Four States of Play: Hone, Learn, Watch, Flow

States-of-Play

I recently saw this video of Richard Garfield speaking on the subject of luck and randomness in game design. More interesting to me were the four states of play he mentions in passing, but doesn't really dive too deeply into during the course of this discussion. He describes these as a kind of gamer, but I think it's more useful to consider these simply states of mind.

An individual can transition through any of these several times during the course of a single game or even a lifetime. You might even extrapolate this further, identifying cultural trends towards one state over another across generations, but that is outside the scope of this blog post.

Identifying these as states of mind during play are also more practically useful for any aspiring game designers. You can certainly create a type of play, but you can't create a type of player. (If we could, we'd all be selling a lot more games!)

First, it helps to identify two axes along which these states are ordered.

On one axis, we have Passive and Active. In this context, the extreme Passive condition can be described as minimal effort for maximum effect, often characterized by very light, fast, noisy games. By contrast, the extreme Active condition can be described as maximum effort for minimal effect, most often seen in cut-throat zero sum games that take many hours to complete.

Along the intersecting axis, we have Mechanical and Social. The extreme Mechanical condition can be described as a completely solitaire experience between the player and the game, without input or influence from any other players. The extreme Social condition can be described as complete interaction between players with only the thinnest scrim of actual mechanics guiding that interaction.

All that said, here are the four states of play as best I can describe them based on my understanding of Richard Garfield's outline.

  • Hone: (Active+Mechanical) Optimizing a single strategy to its fullest extent. 
  • Learn: (Active+Social) Or "Explore." Testing different methods, finding the boundaries. 
  • Watch: (Passive+Social) A spectator taking actions simply to see what happens. 
  • Flow: (Passive+Mechanical) The joy of playing a game you already know how to play well.

Most games encourage two of these states either in gameplay or in the culture surrounding gameplay. For example, Richard Garfield cites Magic: the Gathering as a prime source of Honing, as you try to refine your deck, and Exploring, as you discard one strategy for a completely new play style.

Party games are good for Watching, but you can even enter a Watch state in a hardcore strategy game when you make a random decision because you're not sure what else to do. This is the fun of watching the Jenga tower fall, for example.

I find Flowing is by far the most difficult of states for board games to achieve, simply by the nature of the medium. Video games do this well because you're wrapped in a cocoon of light and sound generally as a solitaire experience. It's hard to completely enter that trance state when you're the one who is unboxing all the components, moving chips, negotiating with other players, and so on.

Still, it's possible. Watch a speed chess game and you're likely to see two players in complete immersion of the Flow state. It generally requires a complete knowledge of the game's eccentricities and often the support of a thriving play culture.

Once you've identified these four states of play, you start spotting the patterns in your own preferences. In my case, I realized that Koi Pond is very much a Flow and Watch game, which may not be interesting to someone looking for a Hone and Learn game.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more