Video Games Make Upkeep Easy, but Input Hard

Have you ever wondered if your board game would be better as a video game or vice versa? Online platforms like Board Game Arena might make you question whether board games have any advantages, since many play better with digital automation. However, board games do have one major advantage over video games: player actions are easier to resolve. This difference matters when deciding what type of game to make.

Recently, I was inspired to make a roguelike video game. My idea was to combine the simple defeat-all-monsters structure of Rift Wizard with the "spellbinding" mechanic from Mage Wars. Players would move on a hex grid, combining spells in various ways while fighting monsters. I thought making it digital would make gameplay smoother than Mage Wars. I was wrong. My prototype felt awful in comparison. I had to click a character, then a space to move, a spell to cast, and a target. This felt like too much work compared to pushing cards and verbalizing actions.

My prototype failed because it felt clumsy in digital form. Video games have clear advantages in calculating values, setting up a game, and updating the game state, but they fall short of tabletop games in expressing inputs. In general, we can say that:

• Video games work better with complex upkeep and simple inputs
• Tabletop games work better with simple upkeep and complex inputs

Video Games are better for high-upkeep games

The biggest advantage video games have over tabletop games is automating both physical and mental upkeep. Computers can assess the game state instantly, calculate scores, generate random numbers, set up scenarios, and perform many tasks in less than a second that would take humans seconds or minutes. Automation enables genres nearly impossible in tabletop games, such as FPS games and platformers. Most real-time games benefit greatly from the computer's ability to update the game state every few milliseconds.

However, automation can be a double-edged sword because it sometimes prevents players from getting adequate feedback. This is especially true in autobattler games where designers must ensure players understand what is happening in automated combat. For example, in Hero's Hour, you move your character with an army around a map, which fights other armies in automated real-time battles. While entertaining to watch, it is hard to understand how your choices affect the outcome because so much happens at once. Tabletop autobattlers like Challengers or Tag Team are more legible because players resolve everything themselves.

That said, if your game requires frequent updates to the game state in response to player actions or heavy number-crunching, it may work best as a video game. However, you need to be careful about the inputs you ask players to make. In general, you want the input-to-feedback ratio to be as low as possible. Ideally, the game state updates every time they press a button.

Tabletop Games are better for complex inputs

Where tabletop games really shine is in allowing complex forms of input. In the physical world, you have many more options than on a computer, including simply declaring what you will do verbally. The ability to say what you will do makes complex inputs easy to resolve; you can say something like "My wolf attacks your sunflower with 'vicious bite'." In a video game, this would require at least three button presses plus moving a cursor. The need to serialize inputs in video games creates overhead that board games avoid entirely.

Beyond offering a wider variety of input types, tabletop games allow greater flexibility in input sequencing. A video game requires inputs in a precise order to signify an action, but in a tabletop game, you can signal your intentions in various ways, including retroactively. When I play Spirit Island in person, I often change actions I recently performed when I realize there is a better target. If I change my mind about an action on the Spirit Island digital app, I must reload the earlier game state and resequence my actions one by one. Humans interpret actions much more flexibly than machines.

Conclusion

My Mage Wars-inspired roguelike felt worse than playing Mage Wars because it added friction to moving units and declaring targets for abilities. Things that felt natural in the board game became chores, making the experience worse.

If you want to make a game but are not sure whether it should be digital or physical, start by thinking about the sorts of inputs players will need to make. If you are translating mechanics from the physical to the digital realm, the most important thing you need to figure out is how to simplify the inputs. If you are translating from digital to physical, focus on how to remove or simplify upkeep tasks.