I’ve had a steady passion for abstract games for 20 years. Contemplating them feels to me like what I imagine praying feels like to the devout. They’re spiritual.

Why do they mean so much to me? I don’t have the same relationship with games in general, nor board games. My feeling is specific to abstract strategy games. It’s a weird thing to be spiritual about.

I’ve never tried to put an explanation into words. Many people don’t understand why anyone would care about these games. Maybe I can shed light on my feelings. Here goes.

First, what’s an abstract game?

The textbook abstract game is a board game that:

lacks a theme

is for 2 players

has short, elegant rules

has geometric gameplay

has emergent, deep gameplay

has no luck or hidden information

A classic example is Go:

There’s an alchemy between these defining qualities, leading to a magical experience I’ve only felt playing abstract games. It starts with abstraction itself:

Theme vs. abstraction



Many game-lovers prefer themes to abstraction. To understand why I’m the opposite, first let’s consider why themes are attractive:

A good thematic game refers to a world beyond the game. Via that reference, it kindles the imagination.

When we play a thematic game, we imagine ourselves players in its story. In becoming magnates or wizards, we’re freed a bit from ordinary life. Because life can be difficult, it feels good to escape from it into a world whose rules we better understand, where we have more agency and power. A famous example is Monopoly. It grew popular in the Great Depression because inside the game, players could succeed at something they were failing at outside it: achieving financial security.

I feel these pleasures too. But abstraction offers a different pleasure, one more important to me. It’s related to meditation.

Games as meditation

In many forms of meditation, the goal is to avoid kindling the imagination. Instead, the goal is to calm the river of thought. When we succeed, we feel serene, because we’re not tossed around on that river. A key way meditation achieves this is single-pointed focus. You practice returning your attention to a simple, unimaginative thing: your breath, a mantra, a point in your visual field, etc.

Because abstract games don’t make strong reference to anything, they don’t set my imagination roaming like themed games do. My imagination does roam, but only through the reference-less world of the game, disconnected from the river of thought beyond, where life’s concerns lie. Being in that isolated world calms me. That calm creates a bigger opening for absorption, and when I’m absorbed, the river of thought calms more, in a virtuous cycle.

But abstraction alone isn’t enough to maintain this meditative quality. That’s why abstract games’ other features matter: they help protect and amplify it. In brief, here’s how:

2-player games are more contemplative – we expect 2-player games to be more contemplative than games for more players. Or maybe they’re just less of a party. In any case they’re more conducive to the meditative experience.

– we expect 2-player games to be more contemplative than games for more players. Or maybe they’re just less of a party. In any case they’re more conducive to the meditative experience. Short rules allow me to abandon words – Words are reference machines, conduits to worlds outside our heads. I can’t achieve the meditative state until I’ve so internalized the rules, I stop thinking in words, and start thinking in game states directly. Speaking of:

– Words are reference machines, conduits to worlds outside our heads. I can’t achieve the meditative state until I’ve so internalized the rules, I stop thinking in words, and start thinking in game states directly. Speaking of: Geometric gameplay requires less symbolic thinking – In playing a geometric game, instead of thinking in words, algebra, ledgers, thematic actions, etc, I can think in direct pictures: what will the board look like, and how can that picture change, if I do this or that? I don’t have to ponder outside concepts much to play. That keeps the game world and outside world more separate, and the river of thought more calm.

– In playing a geometric game, instead of thinking in words, algebra, ledgers, thematic actions, etc, I can think in direct pictures: what will the board look like, and how can that picture change, if I do this or that? I don’t have to ponder outside concepts much to play. That keeps the game world and outside world more separate, and the river of thought more calm. Emergent, deep gameplay keeps me inside the game – The more absorbed I am in a game’s world, the easier it is to stay in the meditative state. I’m less likely to slip back to the world beyond. Emergent, deep gameplay keeps me absorbed by offering more to discover within a game’s boundaries.

Meditative games are particularly important to me now

Our world is noisy. Thanks to communication technologies, our minds are hijacked over and over, all day, by every kind of distraction. It’s hard to direct and shape the mind in even ideal circumstances, and times aren’t ideal.

So it’s more and more important for me to take harbor in mental oases, where I can remind myself of what’s possible, that my mind needn’t be buffeted so much. An abstract game is such an oasis, and it’s the only such oasis I have I can visit with another person.

There’s more

My love for abstract games doesn’t end there. They have other qualities I love:

Luckless games as guides to life



Games without luck or hidden information are different from life generally in a key way: they’re more knowable. When I lose, I know the explanation for my loss is right there, in the game, even if I can’t see it. That inspires me to try to figure out where I biffed.

The real world isn’t like that. I can never be sure the answer I’m looking for is there. So it’s easy to unconsciously assume searching for answers isn’t worth it, and give up.

But that’s the wrong way to think. Long strings of failure are inevitable even when there’s an answer, because that’s the way problems work. You’re unlikely to solve any hard problem if you take a string of failures as evidence there’s no solution.

As I’ve played abstract games over decades, my assumptions about them have crept into my life, in a kind of metaphorical seepage. For every kind of problem, I assume there’s an answer, even if I can’t see it. So I cheerily fail over and over on my way to solutions. I’ve solved some hairy problems that way.

The people who love them

Folks who love abstract games tend to have qualities I admire: they’re probing, independent thinkers, often philosophical, and immune to consumerism and fads. I aspire to these qualities and grateful to be among folks who model them.

Finally, the beauty of emergent complexity

a murmuration of starlings, showing emergent behavior

Emergent complexity refers to complex collective behavior arising from simple constituent parts. There’s something beautiful to me about it, beyond its role in the meditative experience.

Great abstract games have this quality: they create endless patterns of tactics and strategy from elemental rules. Here again, a classic example is Go: I can write its basic rules on a napkin, but through the ages players have produced whole libraries of analysis about its patterns, with no end in sight. Recently, a company called DeepMind created a new artificial intelligence that plays Go better than any previous AI or human. It’s revealing new patterns of play. 2500 years after Go’s invention, we’ve entered a new age of Go discovery.

That’s impressive, but my love of emergent complexity goes even beyond that. For me, it’s life-affirming.

Life itself is emergent. An atom is a simple thing, but somehow atoms come together to make you, and me, and everything we’ve ever known. All the beautiful and terrible things of the world are the products of emergent complexity. Without it, the universe would be inert and lifeless at best. It might not even exist: the Big Bang itself may have been a moment of emergent complexity.

So, when I play a game with real emergent complexity, it’s not just a game. It’s a reminder of what a miracle this all is.

Questions

If you have strong feelings about abstract games, one way or the other, where do they come from?

If you love them, which of my reasons do you share? Do you have others?

If you loathe them, why?

I’d love to read answers that go beyond the obvious. For example, many people feel intimidated by how skill-based abstract games are. They don’t enjoy the idea of losing over and over to better players. I don’t experience that feeling (maybe because I view losses as experiments rather than failures?). I don’t fully understand how some folks get so invested in an outcome that has so few real-life consequences. I’d love to better understand how that works.