From Board Games to Video Games

Two days ago my wife read out one of my early Elementry school activities, I listed board games as one of my favorite things. At first I was puzzled but then boom all these memories came flowing in. Staying up late plying board games with friends. While I know if I stuck around with the friend group I had while living in Northern California, I would have been into Doungons and Dragons, I had no knowledge of it. Instead we would play hours of Monopoly, Risk, Candy Land. The more the rules were convoluted the better. We would even create our own rules, use custom pieces, and one big project in Elementry school I created a Batman bored game with “bat” foot steps (They were actually bird footsteps, but hey I was a naive child).

I think my interest in convoluted board game design was what game me interested in game design in the first place. All my life I’ve been interested in video games, but more specifically game worlds. So while learning game design I discovered pretty quickly that it was not about just designing the worlds first you need to design gameplay elements that were actually fun and unique enough to entrigue the play to push on. Creating a clone of an existing game is great for learning but ultimately the player will just think, I know where this is going. I’m not sure why but I never married the two ideas the convolution of a detailed board game and what can be done in video games. I think I’ve distilled in my brain simple design is just better.

But is it better? I know that 90% of the games I loved over the years were simple but simple leaves out room for curiosity sure a simple design can open up the imagination of what is possible with players capabilities, example what can Mario scale with a simple jump mechanic, but scattering a mess of mechanics can turn a brief walk through your favorite trail turn into a session of pretty rock hunting.

Of course this is not to say people need to make games more convoluted but instead it’s just a gauge that differs from game to game. Not every game needs to be straightforward, but not every game needs to be a mess.