Much like the videogame industry, the boardgame industry is suffering from recyling old themes.
Date: Thursday, October 01, 2009
Author: Michael Barnes
I almost feel as if the grammar of games is being wasted and restricted by designers who do not reach for more, who do not have the inspiration or insight to apply the language of game mechanics to new ideas and concepts. These days, I’m pretty disappointed to see new designs that aren’t about anything fresh or novel. The thought of ever building another palace, stabbing another dragon, or establishing a colony of any kind makes me throw up in my mouth. Been there, done that. I’d much rather play a game where I’m a professional thief involved in heist like the one depicted in HEAT. I’ll skip the generic post-STAR WARS space opera that passes for “science fiction” in most board games for one that attempts to bring the ideas of Roger Zelazny or Gene Wolfe to the table. And are there no designers out there able to come up with a great Western game at least as good as the nearly thirty year old GUNSLINGER? This is all fertile ground, mostly untouched by game designers. Most working designers are content to roll out more games with the same ratty old themes, and the result is a whole lot of redundancy.
The lesson from all of this is that theme matters, and we deserve a broader range of themes than what designers are giving us. Games are a creative, expressive medium and the only limit to what they can show lies in the imagination of their authors. There’s a whole world out there that games could be expressing when we gather around the table. We don’t have to keep playing the same games in new drag over and over again with some mechanical variations providing the only sense of freshness or originality. Somewhere out there, there are likely other prototypes and unpublished designs like the one that we played that do reach for more and do push the themes that board games offer into unexplored areas. It falls on publishers to realize the potential for growth and sign these kinds of games, and it falls on gamers to accept the challenge to move beyond the usual hobby game subject matter and into new frontiers.
Volume One of this series of books does a grand job of introducing gaming to the masses, but offers a lot of familar information for gamers already in the know.
