Mechanical Mechanics

I've been reading Franklin's recent posts about aquatic wildfowl with some interest, not just because they address the increasingly less nebulous question of what markers we can use to peg a game as "ameritrash" but also because the process of doing so, for obvious reasons, also encompasses the margins of what markers can be used to classfiy games as wargames or eurogames. The oft-quoted central signifier of a eurogame has often been quoted as "elegance", but what does this actually mean?

My take on this is that designers who sit down to design eurogames do so with the primary goal of extracting as much depth of gameplay (defined as number and difficulty of decisions) from the minimum amount of rules. The absolute, absolute poster child of this design paradigm is the oriental classic Go which I am entirely convinced will never, ever be beaten in terms of the depth versus complexity ratio. Some of the other markers of euro-ness look to me like just side effects of this approach - it's bound to result in games which tend run to reasonably short play times, favour the use of non-random mechanics and are usually light on theme. There's nothing essential wrong with this - indeed as time goes on I've begun to appreciate that this goal in game design is actually a fine and noble thing, but sadly it generates another side effect which has a much more negative impact.

Now I'm hardly going to be offering any great insight if I comment that the strategy of all games are based on maths. The degree varies, but usually there is a significant component of mathematical analysis involved in successful play. Frequently in games that have significant random factors these are there in part to mask the amount of maths that lie behind the game, but even in these cases a good player will be constantly weighing up the odds during decision making. The point of this brief digression is that if you were to take pretty much any strategy game and distil it down to its bare essentials what you'd be left with is, in most cases, a logic puzzle. And of course stripping a game down in this fashion is exactly the process required to create a game which is rules-light yet deep creating another side-effect and marker for the eurogame - the strategy in many of them is almost entirely dependent on mathematical analysis. They are in effect stylised accounting exercises.

This is not to denigrate the skill required to play games of this nature - frequently the amount of number crunching and level of analysis required are fiendishly high. It's not easy to keep that many numbers in your head at one time and woe betide those of us, like me, who often struggle with maths in the first place. But I feel it is a valid criticism to say that the end result is a bunch of games which have a tendency to play in strikingly similar fashion and which can often be "solved" or "maximised" by the best players offering paths to victory which, while not exactly scripted, can nevertheless be charted or otherwise defined in mathematical terms. There are exceptions and, unsurprisingly these tend to be the eurogames I enjoy most. Probably the best example is Ra which bypasses heavy maths through the ingenuous means of making the value of things dependent entirely on the value of other things, making assessment of the best play more than just a matter of cold statistics. Others manage it by throwing in negotiation elements (Traders of Genoa), randomness (Settlers) or aggressive positional play (Attika).

This is the primary point of critique that I have against eurogames - if I wanted to solve maths puzzles then I'd go get a book of maths puzzles. If I wanted to solve them competitively then I'd gather a group of like-minded people and compete to be the one to finish the puzzle fastest. To me this is simply not what gaming is about - gaming is about sitting with your friends, enjoying the game as both a social experience as well as a thinking excercise, glorying in the drama of dice and the sweep of the narrative. I don't like maths, I'm not terribly good at maths and since I work in IT to some extent I have to contend with maths most working days. I don't want the damn stuff intruding into my leisure time but I still want my games to be dependent on skill rather than pure luck. This, for me, is the essence of Ameritrash.

When I've tried to describe this in the past I've used the phrase "organic strategy" to try and convey what I was talking about. My original meaning was that I liked games where the approach to strategy was something that had to be arrived at in a more creative fashion than the hard logic that so many eurogames required. I eventually came to realise that the phrase actually had a second and more literal meaning - organic in the sense that it takes an organic being to formulate a good strategy. It follows that if eurogames tend to run very close to their mathematical roots then it should be relatively easy to write artificial intelligence routines for them. A glance around at freeware boardgame software would seem to support this - many euros and abstracts have had software versions built with very powerful AI opponents - witness how hard it is to beat the infamous Puerto Rico Evolver for example. For ameritrash games (and wargames) on the other hand, it should prove a correspondingly difficult task and again a search through game software appears to prove the point. Take Axis & Allies for example: I've often been beaten by human opponents yet the two software version I've played, once of which was created professionally, I can beat with almost trivial ease playing as either side.

When I first came across BoardGameGeek and started to frequent the forums and ask for recommendations for new games to try I always felt under pressure to be seeking out and playing games that were seen as "heavier" and "gamers games". After all at the time I didn't have a family who might want lighter games, I had a solid academic background and plenty of time to game so I had no reason to shy away from these games and I felt it would be embarrassing to try. The initial results of this were disastrous - I started playing games that I really disliked and at which I was constantly beaten and that's no fun at all. So here I am going to make an admission - my limited maths skills mean that in most cases, I'm not a great games player. Even for those fine euros and ameritrash games where maths isn't the primary skill I'm still at a disadvantage because we have to acknowledge that maths lies at the heart of nearly all design in strategy games. So one of the reasons I prefer the AT canon is simply because those games offer me a greater chance to win. If you're in denial about this, like I was, it's time to admit it. You'll pick up a lot more great games and have a lot more fun playing them if you do. And for that tiny, tiny minority amongst the Euro fans who belittle and sneer at those games which don't require perfect logic to beat and the flawed mortals that champion them I'd say - fuck off back to your computers and calculators and let the rest of us get on with living full lives and combining friends, beer, and lightweight strategy games into having a damn good time.