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Apr. 22nd, 2013 11:40 amI must confess to a certain frustration with games like Apples to Apples and its somewhat wittier, nastier cousin Cards Against Humanity. I say this having played the latter again at a party last night. Oh, I mostly had a good time. I like my friends and I like playing even bad games with them. But these games represent a sort of gameplay so close to my platonic ideal, and yet so far away.
I once won a game of Apples to Apples by playing random cards. For me, that was the last straw with the game. No game that can be won entirely on random is worth playing. Since then, even though I play by the same rules as everyone else I never have the same objective. Once I tried to spend the entire game without getting any green cards, and almost succeeded.
I'm very fond of freeform gameplay. Among the games I do count as my favorites I number N, 1000 Blank White Cards, Calvinball, and other games where making up the rules is part of the rules. And in theory Fluxx ought to fall in the same category, but I don't like Fluxx. There is too much constraint in the way rules are changed for me to find it interesting. You're not so much changing the rules as you are manipulating a predefined set of modes within the rules.
Apples to Apples is the same way. In theory this is a game with a wide field of possibilities. In theory there is an unbounded relationship between cards, such that even playing the same red card in response to the same green, with a different player judging, constitutes a new coordination. This is the professed merit of the game- you are challenged to psychologically analyze the judge and find a match that works correctly for them, not find any particular 'correct match'. But in practice I don't really find this to be the case. I do not possess any particular skill at choosing the correct card when when my closest friend is judging and a pile of complete strangers are the other players, because of two factors that conspire to limit the game's field of possibilities:
1. You're choosing from a handful of cards. Even if you are in psychic tune with your friend and you know exactly what answer would satisfy them on this card, the odds are fairly strong that you don't actually hold that card.
2. Your opponents are choosing from a handful of cards. Even if they are completely out of psychic sync with your friend and have a completely wrong-headed idea of what answer would satisfy, they still have a chance to mistakenly play the correct card because their choices are constrained.
I generally appreciate the introduction of randomness into gameplay. I like when you have to make decisions knowing that you cannot possibly know if you have made the best move, because a random operation to come will alter the game's probabilities. I think this makes gameplay more dynamic, and as a player who is not a serious tactician this tends to make games more fun for me. But I am not a fan of randomness that can't actually be taken into account in a meaningful strategic way, and I'm not a fan of randomness that categorically makes games less fun, by restricting the matches to inferior combinations. Instead I'd gesture to party games like charades or pictionary that in practice offer a much wider field of possible communications. I'm not particularly good at either of those games, but I have more fun playing them because my failure at them is not determined by a random fluke that I can't control or account for. (The randomness that is inherent in those games, in the selection of the topics to act out or draw, is a reasonable kind of randomness even though I suppose it does sometimes generate inferior matches between player and topic.)
Again, these games come so close to the kind of game I enjoy. They resemble my favorite games in substantial ways, and many of my gameplaying friends love them. I just can't get excited about them because I end up frustrated by their limitations.
/curmudgeon
Today is the twenty seventh day of the Omer
I once won a game of Apples to Apples by playing random cards. For me, that was the last straw with the game. No game that can be won entirely on random is worth playing. Since then, even though I play by the same rules as everyone else I never have the same objective. Once I tried to spend the entire game without getting any green cards, and almost succeeded.
I'm very fond of freeform gameplay. Among the games I do count as my favorites I number N, 1000 Blank White Cards, Calvinball, and other games where making up the rules is part of the rules. And in theory Fluxx ought to fall in the same category, but I don't like Fluxx. There is too much constraint in the way rules are changed for me to find it interesting. You're not so much changing the rules as you are manipulating a predefined set of modes within the rules.
Apples to Apples is the same way. In theory this is a game with a wide field of possibilities. In theory there is an unbounded relationship between cards, such that even playing the same red card in response to the same green, with a different player judging, constitutes a new coordination. This is the professed merit of the game- you are challenged to psychologically analyze the judge and find a match that works correctly for them, not find any particular 'correct match'. But in practice I don't really find this to be the case. I do not possess any particular skill at choosing the correct card when when my closest friend is judging and a pile of complete strangers are the other players, because of two factors that conspire to limit the game's field of possibilities:
1. You're choosing from a handful of cards. Even if you are in psychic tune with your friend and you know exactly what answer would satisfy them on this card, the odds are fairly strong that you don't actually hold that card.
2. Your opponents are choosing from a handful of cards. Even if they are completely out of psychic sync with your friend and have a completely wrong-headed idea of what answer would satisfy, they still have a chance to mistakenly play the correct card because their choices are constrained.
I generally appreciate the introduction of randomness into gameplay. I like when you have to make decisions knowing that you cannot possibly know if you have made the best move, because a random operation to come will alter the game's probabilities. I think this makes gameplay more dynamic, and as a player who is not a serious tactician this tends to make games more fun for me. But I am not a fan of randomness that can't actually be taken into account in a meaningful strategic way, and I'm not a fan of randomness that categorically makes games less fun, by restricting the matches to inferior combinations. Instead I'd gesture to party games like charades or pictionary that in practice offer a much wider field of possible communications. I'm not particularly good at either of those games, but I have more fun playing them because my failure at them is not determined by a random fluke that I can't control or account for. (The randomness that is inherent in those games, in the selection of the topics to act out or draw, is a reasonable kind of randomness even though I suppose it does sometimes generate inferior matches between player and topic.)
Again, these games come so close to the kind of game I enjoy. They resemble my favorite games in substantial ways, and many of my gameplaying friends love them. I just can't get excited about them because I end up frustrated by their limitations.
/curmudgeon
Today is the twenty seventh day of the Omer
