Friday feelings: Twilight Imperium – different edition, same mistakes

I recently watched the Twilight Imperium (TI4) documentary (Space Lions) with a mixture of wonder, sadness and frustration. It was nice to see the Shup Up & Sit Down guys turn their clear talent for content creation away from their opinions (shonky at best) to ‘real’ tele. Bravo, chaps – seriously professional job. But boy, did it lift the lid on what (many people presumed) happens over at Fantasy Flight Games.

Having played TI3 a few times I was interested to see what would change in this new edition. But as I watched the game’s history play out, right back to first edition prototypes, I lost all hope. And looking at comparison videos of the new edition, those fears were confirmed. History is, once again, repeating itself.

I believe TI4 is more streamlined, a little shorter, a bit more accessible etc. But two tragic things struck me as a I watched. Firstly, how insular this firm really is. And second, how that seems to be stunting the game; and the company’s ability to fix mistakes it is making again and again.

Twilight Imperium: Testing with the wrong people?

In Space Lions the developers state, proudly, they have a dedicated fan base ready and willing to test new editions of the game. Which seems a strange brag, as one of the first things I was told as a designer (and still pass on now) was this. Asking your friends’ opinions about a prototype won’t get the answers you need. They like you and they’re not experts. What you need is people who will be critical, preferably from a wide range of design perspectives.

So, what we end up with in Twilight Imperium, over and again, are Groundhog Day style bad moves. And I’m not talking about ‘theme’. I love the fact each race has a backstory and the universe has rich and detailed lore. I’m talking game play and design – and really basic stuff. White text on black cards. Tiny fonts. Lack of useful iconography. Terrible overuse of language, both on cards and in the rules. There are so many more.

But they have that core audience that thinks ‘experience’ first. They happily make house rules to fix the game’s problems. They don’t mind playing a game for 10 hours, where they in fact only did a few things that influenced the actual winning of the game. And when presented with a new version, they don’t notice the basic flaws (that put the rest of us off) because they’ve gotten used to them in previous editions.

The best of all board game design problems

But ultimately, why would Fantasy Flight care? Its other properties make many of the same mistakes: Arkham Horror, Fallout, Discover etc. But they all sell in their thousands. It’s doing enough right to keep its core audience happy, and that core audience is larger than many. So, I expect we’re doomed to see more of this going forward. Or are we?

It was refreshing to see Fantasy Flight release an incredibly streamlined product last year with KeyForge. Here it went outside its usual design/dev pool to Richard Garfield: a man who knows his onions when it comes to simplifying the game experience without losing depth of play. Easy rules, great use of iconography – everything made sense. I’m surprised he wasn’t laughed out of the building!

Here’s hoping Fantasy Flight Games will recognise this chink in its armour and exercise a bit more basic design savvy on its bigger properties moving forward. It wouldn’t lose anything from what it has now, so what’s not to like? I love the occasional game of Eldritch, or Fallout, or Mansions of Madness. But I could, and would love, to love them so much more.

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