This article is a loose continuation of some of the thoughts I offered here and here.
I have a keen interest in how we analyze board games, not just because that’s what I do, but because the state of criticism in the internet age is so dire. I’m not just talking about board games here, but pretty much anything that could be called pop culture. I think a lot of people think that the best kind of movie criticism, for example, is that which points out the most continuity errors. I’ve heard people talk about books like the quality of a novel is an equation summing the characters, plot, and worldbuilding. I’ve written before about what I consider to be tepid ways to analyze games, stripping the analysis down to something flat and lifeless.
Underlying much of this is a desire to have the definitive, final take on any given product. Or, at the very least, a presupposition (conscious or not) that criticism is about trying to find the definitive take. I reject this way of thinking. Furthermore, I believe that if you step outside of that framework, you equip yourself to learn and know more about the media you interact with and the world at large.
What’s the point of a critic, anyways? They evaluate the quality of a thing, of course, but in board gaming a good majority of the games people are going to be evaluating will meet basic standards of quality. That is, they’ll function as games that are playable and have something going on. The clear chaff often languishes on Amazon or half-funded crowdfunding pages. For every review copy I’m offered that I’m actually interested in, I ignore 5-10 dumb looking party games that I never hear about ever again.
So except for the very few people who can look at a big chunk of everything that comes out, most of what board game critics will be evaluating is beyond basic functionality. Thus it doesn’t make a lot of sense to analyze games in the manner of a technical review. We’re not looking at battery life or shock durability or slicing power, but something more effusive and subjective.
We also shouldn’t look to be the absolute, definitive, final word on a game. That’s vanity. I can imagine rare cases where one could make an argument that a game should not exist on an objective, moral level. Those situations are rare. But at the same time, a critic should, of course, attempt to be true and justify their arguments one way or another. Being true and being the final word are not the same, though. I can imagine two contradictory evaluations of the same work that both justify their arguments well. Sure there might be some finer points in conflict, but by and large both evaluations could provide fascinating, useful, illuminating insights.
“Illumination” is the answer I’ll submit to this question of what the job of the critic is. Illumination of what the subject is and/or illumination of some other truths in context with that subject. This attempt at illumination can be a floodlight, trying to expose the whole of the thing for all to see. It can also be focused, a beam of light intensely analyzing only part, so that we can see it in more detail. It can also use the thing analyzed as a reflective surface, exposing something outside of it, affected by its patterns and colors.
In short, I believe two things about criticism:
1. It’s not the end of the conversation, but a beginning.
2. There are multiple valid approaches to criticism that can result in multiple, well-supported conclusions
Sontag
This article was inspired by Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”, which, from what I can tell, is one of the most well-respected essays on the subject of criticism. In this 1966 essay she argues against the destruction of art through interpretation:
“The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.[…] It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world”! As if there were any other.)”
Sontag, “Against Interpretation and Other Essays” pg. 6-7
I find this argument compelling. I remember back in college an art professor gave a little talk defending art as a method of truth-telling. I was confused by this, asking him how Beethoven’s symphonies could express truth when they don’t say anything. I couldn’t understand the idea of truth expressed outside of a syllogism. Over a decade later and I understand him better. To compose sounds into something moving, whole, and beautiful, is to use language to express something about reality; something about who we are as thinking and feeling beings, living in an existence outside of us. Sounds like truth to me.
So if we take a book, movie, game, or whatever, and say that it’s not what it is, but that it’s actually a Freudian examination of the subconscious (or whatever other analytical framework we want), we are destroying the work in order to build our argument. Importantly, Sontag does not criticize interpretation wholesale. She argues that a critical landscape solely focused on interpretation is damaging.
I think interpretation can be illuminating, but we have to understand precisely what we’re doing. We’re using someone else’s work as inspiration for an argument. We should not say that the work is “actually” what we argue, but that it helps illustrate whatever framework we’re using. Or, perhaps that by looking at the work through this framework we can understand more about both. (Back to “criticism is conversation”, no?)
Note that I’m not arguing for a completely subjectivist understanding, where all analyses are equally true (or not-true) because truth is entirely subjective. I’m a realist through and through. I’m saying that art doesn’t have to express one truth. If it did it probably wouldn’t be art, but a simple statement. Art is multifaceted and messy. Why shouldn’t our understanding of it be the same?
Methods
So how should we analyze board games? There’s great freedom to illuminate games from a number of different angles. Once we free ourselves from the burden of trying to find The One True Opinion we’re better equipped to find truths. Here are some ideas, incomplete, overlapping, and not necessarily of the same kind; the result of a quick solo brainstorm:
Interpretation
Like I said above, I don’t think Sontag’s idea of interpretation is necessarily harmful, as long as we avoid too-bold claims of uncovering what a game is “really about”. We can use games to illustrate other ideas and concepts. We can “excavate” and build the foundation for some fascinating arguments.
Descriptive
In the concluding statement of “Against Interpretation”, Sontag says, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” Earlier in the essay she talks about how we should move more towards analyzing form rather than content. Honestly, I don’t think we’re that bad at this in the board game space, where, if there is analysis of a game, it’s often about the mechanisms and what they do for the experience of playing the game. Moving from mere description to illumination is slippery to my mind (what distinguishes one from the other?), but it’s in a large part what I attempt to do with my own reviews.
Psychological
Because board games rely so much on the interaction of people playing it, I believe there is a lot of fruitful ground examining the way games affect us on a psychological level. I love what Geoff Englestein has done with his work on loss aversion, for example.
Experiential
Thought it (heavily?) overlaps with what I’m calling the “descriptive” category, I’ll separate the experiential category by its similarities with autobiography. That is, there is a form of writing about games, somewhat related to “New Games Journalism” (and “New Journalism” before that), that can say as much about the author as it does the game. Insofar as it is about the author, using the game as a way to get to writing about the author, it’s worth classifying as something different.
Social Critique
We’ve seen this form of analysis, focused on the effect board games have on us as people in a community, in primarily two areas: colonialism and sales structure. A number of astute critiques of eurogames’ neglect or ignorance to the horrors of colonialism have been levied over the past few years. Similarly, criticisms of “booster pack”-style games or marketing that preys on FOMO have been around as long as I’ve been interested in modern board games.
Game Design
I believe Godard said that, “the way to critique a film is with another film”. I don’t think it’s any different with games. Spirit Island inserted itself smack-dab in the middle of the colonialism critique. There’s a long tradition, as I understand it, in Wargames of using new designs to rectify perceived flaws in the historical interpretation of other designs. Splotter games challenge the idea of “no one’s out of the game until the end” as a eurogame ethos.
All of these different approaches, and more I’m sure I haven’t mentioned or thought of, can illuminate. They can, with good argumentation and a humble mindset, become part of the great critical conversation.
2 thoughts on “Methods of Board Game Criticism”
Hello, a really interessting article. I am 59 years old, play games, love music hearing and playing and i read a lot. When it comes to review and critize, i think an intellectual approach is wrong. Also the try to overanalyze, looking for a deeper sense or thruth in games or music/books.
First, at least for me, all three have a lot to do with emotions. I still got goosebumps, when i hear a song that touch me. This must not a great or special song, but it have something that rings a bell in me.
Same with games. And it is an absolute thing of personal taste. As hard as you try, you can’t be really objective. And this is right that way.
Otherwise we get “technically” reviews. Like talking about a machine design. Not what i want for games, cds or books.
I admit, i don’t like eurogames. You sit around a table putting meeples here, play a card there, get this for that and in end someone has won with 130 vps. Even the last player, he was bored and has no fun playing today ( he want to look a soccer game but there was a fourth player needed …so he plays ), and he really play as shit, make 45 vps. So no one really lose, no matter what he do orbhow bad he play.
That is not emotional for me. I need the tense feeling of “loosing speak dying ” in a game. That is what i like in games like “Alien legendary encounter”.
But as i say, this truly subjective and personal.
My point in reviews is : If i know a little of the taste of a reviewer, i can read out of a review, it is for me or not. I think i rarely would give an worker placement euro game a high scoring. If a reader know this, he know if a give such a game a better scoring, this game have something, which touches a sense in me to do that.
And theme of games. Open shown racism, for example, is nothing i want in a game. But shortly was the case, that in a game in Germany that take place in an african setting, the game company use brown meeples for the people. A cry erupts, how racist is that. What a overreacted bullshit. It is pretty en vogue today, to search everything for a secret deeper meaning. And show themselve in a spotlight as fighter for the one and only thruth.
We talking about games. I really have a lot of games with red meeples. It never comes to my mind, that the maker is a communist.
To end this, “Games are an emotional experience”.
And this is the fun.
Ralf
Great thoughts! The emotional element is key. For the critic, being able to communicate those thoughts and emotions to others is a big challenge.