Why Digital Board Games Feel So Much Less Fun

Why would you say something so controversial, and yet so brave?

So far in Paperwave I haven’t exactly gone out on many limbs. Lego sets are great. Solo board games are... also great. I’m proud of the content (and very thankful for your positive feedback) but… today I have what I think might be a spicier take:

I don’t like digital board games.

I’m a video game guy by day and a board game fan after hours. So you might think a digital version of an analog game is like mixing chocolate and peanut butter. But in fact combining the two often results in something feels like the worst of both possible mediums. Something more like… OK to be honest I don’t have a fitting follow-up food analogy for something that is the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter. I’ve never liked stuffed peppers... maybe that works...?

Look, the point is video games are great. Board games are great. But board games ported to digital? I’m not so sure. Allow me to elaborate. 

Board Games Can’t Afford to Include B-Sides… and That’s a Good Thing

The best modern board games are feats of almost impossibly-clever and efficient design. The entire experience has to literally fit into a box. And stand up to the scrutiny of dozens of plays, often at different player counts. There is an intentionality and a discipline in board game design I find less present in video games. 

Ounce for ounce, Sprawlopolis is one of the all-time greats. Image credit.

Sprawlopolis is just 18 standard-size playing cards. 18! But it never feels this small. It feels epic, and involved. You lean over the cards, lost in thought, lost in the city you’re building and the roads you’re trying to connect. 

The game doesn’t accomplish this effect through luck. It’s a result of intentional design. And in digital form? It would hardly register how tight the game design is at all.

With three scoring conditions selected from the 18 available (one on the backside of each card), no two games feel the same. With the ability to lay cards overlapping one another or alongside each other, every card you lay gives you a rich possibility space to play with. You’re never left with just or or two legal moves. There is 0 fat in the game. Everything is purposeful, and everything feels finely tuned.

I’ve used Sprawlopolis as an example because I’ve been playing and enjoying it lately, but all of this praise for its considered and deliberate design could be applied to virtually any (good) board game. They all have to be designed with the limitation of actually manufacturing that wooden piece and stuffing it into a box to ship to customers. That limitation forces good, lean game design.

Every component has to be considered. Image Credit.

Video games, on the other hand, don’t have these limitations. And thus all of a board game’s clever design bits begin to feel less clever. A digital version of Sprawlopolis having 18 scoring conditions doesn’t feel that special because there is no requirement that they be included on the backside of the game cards themselves. In fact the limit of 18 (one per open card backside) goes away entirely. Why not 24, or 28 scoring conditions?

This could potentially make for a better game. Surely a board game with more variety and variation would be a good thing, right? 

Maybe. That’s certainly the premise for many board game expansions. But I find more often than not the limitations and constraints required when printing a physical game leads to a tighter, better designed, more closely considered gameplay experience. If you could easily have 36 scoring potential scoring conditions instead of 18, how much more likely is it that a few duds will slip in or unfun combinations are present? When you’re forced to stick to 18, you’re forced to only include the hits. No B-sides.

A quick aside - thanks to crowd funding and stretch goal bloat, a lot more of these overdesigned bad habits are sneaking into board games . Publishers are much more willing to include a half-baked weather mechanic, with its own components, if backers will pay another $15 to include it in the box. 

The Magic Is Ruined

The best modern board games often feel like a magic trick. Imagine playing a card game at your kitchen table, and you flip over a new card that references and remembers a specific decision you made earlier in the game. Gloomhaven does that. Imagine having entire sub-plots in a board game opened or closed to you based on what faction you side with. Gloomhaven does that too. Imagine a board game having secret, unlockable character classes. Yup - Gloomhaven once again stepped up to the plate.

How do you even respond to something this exciting? Image Credit

None of this even registers as special in a video game. Of course a character you spared earlier will resurface later. It’s expected. Of course you equip new loot from downed foes. Of course you can try out a new character class.

But in a physical board game, where everything has to be pre-planned and included in the box (see above) it feels much more thrilling. How did the game do that? How did a character whose life I’d chosen to spare enter back into the story? The magic of these kinds of systems is lost in the translation to digital.

And now that Gloomhaven is 4-5 years old, we’re seeing its influence on a new wave of board games featuring even more sophisticated open world exploration, optional NPC dialogue, and even “save game” systems that let you pack away and resume in-progress board game sessions in just a few seconds. 

Loot you can loot. Image Credit

There’s an argument that this development isn’t exactly a good thing for board games. Why try to make them more video game-like anyway? I’m sympathetic to that perspective, which most often comes from grisled euro-game veterans. But that’s a topic for another day. Suffice it to say, the explosion of more reactive, open, and flexible board games has only grown the hobby.

That Special Feeling

My last major reason for disliking digital adaptations of board games is the most unfair, but also by far the most critical: it just feels good to hold objects in your hand. 

Clicking a new piece of equipment into place by physically slotting it into a sunken cardboard player board. Paying for a new item by clinking down actual metal coins. Stacking heavy poker chips. Picking up and tossing a downed enemy back into the box. Just… shuffling really nice linen-finish playing cards.

This is the stuff. This is what Paperwave is all about. 

It can never be replicated. It can never be faked. It’s completely unfair to digital board games, many of which have done their best. But… regardless… it’s a fact. 

I want that….

The satisfaction of equipping a new sword and having that sword be a thing you can actually hold in your hand (even if it is just a playing card) is immense and feels much more special than the approximately 400 swords you’ll cycle through in The Witcher 3. 

People that know me know I’m a systems guy. I’m a design guy. I don’t care about graphics, or even story really, in my games. I care about learning and exploring smartly designed, interlocking sets of systems. So with that in mind it should make no difference if I have a digital icon representing a banana in Robinson Crusoe or a wooden banana token in Robinson Crusoe. It’s the same game system. It’s the same banana. And yet… I want that banana.

Look, I dunno what to tell you. Humans are full of contradictions. I paid extra to get the resin tokens in my copy of Robinson Crusoe and I’m so excited for them to get here.

Step Into the World of the Real

I know I said last point before, but real quick - there’s one more very real, very practical, but also very unfair reason for my aversion to digital board games:

Staring at a screen all day and all night sucks. 

I work from home on a computer all day. I play a lot of video games. I spend so much time staring at these glowing rectangles. The more years I put into this lifestyle, the stronger the allure of cardboard becomes. Hence… Paperwave.

But Justin, You’re Totally Wrong

Yeah… The truth is I kinda am totally wrong. I’ve written 1500 words about the special alchemy of analog board gaming but I could easily have written even more arguing the opposite. 

Digital games are much cheaper, representing an important gateway for folks curious about the hobby, and helping to democratize access to a scene that frankly has a somewhat high barrier to entry. 

Digital games are ultra-convenient. They eliminate setup and teardown time, which can sometimes get so high, even in games I love like Goomhaven and Marvel Legendary, that it negatively impacts how often I play them. And since digital games can “run” or automate portions of the game upkeep or confusing rules like Gloomhaven enemy movement, this significantly reduces session play time, too. Which means more actual gaming.

Physical games also take up… physical space. Which is fine when you have a modest collection but becomes much more problematic when you’re 10+ years in and you have a Justin-sized collection. Not to mention the “physical space” all these games take up loaded onto tankers fueled by petroleum gas and the corresponding impact on the environment. 

And, of course, it is not lost on me that we are still in the midst of a deadly pandemic. It maybe isn’t great for me to be taking shots at digital board game ports, many of which are quite well done, when they have represented such a critical social lifeline for folks isolated in their homes and from their loved ones, and an economic lifeline for designers, over the last 18 months. 

So, I’m very glad that they exist. 

But for me? No amount of digital convenience or time saved is a replacement for the feel of shuffling and squaring up a stack of cards. And I’m not interested in clicking and dragging my Gloomhaven mini across the board in Tabletop Simulator while staring at the same monitor I just used for work.

Besides, the best board game moments are staring down your opponent, looking into their eyes, and plunking down your big meeple to steal their city. Again.