Design Journal #4 – Conflict at the Table (Board/Card Games)

     Very basic choice for a topic game, I realize, but I think chess is a good case study here. It's a competitive, turn-based strategy game for two players. Each player begins the game with identical resources, the only difference being that the player with the white pieces makes the first move, and turns alternate back and forth from there. Players move one piece per turn in compliance with the movement restrictions of its type, and can capture (permanently remove) their opponent's pieces by moving one of their own onto the same tile. When one player's King piece is captured, the game ends in that player's defeat and the other's victory. The goal, therefore, is to capture your opponent's King while protecting your own.

    Right away, the conflict (player vs. player) is pretty apparent. You and your opponent have perfectly-symmetrical, mutually-exclusive goals that require direct interaction with one another to achieve, as well as limitations, rules by which you must abide in your endeavors. You want to capture their King piece. They want to capture yours. You can only move one piece per turn. They can only move one piece per turn. Both players start with the exact same pieces in the exact same arrangement, and can only move each piece according to the specific movement rules of its type. Both players' pieces are lost for the rest of the game when they are captured and cannot be recovered, in a sense a growing set of limitations you can place on your opponent to tip the odds in your favor as the game progresses, but that they also have equal capacity to place on you.

    Chess has as little asymmetry as its turn-based format permits. Success in its conflicts comes down almost entirely to each player's game knowledge, their ability to both concoct their own long-term plans and discern and counter their opponent's, using the same set of resources. There is an inherent appeal to a competition where victory hinges purely on who is the better player, I think, as well as to the sense that both you and your opponent are playing with the same set of resources available to you. Pokémon and Fire Emblem both tap into this to varying extents, as well, with the majority of the opponents you face in each series being built from the same fundamental building blocks that are available to you in constructing your own parties.

    As for my own project, I've had an idea for a simple, single-button racing game that could definitely apply some of these properties. It isn't 1:1, but I think I can definitely map the ideas of symmetry, of different "pieces" with different movement types, to my idea. Ideally, I'd like to balance fairness with some level of player expressiveness, and I think chess would be a good point of reference for the "fairness" there.