Designing Against Hope

The only thing more futile than ambition is achievement. Yet still we have it. The ambition to design games that will likely never get played, never get published, never earn us a buck. Not that we are averse to any of those things. We just do not hope for them. Or anything else, for that matter.

Hopeless Games is all about experiences. The experiences games create for their players and the experiences players create for themselves and each other. Game mechanics feature prominently in our toolbox, but we do not consider them any more important than the artwork and the stories they combine with. We would rather have a flawed mechanic than a flawed experience.

Thematic games rarely suffer from being thematic. They do, however, often suffer from being games. We try to overcome this inherent paradox by designing games that encourage players to focus on the expression of theme, not on the exploitation of mechanics. Experiments to this end include lowering the rules overhead, removing obvious victory conditions, forcing randomness on the players, and generating aesthetic outcomes unrelated to actual gameplay.

Some may find our themes too dark and our mechanics too damning. Know that we are neither trying to punish nor convert. All we want is for our players to have a good time. And to us that means not obsessing over rules questions and creating hierarchies of winners and losers. Participation and interaction are key. Shared stories and experiences the goal.

All this, of course, is only intentional. We take pride in falling short of our ideals. That is why we have them. To remind ourselves that we can do better. And to not bury a game just because it is hopeless. Why would we. Hope is something we design against. Hope to see you around.