Long ago, boardgaming was my primary form of entertainment.
I would read rules while riding the bus into downtown Houston for my corporate gig. I was trying to internalize the rules and visualize the game experience. Of course, great games stand out because they create complex dynamics that can’t be visualized in a steel tube crawling through city traffic. But what’s the alternative? Buy a game without thought?
Beyond the acquisition decision, this turned out to be was a powerful mental exercise. I was focusing on a complicated text in a variable environment, applying words to a future self. In mentally playing a game, I sat in each opponents’ chair, visualizing their competing interests—different goals leads to different actions, creating that elusive the gameplay dynamic.
Years later, I’m doing the same thing as with contracts tackling difficult situations. The stakes are a bit higher, but that’s all. People generally act according to the set up. So I try to empathize with their pressures to understand their motivations. How can I navigate this mix to discover an optimal outcome?
There might have been less frivolous ways to spend the commute, but reading boardgame rules turned out to be a solid choice.
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Some Links
Our son prefers cooperative games, and Matt Leacock is the giant who designed Pandemic that popularized this genre. In simplifying his classic for a wider audience, he designed Forbidden Island with a board made out of tiles. This twist created a game where the board would disappear over time.
He developed the idea further with Forbidden Desert, where the tiles would shift and and move. I haven’t tried Forbidden Sky, but we just purchased Forbidden Jungle. Here, the players are required to shift the board around—while managing a bunch of grouchy aliens.
This series is a fun case study of a designer developing a simple game mechanic (tiled boards in a cooperative setting) over several iterations. All three are highly recommended.
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Thanks for reading!
Justus Pang, RA,