Creativity in social games

Dear all of you:

So we had been talking with droqen about the fact that Minimal games (aka Haiku games) are better suited for a creative audience, cause they require the player to imagine and create into the open-empty spaces. And I think that’s fine, cause in any case it’s an intimal pact; only you know where your mind goes when playing. Nobody will know what your imagination looks like. But what about social haiku games?

I had been thinking about this many times, but the subject came back after a friend talked to me about Werewolf the other day. I kinda hate Werewolf, and I’m reluctant to engage in games with creative social interactions. Even single player ones but where creativity is demanded, like those parser text adventures where you have to type your actions. But I realized, I used to play roleplaying games and I liked them. And I’m big fan of Dixit. So, what’s the difference?

I analyzed these cases and got to a few conclusions and reflections. 

All games ask you to intervene, that’s kinda what makes them games, and you could say that all interaction is a form of creativity, in the way you have to come up with solutions to problems. But I’d argue that finding a solution within the tools that the game provide is not the kind of creativity I want to talk about here, but the one where you have to bring up your own ideas into the system. 

So, I’ve been trying to find like the parameters of asked-creativity needed for each game and how they are different. I think my problem is that I face a struggle between freedom and constraints. Kinda what happens with any artistic creation moment. The fear of the blank page occurs because of the lack of constraints. It can either be because you have no ideas, or because you have too many. Constraints help you put you in the correct rail. They can either trigger you an idea from nowhere, or limit your infinite imagination into a path of something doable. In games, rules are those constrains. Games that create a constrained and safe space to imagine are easier for me. In roleplaying games, you could argue that you can do whatever you like, but you’re actually restricted to the situation the GameMaster just described, and you have a Character Sheet that puts you back in the box. Yeah, sure, you can imagine all you want, but you’re limited by a (long but still limited) list of abilities and powers. In moments where I’d feel stuck, I could just look at my sheet for ideas, and then be like “oh, right, I can make a spot roll”. I usually say that coding with visual code like Construct is kinda like playing a puzzle game, because it’s creative enough in a way you have to come up with solutions and there are lots of ways to solve anything, but you have a list of things you can do, and they’re all in front of you, so it’s like solving a puzzle where you can see all the pieces. But well, back to analyzing tabletop RPG, I’d say the formula is [lot of (complex) input/ limited freedom (list of choices)].

Games like Dixit give you absolute freedom, to the point where the cards don’t have any text at all, but the input demanded is very small. You don’t need to come up with a huge narrative or interpret a character, you can say a single word or even just a sound and it’s a perfectly valid entry. So, I don’t struggle with those games either, and I haven’t seen any of my less-extrovert-than-me friends (aka most of them) struggle either. Spyfall could be in this category too. Even tho you have to lie (and lying is hard!), because every player is trying to be as succinct as possible, the demanded input is also quite small. So in these cases the formula is [very little input/ lot of freedom]. 

But what happens with games like Werewolf, or Aye Dark Overlord or those “story dices” ones? They ask you to elaborate a whole story, play a character and interact in-character with other players (and even lie!), and they give you in exchange very little to work with. They are anxiety inducers, even for people like me that have no social anxiety at all. I feel the pressure of having to come up with things out of nowhere, and the game can become very boring very fast if not all players are committed to the situation. So, [lot of input/ lot of freedom]

I think a big reason for Among Us to have become such a success, is that it takes back those simple rules of Werewolf/ Mafia/ etc, but it introduces a setting and a whole lot of more gamey mechanics that create a space where it’s easier to interact. The spaciality is a big factor, especially in pandemic times; both droqen and me have written about the importance of virtual spaces in the way we interact. In Among Us, that shared setting provides a safe space to create in. First of all, it creates a lot of real interactions: you need to take care of the ship, you encounter other players, you have to actually kill/being murdered. So when you discuss about who the suspect is, you don’t have to imagine you were doing something, you were actually doing something when the crime took place. And even if you’re lying, it’s easier to lie because you lie inside the parameters of the game. The formula then becomes  [lot of (complex) input/ limited freedom (contained setting)].

I don’t know if these formulas are novel or interesting at all, but it is the way I found to try to understand why seemingly similar games provoke such strong and opposed feelings in me. Would love to know what are your experiences with these kind of socially creative games.

̶L̶o̶v̶e̶,̶ ̶M̶e̶r̶