This week, NPR wrote about how the French Scrabble tournament had been won by Nigel Richards, a New Zealander who doesn’t speak any French, but who spent a few weeks studying a French dictionary. Don’t get me wrong, that’s an extremely impressive learning curve for Mr. Richards — one that I suspect classifies him as a sooper-genius. But otherwise I was utterly unshocked by the news.
You see, I learned a lot about Scrabble several years ago when I read an intriguing book about the game called Word Freak (2001), which talked about the culture of tournament-level Scrabble. What struck me most was how unlike casual play this tournament play was. Players obsessively memorized two-letter words, then three-letter words. They studied the Scrabble Dictionary to mind their Qs and Zs. 538.com famously described the results of high-level Scrabble play as looking like it’s “played in Martian”.
And that’s much of why I don’t think Scrabble is a good design.
It’s a degenerate game.
The Twofold Problems
So what do I mean by degenerate? It’s a twofold issue.
The first issue is that Scrabble pretends to be something that it isn’t. It acts like it’s a word game, but it’s not really about using your actual vocabulary. Instead Scrabble is an arcane game of meaningless glyphs — like a game of Masonic symbolism where the participants don’t need to know what the wacky icons actually mean. Instead of being a vocabulary game, Scrabble turns out to be a pattern-matching game. You might as well be playing Qwirkle.
Or to put it another way, Scrabble is a game where the spirit of the game and the letter of the game aren’t in harmony with each other. The spirit clearly suggests a learnéd, intellectual game of word placement, but the letter instead rewards mindless, unknowing regurgitation of pseudo-words. So, the spirit and the letter of the game aren’t just disharmonious, they’re in direct conflict with each other.
That leads us to the second issue, which is what really causes problems: if you play Scrabble in obedience to the spirit of the game, by placing fun and clever words, then you’re going to lose to someone who plays by the letter, by putting down his pre-memorized AA (a sort of lava flow) and QAT (flowering plants native to the Horn of Africa), his ZZZ (onomonapoeiatized sleeping sound) and ZAX (hand tool used by a slater).
I have no compunctions with Scrabble tournament players testing their memorization skills against each other. The issues comes when two players try to reach out across Scrabble’s theme-mechanic divide. The theme player (who enjoys playing clever words) is probably going to be disappointed and might even feel cheated by the mechanic player (who enjoys ZAXing his QAT).
Scrabble does a great job of highlighting the problems of degeneration in gaming, because it rather obviously degenerates toward mechanical memorization, leaving the wordy themers behind. The wider problem with degeneration is … there’s a wider problem
A Wider Problem
By now, I’ve hopefully clarified my definition of gamular degeneration. When I say a game degenerates I mean that its optimal play moves away from its advertised play (or its desired play). If players want to win, then they have to play in a way that’s not-fun — by some definition of not-fun that was created by the innate expectations of the game.
Scrabble promises meaningful word play, Scrabble rewards meaningless word play. Ergo, gamular degeneration. And, that’s not the only degenerate play I’ve experienced with Scrabble. I offer this next tale not out of any malice against the game. You see, the wife and I played a lot of Scrabble during our early courtship. And therein lies the tale.
I’m a game player. I have been my whole life, since my dad bought me Dungeons & Dragons and my step-dad introduced me to Euchre. My wife has sometimes been serious about games, and still plays many on the iPad, but she doesn’t have the same killer instinct that I’ve honed over four decades of gaming. So when we started playing Scrabble she was enjoying playing her clever words, and I was enjoying playing my clever words … but I was also sussing out how the game board worked.
Pretty quickly, I realized that I was putting myself at a serious strategic disadvantage when I opened up double-and-triple word spaces to my wife-to-be. So, I stopped doing so. Meanwhile, she kept playing her wonderful words wherever they went. My win-lose ratio, which had dwindled through continued play, started picking up again. Until she realized what I was doing, and got pretty annoyed by it.
I’ve seen similar dynamics in other games. In fact, my wife was once angrily called out in an online game of Ticket to Ride when she blocked an opponent’s route. It wasn’t even malicious (as that’s not the way my wife rolls while gaming). It just happened to be a bit of track that my wife wanted. But her opponent loudly claimed that she was being “unfair” and even implied she was cheating!
Was I also being “unfair” in my not-quite-similar situation in Scrabble? Probably, as I was playing by different (unwritten) rules than my wife, based on different expectations. She continued to play her light game of word placement, and though I hadn’t advanced down the hellish path of meaningless-word memorization, I was now playing a different game, of strategic word placement.
I think whether this is OK is a tricky question when you’re talking about gateway games like Ticket to Ride and Catan (and maybe Scrabble). Does a game become degenerate when serious strategic play wins out over casual play … if you’re advertising that casual play is what the game’s all about? I don’t know for sure, but it certainly lies close the general idea of degenerate play.
I see more obvious cases of degeneration in games that are prone to AP. There are certainly some games that AP-out just because players are offered too many choices. But there are also games where players can drag the proceedings to a halt because they’re minutely and meaningfully calculating all the possibilities of every move. It’s why God invented the Chess Clock and it’s why I’m fond of real-time games.
These APed games of serious analysis become truly degenerate when the games are meant to be light. The APing player takes his time and does a superior job of analyzing board positions, while the other players go quickly and more thoughtlessly, playing the game like it’s supposed to be played. In the end, the people who play the game by its spirit lose, while those who make the whole experience worse win.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve sobbed into my Carcassonne meeples, crying out, “It’s supposed to be a light game!”
What to Do!?
So how you solve a problem like a degenerate game?
The first step is clearly defining what the game is, making sure that the theme and mechanics cohere into a coherent whole.
The second step is ensuring that strategies that play to the game’s stated strengths do well and that whacked-out strategies that contradict a game’s strengths do poorly.
The third step is play testing. A lot.
Gamular?
Where did you pick up such word? Be honest, you just wanted to make a word worth more points. (lol)
Great article by the way, I was constantly tinking about how some people play the 2 player Carcassonne while reading it and than… you mentioned it.
Great job as always.
The wife and I finally had to come up with some alternate rules for 2-player Carcassonne because of disagreements over the ethics of stealing fields.
Stealing fields is the game of Carcassonne. Arguing over the ethics of stealing fields is exactly the same thing as arguing over the ethics of playing Carcassonne.
I much prefer “ludic” over “gamular” but otherwise I love every word of this article. thanks!
Ludic has the deficit of being an actual word, but is otherwise very nice:).
I’m what you would class a serious Scrabble player & although totally disagreeing with you about the game I respect your viewpoint & you argue it very well. However you make assumptions over words, using phrases like ‘arcane meaningless glyphs”, “memorized pseudo-words”, etc. Words are subjective to individuals thus whilst AA, ZAX etcetera are unfamiliar to you they may be very common to your opponent. Before i began playing over 21 years ago i had an extensive vocab thus words like PEIN, TCHOTCHKE, SHMATTE & 1000’s of others were familiar, Also it’s lexicographers at the source dictionaries who determine who determine allowable words or not NOT Scrabble players. When I teach the game I explain that we could make up 26 symbols & then construct a ‘lexicon’ of patterns of these symbols. We could then play Scrabble using this lexicon i.e. your Qwirkle. Scrabble is an excellent tool for teaching kids English & maths & is compulsory in Thai schools, in fact 2 world Champions have been Thais & there has been a youth Champion from Pakistan. So Dungeons & Dragons for you & Scrabble for me. Live & let live.
i see you entered into the spirit though by inventing the word GAMULAR*. Although not a ‘word’ the meaning was clear & it’s a fact there are more words NOT allowed in Scrabble than allowable ones.
I’m not sure if degeneration is the right word for this phenomenon. It’s definitely worth discussing, but I consider it different expectations from a game rather that the negative connotations that degenerate brings. Magic the gathering has this phenomenon to an extreme and it has been talked about on occation. Different people go into the game expecting wildly different experiences and both come out having a worse time. If this is an intended or already published design choice, the best solution is for players to have an adult conversation beforehand. The worst part of it would be that players who are unaware of the divisive playstyles might not know to even bring it up
….you could easily find GRANULOMA from playing about with a rack carrying GAMULAR.
It takes ambition, industry, discipline and intelligence to find the out play. But hey, the article is brilliant. It identifies the different dimensions of the game. It talks about the paradigm shifts that tournament players must undergo to make the leap into the game and, and it acknowledges the beauty in the game. It also glorifies the game. ….many of us who love the game for its ability to mediate two diametrically opposite people who ordinarily would prefer a more physical, old school way to resolve their differences.
Yeh to get good at Scrabble means you need to learn a lot of obscure words. If you don’t learn them you won’t be any good at it, but you can still enjoy a casual game.
If you’d just start using QAT and ZAX as part of your every day vernacular, there wouldn’t be a conflict.
That puts the point on it entirely. Those words are not part of every day vocab and that you don’t need to even speak the language to be “the best”.
Well-written article. However, I imagine it is less the problem of the game but that the perspective of the player on how serious he wants to pursue winning the game?
I think by your definition every light/entry game that requires some thinking (i.e. not just roll the dice and move a la Snakes and Ladders) is degenerate. You’ve given good examples on how Ticket to Ride can be taken to serious levels, at the expense of “warmth” (I wouldn’t call fun, because the analytical task may be the fun for some), and Carcassone. Take another example: card games like black jack or poker; to some they will play it as a social random-draw card game where everyone takes turn winning (probability says so), but some will do the card-counting and probability-maximizing, and even bluffing (sacrilege!) to get an edge to win. So are card games degenerate too?
Speaking of Carcassone, some will say “it’s just Carcassone” but I do recall I once prepared for a tournament (that in the end I didn’t take part in) memorizing all the possible tiles in basic Carcassone so I can know how many roads are out, how many castle of which shape are out, to maximize the scoring near the end – the equivalent of card-counting in card games (or tile-tracking in Scrabble).
In fact I can’t think of games (other than the ilks of Snakes and Ladders above) which are not degenerate. I can imagine cut-throat Jenga where instead of simply pulling the safer block, one pulls a less-safe block which causes more problems for the next player.
On the other end of the spectrum: imagine a casual player in a tense game of 4-player Agricola, who in his last move just randomly grabbed a sheep he didn’t need because “sheep are cute, and I haven’t got one in the last 5 turns”, and in the process broke all the move sequences of the subsequent players who analysed their action based on the logical best moves of the players before them (the accidental kingmaker). In this case. In this case, the serious players may be seriously annoyed (“Hey man, cool, it’s just a game”).
Maybe you can give some examples of what games you think are not degenerate, in case I’m missing the point?
In short, I agree there is a gap between casual and serious player in games. But I think it is not a “game” thing, but a “player” thing. I believe most of the time the type of player determines how the game is played, not the type of game.
I think the question of whether games actually degenerate between serious and casual players is a tricky one, which is why I said it was questionable, but lies in the same ballpark. And, you certainly raise good questions about it. I think a game like Scrabble or a casual game that is AP-heavy is a lot more obvious example of what I’m talking about.
The thing is, every game which involves thought and has no time limit can be AP-heavy in the hands of the “right” player (which is why some of my clique cringe at having me in the game 🙂 )
I would say even an activity like Uno can be ruined by AP players. AP, particularly as a strategy to ware out and frustrate you opponent is definitely degenerate game play.
the main problem with your thesis is that you call it “not fun”, as if tournament Scrabble players were sad husks who derive no entertainment from the game. Once you know the words, the game becomes a deeply strategic game with elements of probability and spatial reasoning, facets that are barely touched upon by “kitchen-table” players. This is what makes the game fun and why it has endured. It would be nearly impossible to convince you of this, though, unless you’ve actually thought beyond “lol you played QAT therefore the game sucks”.
I feel like you didn’t read my whole article, which said things like: “that’s not-fun — by some definition of not-fun that was created by the innate expectations of the game.” and “I have no compunctions with Scrabble tournament players testing their memorization skills against each other. The issues comes when two players try to reach out across Scrabble’s theme-mechanic divide.” You missed out on the actual thesis — which is not that there’s anything wrong with how Tournament players play Scrabble, but there is a problem with how the best strategies for Scrabble contradict how the theme suggests it should be played.
Huh, I was just in a long debate on BGG about this very issue, pretty much on the diametrically opposite side to this article. For a wonderful alternative perspective I highly recommend Bernie de Koven’s book The Well-Played Game. He shifts the responsibility for an enjoyable session away from the game and towards the players.
I frequently come across the attitude that the only contract players have with a game (and each other) is to follow the rules and do their best to win. If that doesn’t result in a fun experience, they blame the game. De Koven argues that we have much more freedom than that to shape our experience, by tacit agreement or changing the rules. In the Scrabble example, if the players prefer interesting words over ‘tournament-style’ play, use a smaller dictionary, or require players to be able to define their word if challenged.
And in the case of a ‘tournament player’ vs a ‘vocabulary player’, talk about your expectations! If you can come up with a way for both of you to experience a ‘well-played game’, great. If not, choose a different game. That doesn’t make Scrabble a bad game.
(I wrote a bit more about The Well-Played Game on my BGG blog: https://boardgamegeek.com/…/playing-win-or-playing-play)
I think it is good to point out the Author doesn’t say Scrabble is bad, rather that the expectation of the game does not match the game play. I think this is not uncommon in games, particularly when played in a tournament setting.
I think that is where you make a very valid point about the players. A tournament player will always approach a game with an angle toward Min-Maxing.
I think you could also classify the AP gamer as a different player type or approach. I would label the ‘casual’ gamer as Thematic. In some ways it all depends on which aspects of play a person focuses on.
For me, I enjoy playing with other Thematic players. I find the AP players tedius and Tourny players to be rules lawyery, so I cultivate my gaming group.
To circle back to the author’s point, the actual mechanics of Scrabble allow, even encourage, the two distinct game styles of Tourny and Thematic. The rules of a game create a play space. Each player will interpret and play the game in their own way. So many games attempt to limit the spaces created, so that they largely overlap, i.e. have a small amount of disconnect between different play styles.
Scrabble, with the various mechanics pointed out in the article, allows the creation of very disparate game spaces. However, some of the article talks about social conventions and expectations, which is another factor which creates and defines the play space.
An article that makes on the mark insight which leads into a very interesting issue.
And then walks a long way around it to be sure it misses this issue.
Perhaps a degeneration is in the mind of the beholder?
“Scrabble is a game where the spirit of the game and the letter of the game aren’t in harmony with each other.”
“When I say a game degenerates I mean that its optimal play moves away from its advertised play (or its desired play). If players want to win, then they have to play in a way that’s not-fun — by some definition of not-fun that was created by the innate expectations of the game.”
I suggest degeneration is caused by your interpretation of the rules, actually a quite common interpretation nowadays which might not be common at the time of game’s creation. Degeneration is the idea that you should do what you can to win the game, when the game in question didn’t expect you to be as degenerate. Heh. When you read the rules, you understand (hopefully) that there is a spirit to these rules, and then you deliberately ignore this spirit in order to win. Why are you doing this? Is respecting the spirit of rules totally unimaginable to you? You realise that the idea of competition and winning is a cultural construct which you are bringing into the game .- yes, of course the game in question has a winning condition – but: The position of winning condition within the games’ organism is different by the spirit of rules, then it is when you misinterpret the game by “letter of the rules”. Understanding that winning is what you should be doing is a specific act of interpretation, based on currently widespread cultural bias.
What I’ve noticed over the years, coming from D&D as you did, is that certain type of gamers hand in hand with a certain type of games had moved into direction where winning is the only thing that gives sense to playing a game. I don’t mean by this you don’t have fun by playing a challenging game, but the idea of competing=game does create certain confines around one particular form of boardgaming. What could be the alternative? Well, instead of being an “egoist”, playing for the win, you could play together with players under a different social contract. This contract, originating from free play (what kids do) is: the intent, the goal of playing is too keep on playing. Preferably with the same people. And in order to do this, we negotiate the terms under which we’re willing to play together. With games where spirit of rules and winning spirit are at odds, I’d simply talk to the group and discuss how we are willing to achieve a shared sense of fun. I believe sharing the responsibility to make the game work can create a more satisfying experience for everyone involved.
I don’t think such games are “degenerate” if it’s completely possible to have a fulfilling session out of them when played by the spirit of the game. Furthermore I believe something will be lost if every game must be built out of reinforced steel in order to survive the winning oriented mayhem. Simply I think some “spirits” of games cannot be put in perfect harmony with this goal, and why should they if they do achieve what they aim for as it is? A fragile game (where mis-investment from players can break a game) teaches the group how to be together and reach greater heights, not carrying all that steel on board.
Funnily enough I think boardgaming is currently splitting in two groups precisely around this issue – either hobbyist gaming which has become entirely competition oriented, or casual gaming where the idea is being together. I’m a part of a group organising public gaming events and we have an audience of 20-30 somethings who come to us to socialize after spending their study and work hours on a computer. Games being played are simplest of the simple – Resistance, Spyfall, Love Letter, Coup, Cockroach poker, Hanabi (gamers play this one very weirdly, with conventions and whatnot), Camel Up, amongst others. SdJ has been making pronounced shifts into casual gamer direction in last few years, emphasising the social part of gaming.
happy gaming!