It's Popular Because It's Popular

Every entertainment industry has trends; whatever is popular will inevitably trigger the creation of similar entities. The Simpsons and Batman Begins, for instance, helped to change the landscape of their respective mediums by their sheer popularity. Once upon a time the idea that a cartoon would be inappropriate for children was unheard of, as were dark, gritty superhero movies. The board game industry is no different; trends pop up just as often as anywhere else. There they usually play out either as a common theme, or as a common mechanic. Common themes usually coincide with what is popular in other media, like tropes of horror, fantasy, or superheroes. Common mechanics are usually the result of other companies emulating a popular game.

I first noticed board game trends a few years ago, around the time that Munchkin Zombies was released and The Walking Dead first aired. There had been a growing cultural obsession with Zombies, and it seem to come to a head around then. The undead were everywhere, and it didn't take long for a glut of zombie themed games to appear. The zombie craze has since petered out, and while there are the occasional new title, the market is no longer as saturated with them; it has moved on to the next trend.

Around the same time, about when zombie games were starting to trail off, deck building games were on a huge upswing. Dominion had been released a few years prior, but around that time it had hit a remarkable level of popularity. It seemed that every game company was pitching their own 'deck building game... with a twist!' Unfortunately, most of these games ended up feeling basically the same. The 'twists' never really pushed these games to be all that different. Even Quarriors, one of the more unique takes on deck building, is essentially just Dominion with dice. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a lot of these games, but they do feel somewhat derivative. It has taken time, but deck building is finally starting to move away from being the only core mechanic, which was what made these games all feel like Dominion, to being an interesting tool that designers can now integrate into other games.

I would be remiss if I did not touch on the recent craze of adult party games. They have been around for well over a decade, but it wasn't until recently that the genre became popular. One particularly offensive game exploded in popularity and spawned several copycat games aimed at being as shocking as possible. Personally, I'm sick of this style of game and look forward to them going away. My opinions aside, the genre is a good example of how the game industry latches on to a popular idea and produces as many games as possible to capitalize on it.

Once I started to notice the trendiness of game mechanics and themes with new releases, I started to look at older titles and saw it playing out in them as well. The most obvious example I noticed was shape of the classic Monopoly board. The spaces around the perimeter of the game board has appeared in countless titles over the years, like Careers, and stylistically they are clearly inspired by Monopoly. It is interesting to note that since the release of Settlers of Catan, the Monopoly-board design has given way to more games with hexagonal spaces modular boards.

Resource management, worker placement, and even cooperative games have all had their day in the sun. Themes come in bunches, as do mechanics. The market will always seek to make the most money, and looking at what is currently popular is a fine way to do that. (I'm expecting to see some variations on Five Tribes in the near future.) This isn't to say that this is a bad thing; it's just the nature of the industry. Still, it's always nice to see when something new comes onto the scene and mixes things up. And if you don't like the games that are coming out now, there is no shortage of older titles to play.

13/13

The Joys of Limitation

I like building decks for trading card games. I've played a number of them, including the old Harry Potter TCG, the now defunct Warhammer 40k CCG, the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG, and the everlasting Magic: the Gathering, and I've enjoyed constructing decks in all of them.

For me, deck building is a creative outlet. Usually, I pick a theme, look at my card pool, and build a deck that fits that theme. Often this will be centred around a single card and built out from there, but sometimes it's around a combination of two or more cards, or more generally around a type of card or game mechanic. Occasionally, I look at my collection of cards and build the best deck I can with what I have. I enjoy that, but I usually get more satisfaction out of 'jenky' decks that have themes; they have more character to them.

When I was growing up, I was limited by my card pool when building decks. This was an interesting restriction, since I could obviously only build with what I had; I never was big on the trading aspect of these games, and would usually just collect the cards. As a kid, I could only ever get so many cards, but still, I enjoyed being restricted in that sense; it added a challenging element to building, and I didn't feel compelled to spend a fortune to find the right card to complete a deck. What I had would have to be good enough unless I got lucky opening a booster pack.

By contrast, when I started playing Magic: the Gathering a few years ago, my approach to deck building changed. While I still built decks based on a theme when I could, I was no longer limited by my card collection; buying specific cards was far easier with Magic than it ever was with other trading card games I played. This meant that I could look at a list of every card printed, find the card I needed for the deck, and pick it up from a local gaming store. This removed the restriction I had as a kid of a small card pool, and opened up far more opportunities for building those themed decks. If I had an idea for a deck, I could build it, no matter what my luck was in opening packs, or how old a card was that I needed. If the card was one I could afford, I could get it for my deck.

Magic is particularly interesting, however, in that it has several supported ways of playing. These formats are either 'Constructed', where players create decks from whatever they have in their collection, or they are 'Limited', where players are given a small number of sealed booster packs from which they build decks. Given the small card pool, Limited settings make building themed decks largely out of the question, so it falls to building the best deck you can with the limited resources at your disposal. Nevertheless, I find Limited environments to be quite rewarding; players only have a short amount of time to build their decks, and it forces players to use cards that would be passed over in Constructed games in favour of better cards.

I've heard it said that greater restrictions breed greater creativity. I'm not sure that it applies entirely with trading card games, but greater restrictions in TCGs certainly encourage greater resourcefulness. Building a deck out of whatever you want is a lot of fun, but building a deck out of a small pool of cards really does make you better appreciate a lot of otherwise uninteresting cards; sometimes you have to make do with what you have, and those mediocre cards may just be the best on hand.

13/13