I was going to write a designer diary here, thanking Bez for his competition inspiring me, but first I want to do a quick Airecon report, mainly consisting of telling you who you should be liking:

Mark of Wreck and Ruin game fame is an absolute star. Check out his game here:

I saw a game advertised yesterday, Walls of York, which prompted me to write this. But I want to emphasise, for all of this post I’m just talking about theme, not mechanics (but I will explain why it’s important).

I live in York. Love the city, probably one of the best places to live in the UK, or even the world. Steeped in culture and history, it’s a fascinating place, and would make a great thematic setting for a game. If anybody sets a game in York, I’ll be interested. So when I saw “The Walls of York” advertised I clicked through to see what it was about. I’m not an expert in the city walls, but I know they have a fascinating history (originally Roman, which were left to ruin when they left, palisades were built upon those foundations by the Vikings, and finally massive medieval walls were built on those foundations and beyond), and those walls you can walk around today, looking at the Bars (gates) and Gates (streets) with pubs (bars) on them. They’re ripe with thematic and mechanic possibilities, so someone making a game about them is a good thing, yes?

Well it should be, but I’m really disappointed with what Cranio Creations has done. Not mechanically, I haven’t played it so don’t want to comment on that, but thematically it’s really lazy. Watching the video I’m not sure if anybody involved has even been to York. Where are the rivers? The construction of the wall is lacking without the rivers, and the fact they damned the Foss to make the Kings Fishpool and changed the City is a lovely bit of history which would fit in. But nothing. And even worse, why are we walling out the Vikings? That bit makes no sense. The Romans didn’t wall against the Vikings, the Vikings certainly didn’t, and the famous medieval walls in the game, which really are ‘The Walls of York’ were constructed much later. It feels either lazy and ignorant, or jumping on the waning popularity of Vikings. In fact there’s nothing here which ties it to York at all. Could be the Walls of *insert literally any place*.

Some people are probably thinking this doesn’t matter, a game lives and dies on its mechanics but there’s a couple of reasons why I feel this matters. If a designer puts no effort into a theme, how much effort are they putting into the rest of the game? If they can’t even be bothered to do any research into where there game is set it doesn’t bode well for the effort put into the rest of the game. It’s not zero-sum. Effort in one reflects in the other.

As someone who knows and likes York, this lazy rewriting or ignorance of history put me off the game. You’re using the setting without delivering on the promise. I’d rather it had a fictional theme, than a butchered one.

And finally, I don’t want to have something which spreads ignorance, or doesn’t care about facts or history. If it’s not important to the designers, than don’t use it in your game. If it is important then get it right.

There are a couple of other games which just have a weird idea of Britain. Cornwall, a tile laying game in which you build Cornwall, has you placing all the mountains and swamps of Cornwall for points. Now as someone who spent just under 20 years in Cornwall, I’m not sure what Cornwall they’re thinking of. Trencrom Hill and Brown Willy do not a mountain range make. Again, just lazy and ignorant. Why not towans? Cornwall has them and other places don’t. Just a simple name and art change to actually make the theme sing. And the less said about Ticket To Ride UK not having York the better.

Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that these are nice places easy to visit. I can’t imagine how mangled some of the games about cultures and places further afield, designed by people who’ve only seen it in photos, must be.

So if you’re making a game set somewhere, please actually set it somewhere you know (Cornish Smugglers did this), or research it (see Feast for Odin for a fantastic almanac of research, or the upcoming Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr, in which Michael has told me they spent hundreds of hours researching the real life places and events which occur in the game). It’s just showing some respect to the consumers, showing them you actually care about all of the game.

A bit of synchronicity the other day when I listened to a really interesting podcast (http://thespiel.net/node/1159 ) about teaching using games, and then immediately read a post on the Shut Up and Sit Down forums about using games to teach maths. Here I have some experience (about 10 years of teaching maths and an accredited PD Lead for maths teaching. Running chess and boardgames club (or both) throughout this time. Also some games experience, a lot playing, some designing. Not as much as teaching maths though). So rather than a blog post about pretty much nothing, here’s the best blog post I’ll do given it’s about something I actually know.

So, what’s the key to using modern boardgames to teach maths?

To not do it.

A qualifier here: I’m specifically talking about maths. Games can definitely be used to help teach soft skills successfully, and I’m not an expert in other subjects. Indeed, listen to the podcast above to hear how games are used successfully in other parts of education. Secondly, there are some games I use for teaching, but these are in no way modern boardgames or even in the style. And there are some games I play which are in a modern boardgames style, but they don’t teach maths.

Why not? Well I’m speaking from experience here. These are some of the games I’ve tried to use to teach concepts:

• A Puerto Rico style game about factory production to teach negative numbers.
• A dividing up a cake game to teach fractions.
• A worker placement game about dividing into a ratio for baking.
• A tile laying game for polygons (names and angles).
• An area control probability game.
• A quarto variant with number properties

There are probably more. These games had varying levels of success with engagement, but consistent levels of success with learning: little to none. There were two reasons for this:

1. they relied upon a level of procedural fluency which meant that the students were already confident with the topic, and whilst they were engaged with its application, there was no depth or stretch. These students were learning how to win the game, which was wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand.
2. the games themselves were too complex. As a games designer I tried to make games which had interesting choices, but this is completely counter-productive when trying to teach. It introduced significant amounts of cognitive load, reducing the students ability to focus on what was really important: the maths. (For more information on cognitive load theory, start with Greg Ahsman’s blog here: https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/new-report-on-cognitive-load-theory-aimed-at-teachers/).

Now stepping back, it’s obvious from the outset that both those issues would occur. How could they not? If I’m playing a good game I’m focusing on winning that game, and I wanted to make good games for the students. But it was because I was chasing the elusive beast that is engagement. But as Professor Robert Coe argues here: http://www.cem.org/attachments/publications/ImprovingEducation2013.pdf   engagement is a poor proxy for learning (aside: I love the title ‘A triumph of hope over experience’).

Engagement is easy to observe, and learning isn’t. So when I had lessons with a lot of engagement that the student’s loved I thought I’d succeeded. Clearly, as described, I was wrong.

I was wrong to use modern style boardgames to teach maths, but that doesn’t mean I don’t play games. But there are two different situations when I do this:

1. Extremely simple luck based games to assess fluency or to draw out some deeper thinking.
2. Interesting games used as a reward at the end of term. I don’t even pretend to myself that I’m teaching maths during these.

The extremely simple games are just as described. Games like Bingo, the decimal ladder game (ordering random decimals on a ladder), the Factors and Multiples game or even the Ten Ticks roll and move substitution:

These can be used to draw out students understanding with pertinent follow up questions (which square do you want to roll a low number on? On which square does it not matter what you roll?). But the key thing here is the games are simple. They don’t introduce cognitive overload and as a teacher I know what understanding I want the students to draw out from playing them.

The final one is spending an entire lesson playing a game. There are a few I’ve created (the Smoothy Game, which is a worker placement game with resource conversion; an Elf Game which uses simultaneous action selection on the iPad; and a variant of Masters of Commerce for a class of 32). These all go down incredibly well, enjoyed by all students and I even have fun running them. But they’re not about teaching maths, they’re just about having fun playing games.

All of which isn’t particularly nice. As a gaming maths teacher it feels as though there should be a game which can be used to teach maths whilst also being a great game. But then perhaps if there were all we’d end up doing is putting kids off playing games, rather than enticing them into learning maths.

It feels like a long time since I posted here, and I guess a month is long (work and games. Playing lots of games), but I got asked this question the other day about why I design games. A fair question, it’s not like I’m launching onto kickstarter will an ill-thought out clone for $$$, so it’s not for money. It’s also not for praise- although don’t get me wrong, sometimes praise sustains me. Hearing playtesters and publishers say your game is exciting, or puzzles are some of the best they have seen, or witnessing professional critics enjoy your design is a phenomenal feeling, a high I could ride for days. But that’s not why I do it, it would be odd if it were- the praise follows the design, the design doesn’t chase after it.

It’s an intrinsic motivation. I simply find the practice of designing a game enjoyable. Designing a game is akin to solving a puzzle which you also set up. Of course it gets harder the further in you go, and sometimes you end up with a puzzle that can’t be solved, a game that’s just not fun no matter what. Sometimes a thought will get stuck in my head (a 4X game based upon Alpha Centauri *cough cough* ) which I feel compelled to work on to the detriment of everything else, which I’ll accept is an unusual proclivity, but I’m useless at working on anything else when I’ve got that bug. So that’s it. I do it because I enjoy it, and like all things worth doing, as it gets harder it also gets more rewarding. In fact, I don’t understand why people don’t design games. Now you may be thinking this is a completely obvious point, but it does make me question why I get asked it.

In other news, had a fantastic playtesting session earlier this week, looking forward to doing it again in a fortnights time (if anybody is in the Yorkshire area come along- super cheap pub prices as a sweetener). Shout out to all playtesters everywhere- you are great.