Until I read this fascinating volume, it hadn’t registered with me how very, very different German culture is from Anglo-U.S. culture. After all, I knew that Sid Sackson’s Acquire (3M Games, later Avalon Hill) had sold incredibly well in a German edition and I knew that some of the best players in the world at Magic: The Gathering were located in German and Scandinavian countries. Some years ago, I was at a game design conference hosted by Wizards of the Coast and remember Reiner Knizia saying t

Until I read this fascinating volume, it hadn’t registered with me how very, very different German culture is from Anglo-U.S. culture. After all, I knew that Sid Sackson’s Acquire (3M Games, later Avalon Hill) had sold incredibly well in a German edition and I knew that some of the best players in the world at Magic: The Gathering were located in German and Scandinavian countries. Some years ago, I was at a game design conference hosted by Wizards of the Coast and remember Reiner Knizia saying that the German marketplace preferred games with new mechanics as opposed to new applications of familiar mechanics. With the current explosion of Eurogames as a global market, that may not be as true as it once was, but it was still true enough for Woods to state, “Eurogames tend to be accessible games that privilege the role of mechanics over theme in gameplay. They typically facilitate indirect rather than direct conflict, de-emphasize the role of chance, offer predictable playing times, and are usually of a high standard in terms of component quality and presentation.” (p. 79).



Woods establishes that, with a few exceptions such as the games of Sackson and Frances Tresham, the Anglo-U.S. tradition tended to be heavy on conflict and displacement as the path to victory. The board game tradition was heavy on elimination of one’s opponents and relied heavily on the military gaming tradition. In Germany, the ban (at least as far as juveniles were concerned) with regard to anything that might glorify the National Socialist regime and suspicion (as far as adults were concerned) with regard to anything with Nazi symbolism or references seemed to limit the wargame tradition. Woods offers the example of Australian Design Group’s Days of Decision III with a very small swastika counter representing Adolf Hitler. This straightforward game in many countries became an under-the-counter item in many shops, akin to pornographic magazines in the United States (p. 57). So, it is no surprise when Woods quotes Reiner Knizia one page later as stating, “I don’t like bloody games.” (p. 58)



Again, I had observed in my personal experience that Europeans enjoy a higher level of abstraction in their games. For me, theme and color (in terms of chrome and detail) are vital. “The majority of eurogames, however, take place on a miniaturized representation of a real-world geographical location or a stylized rendering of an imagined setting.” (p. 81) Woods goes on to state, “Although the environments in these eurogames echo the spatial emphasis of wargames and Anglo-American hobby board games, they are typically abstracted and/or stylized to a far greater degree, often falling closer to traditional abstract games in terms of fidelity to the represented environment.” (p. 81)



I also liked Woods’ observations about the rules in such games, noting in a quotation from a think piece by a blogger that, “Now a game’s theme was built around its rules, and no longer burdened by a need to create levels of simulation…” (p. 83) Some people call that “elegant;” I call it “arrogant,” but I’m a simulation player at heart and actually enjoy even a number of “failed” games because of their simulation value.



Perhaps, some of the most interesting data in the book pointed to the use of primary mechanics in eurogames. After delineating 40 common mechanics in eurogames, he drills down to the 14 most commonly used “primary” mechanics. Of these, the top five (5) are clearly: 1) Choosing, 2) Placing (hence the proliferation of “worker placement” games), 3) Point-to-Point movement (simplifying the structure of movement but reducing the “freedom” of choosing a route in some cases), 4) Bidding (becoming more common in Anglo-American hobby games, as well), and 5) Building. (p. 85) It is interesting that when he looks at the missing mechanics: “…only two involve conquering and one attacking/defending.” (p. 86)



Another fascinating data point was when he quantified endgame goals in the games. By far the dominant goal was accumulation with racing and accomplishing in distant seconds and thirds (p. 100). Subgoals reflect the endgame goals with gaining ownership, creating optimal configurations, making connections, completing traversals, and collecting being right behind (p. 102). I also appreciated his discussion of how loose the relationship between theme and mechanics usually is in eurogames. In this argument, he cites the fact that Ra with its Egyptian “theme” and Razzia with its mafia theme would each be essentially the same game (p. 107). One startling fact I didn’t realize when looking at eurogames was that science-fiction is considerably underrepresented in the game style (p. 109).



The latter portion of the book, circa p. 110ff, feels like additional material added to fill out Woods’ dissertation material. His long discourse on the boardgamegeek website has a few insights, but it doesn’t really advance the psychographic of gamers beyond Gary Fine’s groundbreaking work of the 1980s. Of course, he’s very right that gaming is still primarily the “hobby of the over-educated” (p. 125). And I loved the goofy story behind Cleopatra’s Caboose (p. 139) And, I whole-heartedly approve of his quotation of Nicole Lazzaro’s 2004 work where she identifies four emotional keys in playing: 1) “hard fun” in problem-solving; 2) “easy fun” from immersion; 3) “altered states” reflecting one’s mental experience of involvement; and 4) “people factor” derived from the social experiences surrounding games (p. 147).I also approve of his use of Lew Pulsipher’s 2009 material dividing the player experience into interaction with the system and the psychology of the game (“figuring out how to forecast and to manipulate the other players”—p. 156). Yet, most of the concepts in the last two chapters are readily available in other formats.



Still, as a person who used to despise eurogames and still only plays them on rare occasions, I find this to be an enlightening source and I’m glad I purchased it.



