“Why Do I Like the Games I Like?”

There comes a point in the life of a game analyst, designer, or reviewer where one must contemplate the age-old question: “Why do I like the games that I like?”

Indeed, this question should be encountered multiple times in the life of any gamer who wants to understand both games and themselves, and improve their appreciation of each.

And as well – the answer isn’t “I like games that are good”, because I guarantee there are multiple games, a plethora even, that most people consider good, yet that you hate. The answer isn’t “I don’t like games that are broken” because I guarantee there are games you love that other people would call broken, for varying levels of justified.

The answer also isn’t “most people are just ignorant and feckless” because that means you’ve never seriously considered the idea of “what if I’m the ignorant and feckless one?” and never thought you found a situation where the answer is “yes.”

Because that situation will always exist somewhere. It’s as preposterous as claiming you’ve never made a mistake in your life, or that you’ve never made a mistake in gameplay.

Very often, the answer is: “I personally don’t appreciate this specific aspect of the game.”

The sooner you can recognize this, the sooner you can stop embarrassing yourself by writing out in public “this game is just broken FULL STOP” frequently enough that it becomes clear to all that the problem is mostly you. This behavior tends to put a full stop on other people taking you seriously, including those who are more negative than not on the matter of games. And, it must be said, such lack of thought yet breadth of opinion is a great way to find yourself isolated from connections in the community.

Also, it is far more fun to enthuse about games, or at least to analyze them deeply and go beyond “I just hate it”.

A Personal Example: Necromancy Over Dungeons

These words were inspired by my personal feelings on Graduate in Necromancy (Tomas Glomb) versus a well-regarded modern solitaire played with a poker deck, Scoundrel (Zach Gage, Kurt Bieg).

Now, I actually do love engaging in dungeon crawls from time to time. In my younger days I loved huge ones like Descent (all the way back even in its first edition) and the D&D board games in their Adventure System Board Games. I loved Runebound – all three very different editions – and I could never help picking up card game crawlers like Dungeoneer, Iron Helm, and Mini Rogue.

And I of course do love some dungeon crawl playing card solitaires, such as Dungeon Solitaire (Tomb of Four Kings; if you’re willing to invest in a playing tarot deck – sometimes called a tarock deck – Labyrinth of Souls is an extended experience with a campaign mechanic).

So when lately I ran across Scoundrel, I couldn’t resist giving it a go. I was looking for playing card solitaires that would fit in a meal tray (for my Elizabag of portable games), and Scoundrel seemed perfect.

Until I started to play it for evaluation.1

I just did not like the game. At all. A game has to try really hard to go against my preferences and philosophies to achieve that. Thus, while I am very against war, I like and play war games.2

So here’s the thing: my dislike of Scoundrel is an obvious contradiction of my general tastes and gaming history.

And as always, I wanted to find out why.

In a Dungeon, Luck Is Not a Lady

In which I meet a Scoundrel

Dungeon crawlers are not particularly known for being fair; you’re always at the risk of chance, and that’s part of the implied contract you agree to whenever you play one of these types of games. You need to be able to roll with the RNG. Different dungeon crawlers will have different levels of luck, and of course we all have our personal preferences on how much we want to be at the mercy of the dice/cards/etc.

My temperance for luck is actually really high. There are games that are almost entirely random – I’m looking at you, Tales of the Arabian Nights – that I find completely enjoyable. Thus, when my average score on Scoundrel is -109 points and all of my games didn’t even get through a quarter of the deck, and this displeased me, I knew it was not about luck. Or if it was about luck, it was about an aspect of luck that was different in Scoundrel from other games with just as much luck that I still enjoyed.

Was it maybe related to the fact that games of Scoundrel don’t get very far before I get smashed to a pulp by the merciless falling rocks of random? In fact, this isn’t the case either. SpaceShipped, for all that it scratches my Merchant of Venus itch in a solo setting, is notorious for sometimes delivering turn-1 losses that can’t be avoided – and yet I love that game so much that I was willing to endure the fires of the learning curve of multiple rounds of its sequel, FantasyForm.

So hmm; try again.

Is it the case that I felt like I had no decisions – or only easy, straightforward silver bullet decisions – during game play in Scoundrel? No, not at all! In fact, the decisions that Scoundrel presents you with at every turn are deliciously juicy that impact you beyond the current turn. What seems like the obvious choice becomes a mistake in hindsight when you realize a different choice would have let you survive the next room due to a situation that, realistically, would happen often.

Also, and it must be said, sometimes I don’t really care if a game has easy decisions as long as there are some decisions, and I’m in the mood for such a game. Quests Over Coffee is a great example of a fluffy light dice chucker that I love, even before my coffee/tea.

So that’s not it, either.

Grad school is better with necromancy

It wasn’t until I started to play Graduate in Necromancy (a small PNP card game) that I realized what I wasn’t clicking with in Scoundrel.

Now, Graduate in Necromancy is not a deep game, nor does it look like it. Its theme of the travails of graduate school viewed through a fantasy lens is what drives a lot of its charm, more than its mechanics could on their own.

Many serious gamers would also take issue with how the play of both Scoundrel and Graduate in Necromancy proceeds – you pull blindly from a deck and don’t have a hand to select a specific card out of.3

Many would also argue that there’s no way Graduate in Necromancy could feel better than Scoundrel for anyone because its decisions aren’t as (obviously) interesting.

And yet I loved Graduate in Necromancy enough to make space for it in my portable Elizabag of games, while I added the tag of “no” to my board game organizer app for Scoundrel.

Why is that?

As I played Graduate in Necromancy over and over late in the night, with my insomnia demon digging its claws into my shoulders – it’s at a full 10 games now and I made the PNP less than 24 hours ago – I puzzled this in the back of my mind.

Until I realized the answer, which is that Graduate in Necromancy allows me to plan far ahead into the second half of the game, and allows that second half to actually matter (or at least, to occur at all). If I run into courses I don’t have the prerequisites or remaining sanity to take in the first semester4 and I’m going to really need their credits or the prereqs they grant to get to my full credit requirement while also trying to finish my thesis5 – I can put up to four in a “maybe later” pile for the second semester.

In contrast, Scoundrel didn’t give me a chance to plan at all. In fact, Scoundrel’s mechanics are designed to prevent your ability to plan for the future except for a very tiny amount. This cranks up the meaningfulness of the choices you are able to make, and the fact Scoundrel provides a lot of choices every turn (well, unless you get a room of all monsters), means that if you don’t miss being able to plan ahead and want to live only in the moment, Scoundrel is an excellent game.

You would think that I would like this aspect of Scoundrel, because for me life has never been about being not presented with rooms full of monsters while giving me a fork to survive with. Improvising on a hand of nothing is something I’m used to doing and even am somewhat decent at (at least, decent enough to survive some truly hair-raising stuff).

But I don’t, because even in the most unfair situations I have the flexibility to find some little give to not die or become maimed (physically or financially). It might not be enough (which is why I am in pain all of the time these days), but that chance of improvisation exists in real life in a way that… it just doesn’t in Scoundrel.

And as someone for whom these types of situations were so real, prolonged, and constant that I have the scars, chronic pain, degraded health, and chronic trauma to prove it – that throws me entirely out of a game in a way it often won’t for other folks with calmer lives.

It’s truly astonishing to me that just that pair of mechanics in Graduate in Necromancy existing – you will get a second semester and you can save a little bit for it – in not that deep a way created this enjoyable frisson for me in a way that Scoundrel, which by all rights should have been able to do it more for me, just doesn’t.

Staring at yourself in the mirror in a deeply aggressive way

From the example above, you can see how very, very personal the reason was for why my heart made the seemingly weird choice of necromancy over dungeons.

And this depth is present in so many of our preferences. It is subtle and hidden, because seizing up when making choices was a great way to get devoured by tigers and thus not very encouraged by the processes of evolution – but it is there.

Especially when we explore media that we love, those still waters can run so deep.

And it’s only through such analysis that you can come to a more clear-eyed view of both games and yourself. I won’t claim that I saw either game with total clarity – Graduate in Necromancy plays best upon integrating theme with non-showy mechanics and if you didn’t go through grad school you’re less likely to love the game. Total clarity is not something I can achieve.

But what I can achieve is to be thoughtful about the game I’m currently playing in front of me; and to, hopefully, be less biased and more critical of how I think about, talk about, and maybe even design games.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

And yes, doing this kind of analysis means that I will always get enjoyment even out of games that rub me the wrong way. :)

Footnotes

  1. This is the stage where I’m new to a game, and I will play it five or more times in a row while making note of its gameplay and characteristics; in the past it led to reviews, and in present it more often leads to long screeds of enthusiasm in Discord if applicable. ↩

  2. Which means I make it a point to confront and read the history and think about everyone who died horribly, which when we get to the World Wars, becomes extremely sobering; it is so important to not ignore history, even when it is ugly. ↩

  3. I have seen enough games where this works – like almost all push-your-luck card games, such as the much vaunted Cursed!? – that I won’t write a game off for featuring this mechanic. ↩

  4. Oh you, college. ↩

  5. Oh you, grad school. ↩