 boardgamegeek.com Good Day Internet! Now that we’ve gone through the importance of both mechanics and theme it’s time to discuss which one you’ll want to focus on when beginning to develop your game. Before we do though, I want to be clear that in order to make a great game you need to have a great theme and great mechanics that work well together. For that to happen you’re going to need to be developing both mechanics and theme simultaneously as soon as possible. When you’re at that initial idea phase and early development, theme and mechanics will probably be developed separately (and therefore the existence of this blog post). However, shortly thereafter you need to be constantly looking at them together (for example, does this mechanic match the theme? Does the theme make sense for what mechanics I’ve implemented?) throughout development. Furthermore, you shouldn’t rely on the fact that there are a small number of games where a fantastic/popular theme, without much consideration of mechanics, was highly successful (Cards Against Humanity, Exploding Kittens) or vice-versa (Dominion): it’s almost guaranteed that your game isn’t going to be one of those lucky ones. Unless you’re making an abstract game (in which case, you don’t have to focus so much on theme), you need to be putting in substantial effort into both mechanics and theme. So, without further ado, in the early stages of game development you should focus on developing your theme first. The reason for this is that theme gives your game direction, whereas mechanics are just how the game is played. Like we said in “Game Basics: Theme” your theme is your ‘why’ and it ties together the actions, game terminology, components, and what you do in game. You’re going to want to know what that is before you start developing your mechanics further (assuming you have any). Remember how we also said that most of your theme comes through the actual gameplay? So, if you start developing a bunch of mechanics and have no theme, that could cause some problems. Namely, how can your mechanics bring out the theme if there is none or it’s not clear what it is exactly? Additionally, in the absence of theme, mechanics are just a ‘beginning’, a set of actions, and an ‘end goal’ (ie. points scored, player elimination, etc). Those mechanics should be tying together (beyond being the way to play a game from start to finish) and they probably don’t because there’s no theme to direct them. That's why you need to have that theme (at least the backstory part) first, and then make your game. It’s where your players start in game, it's the start of an explanation of a game, and it should be where you start to develop your game.  http://i.imgur.com/t9qYw.png Let’s say, perhaps, you go the other way and develop mechanics before theme. What happens then? Well, developing mechanics before theme in game design is like creating a machine without a purpose. In the end you’ll have a machine that has all the parts it needs to work, but it won’t have any use. There’s also a possibility of a lack of a logical order of operations. In most cases, you could find a use or problem for the machine to solve, but most likely it won’t be very efficient at solving that problem. There’s a high probability that in order for it to be useful you’ll need to rearrange and swap out a lot of the parts.
The same thing happens when you don’t develop your theme or ‘why’ (aka problem) before creating a game. You’ll have something that works, but it won’t be useful nor efficient. You’re going to want to develop your theme first so you don’t end up with a ‘machine’ that you’ll have to paste a theme onto (aka create a problem for it to solve). It’s not going to work out well for you. Lastly, I’d like to point out that this blog post isn’t about inspiration for game ideas, but rather it is more about the initial stages of game development. Your game idea can come from a cool theme, interesting mechanics, component restrictions, or whatever else; it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Besides, who am I to tell you where your inspiration should come from? The part that really matters is what happens after that. That’s the part where you spend your time trying to transform this idea into a physical game that someone can play. There’s a lot of work required to make that happen and, in the long run, making your theme your initial focus will make the design process focused and easier for everyone. That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the core of your game. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin
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 http://www.8thdimensioncomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LNOE1.jpg Good Day Internet! Now that we've talked about what you can expect, we're going to get into the basics of game design: theme and mechanics. Before we do though, I'd like to point out that League of Gamemakers published a blog discussing "The False Dichotomy" of Theme vs. Mechanics. It is a much more thorough analysis of the elements of a game and is definitely worth the read if you are inclined to do so. Despite this, we're going to stick with explaining the basics of game design using theme and mechanics because it simplifies the explanation without losing the essential content. Today we'll talk about the importance of theme and our next post will discuss the importance of mechanics. After that, we’ll look at them together and tell you which one you need to focus on when you first begin to design your game. Let's get down to business and discuss the importance of theme in game design. The easiest way to explain theme in board games is: it's the 'why'. The theme is the background story, the motivation and provides the context to what the players need to accomplish. It's how players understand the relationship between the components, mechanics and how they should act in game. For these reasons, you usually have to describe the theme of a game to new players before you even say one word on how it’s played (there are some people who will say otherwise). Therefore, it’s very important to think about this early on when designing in order to have an easy way of presenting your game to new and unfamiliar players (which is basically everyone). Theme is also important in the respect that you should always keep your theme in mind when designing a game. You should be constantly going back to what players are trying to accomplish and why as you design your game. When we say what players are trying to accomplish, we don't just mean the final goal. We also mean all those small actions that come from the theme and lead to victory. In Jason C. Hill/Flying Frog's 'Last Night on Earth', it's the scrambling to acquire weapons and equipment, running from zombies, and killing zombies. All those small accomplishments in game flow naturally from the zombie theme of the game. If instead you had to acquire different hats in order to ensure the circus show can go on, which will then chase away the zombies, no one is going to have a clue what's going on. Players won't understand what they are supposed to do, when, or understand what a component actually represents.  http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~gameprof/gamewiki/ images/c/c8/Pandemic.png Even in an abstract game, you’re going to want to come up with a light theme to provide direction to what you’re doing. For instance, Go (which quite frankly I’m surprised has a theme) is about life and death (yeah, Go figure). Every placing of a stone goes back to that life and death theme (in a very abstract way). The point is, if players don’t know why they’re playing your game or what they’re trying to accomplish, you probably don’t know either. You may think you do, but you probably just created a mess.
The last thing I want to mention about theme is that your theme needs to come across mostly from gameplay, not by how much backstory you can squeeze into a rulebook or components. Look at the rulebooks for some of your favourite board games; chances are the theme/backstory takes up a couple paragraphs or less. This is because that’s all you really need in order to understand and "get into" a game if it’s designed with theme in mind. In Matt Leacock's 'Pandemic', you’re a disease fighting team trying to find cures to 4 diseases spreading wildly across the globe. With that, players are set. Sure, they’ll ask questions about what they can do, but what they can do all flows pretty naturally from the theme. The other reason most games have a small backstory is because gaming is about creating a unique playing experience that allows players to manipulate their environment within a set of rules. Gaming is not about limiting players to a set script. Players want choice, so don't write a two page backstory for your 10 minute filler game's rulebook because you'll limit your players and yourself in what you can include in your game. That's it for this time. Next post we’ll take a look at the importance of mechanics. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin |
Kevin CarmichaelBoard game designer and developer discussing the ins and outs of game design. 
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