Underpinning all of this, on my opinion is the tension between games as craft/art and games as product. Games are both, but unfortunately (and to the hobby’s detriment) the productization of games usually wins out. That which sells gains attention because it has the money to shape public opinion.
This is why Cole Wehrle is so often mentioned in these conversations, in my opinion. Not only does he make thoughtful and innovative games with strong perspectives, but he also moves units. His games (and the games he backs) sell.
His efforts, through both Leder and Wehrlegig, prove that it’s possible to do both things - to be commercially successful and make art. Unfortunately, his work is an anomaly. There are others as well - City of Six Moons, for example - that prove this can be done. But it’s much too rare.
What is the appetite for board games as artistic experiences? Can they rival movies or music or video games? In volume likely not, the medium is too clumsy and time-consuming and space-eating. But in quality of artistry or depth of argument? Most definitely. Games are arguably more powerful.
Board games pull people into a shared social experience. They ask interesting questions and elicit string emotional reactions, even when they’re pushing capitalist engines down our throats. Maybe that’s why they aren’t more broadly appealing - because most people think of Monopoly or Catan as game.
What would it look like if people could see how games can open people up and spill them out into a table? How would your game-hating friend react if they got to see games can be so much more than they think?
To achieve this we have to stop thinking of games as their component parts, as a collection of mechanisms or a thematic experience or a narrative adventure. Games are more than the sum of their parts. Everything about a game shapes how players approach and experience it. And I mean everything.
The standards are obvious: mechanisms, art, theme, player personas. But everything else matters too. The physical components and how players interact with them. The rules and how they speak to the reader. The end game conditions shape how players think about the game’s outcomes. All of it matters.
I like to think of games as wholistic experiences that bring players into temporary social contracts that allow for the suspension of reality and the adoption of special rules. The meaning of a game is created in concert between the designer and all the players who will ever play it.
Isn’t that wonderful? Every time a group sits down to play a game, a new meaning will be created, just for that one fleeting instance of play. Play. Something else to remember. This is all play. We are exercising the most childlike of muscles, exploring the world through play.
I don’t have a grand point. Just these rambles about games and where we are as an industry. I hope for more weird, niche, interesting things to play. I hope to be challenged and pushed and confronted. I look forward to it.
There are more than a few art forms where this is true: photography, music, sculpture . . . we're getting there with novels and movies, too
Sure but those don’t suffer from the “can they be art” conversation in the same way, largely because they are thought of as art forms that have become commodified while games are commonly considered (wrongly in my opinion) in the reverse.
definitely true in terms of the "reverse point of view"