Week 12 - Board Games and Transparency

If I’m being fully transparent (see what I did there?) I thought I had a good grasp on transparency in games, but now I am not so sure. He went over some games, and I found it hard to keep up sometimes. But I think that I understand the basic concept of what we mean when we say “transparency.” So, I watched the video on USPS, The Great American Mail Race, and I really like how this game works. Near the middle of the video, he gives an example of what good and bad transparency look like. I interpreted that as games being sort of “foggy”, unclear, or even almost poor in design. The player needs to know how the game functions. He states that “Transparency is the key factor that enables dynamic play,” dynamic means something changes but also describes a person having a positive attitude toward something. I think that The Great American Mail Race has good transparency and is clear in its goal to produce a dynamic response. At the end of the How Board Games Matter video, he talks about Transparency via interface, system, theme, and help. I am assuming these are the four notions discussed on our class page. Interface (a word describing something I try to avoid because it sounds complex, but after googling a basic definition, it is the visual components that allow players to interact with the games story and game space) would kind of be the driving factor of the goals (Moving, how you move, what order you move, and how you act in the play space creates “story”) and the board. The instructions clearly lay out rules for moving, and the board provides the areas to do that. If applying this concept correctly, I think that the game's interface is present and clear, providing transparency. In terms of theme, I think the game stays consistent in the matter it is built around. Players execute mechanics that are in correlation to the theme. Systems for board games (after googling it to better understand) are the part of the game that isn’t the game. The components that lay outside the gameplay. He brings up physics and how you just “have to be a human and know what it means to fall.” Physics is very transparent. I am not quite sure how to apply it to this specific game. There are limitations in place in terms of the moving cards that would correlate to the limitations in real life, so I believe some components of the system are in play in this board game. In terms of help, there is no menu a mouse can “hover” over to reveal stats and statistics in this game. The knowledge and rules of the game are listed in the instructions, and there is no way to tell how you are doing; unless you count having the ability to know how much mail you have in your van.