She Invented a Board Game with Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off | Hacker News Reader

She Invented a Board Game with Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off

nytimes.com

32 pointsandrewl7 comments

The scientific integrity referenced in the title is a spreadsheet she made classifying 500 birds across 100 different dimensions. Skip this read, the article is long and goes nowhere.

First, a side note: this article seems to do a lot of lauding of her game on the basis that she's a woman designing a board game. Granted, this is not an industry with a large % of women in design roles, but it's definitely not some revolutionary role she's taking on, and the article definitely makes her seem like she's taking on the industry alone.

As for the game: It definitely looks interesting enough -- Very similar to "Evolution", but with a lot more stats that are tracked.

I found some quotes in the article that I took umbrage with as well, pointing to them overly lauding her:

> [...] some gamers scratched their heads and said, “Birds? Really!?” They expressed concern that our feathered friends might not resonate with a community usually drawn to zombies, dragons, spaceships, farming, civilizations and (of course) trains.

We have board games about some of the most banal possible topics, and they are some of the best ones out there, and this isn't even the first game like this (see my comment about Evolution). Also, in that list of "things gamers like", some of those things are not like the others, and serve as perfect examples that esoteric or "boring" topics still make gamers play a game if the game using the topic is a good one. Seems like they cherry picked the few people who had a negative reaction to subject matter -- After seeing the offerings at GenCon last year, I can say that most board game enthusiasts care very little in the end about the topic, and much more about enjoyable gameplay and interesting mechanics.

> It offers numerous paths to victory (the Holy Grail in game design) without inducing “analysis paralysis.”

I am not a board game designer, but I am a very big enthusiast and have played LOTS of different games. This does not strike me as a "Holy Grail in game design". This is pretty much an expectation for any reasonably complex board game coming out these days. I can think of plenty of examples that satisfy this criteria, and have for years.

In the end, I'm sure it's probably a great game -- it definitely seems to hit on lots of things popular games use these days, and it seems like it was made to still be approachable despite its depth behind the scenes, but this article does a pretty awful job representing the game in favor of trying to elevate the designer to a status that she really doesn't fit in, let alone need to succeed. The game is already successful. Let her credentials ride on that, not on her gender.

[EDIT]: Removed some hyperbole. No need for that.

Similar to Evolution? A line in the article[0] suggested it would be similar to Race for the Galaxy, which got me really excited. Evolution is fun too, though.

> We have board games about some of the most banal possible topics

Absolutely true, but the article is correct that some categories are somewhat overrepresented. And while those overrepresented categories fit my interests quite well, I welcome every attempt at diversity.

> This does not strike me as a "Holy Grail in game design".

Maybe not the holy grail, but certainly a laudable goal. Many games have only a single path to victory, and generally games with multiple balanced paths to victory are considered more interesting, but also harder to accomplish (because balance).

[0] I could only read the top of the article because the rest is hidden.

RE: Similar games: Yes, but if you look at Amazon reviews, people also try to compare it to things like Gloomhaven. The world of board games can be pretty hard to nail down in terms of similarity of games sometimes. Evolution is also not as popular as many games, and if the creator doesn't know the game she wouldn't compare it to the game. The line you're referencing is a semi-quote from the creator about her inspiration for it.

The article lists a bunch of topics that we DON'T really overrepresent. "Trains"? We have 1 popular game for that (Ticket to Ride). "Civilizations"? That's a REALLY broad subject, so that's harder to really make a call on. The others in the list are not really games that most of the really popular games focus on. Pandemic, Azul, Carcassone, Settlers of Catan -- These are a lot of the really popular games right now, and none of them hit on what we normally call "trendy topics for people". The main example I would have used if I was the author is _Lovecraft_, which is indeed VERY overrepresented in board games.

Also, I agree 100% -- I welcome diversity in my games. My beef is not with her game at all. It looks great. Honestly probably a game my wife and I will pick up, since it's similar to games we like. My problem is with the article not focusing at all on things that would better highlight the game, and therefore the author's success. She made a great game, people love it, and it's doing well. Focus on that, not on her gender or trying to straw man metrics of why she's doing well.

RE: Multiple paths to victory. I thought more about this, but I think what you're mistaking is "multiple PATHS to victory" vs "multiple victory conditions". Games like Stone Age, Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, and Settlers have 1 "victory condition" (have the most points"), but have MANY _paths_ to take to win with that condition. This game seems the same way, which I agree is a fantastic thing for a game to have, but given how common it is for games to have this now, I would no longer be comfortable calling it a "holy grail", since that term implies something that hasn't been achieved (or rarely is achieved), and that's provably false now.

[EDIT]: Capitalization and grammar

Trains not overrepresented? Could it be that you are unfamiliar with the 18xx genre of train investment games? It's an entire genre in itself, with hundreds of games taking place in every conceivable part of the world. Apart from that, there's the Empire Builder-type train games, Trans America, Steam, not to mention a whole bunch of tile-laying games that use rails as their theme.

It's possible train games are more visible to me due to my train-nut family, but there are a lot of excellent train games out there.

"Civilizations" -- my interpretation of that is, well, the original Civilization, and the many, many attempts to make a more streamlined game with a similar feel. If you want to interpret it broader than that, you could include any kind of game where you build up a society out of nothing, including even Catan, despite its lack of technological progress. Or it could include anything involving ancient civilisations, even if it's just as a theme (we are talking theme here, after all). But if you need to include technological progress, then I don't think this is overrepresented, it's just a kind of game that many gamers find really intriguing but is hard to get right, hence the interest when a new attempt seems to get it right.

I agree Lovecraft is overrepresented.

I'm afraid I can't really comment on the focus of the article, as only the first few paragraphs are visible to me.

You've got a good point about the use of "Holy Grail". Many games do enable very different viable strategies, so it's not as unattainable as the phrase "holy grail" suggests. It is still considered to be an important aspect of game design, though, and games where one strategy is clearly superior to all others have failed at it.

I was not aware of those train games, thank you for telling me of them. It's obviously possible we both have major selection bias towards what we've seen, but I guess my point was more that the "normal internet fad topics" are not really as overrepresented in board games. Zombies and Dragons and stuff _exist_ in board games, but most of the really popular games are touching on topics that most reasonable people would not immediately associate with the generation of people ravenously playing those board games now.

Civilizations -- yeah, like I said, a VERY broad genre, so I kinda left that one alone.

You have a good point too on multiple strategies being important in game design. I just disagreed with how the author portrays all of this.

In the end, that's what my rant was (not so clearly) about I guess -- Good game, good design, good designer: Terrible article.

Love this story. What an innovative idea to create a game using American birds, their habitats and the sources of their feeding . With over 700 species in the US, the possibilities are incredible, and fun for all ages. It would be a great teaching device in schools to acquaint American children with the variety of habitats and birds in this country.

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