"Out of sight, out of mind."
- John Heywood
So, an interesting coincidence happened recently.
I'm still attempting to make an expansion for Manaforge. While I think I'm on the right track with my ideas, it often feels like there's some element of attractiveness missing. As in, I come up with something that I think would be interesting to the players, but when I run a playtest, my changes are often times ignored. I've even tried making the new game elements more powerful than the standard ones, and they still sometimes go overlooked.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to an episode of the Ludology podcast. (If you haven't heard it, and are into game design, you really should give it a try. Lots of good stuff in there.) Along with the show's regular hosts Gil Hova and Emma Larkins, they had Scott Rogers on to talk about his theory of "The 6 Zones of Play". The short version is that the play area in any board game can be divided up into roughly six regions with respect to a particular player. (The regions I have in my illustration above are not the same as the zones Scott Rogers was describing. Instead, shown above is my reinterpretation of the idea.) While the theory is a work in progress, and there isn't total agreement on how many zones there should be or what goes in each one, the underlying concept is solid: the placement of game elements with respect to the player can make a difference in terms of the mental processing the players devote to them. Game pieces that are farther away from the player, harder to see and harder to reach, tend to get less consideration, even though the options they present may be superior to the options closer by. Also, there is a certain amount of mental 'context switching' going on, in which the player first processes information close by (objects in the hands and in their personal tableau), and then switches to the objects farther away (main board and sideboards) to complete their move.
Circling back to my expansion ideas, I'm currently working with four new elements. I have a deck of 'customer' cards, which represent additional scoring opportunities for the players; a deck of 'dark item' cards, which are dealt out in parallel to the standard item deck cards and expand the item build options from 6 to 8 each turn; a black 'dark power' die that gives players a shot of bonus resources in exchange for gaining darkness points; and a 'darkness' meter and associated 'curse' cards, which start to dish out obstacles to players that draw too heavily from the dark abilities.
For my first iterations with these new mechanics, I had all of the new components sitting to various sides of the main gameboard. The new items above the board, the customers below, and the curse cards and black die to one side. Typically, the game board is facing the players (at least for a small number of players), so the customer cards are close by and the dark items are far away, with the black die to the side. I noticed that players tended to be interested in the customer cards but didn't pay much attention to the dark item cards or the black die. I can't tell if my new elements are any good if the players don't pay any attention to them. (Or, maybe, they just suck that badly that nobody wants to touch them? I hoped that wasn't it.)
While I was wrestling with this problem, I happened to listen to the Ludology podcast, and the concept just clicked. Perhaps players weren't paying attention to my new game elements because they were just too hard to see? In essence, all of my new stuff could be considered to be part of the game's 'sideboard', which typically gets less consideration than anything in the main play area. Sideboard elements are often farther away than the main board, and so can suffer from decreased visibility as well as the need to 'context switch' to specifically devote mental processing time to these outside options.
With that in mind, I did a little bit of rearranging. I moved the new dark item cards onto the main gameboard; it was very cramped and hard to get everything set up right, but it did get the new cards next to the old. I also changed the black die into a small deck of square cards; while I couldn't place the die any closer, I did exchange it for something it larger and easier to see, incorporating larger iconography. The customers were fine close to the players, and the darkness meter is fine being a sideboard element; it does not need constant consideration. (It's sneaky like that. :)
Playtesting with the new elements arranged that way went significantly better. I had one player comment that the new items were easier to compare to the old ones, being placed next to them. The dark power deck (instead of a die) received more attention as well, though it was hard to tell how much of a difference it made. (One player was trying to play 'clean', not using any of the new dark powers, but ended up giving in and dabbling a bit anyway. Muhaha!)
I need significantly more playtesting to be able to come to a conclusion, but so far it does seem like the placement (and size) of some items affects how they are perceived, and therefore how they factor into the players' decisions. I'll have to keep this in mind as I keep iterating on these new mechanics. This might also affect the physical game elements themselves, as I might need to use cards instead of a die, and may end up with an entirely new gameboard. (If I do make a sideboard for the new items, it will have to attach and blend in so that it seems like part of the main board. Yay expensive component considerations. :)
Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope to theorize more on this topic as I learn more, but I thought it was such an interesting timing coincidence that I felt I had to post something about it sooner rather than later.
I'm still attempting to make an expansion for Manaforge. While I think I'm on the right track with my ideas, it often feels like there's some element of attractiveness missing. As in, I come up with something that I think would be interesting to the players, but when I run a playtest, my changes are often times ignored. I've even tried making the new game elements more powerful than the standard ones, and they still sometimes go overlooked.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to an episode of the Ludology podcast. (If you haven't heard it, and are into game design, you really should give it a try. Lots of good stuff in there.) Along with the show's regular hosts Gil Hova and Emma Larkins, they had Scott Rogers on to talk about his theory of "The 6 Zones of Play". The short version is that the play area in any board game can be divided up into roughly six regions with respect to a particular player. (The regions I have in my illustration above are not the same as the zones Scott Rogers was describing. Instead, shown above is my reinterpretation of the idea.) While the theory is a work in progress, and there isn't total agreement on how many zones there should be or what goes in each one, the underlying concept is solid: the placement of game elements with respect to the player can make a difference in terms of the mental processing the players devote to them. Game pieces that are farther away from the player, harder to see and harder to reach, tend to get less consideration, even though the options they present may be superior to the options closer by. Also, there is a certain amount of mental 'context switching' going on, in which the player first processes information close by (objects in the hands and in their personal tableau), and then switches to the objects farther away (main board and sideboards) to complete their move.
Circling back to my expansion ideas, I'm currently working with four new elements. I have a deck of 'customer' cards, which represent additional scoring opportunities for the players; a deck of 'dark item' cards, which are dealt out in parallel to the standard item deck cards and expand the item build options from 6 to 8 each turn; a black 'dark power' die that gives players a shot of bonus resources in exchange for gaining darkness points; and a 'darkness' meter and associated 'curse' cards, which start to dish out obstacles to players that draw too heavily from the dark abilities.
For my first iterations with these new mechanics, I had all of the new components sitting to various sides of the main gameboard. The new items above the board, the customers below, and the curse cards and black die to one side. Typically, the game board is facing the players (at least for a small number of players), so the customer cards are close by and the dark items are far away, with the black die to the side. I noticed that players tended to be interested in the customer cards but didn't pay much attention to the dark item cards or the black die. I can't tell if my new elements are any good if the players don't pay any attention to them. (Or, maybe, they just suck that badly that nobody wants to touch them? I hoped that wasn't it.)
While I was wrestling with this problem, I happened to listen to the Ludology podcast, and the concept just clicked. Perhaps players weren't paying attention to my new game elements because they were just too hard to see? In essence, all of my new stuff could be considered to be part of the game's 'sideboard', which typically gets less consideration than anything in the main play area. Sideboard elements are often farther away than the main board, and so can suffer from decreased visibility as well as the need to 'context switch' to specifically devote mental processing time to these outside options.
With that in mind, I did a little bit of rearranging. I moved the new dark item cards onto the main gameboard; it was very cramped and hard to get everything set up right, but it did get the new cards next to the old. I also changed the black die into a small deck of square cards; while I couldn't place the die any closer, I did exchange it for something it larger and easier to see, incorporating larger iconography. The customers were fine close to the players, and the darkness meter is fine being a sideboard element; it does not need constant consideration. (It's sneaky like that. :)
Playtesting with the new elements arranged that way went significantly better. I had one player comment that the new items were easier to compare to the old ones, being placed next to them. The dark power deck (instead of a die) received more attention as well, though it was hard to tell how much of a difference it made. (One player was trying to play 'clean', not using any of the new dark powers, but ended up giving in and dabbling a bit anyway. Muhaha!)
I need significantly more playtesting to be able to come to a conclusion, but so far it does seem like the placement (and size) of some items affects how they are perceived, and therefore how they factor into the players' decisions. I'll have to keep this in mind as I keep iterating on these new mechanics. This might also affect the physical game elements themselves, as I might need to use cards instead of a die, and may end up with an entirely new gameboard. (If I do make a sideboard for the new items, it will have to attach and blend in so that it seems like part of the main board. Yay expensive component considerations. :)
Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope to theorize more on this topic as I learn more, but I thought it was such an interesting timing coincidence that I felt I had to post something about it sooner rather than later.
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