Should you follow a designer or a publisher?

In the last year, I've had a change of opinion about how to make game choices and what aspects of game publishing are more valuable to me. Specifically, I've decided to follow publishers slightly more than designers. Rather than try to convince you that you should do the same, I'll give you some feedback about why this was the case.

Designers

If you're following a designer, you have to decide early on if the designers you like are consistently making certain types of games, or if the designer likes to spread their wings wide and produce many different types of games.

Bruno Cathala is a designer of high repute but he's also a designer that spreads wide. He has worked on abstract games, light weight games, heavier games, usually all with some strong implementation of theme.

Vital Lacerda, on the other hand, tends to design games with a similar aesthetic. He stays primarily in the heavy game realm with multiple paths to victory and tactical options buffeted by bonus combinations with each player turn.

Making a decision about a designer speaks to what you're looking to get out of gaming. Do you enjoy a variety of games with a similar external focus or do you enjoy similar play across multiple games?

Publishers

You might also want to consider following a publisher. With publishers, you don't usually have the same extremes as above. Publishers like repeat business and so they usually stay within one gaming niche similar to designers like Vital Lacerda. However, what also comes along with this is the use of the same artists and graphic designers over and over. This is great if you enjoy the art style and rulebook layout from one game to the next. A great place to see this is the What's Your Game games Nippon, Madeira, ZhanGuo, Signorie, and Vinhos.

Following a publisher over a designer for me is an expectation of quality. You know what to expect from publishers because they make deals with game manufacturers usually for the long term. In addition, the value that publishers provide usually means that games enhance their quality though the publishing process without diminishing the core concept of the game.

The main frustration that brought me to follow publishers was the vastly different quality from one game to the next for the same designer. Often it feels like it's a game from a different designer because the publisher introduces decisions about style and production.

Ryan Laukat and Jamey Stegmaier

Sometimes a designer is also a publisher (if you're a designer PLEASE don't name your publishing company after yourself). The two designer/publishers I've seen pull this off are Jamey Stegmaier and Ryan Laukat. It is no small feat to be successful at both roles.

The main reason that both of these guys succeed is the personal nature of their games and campaigns. Fans really feel involved for better or worse.

If you're looking for that next great game and have tired of looking through a designer's game repertoire, consider browsing through a publisher's games. For even more depth of understanding, take two similar games from the same designer but different publishers and compare the implementation differences.

Gaining Perspective: Would you like your game heavy or meaty?

The more you play modern board games, you might start to hear people discussing a game's weight. According to BoardGameGeek, a game's weight refers to a wide variety of factors, most revolving around a game's inherent complexity in terms of instruction to make a play. There's another aspect to weight which I feel is not described by this explanation. I'm gonna call this the game's "meat" factor.

A game can be said to be "meaty" if the range of options for actions to take are meaningful AND if those actions drive deep strategy. Usually "heavy" games can also be described as meaty, but there are some games which are not so heavy, but are meaty nonetheless. There are also some rare games where a game could have a significant number of rules, but underneath the covers, there isn't much meat.

Usually games which are not heavy but are very meaty come across as wonderful games to most people. Chess in this case is a great example. It doesn't take very much to learn Chess and you can get through the basics of play to strategy pretty quickly. However, once you're in the advanced Chess strategy zone, you see how many more avenues and options are available.

Even though I commented on Dominion negatively in my last article, Dominion is another example of a game that doesn't take much to learn, but a wealth of options exist in each play that makes it a new classic which is only enhanced by every expansion. Even though I don't enjoy the game because of the mechanisms, I can understand the joy that fans of Dominion derive. This is a meaty game.

On the flip side, if a game is heavy, but not meaty, it's usually very much criticized. However, one game I have found that is rather popular but falls into this category is Tokaido. Once you've played a couple of times, you understand the overall strategy and can very easily tell which spaces you should go for each turn. Since your opponents pawns are usually not moving very far ahead of you, your options become more limited. However, since many of the spaces function very differently in terms of scoring or money, it takes a while with the first play to explain everything and usually a verbal reminder of a space's scoring mechanism is necessary.

I find games like Tokaido to be tedious. It's still in my collection for game nights with new gamers so that they can see what elegance in visual game design is like (it does add to the cool factor), but really for a filling game session, I'll play anything else.

Hopefully this has given you a couple of avenues to explore when learning about a new game to make better decisions as to what types of games you'll enjoy and where to put your precious dollars. Find those games with meat and you're bound to be satisfied.

The Art of Gaining Perspective

One of the most difficult things to do when purchasing games is how to know if a game is any good. You can watch game review videos (try the Dice Tower), read reviews online, and pay attention to the general zeitgeist and what others are thinking. What you should really know about purchasing games is that there is no magic wand that can tell whether or not a game is for you unless you have the benefit of perspective. For me, that has only come with many years of playing games, mostly good games, but more importantly, all games that represent the pinnacle of that genre or mechanism in game design.

If you asked me "I hear a lot about Carcassonne. Would I like it?" The only answer I can give is "Have you played a tile laying game before?" There are some qualities in tile laying games that all games of that genre share. When you have played one, you gain a certain amount of experience and perspective to know what another game with the same mechanism will be like.

Where this breaks down, unfortunately, is that there are dozens upon dozens of mechanisms and combinations thereof. A recent game that cropped up on my radar is Tyrants of the Underdark. On the surface, this sounds like my kind of game. It's an area control game that uses a deck building system for taking actions. I love area control, but once I saw the game in action, I saw how far the deck building component was used.

Deck building is a mechanism that does not appeal to me greatly. Of the deck building games that I have played (Dominion, Trains, Ascension, Lord of the Rings, Legendary, Thunderstone), the mechanism itself doesn't conjure any enjoyment in me because it gives the illusion of control. A deck building game doesn't allow you much choice in your decision when playing cards besides just how you have selected cards for your deck in combination with other cards. Your hope is that you form certain combinations at certain times to make grand moves. The important word in that sentence is hope. You are always at the mercy of the shuffle.

When deck building is used as an action mechanism, the area control freedom breaks down. I am currently working on a game design (I might write more about this in the future) that has a certain combination of these things and my fear is that I fall into this same trap. Area control requires calculated moves at certain timings. If this isn't allowed by the action mechanism, the ability to maintain that control gets lost. This is just one small example of how a combination of mechanisms can result in a frustrating unenjoyable game. However, that doesn't mean others who enjoy the deck building mechanism more won't find the fun with Tyrants of the Underdark.

One of the goals of this blog is to give gamers tools by which to judge games and understand why mechanisms work in games and why they don't. Gaining the ability to use this perspective arms you with a much greater ability to judge if games will be right for you and what you will like or dislike about them.