Sometimes, when a board game becomes a video game, it's a great thing for all concerned. The XBLA version of Catan is terrific fun, and while the Catan MMO misses a few steps, it's certainly a unique exercise in digital board gaming. We've seen recent Xbox conversions for many of our favorite tabletop games, including Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Lost Cities, and with word that Zombies!!! and others are on the way, the trend shows no signs of slowing down. One such cherished title, however, will not be joining the XBLA lineup any time soon -- Talisman, the Games Workshop RPG/boardgame hybrid, which had been in development by the folks over at Capcom up until a few months ago.
The news of Talisman's cancellation, once it finally got beyond Capcom's own forums, came as a disappointment to board gamers everywhere. Those of us with fond memories of the game were upset that we wouldn't be able to bring our epic quests beyond the digital frontier; gone were our dreams of unleashing the Crown of Command on our fellow gamers across the nation. Today, however, Giant Realm published a long and candid post-mortem on the Talisman project with Capcom's Adam Boyes, centering on what went wrong with the game's development -- at the same time as a public apology of sorts appeared on Capcom's Unity blog.
It's unusual, when a game is cancelled mid-development, to see a studio stand up and explain the full reasons behind the "internal and external disappointment," but what's even more unusual is for the explanation to make almost perfect sense, in retrospect. I love playing Talisman: My well-worn second edition box conjures up marathon sessions against my older brother, four-player matches against my fellow geeks, with dozens of cards, rooting through the box for the correct number pieces, and our house rule against the stupid and disappointing "Black Void" ending card from the expansion set. Why shouldn't such a great game see a digital release?
The entire interview is worth reading, but Boyes' comments on the digital adaptation issues are truly enlightening:
...When we set out to make the game, we assumed that people would want to play through a whole campaign in one sitting, so we only had the save system in the single player version. We looked at the other games on XBLA and PSN and realized that very few people were willing to sit and play a game for more than an hour. With a regular Talisman match coming in between 3-5 hours, this created an issue with how we would make the game fun and engaging for that whole time.
Talisman itself is a turn-based game, and on each turn there are quite a few decisions the player can make. As we continued to refine the concept of the game, we realized that the average gamer needed at least 60 seconds per turn to roll their dice, choose their direction, and then choose how to interact with the space they landed on. That meant that in a six player game, you would spend 80 percent of the time not doing anything.
One has to admit it: Boyes is completely right. For all of the fun Talisman can be, it's also ridiculously long. I have no doubt that a digital version would move along much faster, once details like players' stats and growth were automated, but it's the kind of game where a few fickle die rolls or drawing an unfortunate card can turn a simple objective into an obscenely difficult grind for stats, or a frustrating back-and-forth hop over the one space you're trying to reach. I've had games of Talisman last three days, where my friends and I needed to relocate the board several times, like Kramer playing Risk. Given Boyes' remarks about the typical XBLA game length, it's painful to think of a modern gamer's attention span trying to see a game of Talisman through to the finish. Even if Capcom had managed to implement a multiplayer save feature, think of where it would lead -- it's easy to envision gamers with dozens upon dozens of save files, each matched against random pick-up players from LIVE whose schedules never quite managed to sync up a second time. As much fun as Talisman would be to play against a group of friends, it would be near-impossible to play against strangers, which a decent XBLA title needs. The gamer-rating complaints of "Quit the game early" would be numerous and widespread.
And then there's this part:
Social games like Talisman rely on [enjoyable personal interaction and communication], so if the people in your match aren't going to use their headsets, the social aspect of a board game gets completely drained and becomes a slog as you could be sitting there for five minutes waiting for your next turn.
Again, this rather makes Talisman unplayable with strangers. Given the choice between an agonizingly slow-paced waiting game, or being forced to use a headset in the company of LIVE's usual eloquent folks, I'd be hard pressed to buy the game at all, and I like Talisman.
The rest of Boyes discussion is similarly disappointing but understandable. From the man's account, it sounds like Talisman was shaping up to be a fun game, with streamlining options, new "casual" rule options, and more. Unfortunately, as he points out, the game would only have been very fun under very specific circumstances -- and a narrow definition of fun does not make for a broad commercial success.
Join us in mourning the cancellation of online Talisman, but take solace in the knowledge that the tabletop version -- still as social and enjoyable as ever, one presumes -- is going to see its fourth edition re-release next month.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I'm sorry to learn of Talisman's cancellation. As a fan of the original game and a casual Xbox Live gamer, this title was right in my wheelhouse, and I was looking forward to it.
I think this outcome could have been predicted. The developer's realization that Talisman is a long game dependent on player interaction for much of its fun is something that should have been revealed by playing the boardgame. Anyone familiar with the game could have told you that it can take days to play and come down to a few arbitrary die rolls. Play with the expansion, and you can hack your way through to the Crown of Command only to be sucked into the Horrible Black Void with no chance of escape. Great fun when you're playing with a bunch of drunken friends. Less so on XBLA.
It will almost always prove a mistake to revisit classic games using new technology. I don't want games that I played in 1980 presented to me with a new coat of digital paint. Developers need the vision to combine new technology with classic games and game mechanics to take people to new places. Talisman could work as an XBLA game but it will require vision to reinvent the property.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
@ Paul:
See above for my "No Goddamned Black Void" house rule.
And I don't know about "almost always;" I think the digital versions of Catan and Carcassonne came out pretty well. Hell, the turn-timer for Catan is something I sometimes wish I had when playing the analog version -- I've had a simple 30 minute game turn into 2 hours when a couple of players are at a trade-based impasse.
You're right, though -- there needs to be more than a simple "coat of digital paint" to fully realize what makes the games fun, and translate that into a new medium.
Thanks for reading!
November 5th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Catan and (especially) Carcassonne are among my most-played XBLA games. The advantage they share over Talisman is that they are ports of more recent designs (Talisman was published in 1983, Settlers in 1995, and Carcassonne in 2000). Modern European boardgames consciously detonate many of the design mechanics that were commonly accepted in the 1980s (like player elimination, roll-and-move, longer playing times associated with what was essentially a role-playing game on a board, etc.). So, as modern games, Catan and Carcassonne have less to reinvent on their way to successful implementation as XBLA games. (The same can be said of Ticket to Ride).
Thanks for your in-depth coverage of this genre of game. I suspect we both would have loved the XBLA Talisman despite its flaws. Too bad we'll never be able to connect for a game.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Are you trying to make a subconscious jab at the game's inherent character class imbalance with that Warrior of Chaos pic?