RftG is also a poor example because it’s NOT language-independent: many cards have text on them. The icons are there, I assume, because there simply isn’t *room* on the cards to spell out all of their effects.

I feel that iconography almost always helps. Using Red November, which only uses text, as an example: it’s very easy to forget that fire cards advance the suffocation track, because it’s only mentioned in the rules. In fact, which color track is which is only mentioned in the rules. A simple red, green or blue dot on the cards would have been enough to remind AND inform players which track to move along (and I’ve stickered my cards with dots now).

For an example of a terrible player aid that only uses icons, look at Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas. Not only does it have a misprint, it is also confusing even if you know how the game works.

I like language independant games.  I found the iconography of RftG to be difficult to begin with - particularly the many minor differences (a production world, a windfall world, a rebel world, etc etc.).  Another game that I found fairly difficult to begin with was Torres - the card powers use pictures that aren’t always obvious (at least when you are first learning a game).

Despite this I like them, why?  Because they are often the product of a consistent vision for the visual design and playability of the game.  It is a metalanguage that, when done well and learned, tells you how to play the game in situations that might otherwise send you scurrying to the rules book.

They also make the games more consistent across published versions, meaning less set-up cost for publishers and a potential wider release for a game.  I am sure there are many games we all enjoy that may never have seen an English market release if the game had to be ‘ported’ into English.  Less set-up for publishers means ultimately that they can co-operate more with other publishers, reduce costs, develop and publish more games, and make a better profit (which also hopefully translates into being able to take more time and spend more on production/development).

So, while I sometimes find the metalanguage of play-aids and visual design can obfuscate to begin with, I also appreciate that they often end up helping more than they hinder, both in a play and broader sense.

Cheers,

Giles.

I think Race is a great example because that iconography is a major reason I can’t stand to play the game.  Give me San Juan over Race any day!

I’m not opposed to the idea of icons, in fact it usually does sound like a good idea, but if you’re writing more via icons than you would with simple text (i.e. Race) then you really need to reconsider.

I am a rather large fan of Race and honestly I just don’t get the complaints about the icons.  I had read that they were confusing to new players of the game but really our group took to them almost immediately.

I also find it odd that you don’t see why feudal Japan would be more interesting to modern gamers than the thirty year war.  Seriously?  Have you spent any time in American geek culture?  I know so many friends that love anything Japanese but I rarely hear them talk about Germany.  Heck, my family comes from Germany and I have more interest in Japan.  Examples, if you want them, are Anime, Legend of the Five Rings (in all its forms), the heavy influence on the Exalted RPG, many many video games etc.  For whatever reason Japan and things related to it are connected to the geek/gaming culture in a far closer way than Germany is. While the game rules changes might not make sense the scenery change seems like a no brainer to me.

And as for the “language independent” game components, well, the only problem I have had with Alhambra and Shogun is that I don’t feel like throwing out the unnecessary rule books and thus I have to sort through them every time.  But really, this is just my problem.

Matt, there’s another benefit to language-independent games (or, at least, games which use a great deal of iconography):  they can avoid what I call the dreaded Chez Geek Effect.  These are games with a great deal of text on all the cards that is necessary in order to play.  During the first few games, things proceed at a crawl, because you have to read everything in your hand each turn.  If clear iconography can be used, this time is greatly reduced.  Of course, if it takes time to learn the symbols, as it certainly does with Race, those beginning games will still be slow, but at least the following sessions should go more smoothly; it’s usually much easier to pick up icons at a glance than text, which makes hand evaluation easier and more enjoyable.

That being said, I agree with your specific example.  I think they did as good a job as they could have with the icons on Race, but they still represent a significant barrier to learning the game and have led some in my group to avoid it.  Even today, after playing a dozen times or so, I still usually find at least one card per game that I just can’t puzzle out from the symbols.  Because the icons are sufficiently complex that their meaning can be hard to see from across the table, it tends to even further reduce the player interaction, as the temptation to play with your head buried in your cards, rather than squint at what your opponents have, is considerable.  I think some sort of iconography was desirable; maybe the ideal compromise would have been to limit this to readily understood symbols and to use more text to fill in the more subtle variations.  I still like the game, but I think the learning curve would have been reduced and my current appreciation heightened if there had been a bit less reliance on icons.

I wish you luck with the Race expansion, but I somehow doubt that it will contain the direct player interaction that you seek.  Maybe some of the folks more familiar with the expansion can weigh in on that.

@Josh - No, I’m not very familiar with American geek culture, ‘cos I’m British! UK and US geek culture does seem to be somewhat differentiated, and you might have just hit on an example.

@Larry - Whilst the point you make about needing to learn card text is good, I don’t entirely buy it. Natural language is simply more memorable than an unfamiliar and abstract set of symbols. I learned the card effects in games like Twilight Struggle and War of the Ring in a very short space of time, yet I still struggle with some of the symbols in Shogun in spite of the reduced pool of cards! Besides which I’d say it’s come to a sad day when someone shies away from playing a game just because there’s too much text on the cards. Some games - like the aforementioned TS - absolutely need text-heavy cards, and I don’t think that requirement in any way detracts from the brilliance of the design.

I don’t know if the game was language independent but, the cards in To Court The King would have been much better if they had used words to describe their function instead of iconagraphy.

Matt:  Well, there’s the difference.  Twilight Struggle is a deep, 3 hour game and no one is going to begrudge the extra time required to read the cards.  Chez Geek is a piece of fluff, so if you double the time to play it because of all the text, there is genuine pain involved.  For games of this weight, the the initial learning curve has to be considered--Chez Geek is decidely NOT worth it.

Eric, To Court the King would have been better with both:  brief text, for beginning players; considerably bigger icons (that can actually be read from across the table); and much smaller portraits.  The too small icons are yet another example of the artist thinking too much about the look of the components and not enough about their functionality.

If you think the Race icons are hard to see across the table, imagine how hard it would be to read text across the table instead!  The main win of the icons, I think, is that it puts each phase’s power in the same place on each card, so you can tell at a glance which cards in a tableau affect a particular phase.  If the cards just had a blob of text at the bottom, this would be nearly impossible.  (And I don’t think there would be room to put text in place of each icon, especially without reducing the card art.)

Race for the Galaxy is not the best example, since I actually think that the icons are perfectly executed. They are extremely logical and well designed, once you think about them as a game help rather than an obstacle. Moreover, the reduced space they use makes more for the gorgeous illustrations. Dominion, on the contrary, is quite badly executed: much space is taken by text, and the illustrations are much too small.

Talking about bad icons, I think about Gloria Mundi (they do not even enhance the space for illustrations, and the same icon may have several meanings) or Roma.

Put me in the fan of icons camp. 

I actually think RftG is a sterling example.  The icons are small so that all the phases can fit on the side of a card.  Scanning opponent’s tableaux makes it easy to remind one that they have _a_ benefit in a given phase.  It may not be easy to see which benefit, but it does jog memories.  For cards in your hand, it’s easy enough to read the icons and after the first couple games, they seem intuitive (to the point that when the first expansion came out, the new icons were “readable.")

On example of “icons” gone bad was Magic.  They defined, for example, Swampwalk, and then on every card where it appeared, there was a parenthetical expression repeating the definition.

I should add that I think while some people grok icons, others don’t.  I do play RftG with some people who just don’t get the iconography. 

I don’t think it’s tied to learning languages, because I am good at icons, but not good at languages. :) I suspect it may be more related to engineering/technical vs. not, but don’t have enough data for a conclusion.

Language independence is only one of many, many issues involved with icons/graphic design.

In the case of Race, it was not the motivation for the icons.  In fact, at the publisher’s request (who was interested in possible language independence), at one point we investigated an all-icon / no text approach in Race’s development.  It totally bombed.  Playtesters who had been playing the game 20+ times a week for over a year stopped playing, while brand new playtesters were completely at sea.  Wei-Hwa and I even offered to put up the money to cover the additional cost for multiple languages to avoid putting out the game in an all-icon / no text format (the publisher declined).

Whether text alone is better or worse depends on a lot things, including how many powers are on a card and when/how often do these powers trigger.

Icons and text together don’t always work: the cards can often become too visually busy or unattractive, the space for artwork becomes too cramped, or the result becomes too intimidating for new players.  This is a large part of why not all powers in Race have text hints on the cards; we broke out the “simple” powers and put them on a reference sheet.

San Juan has a relatively small number of single power cards (about 20, depending on how you count), so it can get away with a text only approach.

With Race, I wanted to produce a game with lots of variety using multi-function cards.  This goal had a major design implication: most powers had to be “parameterized” (such as +1 to a sale or +2) instead of “unique”.  Having lots of powers such as San Juan’s “Crane” (which takes a half-page in the rules to explain) would be too hard for players to initially learn and remember (though a few such powers could be gradually introduced later in expansions).

Once you make the design decision to go with parameterized powers, then icons are a fairly natural way to express them.  It’s not hard to design icons to represent the action consume a good for X, where X could be 1 VP, 2 VPs, a card draw, 1 VP plus a card, 2 cards, etc.  Icons are easier to associate with different game phases (important given the multi-function nature of the cards), easier to reference across the table, and, most important, easier to retain from one game to the next for *frequent* players.

Text only cards not only have to read when learning the game, but they frequently have to be reread when playing again.  Icons, once you internalize their pictorial language, tend to be faster, for most people, to remember when encountered again (most humans are quite good at visual pattern recognition).

We used icons in Race to solve the multi-function problem and to make the game easier for repeated play.  Playtesting had shown us that many players who liked the game found it quite addicting.

There’s an obvious risk in slanting an aspect of a game’s presentation to make it better for most players after 3 or so plays, but slightly harder for the first and second play.  In the case of Race, we carefully tested what cards had or didn’t have hint text to try to find the sweet spot.  The results indicate that we did a pretty good job of finding it, though, of course, no graphic presentation works for everyone.