Keeping Players Engaged
The problem of keeping players engaged and involved is something that I’ve struggled with when introducing people to new games that don’t explore. It is something that can prevent prevent me and my play groups to returning to playcertain games all together.
The typical pattern I’ve noticed is that when players don’t have reason to pay attention, they simply don’t, choosing instead to turn their attention to othermatters like the blackholes of phones or TVs. Unfortunately, this struggle can turn otherwise great games into boring slogs if play isn’t moving fast enough. In extreme cases the actions of a single player taking far too long on turns where their coplayers having nothing to do can be enought to kill the momentum of games entirely. So how should games and their designers combat these issues? The first and most ubiquitous is the concept of out of turn play.
Out of turn play can take many forms whether it be the opportunity to bargain with the active turn player, cards or abilities that may be used during very specific windows or even just having resources or triggers generated during each players turn. During my time as both a competitve player and designer, I’ve always been partial to the second option as it provides far more interesting and diverse situations than the others. The first time I remember playing something with anything remotely resembling this idea was my first time playing Smash Up. What should be a simple game of math is immediately turned on its head as you have to factor in player’s abilities to affect totals with cards that have Special effects. These cards mean you have to constantly be playing attention, evaluating the visible math on the board as well as your ability to turn those numbers in your favor. This simple mechanic highlights the beautiful secondary effect of out of turn play, the impact on the active player. What may once have been simple math becomes exponentially more difficult and interesting as you have to not only respond to the play of other players but you must anticipate the play of other players as well.
The TCG Flesh and Blood is probably my favorite example of out of turn play because of the elegant flow that it creates. The game itself is structured around attacking and defending against your opponent while they attack and defend against you. Cards committed to defend can’t be used to attack and vice versa, meaning that your influence on your opponent’s turn directly effects your own turn as well. But for most of the heroes in the game this is where the concept of out of turn play stops. Enter Isylander.
While not a hero that matched my particular playstyle, Isylander stands above the rest in terms of design, at least in terms of the concept of out of turn play and interaction. With her ability Isylander allowed players the ability to play cards they otherwise wouldn’t be able to play during their opponents turns during specific windows. This drastically shifted how the game was played as you had to factor in the disruption her spells might provide, as well as paying the additional cost added to your cards by the frostbite tokens she creates. This ultimately shaped the meta game as a whole for the better, making decks play more fair rather than decks built as greedily with as little thought to interacting with their opponent as possible. Isylander changed the rules, she turned the game upside down, impacting games she wasn’t even in just by being a looming threat that had to be considered.
I’ve discussed the concept of out of turn play at length but by no means is this the only method through which games can be designed in order to keep players actively engaged. For example there exists the timeless classic of short back and forth turns seen in the likes of Chess or Checkers. Simple yet effective this structure keeps players engaged simply by not affording them the time to become drawn in by something else. This turn structure is easily adapted to modern games as well, Star Wars: Destiny being an example that I’m intimately familar with.
Another option while I’ve found scarcely used as it requires the game to be built around it is the idea of simultaneous turns or really no turns at all. This is something that can be found in the game Spirit Island, where player do all their turns simultaniously while proceeding through a number of clearly defined phases. While some players may have more to do than others, the cooperative nature of the game requires constant communication in order to not overlap and waste effects.
Now the ability to identify these different methods of keeping players engaged is all well and good but putting it into practice is really what designers should be striving for and that’s exactly what I did in my game Lance-A-Little.
I accomplished this through two methods, the first of which was to actively engage players by making them participate in jousts, the main mechanic of the game, during opponents turns, every joust needs two (or more in some cases) competitors after all. This meant that players who aren’t the active player have the opportunity to participate on a similar level even if its not their turn. Second by creating Event cards I even allowed players not participating in a joust to directly influence results, by either changing totals directly by using modifiers or using one of many effects that can change the rules of a joust.
In my playtesting these two simple mechanical decisions kept players around the table engaged, having fun, and laughing which is ultimately what my game was made to do. I urge my fellow designers to explore opportunites to keep your players engaged, and for consumers to look for games that provide these opportunities, it will without a doubt increase the comradery that these games are meant to foster.
