Whenever I consider the things that define what separates a “good” board game from a “great” one, it is inevitable that concepts such as variability, opportunities for creative play, and meaningful player interaction are high on the list. There have been a lot of “good” games over the years that may have been smartly designed pieces of work- such as PUERTO RICO- that have failed to meet those kinds of expectations and the result is that many games with similarly rigid, processional mechanics have come and gone over the years while the ones that have offered these particulars have stuck around and become favorites not only on my game shelf but on the shelves of many others in the hobby.

We’re talking about titles like COSMIC ENCOUNTER, SETTLERS OF CATAN, ARKHAM HORROR, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA— all of which are examples of games that have a certain transcendental quality that moves the process of playing them well beyond the procedural enactment of rules-as-instructions that characterizes the gameplay in titles such as CAYLUS and AGE OF STEAM.

No doubt, there are a lot of moving parts and “wheels within wheels” that make a game like COSMIC ENCOUNTER a vastly superior gaming experience. Strong, pervasive narrative that is both informed and described by mechanics is essential. Surprise and shifting tactical situations, often generated by player actions or random elements, are prime elements. It isn’t a simple thing to arrive at what actually makes a game “great”, at least as far as I am concerned, and it is something I constantly wrestle with to try to quantify in every review I write and during every new game that I play.

So for years, I have been trying to come up with a sort of unified theory that could offer a degree of critical cohesion between games as disparate in terms of theme, mechanics, and gameplay as DUNE and MAGICAL ATHELETE. I think both are truly great games, but in very different terms. Yet I am convinced that there is a connective theoretical tissue that binds them, along with many other games, and describes an innate quality that is actually more significant than singular mechanics, design concepts, or gameplay actions.

Two major events in my gaming life have recently transpired that have congealed a couple of ideas into what I now recognize as the core element of what makes a great game. The first, and most relevant to hobby gaming, was that I played CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD, the new game set in the Warhammer universe designed by Eric Lang and published by Fantasy Flight Games. I was indifferent to the game after reading the rules and being quite unimpressed by what appeared to be another European-style area control game in the vein of EL GRANDE with a smattering of lip-service executive theme. It read dull, and I actually kind of wrote it off. Friends played it, loved it, and I heard good things from others whose opinions I value. I gave it a fair chance, as I do with any game, and I’m now ready to hand the Gameshark Board Game of the Year Award to it under the assumption that nothing that good could possibly be released between now and 2010.

What makes CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD something very special—aside from the fact that Mr. Lang has both managed to demonstrate that Eurogame concepts can be hugely thematic when applied properly to a great concept and that Ameritrash-style conquest games do not have to follow the RISK model any longer, is that the game strikes the perfect balance between process and creative, malleable play. Timing and structure are essential game elements, but so to is the fact that all four players have very different styles of play, multiple victory paths, and the ability to drastically alter the game state with every action. There are a number of brilliant mechanics at work that enable this, but the key result is that the rules, card text, special abilities, and restrictions provide the players with a framework in which to play the game- not a set of instructions that describe how to play it. The players create the game through the game; it isn’t given to them with the victor being decided by who followed the rules best.

The second event was that I finally played BIOSHOCK. I just recently caught up with this generation of consoles and I chose it as the inaugural game for my new Xbox 360. The game is a masterpiece, as many have suggested, but in reading a couple of the reviews something struck a chord with me. The idea of ‘emergent gameplay’ was mentioned somewhere, and it is a concept that has come to practically revolutionize video games and it is in fact one of the things that has enabled the medium to move from something considered for kids and teenagers and into a mainstream, almost universally accepted form of entertainment..

Emergent gameplay happens when situations grow directly from the interaction of simple mechanics and gameplay structures. A better way of phrasing it, I think, is that emergent gameplay allows the player to essentially define their experience on their own terms rather than having it specifically delineated to them. This is, at an extreme, the difference between the linear progression of DONKEY KONG and the go anywhere, do anything worlds of FALLOUT 3 or GRAND THEFT AUTO IV. In regard to BIOSHOCK, the emergent gameplay element comes in the form of a variety of Plasmid upgrades and environmental effects that give the player numerous solutions to combat problems. You can play however you like- going full guns-to-the-gills or resorting to combinations with some of the more specialized Plasmids and ability tonics. The structure and flow of the game is dictated, but what actions you take in it are more loosely defined.