Agency is what lies at the center of board games. In „Agency as Art“ T. Chi Nguyen argues that games are a medium for it. Instead of a clear-cut narrative or simulationist content, what games actually provide us with is a form of agency. One which we are allowed to explore within the confines of the game. This is a useful way to describe the medium itself. Simulated settings familiarize players with certain situations. Through practice players become familiar with them, and if placed in comparable situations they are less likely to be overwhelmed. Which is a thought that Peter Perla also touched on in “The Art of Wargaming”.

Outside of such learning opportunities, games act as forms of (self-)expression. We can act like cunning traders, who cleverly make use of changing prices in the game to make a profit. Or we can use our shrewd strategic foresight to make investments that will result in increased influence and power over the game board. Games allow us to indulge in a form of theater. One which includes immersion but can go far beyond it as well. All these experiences are available to us. All because board games give us agency.

Which rightfully brings up the question: what’s agency, anyway? What does it consist of, and what does it refer to? The common understanding of games, tends to fall back on its mechanisms. Naturally, we try to understand agency on a mechanical level as well.

Within this framework, agency is the sum of options players are given to influence the game’s outcome. This is in part covered by the explicitly regulated actions players can take as part of the game. A game that gives me the choice of four distinct actions during my turn, creates a clear framework of how I can influence its outcome. The first level of agency is found in the rules of the game itself. Once you know the rules, you have acquired this form of agency.

Once you start playing with other people, you find that their actions further limit or change the options available to you. Let’s assume one of the actions available to me is: take money from the supply. If other players, have chosen this option before me this round, and thereby emptied the supply, my options have changed. The limitations of my agency can shift due to the actions taken by other players. On a smaller – and often considered more intriguing – scale, some actions become more valuable to me than others. Maybe this round’s focus on taking money from the supply means, that I now have more cards to choose from in the display.

On the other end of the scale, my agency might be canceled, because the other actions of other players have kicked me out of the current round. The reason why player elimination is often rejected, ultimately has to do with the fact that our agency is completely taken from us. The reason why many people sit down to play a game in the first place, has been invalidated by the choices of other players.

I would call this “game agency”. It describes how the mechanisms of a game outline a form of agency, but also how the game state, as created through play, shifts that agency in one direction or another. In a way, game agency is objective, because it can be measured. Through clean analysis, it can even be expressed in a flow chart or through mathematical equations. The appeal of most games lies in not having access to all relevant factors at any one moment. Trick-taking games exemplify this well. Here, we’re trying to maximize our game agency by making use of the rules, in order to narrow other player’s game agency. We play certain cards to force others to respond in a specific way, in hopes of cornering them for the duration of this hand. This is how we win tricks or score points.

That said, I would add another layer to this mechanical understanding of agency. One, which might even be more important than game agency itself: personal agency. This isn’t necessarily a consequence of what options the game’s rules offer us. It’s also only indirectly affected by the actual, “measurable” game state. Instead, personal agency covers questions of self-evaluation, interpreting the game state and having faith in the inherent potential of both.

Personal agency is shaped by how we view our individual ability to act and influence the outcome of the game. It is the psychological basis for how we experience things in the game. In my opinion it is also a major factor in whether we enjoy our time playing the game. The bigger our personal agency, the more fun and interest we feel while playing. The smaller our personal agency, the more frustration and dissatisfaction we feel during play.

To illustrate this, I want to talk about a game I played in, a while back. One of the players felt himself boxed in right from turn one. Out of four available action spaces two had already been blocked by other players, before he had his turn. In addition to that, the choices available later in the round were tied to the actions taken at the beginning of the round. As the last player to take their turn, that player felt disadvantaged in every way. This was a feeling he could not shake for the remainder of the game.

Even in later rounds, when turn order had changed multiple times and the decisions taken at the start of the game, had no tangible effect on the current game state, he felt limited in his agency.

An explanation, or allegedly objective analysis of his options wouldn’t have made a difference at this point. Like most opinions this one wasn’t based on a purely rational analysis of the situation, but instead on a feeling. One that build on previous experiences. He saw himself at a disadvantage. He viewed the game state as (momentarily) imbalanced and he had great difficulty in seeing potential in the current game. He could not see way to fully participate in the game’s underlying competition. It doesn’t matter if he had correctly assessed the situation or not. This was his perspective in this moment, and all his decisions and his experience of the game would build on it.

But personal agency is more than feeling that we have fewer options available to us. Games of chance in particular thrive when they make players feel as if they can go beyond the purely mechanical options of the game. Personal agency let’s us see more than the strict mathematics encoded in the game’s rules. In a game like Hot Streak (in which we bet on the winner of a mascot race), our game agency is low. We only choose two bets we want to take, at the start of a race. The mascots will move according to a deck of about 12 randomly chosen (but known) cards. Each player may then secretly swap exactly *one* card with a card from their hand. Which means that – with greater groups in particular – it is enormously unclear how the mascots will move. But since you have a vague idea what cards the deck is made of, and what changes you have introduced yourself, you trust yourself to vaguely anticipate the race’s outcome. These tidbits of information invite you to build personal agency. Because we feel capable of making decisions that will make choosing a winning bet a little more likely.

We are convinced of our ability to gauge and make use of the possibilities open to us in the game. Our full participation in the game is rooted in this self-assessment. Without personal agency we can’t immerse ourselves in what is happening. Only by making it past this threshold, do we turn a toy we’re playing around with into a game we’re playing in.

That is why the first priority has to be getting players to that point as quickly as possible. This job obviously falls to those who bring new games to players. That may be game explainers at public (or private) game nights. But in most cases it is the game’s rulebook and by extension the people responsible for creating the game.

The one method to do that is one that everyone can fall back on: constant repetition. You keep playing the game over and over again. Until you’ve seen enough playthroughs to get a general idea of what’s possible. Once you’ve fed enough experience into your imagination, it’s easier to make out what you’re capable of. This approach is generally used with trick-taking games. With enough games under your belt, you develop a kind of “skill”. And it is this “skill” that unlocks enjoyment. 

The question we have to ask ourselves then is: what tools do designers (and game teachers in general) have at their disposal, to make prior experience not the sole prerequisite for enjoying a game? How can a game be fun, i.e. evoke personal agency, without having to play the game first a number of times?