Link to article courtesy . The article isn’t exactly meaty in its details or relevant discussion of the topic but it brings up a point I’ve never thought of – namely that of what is a good game for a family?
I generally find myself unwilling to engage in long games for fear of boredom and the like but not for lack of time. Anyone here pressed for time when it comes to playing games? It seems likely to me that most gamesy people create a day in which they can engage in some playing of games.
Do quick games have a tendency to become mechanical in nature? Questions for the native (purple) beret wearing game designers out there.
I think that length of time to play a board game is a very important factor in its overall quality. As the article (which, admittedly, covered only the ‘classic’ big-name games that we played as kids) pointed out, game designers are increasingly considering length of play as a factor when designing their games. Now euro-game designers and players have long known that length of play time was important – after all, why play 1 game of Monopoly when you could instead play 5 games of Settlers of Catan, or 8 games of Ticket to Ride?!
But the real issue with length of time for ‘gamesy’ people is not the lack of enough time in a day (or an evening, or a session, etc). Rather, the issue becomes a matter of ‘how do we spend our time in this gaming session?’ Gamesy people (in my experience anyway) will usually prefer to spend an evening playing multiple games, which is hard to do with some of the longer board games. So the choice will come down to: do we play 1 game of Axis & Allies (or Risk, or Arkham Horror, or World of Warcraft, etc), or do we play 3 shorter games (i.e. Carcasonne, Ra, Ticket to Ride, etc)? Gamesy people will usually choose the latter.
I agree with Sultan, although the ‘big games’ are generally events in and of themselves where everyone organizes for the unusual treat of playing a very long and complex game (see Game of Thrones, Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium, Axis and Allies).
From the beret-wearing blob community:
We generally avoid designing long games because you can be losing for that entire time and that’s no fun.
Length of a game vs Fun of a game is a hard thing to manage when making one id think.
Take Phase 10. A very simple card game yet can go on for a long time if your playing with more then 2 people. But the game actually is fun even if you are behind because you can play a part in handicapping the other players and making them fall behind. Now its not a boardgame but the principle is still the same.
I think if its meant to be a longer game there needs to be an element that would make it fun for the players no longer involved/losing to become involved.
In the case of almost all time-consuming games, it quickly reaches a point where you’re not going to see anything new and events are simply going to repeat. When all the properties get bought in Monopoly, the rest of the game will hardly see anything new. When all the easy targets are gone in Risk, the rest of the game will be the same ‘ol, same ‘ol.
That is, long games usually exhaust the random chance element pretty early on.
A shorter game may or may not rely heavily on the random element for it to be fun, but statistically speaking, the more you play a game the more randomized and *fresh* outcomes you’ll experience. Shorter games allow this much more easily than longer ones. They’re going to feel new more often, and many people enjoy them more because of that.