The guy at my FLGS said heavy games are just bad game design and I cant stop thinking about it

I was standing in the aisle at Game Haven last Saturday looking at a copy of Brass Birmingham and this random guy walks up and says "heavy games are just bad game design, they hide broken mechanics behind 50 page rulebooks." He was all about how if your game needs a 30 minute teach, you failed as a designer. On one hand I kinda see it - simple games like Cascadia are elegant. But also I think some of us enjoy the puzzle of cracking a dense system. Has anyone else heard this argument and does it hold any water?

2 comments

2 Comments

gibson.mark16d ago

Does that dude think heavy games are for some kind of brainiac elite or something? I mean sure Cascadia is tight and clean but that argument falls apart when you think about what a "puzzle" actually is. A simple jigsaw is fine but some of us actually want to wrestle with a complex system that takes a few plays to click. The whole point of a heavy game is that it rewards the time you put into it, not that it's broken and needs a rulebook to hide it. That guy just sounds like he got wrecked in Brass and is salty about it.

benk2616d ago

Betraying your own argument by calling someone salty just proves his point.