The topic
of theme in games was something that came up at a recent gaming meet-up, and
it’s something that’s had me thinking. I’m someone who considers myself
squarely in the mechanism corner of the board game arena. Whenever I consider
any new game, I (mostly) ignore the theme and go straight for the mechanisms.
What mechanisms are at play, and is there something that makes the way they are
used stand out? Theme is more a secondary consideration for me – not completely
disregarded, but at the same time not all that important. I know it matters to
some degree to me because I’m not the biggest fan of purely abstract games, and
I find it kind of fascinating that at least a portion of people who complain
about lack of theme will still find abstract games very engaging. It just makes
me wonder how a complete lack of theme is better than partial and/or pasted on
theme.
The funny
thing for me is that I actually love engaging myself in a story, whether it’s
through a book, a movie, a television show, or a video game. Of course, I have
other aspects that matters. In a television show or a book, I need to care
about one of the main characters to care about what happens to them – which
means I can enjoy a sub-par story because I enjoy the character experiencing it,
and I can get disinterested in a good story because I cannot engage myself in
any of the characters in it. With video games, the gameplay mechanisms also
play a key aspect – though not necessarily in the same way as they do in a
boardgame. Here I don’t mind repetitive actions (like fighting enemies with the
same button-combinations over and over again) because I enjoy the story framing
the action.
Yet,
despite all this, despite how much the story matters to me in pretty much every
other form of media, it doesn’t really matter all that much for me in board
games. I have yet to actually successfully immerse myself in a theme while
playing a board game. I will make puns and joke about things related to the
theme (and not related to the theme as well), and I do have this thing where
whenever I play My Village, that whenever we kill off a villager, we make up a
story about how that character died (which can get pretty crazy at times, from
superstitious conspiracies, to revenge plots, to zombies), which often leads us to building upon that story whenever we have to kill another villager. I have a
ton of fun with that aspect, but I don’t consider myself thematically immersed
in the game; it’s more of a fun thing we have decided to tack on. I have yet to
actually successfully role play in a game, maybe because I find social-heavy
games to be awkward rather than engaging? Even with the select few games I do
buy for theme purposes (mainly licensed games for fandoms I love, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly), it’s still
merely the references to the fandom I care about, the way it gets us players
talking about things that happened in the fandom, and not necessarily if
playing the game makes me feel like I’m in the story.
 |
| I was really pleased how well this game referenced the show in every cards, character, scenario. One of few times where the theme really made the game for me (careful not to confuse the game with the "other one" from the same year). |
But theme
does have a place for me, I will absolutely admit to that. If the theme makes a
mechanism more intuitive, I’m always happy, because it makes the game both
easier to learn and easier to teach. I will always prefer wooden resources over
generic cubes wherever possible, as it improves on the tactile experience of
the game – and if the cubes in a game are meant to be specific resources, I’m
actually very likely to upgrade them at some point. But I don’t really care
whether everything in a game means something, because I don’t usually care what
the theme in a game is. What I care about is that the game looks good and plays
well, and if certain things make easily sense because of the theme, then I’m
happy.
So, to the
rest of you, to what degree does theme matter to you? Where do you draw the
line on whether a game has sufficient theme to engage you? Do you get that
level of engagement in the game?
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