Comment by stevage
2 years ago
No, but I would distinguish between immersive games that expect to be run full screen, with your full attention and casual games that you might flip back and forth between. It's much more forgiveable for the former to play music at you, I think.
You make me realise I'm not sure what makes a game "strategy" per se. Games like Agricola don't feel very strategic to me, in that there is not much scope for long term planning, or predicting what other players will do. Instead, you just react to the situation in front of you, trying to make the most +EV play.
> You make me realise I'm not sure what makes a game "strategy" per se.
The business world can’t even agree on this one. There are maybe as many HBR rants swearing by Michael Porter’s definition as there are indignant talking heads criticizing it. Same for all the flavors of Nash economics or ESS in biology.
For a game to be ‘strategy’, I’d say some element of deductive reasoning or foreplanning being a prerequisite for (better odds of) success is necessary, but not sufficient. A min decision space complexity that makes the former non-trivial is likely sufficient.
Some might argue that decision making under uncertainty, or some version of stochastic optimization is necessary too. Or that strategy (as opposed to logic) is only relevant when more than one agent is decisioning at some level - making a clearer distinction with puzzle solving, PvE, emergent gameplay or meta strategy. Are they right? Maybe. Does it make any difference beyond gatekeeping? Probably not. Some of the best designers I know purposefully blur the lines between established genres when creating their games.
> Games like Agricola don't feel very strategic to me, in that there is not much scope for long term planning, or predicting what other players will do.
BGG often has heated debates on this point. I think it’s mostly a eurogame vs american-style thing (I’m a fan of both camps for different reasons).