In the spring of 2013 and 2014 a group of college professors got together to play and discuss games. Overall the group contained two psychologists, an economist, a classicist, a media studies professor, an anthropologist and a biologist. Our main focus involved whether we could pull games or game mechanisms into our classrooms. We were purposefully open-minded about how this might happen (e.g., as content, simulations, mechanics, etc.). Being academics, the discussions often went off into other directions. Time permitting, I will occasionally try and share the gist of some of the conversation surrounding a particular game. Up today:
Image by <PERSON>:
Engaging co-op with a tense, puzzle-like play.
Very difficult to win.
The game, as a game is very good, but not great – easy to pick up, engaging, but just a tad repetitive in game play. However, the game as a sort of metaphorical monument is a masterpiece.
Some Thoughts on “Replay Value”
We academics are often accused of researching the obvious. “Hey look, a study has determined that pornography is arousing,” or “Wow, waddaya know? Research has discovered that drinking water with sewage in it can make you sick.” So let me begin this review with a statement of suitable profundity: One of the great things about games is that we get to play them again. I’m only partly joking there. Much of life does not fall into the category of “replayable.” Games do, and what I’m going to try to do in this review is convince you that “replay” is valuable in ways that you might not have considered. Warning. What follows is long, although I hope the journey is worth your time. Besides which would you rather have, <PERSON> or this?
<PERSON> does LotR
Before turning to the review proper, though, just to be clear, I’m not talking about “replay value” as it is typically used in BGG discussions. On the Geek, “replay value” is usually used to refer to the repeated “freshness” of a game – the variability it offers in the type, sequence, and significance of its within game decisions. Using “replay value” in this manner, we’d say that craps has a lower replay value than, say, chess. Once you know the probability distribution for 2d6, then craps is no longer a game so much as it is a recipe. 504
The rules of chess, on the other hand, enable more opportunities to encounter novel situations from one game to the next and to discover the consequences of different moves within those situations. These consequences can then be built up into “styles” of play: conservative, aggressive, reckless, etc. Without a doubt, chess has a higher “replay value” than craps.
…Unless, of course, you happened to live in 16th and 17th century Italy. Those of you that know a little bit about the history of probability theory will recognize the importance of that time period. Let’s just say that if probability theory hasn’t been invented, then there are many reasons to play craps over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over. For that matter, even in the 21st century there are reasons to play craps over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over. Maybe you suspect that your dice are biased. Maybe you want to study decision biases such as the gambler’s fallacy or the hot hand fallacy. What I’m getting at here, is that if we consider a game like craps as a tool for exploring something beyond the within-game contingencies (fancy psychology word that means the causal structure of a particular environment), then the notion of “replay value” acquires a slightly different meaning that is typically assumed. The value of replay emerges in its ability to tell us something outside of the game.
Let me put it like this, and I promise that this is the last aside before we get to Freedom , itself. How many of you had a book when you were younger that you read and re-read and re-read and re-read? Me, when I was a tween, I read <PERSON> The Tripods trilogy about 20 times straight. Well, mostly the first two books, The White Mountains and The City of Gold and Lead . Read. Finish. Start over. The same went for <PERSON> Harriet the Spy and <PERSON> My Side of the Mountain . For me, at that period in my life, these books had a high “replay value.” But how is that possible? 118