Dominion Killed Replayability

Our hobby has conjured the niche word ‘replayability’ to describe how well a game cultivates a desire to return to it. A game that is highly replayable is one that players want to explore repeatedly. It’s something we value because every prospective purchase exists conceptually as our next favorite game. Every title is graded out the same way, expected to stand up to endless plays and continue blowing our mind over and over again, indefinitely.

Despite how flawed that reasoning is, I say fair enough.

But something happened. Replayability was once evaluated on very broad terms of strategic depth and emergent game states. A title like Tigris & Euphrates boasts strong replayability due to the multitude of tactical and strategic intersections as a result of player input. No two plays are the same because participants continually find themselves in unfamiliar precarious positions. A player utilizes developed pillars of strategy to make on the fly judgments and respond to current circumstances as best they can.

Replayability is also whether we desire to explore that dynamic tactical puzzle again. It could even be thought of as an opportunity cost. Is Wiz-War worth returning to when we could be playing Galaxy Trucker instead?

Most games I examine have such a quality. Certainly the best do.

But that’s not what we talk about anymore. At least, not in that way.

Now, often replayability is appraised through the lens of content. Strategic depth and system exploration has retired, phased out like a horse being run into the ditch by an automobile. In modern times, content discovery is the primary factor associated with replayability. A game’s capacity to be re-experienced with satisfaction is framed around each play seeing a new piece of content. A new setup. A new set of tiles to bid on. Dozens of variable player powers. A fresh asymmetric faction for each of the 23 plays we imagine for the future. A campaign with at least four branching narratives. Four extra expansion boxes so every time you encounter a foe, it’s a one you have to dig out of its tray and find the matching ability card.

I think you got it.

We live in the age where games sell themselves based on the number of tokens, cards, and miniatures they contain the box. No two plays will ever be the same.

Dominion ruined us.

Donald X. Vaccarino’s influential 2008 title changed the game. I’m not talking about the mechanism of deckbuilding, but the notion that setup was entirely variable. It’s the essence of Dominion’s strategy landscape. You look at the set of Kingdom Cards in the center of the table and devise a rough shopping list and hierarchy of purchases. There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.

This was the first game to really emphasize variable setup as an anchor of its central loop. Nothing else did such a thing in 2008 and it was wild. It’s overshadowed by the creative genesis of deckbuilding, but it’s equally as significant to the evolution of thought and culture.

Hundreds of games came before it with variable setup, but none presented it as such a crucial element of the play experience. Dominion’s structure requires variable setup in order to experience it anew. This is significantly different than a game like Cosmic Encounter which would stand up to many plays using the exact same alien powers. In many ways, Dominion is defined by variable setup in order to vary the strategic puzzle, as the bulk of decision making is front loaded to the moment before play begins.

It hooked us up to an intravenous line of content and we’ve been trolleyed ever since. The model demanded expansions. Eventually, you would see enough patterns in the original game’s setup that the card selection would feature a repetition of basic strategic patterns. And we can’t have it. That’s antithetical to Dominion’s ideology.

This framework was insidious. It didn’t radically alter designer or consumer reasoning immediately. It slowly ate away at our expectations. The tenor changed and discussion concerning variability shifted to the physical as opposed to the abstract. Other games started to slowly incorporate a focus on content diversity. Titles like Smash Up, Earth Reborn, and Legendary followed.

Then, Kickstarter cranked that jack-in-the-box like Lincoln Hawk. Zombicide was born. Everything accelerated.

Without an appreciable way to demonstrate rich or lasting gameplay, crowdfunded games have to win the consumer over with visuals. While the fascinating dynamics of tangled social collusion or cunning brinksmanship cannot be captured in a JPEG, a coffin-box of miniatures can be. Content is visual. Even something imperceptible like campaign play or scenario assortment can be quantified. It’s a losing battle, and it’s why artwork and components sell games.

This is a problem because the current concept of replayability is throw-away. It’s a facade as soft as wet cardboard and the term has been rendered less comprehensive and less meaningful as a result. Instead of a discussion point, it’s a checkbox publishers must mark before hitting that ‘launch campaign’ button.

It’s not that content discovery is valueless or undesired. I certainly enjoy this quality at times and appreciate a big voluminous box as much as the next sucker. But content on its own is meritless. If you add a thousand more cards to Candyland, the experience is not improved. The core fundamentals of play need to be sound and impervious. These traits are what ultimately establish replayability, whereas content merely supplements that sturdy basis.

The connection between Dominion’s headlining of variable setup to crowdfunding’s vulgar display of content is logical. It’s the natural conclusion of this principle. In totality, this genealogy changed the discussion, altering our conceptual framework of replayability. Throw a dart in any direction and you will land upon board game content utilizing this word usage. Language is forever changed and the discourse has become shallower as a result.

 

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