobby market gamers are often quickly frustrated by games with fewer thematic concessions than they expect to see.
Being able to shift your own lens while designing can help you understand why something that works for players of one framework will bother players from another, and better understand the groups to which your game will feel natural and the ones to which it may be a bit more of an uphill climb to learn.
What Was That About Blogging a Future Project?
Some high-fidelity visuals right here.
I’m working on a new game, and I’m going to be blogging about my design process over the next few weeks, from concept to vertical slice. I won’t bore you with every single nitty-gritty detail (mostly because trying to type them all would make my fingers fall off, probably), so each week will be organized around a design lesson or interesting anecdote that relates to or stems from the work I was doing.
I’ve never had a chance to do a game design “in the light of day” like this before, and I’m excited to have you all along on this ride for me!