I feel that Cuba has similarities with a lot of games.  I think the Puerto Rico comparison happens more often because more people have experienced Puerto Rico.  On the other hand, I think the dauntless duo have added plenty of their own flair and spice.

So, if you’ll forgive the plug, here’s my strange, comparative review of Cuba:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/278686

Nathan, really nice job on your review.  I come away from it, though, with the feeling that you think Cuba is derivative of many games.  I think if you hold a magnifying glass up to just about any game, you’ll find it could be declared related to hundreds of games.

Thanks, Scott.  I can understand how you could get that impression; however, that wasn’t my intent.  Very few games have much truly innovative about them - those that do tend to fail miserably.  We crazy humans need a big fat anchor in the familiar in order to be able to appreciate anything new.

What fascinated me about Cuba was just how many mechanisms were at work.  I think I wrote my review as a response to early reports that it was derivative, and didn’t really provide anything new.  Even if that were the case, those components are assembled so brilliantly that you end up with a rather good game.  Rather than try to argue whether Cuba was derivative, in my review I merely compared its features to other games I knew, where applicable.  I was very careful in my wording not to say, “Cuba got this from X,” because I’d have no way of knowing if such a brash assertion were true.

Not like Sébastien Pauchon’s declaration of Oklahoma -> Parys -> Metropolys being inspired by his initial misinterpretation while reading the rules to Goa.  Hence, we end up with a core mechanism that is a rather interesting twist on Rüdiger Dorn’s trademark trail-leaving mechanism.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my silly “review”, Scott!  (and anyone else who does)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think doing a mechanic-by-mechanic comparison of Cuba vs. Puerto Rico is missing the point. They key thing is how they actually play. And in that department, there are huge differences between Cuba and Puerto Rico. The most notable being that in Puerto Rico, everything you do has some impact on everyone else, and frequently a rather large one. In Cuba, most decisions you make have comparatively little impact on the other players. In Cuba you can snag a building someone else really wanted, or maybe take a spot on a ship that someone else was angling for, but in Puerto Rico those things can happen plus a ton of other stuff.

While I wouldn’t dispute that Cuba borrowed pieces from Puerto Rico, sometimes perhaps a bit shamelessly, at the end of the day they produced a quite different game. And that’s what matters, right?

Chris,

I agree with most everything you say.  The first few time someone commented about how they felt Cuba was similar to PR, I was surprised.  It hadn’t even occured to me.

Now I can see some similarities, but for me, the games are very different.  The whole “voting on laws” thing alone makes it a unique (and enjoyable!) game for me.

I am going to disagree with you on one comment you made, “In Cuba, most decisions you make have comparatively little impact on the other players.” I think it’s very important to watch your opponents in Cuba as there are many ways their actions can affect you:  As most of the buildings are unique, a player can snatch a building you need out from under you.  A player can buy or sell into the marketplace before you and thus affect prices for your turn.  A player can choose an action’s secondary power which will can affect you (not such a big deal on, for example, the mayer, but it could be a big deal if you needed a particular resource from the marketplace’s secondary action), a player winning the bid to set law in parliament can affect other players’ abilities to score victory points that round(and in subsequent rounds), a player can load goods on a ship which will limit the amount that you could load on the same ship, not to mention that there are buildings that can change the board(i.e. boats) that can affect the other players.

But ultimately, I do agree with you that it is quite a different game than PR, and that IS what matters.

Nice point, Chris--the same could be said for Agricola and Caylus, and how different these two games play, even though they have this same central mechanic in common.  In Caylus, all buildings built are “community buildings” that can be used by all players in future rounds, whereas all things built/grown in Agricola are for that player only.  It is interesting that in both of these comparisons, the newer variations (Cuba and Agricola) have less player interaction.

By the way, am I the only one who now can’t that song by “The Cure” out of my head?  Thanks, Scott:)

I talked about the differences between Cuba and the other games it’s often compared to in my column today (must have been something in the blue cubes--I mean the water), but I think there’s even greater differences than you’re talking about, Scott.  For example, the method of activating buildings (although you touch on this with your “Location of buildings important” category) and, most critically, voting on the laws.  These are fundamental differences between the two games.

Really, I think the similarities are mostly cosmetic.  Agricola and Caylus have more in common; at least Rosenberg’s game is based on the same core mechanic as Caylus (and the Ystari game was its direct inspiration).  However, it’s a deep seated human need to draw comparisons between something new and things we already know.  So a new game will always be greeted with an “it’s just like Game X” or maybe “it’s Game Y crossed with Game Z”.  It has ever been thus and ever it shall be.

But I agree with you, Scott, that your actions can affect your opponents quite a bit.  If you wanted to play Puerto Rico and Cuba with your nose buried in your own position, you’d probably do better in Cuba than in the Alea classic.  But I suspect against experienced Cubans that you’d still lose pretty soundly.

Jeff:  “By the way, am I the only one who now can’t that song by “The Cure” out of my head?”

I have no idea who The Cure is, but I’m still humming to The Carpenters!

Agricola and Caylus have more in common; at least Rosenberg’s game is based on the same core mechanic as Caylus (and the Ystari game was its direct inspiration).

Hey, what happened to Alladin’s Dragons? It’s still my favorite.

I actually think Caylus and Agricola are fundamentally different games that just happen to share one (not particularly interesting) superficial mechanic, a superficial mechanic that isn’t that uncommon. The big difference for me is that in Caylus, the rewards of the game are un- or non-thematic. You’re trying to produce victory points that ultimately have no meaning. In Agricola, the engine you build is its own reward - the victory points you get are for your success in playing the role, in building up the farm that the game is about. To me, that’s a huge difference, one that can transform a game from an abstract exercise to something thematically interesting and fun.

You can’t underestimate the importance of Agricola’s excellent fidelity to theme, Chris.  However, if you look at what makes the games tick, i.e., their mechanics, they’re clearly members of the same family.  And while a lot of newer titles are using the worker placement system--no doubt, inspired by the tremendous success of Caylus--it’s still not a huge group of games.

Rosenberg himself has said that Agricola was directly inspired by Caylus.  He loved the base system, but wanted a game where the number of workers could increase.  Family growth was his thematic way of doing that and the design took off from there.

Many (including Rosenberg) view Aladdin’s Dragons (or, rather, it’s progenitor, 1998’s Keydom) as the first worker placement game.  I see the similarity, but I still feel the central mechanic in that design is more of a series of extended auctions than a true worker placement.  But there’s no question that it’s proven to be an influential game and AD is a fine design to boot.  Still, it was Caylus that got so many people excited about the system and was the inspiration for Agricola.

I dunno, is worker placement that different from area control?  Or role selection? Or tile placement? I mean OK, it’s a different thing, there are only maybe a dozen games that use this precise mechanism, but I don’t see the process itself as being all that compelling or inspiring on its own. It’s just another tool in the old toolbox, and for the most part, my observation is that players don’t care about mechanisms.

For me, Ystari is living proof that you can glue together different game mechanisms in abstract format, paste on a random theme, and call it a game. Even a game that apparently many people end up liking. But games like Agricola demonstrate the difference between that and real game design.

Your point about Ystari is an interesting one, Chris, but you have to keep in mind that several of their titles were publications of games that had won design competitions.  So, yes, perhaps they “pasted on a theme” that got Y and S into the title, but Ystari weren’t the ones who glued together different game mechanisms.

Try building a car without using tires, a steering wheel, a battery, a transmission… It can be done, but now try marketing it.  On the other hand, Car A may have a GPS navigation system with an internal combustion engine, while Car B is an all-electric dune buggy, nothing more than a naked frame with the essentials.  Both designs strive to transport people, but their intended uses are otherwise quite different.  As a particular game designer once said, “That’s what we [game designers] do:  We steal each other’s ideas, then make them our own.” Expressed a little differently, game mechanisms are parts lying in Frankenstein’s game lab, and he can cobble them together however he likes; however, it probably needs to end up humanoid, and functionally integrated in order for people to accept it.  Some of us just prefer more gruesome, complex monsters - I mean creations - than others.

Your observation that players don’t care about mechanisms is a very interesting one.  My observation is that more casual gamers (and “non-gamers") don’t care about the taxonomy of game mechanisms - they need to know the mechanisms in order to play the game, but they don’t need to dissect the game and identify the different mechanisms; but more frequent or “serious” gamers care greatly about mechanisms.  I’ve played and rated over six hundred different games over the last five years.  Sometimes learning a new game can be as easy as being told, “This is your basic area majority game, except the way you play your pieces into the areas is....” No need to explain to me that this is a game about building X, and the areas represent resources A, B, and C, and so forth.  All that makes the game a much more interesting thing to play, but I don’t need to know it in order to get started.

So, in defense of your observation, Chris, the question is, “What percentage of the game-playing populace comprises casual gamers?” I think that the answer is, “the vast majority.” What percentage of BGN readers comprises casual gamers?  I’d guess virtually nil.  So, here we are, connoisseurs, discussing the nuttiness, hint of chocolate and raspberry, and tannin of various wines, while a large portion of the rest of the world ends their trek into such matters at “I don’t like wine,” when all they’ve had are what the connoisseurs would consider the worst on the market.

So, just what are the merits of these exclusive, very-high-end sports cars that only the tiniest sliver of the world population will ever drive?  We can talk about how obvious and trite a choice that particular style of steering wheel was, but for most people, a steering wheel is that thingy that steers the car.  Aren’t we geeks funny?

Chris wrote: >>I dunno, is worker placement that different from area control?  Or role selection? Or tile placement? I mean OK, it’s a different thing, there are only maybe a dozen games that use this precise mechanism, but I don’t see the process itself as being all that compelling or inspiring on its own. It’s just another tool in the old toolbox, and for the most part, my observation is that players don’t care about mechanisms.

Lately I’ve been on an economics kick and have been reading up on Barrier of Entry economic concepts (which in turn has helped my game decomposition skills) These mechanisms Chris names all do exactly that. They don’t reduce the return on the actions as much as create a narrow pipe (or barrier) into the victory points or economic return. Likewise games without such mechanisms (and it doesn’t matter if its an abstract mechanism or not) seem less real to me. I’m hoping the designs of the future will look at the different barrier properties and incorporate such mechanisms to to capture such behavior. So to answer Chris’s question they can be different but it is in how they restrict entry not in the mechanism themselves.

Your observation that players don’t care about mechanisms is a very interesting one.  My observation is that more casual gamers (and “non-gamers") don’t care about the taxonomy of game mechanisms - they need to know the mechanisms in order to play the game, but they don’t need to dissect the game and identify the different mechanisms; but more frequent or “serious” gamers care greatly about mechanisms.

I think this is a simplification. Of course casual players don’t care about mechanisms, because they don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. In my experience many hobby gamers are interested in mechanisms, and how they work, but that’s not why they like or don’t like games. To further abuse the wine metaphor, I would wager that most people who like wine can talk intelligently about the taste, but don’t care how exactly it was made - you have to be seriously hard core to go that far. Likewise, what even hobbyist gamers care about is the flavor of the game - the types of choices, the player interaction, the theme - and not the mechanisms that go into producing it. That’s what I’m arguing - that we should worry about the choices players make in playing a game, not how the results of those choices are played out in the physical activities of the game.

To make this somewhat relevant, this is how you want to talk about Cuba vs. Puerto Rico - how the choices the players make and the results of those choices are different. This is what people care about - not just the mythical casual gamer, but the hobbyist gamer too. Not even the most hard-core care more about how pieces are moved around on the board than they do about how they make the choices that result in the movement of those pieces.

Fair enough, Chris.  I’m not sure I totally agree with you, but I think I better see your point and mostly concur.  Certainly I believe you are correct about the levels - or at least overlapping areas - of geekiness.  There are those who know the process for wine/game X, but that is not required in order to savor the flavor; however, even as barely, casually familiar I am with the whole realm of wines, I have more familiarity with the process of making them in general, and even some specific ones.  So, as with most things, I don’t think rigid taxonomy can classify everything - nor does it need to.  By your very valid argument (and further analogy), if Coke tastes the same as Pepsi to most people, then we don’t really need to have both.  It is that distinction in how it strikes the consumer that determines the individuality of product identity.

On the other hand, I think it’s totally fine for game mechanism geeks to talk about which cams and cogs drive the engines of different games.  ...as long as we remember that we’re talking at a level that the average consumer - even a knowledgeable consumer - may find superfluous.  I suspect this difference in audience is why a typical GAMES Magazine game review reads rather differently from most Boardgame News game reviews.  ...and much of the reason that I am more likely to read a BGN review than a GAMES review of the same game.

Thanks for elucidating your intent, Chris!