An interview given by Kris Burm to Jonathan Tisdall for the online magazine MindZine in July 2000.

Although this interview is over 26 years old, many of the ideas Kris expressed remain relevant today. A must-read for players, inventors and organizers — anyone with an interest in the world of mind sports.

The online magazine MindZine was published by the company behind the Mind Sports Olympiad. It ceased updates in April 2001, though it remained available online until June 2011.

The magazine no longer exists; its published content can now only be found via the Wayback Machine or on sites maintained by enthusiasts. All rights to the published material belong to the respective authors.

On Games for People

— What kind of a relationship do you have with the MSO event? What do you think of it?

The first time I heard about MSO — in the spring of ‘97, that was — I immediately thought: fantastic! Or even stronger: finally!

I was in full preparation of a kind of abstract games fair in Antwerp myself, called The Other Game. The aim was to let the people know that abstract 2-player games still exist and that each year new games of this type are released. Far too few people know them and that I consider a real problem for games in general.

The shops are stuffed with all kinds of toys, gadgets and tools for kids and I think that is one of the main reasons why more and more adolescents and adults turn their back on games.

The first thing to do is to make people aware that there still are good and challenging games, next you must find a way to get them playing. If you get them there, you have won a first battle — not the war, because that is a matter of long term re-education. When I heard about MSO, I thought: I have a few brothers in arms on the other side of the channel.

— You have had experience with fighting for games — you have staged a similar event in Belgium?

Well, I’m very familiar with the problems David Levy had to face this year, and I think it is a miracle that he found a way out of it. It is an unbelievable achievement.

The first edition of The Other Game cost me about £7,000. Now I’m preparing the third edition, which will take place in November. I think there’s a good chance that we’ll pass the edge of 3,000 visitors, because we got very enthusiastic reactions from the visitors and good coverage in the media.

But I simply don’t get the thing sponsored. Apparently nobody takes games seriously. I can’t make business people understand that The Other Game is a cultural event that really needs to be supported.

— What exactly is The Other Game? How does it compare with the MSO — is it a competition or a games fair?

It is not really a fair, rather a happening. We select between 25 and 30 recently published abstract 2-player games. We have a hall of 1500 m² and each game is represented with at least 8 demo-copies.

We take care that every game has a volunteer to explain it to the visitors. We also invite clubs of the classic games, so that they can inform the people about their activities.

Most people don’t even know that e.g. Go and Shogi clubs exist - not to mention how they work and where you can find them. So, in total we have between 300 and 400 copies waiting to be played.

The formula works well. There is a lot of ambiance; the visitors understand and experience that abstract 2-player games can be great fun, that you must not necessarily play them with a gray pull-over and brown shoes and that there is no obligation to think about each move until steams comes out of your ears. Even the tournaments are rather workshops than tough competitions.

— So The Other Game is a festival and gathering more than a sporting event?

No, the competitions were certainly not a joke. For example, last time the prize money for the GIPF-tournament was about £4,000, so, believe me, the players performed at their best.

With “workshop” I mean that the participants rather looked at it as a gathering of equally-minded people that got the opportunity to measure up to each other. It’s hard to put in words the difference between “doing the best you can” and “being prepared to kill”, but it isn’t difficult at all to “feel” that difference.

An important aspect was that we did not have a separate tournament section. The competitions were part of the complete event, not more and not less important than the other activities. Everything took place in the same hall, because we wanted to keep the gap between the occasional players and the hardcore gamers as little as possible.

I would love to organize a tournament on a square in the center of a city, preferably on a hot summer evening. And install big screens to give passers-by something to look at. Playing an abstract game, no matter on what level, should remain part of the world. The more you deal with it on an elitist level, the more you isolate it.

— Taking your organization of festivals in Belgium into account, how do you react to the MSO’s emphasis on competition?

Above all I think it is a fantastic event. But what I think is not so important, because I already am an abstract game freak. So, if you permit me, in my opinion the MSO is too much focused solely on competition.

That way you only reach people like me, players who already are convinced abstract game players, but you will not — or hardly — generate new players. Moreover, you won’t attract a lot of visitors and I think visitors are the key to further growth.

Every visitor you get is a potential participant of the next edition. But for the moment the difference between a man in the street who wants to have a look around or a mother who would like to do something interesting with her kids, and, on the other hand, the world of the experienced players, is far too big.

It is like a 5-story building with plenty of activity on the highest floor, with an elevator for the participants but without stairs for the public. And that, I think, is a pity.

— The MSO concentrates on competition because they hope to establish mental achievement on an equal footing with physical. Is this a reasonable goal?

Players who put a lot of effort in getting really good at a particular game, must have a context within which they can compete with other advanced players. If not, many will lose their interest and look for something else to get good at.

I also think that it is a necessity for the status of the MSO itself to have competitions on the highest level, like e.g. the Olympic Games. But on an equal footing? I don’t know… The achievement of the individuals, athlete or player, may be equal - in fact, they are, no doubt about it - but the MSO is not needed to prove that.

If you want to compare physical with mental efforts, you must compare the contexts in which these efforts are made and it doesn’t need much explanation to see that the comparison doesn’t go far. You can practice sports on every corner of every street, so to speak.

Everybody is familiar with physical performances and related competitions; billions of people practice some kind of sport all over the world. Put in other words: the base is enormous and that makes top events a guaranteed success. That is not the case with “mind” sports.

The MSO is a top event, but where is the base? Where is the public? The MSO creates a platform for the best players in many different game disciplines — a platform that was badly needed — but I fear that isn’t sufficient to talk about “equal footing”. First the interest in abstract games must be re-established on a much larger scale.

— What do you see as the major differences between your festival and the MSO games?

Well, I think it’s a matter of approach. As a player David Levy is a top athlete, I’m not. David is focused on a big event to give players the opportunity to compete with each other. And I fully understand why: there was nothing!

If you think about it, how come a big abstract games event didn’t already exist? Games are played all over the world, playing should still be considered as part of every culture, yet somebody had to start something like the MSO from scratch.

I, on the other hand, was never good at one particular game; you could say that I belong to the base and I’m confronted with what’s going wrong there: lack of interest. So, doing something about that is my goal.

Our approach is different, but eventually we want to achieve the same thing: putting abstract games back where they belong. And I sincerely hope that my comments will not be interpreted as criticism to David’s address; I sympathize very much with what he’s doing and my respect is enormous. Moreover, I certainly don’t want to compare what I do with what he is doing. He’s major league.

— How would you change the MSO?

From my point of view the most important thing that is missing is: what do you offer an average visitor? Something spectacular to look at? Not really. Something else? Not really.

I can’t help having had the feeling that you scared off most of the few visitors that showed up. It is fun for the participants, but visitors don’t experience a joyful atmosphere.

And as such, I fear that the MSO is rather confirming the current prejudices towards abstract games than deals with them. I’m sure most visitors must have thought: too elitist, too serious, gives you a headache, not “cool”.

I read in an interview with David Levy that the idea of organizing the MSO came from what he called “a chess party”. Indeed, a party it must be. Sounds great, but why not make it a party for the visitors, too?

That way you make the MSO accessible for people who like games but don’t feel like participating in a tournament — that is: not yet!

— The MSO has tried to have an exhibition and sales area, and teach visitors some of the games. Is this something that can fit in with the idea of a kind of Olympic games of the mind?

Yes, a few games were demonstrated on the spot, but there wasn’t put much effort in the area. Who knew about it? It thought it was a fine bonus for those who where there any way, as participants of one or more tournaments, rather than an activity to attract and entertain visitors.

The space where you could be initiated in the few recently published games wasn’t really part of the happenings, although, in my opinion, that is what it must be: an essential part of the MSO. And it must be promoted as such.

With the competitions you attract high level players, with the new games you attract less fanatic game minded people, to keep in touch with the base and to welcome newcomers. Make them active; give them the opportunity to play and to get familiar with the games on the program and let them feel that abstract 2-players games are fun.

Arguments alone won’t convince many people, nor will competitions and prize money; let the games do some of the work, too. After all, the quality of the games is the strongest argument you have.

On Inventing Games

— You said something to me when we met in London that fascinated me; that you were perhaps the only professional abstract game maker.

Perhaps, yes - in the sense that I know no other game designer who is focused solely on abstract 2-player games and does nothing but that.

On the one hand I should feel fortunate, because it could well be that exactly that is the reason why I’m so lucky to make a living out of it, and, on the other hand, it is a sad indication that abstract games aren’t doing well. There are thousands of game designers, but at least 99% must have given them up.

— So: Is the time of the abstract game past?

The big question… And so much to say about it… But maybe I’m not the right person to do that because I’m too much in it. I mean, for me that became irrelevant because no matter what the answer is, I will always act as if they have a future. At least, that used to be my attitude, but I’m not sure how long I will be able to hold onto it. I’m getting pretty tired.

You know, I’ve put myself in a delicate position. In the beginning things were easy: I was a game designer, period. But the more I was confronted with the lack of interest in abstract games, the more I got involved on different levels.

Now I’m also a bit of a publisher, a bit of a distributor, and bit of an organizer of game events, etc. The result of all that is that more and more of my idealistic statements became suspicious, as if I’m using deontological arguments for commercial purposes. Sometimes I even feel embarrassed when I start talking about abstract game with my normal enthusiasm.

— How did you get started on this tough road?

When I visited the Games Fair in Essen for the first time — in 1987, I believe — I had three abstract games with me. It just happened that they were abstract, I really don’t know why.

Any way, I walked around with my games, did not know what to do, yet somehow managed to get a few appointments with publishers. And it went badly, very badly. I think the end of the eighties must have been the absolute low of abstract games. They were death, done and over with.

That in itself I could have accepted — after all, I was new and knew nothing about the game business — but I heard so much nonsense that I simply refused to accept that abstract games were so commercially worthless as the publishers were telling.

Especially after having had a look around and having seen so many absolute non-games, I got caught by a profound disbelief. On the way back home the idiot in me expressed the wish to deliver the proof that there still was a public for abstract games.

There’s one thing that I remember very well — said by a man, by the way, who is still in charge of a big company. After having had a look at my games, he said: “Not bad, but as long as chess exists, there will be no room for them.”

This is probably the most stupid thing I ever heard about games in general. If I would have shown him a board game with a theme, he could have said just as well: “No need to come back for as long as Monopoly exists.”

— So have you finally managed to prove your point — that there is a serious audience for abstract games?

No, the proof is far from delivered. In the beginning I wasted a lot of time by just thinking in terms of quality. Now I know better. The only valid way to measure quality these days is through sales records and sales records are looked at on an annual base.

Apart from the fact that sales numbers are not suitable to find out more about quality, abstract games also need more time than a year to start selling; they need a longer incubation period and that doesn’t fit in the current commercial tendencies.

Everybody knows that investments must yield a return in as little time as possible. But if it was only that, the problem could be tackled. Unfortunately the situation is much more complex.

— How complex? What other kind of obstacles do abstract games face?

Well, to give you just one example… A few decades ago the R&D; department of a publisher took the decisions about which games were going to be published. Their main question was “is this game good enough?”

Then Marketing & Promotion took over; the question wasn’t any longer “is it good enough?” but “can we promote it?”. Meanwhile it looks as if the sales reps and even the retailers are becoming more and more important.

Often they don’t even know how a game works anymore; they just look at the box, turn it around once or twice, shake it a few times and ask themselves aloud: “can I sell it?”.

I mean, shaking the box became a kind of “quality check”. And why do they check it that way? Because that’s what an average buyer in an average game shop does to make up his mind.

I know that I’m making a caricature of it — fortunately other criteria are used, too — nevertheless the consequence of all this is that a few basic notions have been re-defined over the last years.

“Quality”, for example, can mean anything between “a lot of intrinsic value” and “something you buy after having shaken it”. In theory the intrinsic value is still the more important, in practice the shaking has gotten the upper-hand.

That is a reality. Both are plausible these days, which makes having a discussion about what a game should be quite difficult.

The Challenge Facing Abstract Games

— The renowned game inventor Reiner Knizia gave us a very interesting interview at MSO3. He said something that I found fascinating, and which interfaces with your views in a stimulating way. He said that the great abstract games would have virtually no chance of commercial success today, that chess and games like it are popular on the strength of their tradition

He’s right, no doubt about it. Maybe there’s a small chance that Chess would find a publisher, but only because it is not completely abstract. I mean, even as a new game, it would remain appealing because of the pieces.

But even then it would be a game just like the many others that struggle for survival. And if it would survive — say, stay on the market for more than 5 years — that in itself would already be a success. But most of other classics would definitely have no chance at all.

Go for example — such a beautiful game, maybe the most aesthetic game ever — would even have problems to get one single good review somewhere. And even that is already too much of a speculation, because nobody would publish it. Bridge, same story. Nobody would be prepared to find out what the game is all about.

So, I agree with Reiner: their blessing is that they are rooted in the past. And, of course, that they belong to the public domain. Everybody may publish them, which means that e.g. chess and checkers can be found in almost every catalogue and every shop.

— So what is the future of abstract games? Can they continue to survive and perhaps flourish or evolve?

The most important thing is that new good abstract games are published — and bought and played, of course. And it is of the greatest importance that more people start understanding that, not in the least the players of the classic games.

If not, I fear that even e.g. chess will start suffering from a lack of interest in the not so distant future; it will become an archaic activity of an elitist few.

Let’s assume no new books would be published any more. How many will go on reading Dickens, Dostoyevsky and Proust forever? How will you generate new readers?

Literature is an art and an art must move to be kept alive. That is a shared responsibility of all parties involved: writers, publishers, shopkeepers and, last but not least, readers.

Playing games is also an art, so the act of playing games must move, too. Now, it isn’t hard to conclude that there has been little activity in the world of abstract games for decades. Complete stagnation.

Most chess players are chess players, period; Go players stick to Go and most of them will proclaim that it is richer than chess; Bridge players will play bridge until they die.

There is a logic in it, sure. The more you play a certain game, the more you discover its depth and its beauty. And the more effort you put in getting well at that one game, the less interest there is in another game where you have to start from scratch.

Perfectly understandable, but it makes the world of abstract games seen to be very protective and conservative. Each of the classic games could be seen as a little island, disconnected from the continent where life moves on.

That is why an event like MSO so enormously important; it can’t be stressed enough how important it is, because it places playing abstract games back on the continent, in the middle of a metropolis, in the middle of life.

Finally something is moving again. Finally players of all kinds of games are brought together, so that they are confronted with the fact that they are part of a bigger whole.

The only thing that is still missing, at least in my opinion, is a greater input of new games. Both visitors and tournament players must have more chance to find out that there are new abstract games that are worth being played.

— Why do you find them so important?

Why? The frustrating thing about this interview is that I could talk for hours about every question you ask. I’ll give you an at random answer — just one of the many reasons. And I’ll try to make it short.

I think that many will agree that abstract games are the purest of all games: a board, pieces and a minimum of rules; no story, no dice, no money, nothing but sheer essence; all information is there, thus so are all the answers on all possible questions.

Yet, once you start playing a good abstract game, you are confronted with unlimited possibilities, a new cosmos that you must explore. A fairer and more interesting challenge simply doesn’t exist.

How else can you explain that a game like Go succeeds in keeping people playing for already 4000 years, if I’m not mistaken. Look at what happened with the world during these 4000 years, look at the evolution mankind made, and yet people still bend over that board, trying to sort out the same unlimited possibilities as 4000 years ago.

Isn’t that unbelievable? No other thing represents our heritage better than abstract games. I mean, we are aiming farther than Mars these days, yet we can still sit on a boulder and think about a move, just like people did way back.

So, for me playing an abstract game is the ultimate art, no question about it, for the simple reason that it is the ultimate activity that differs man from other living creatures. That and rolling a die, of course. But rolling a die is not an art, that’s “faith” - and that’s another story.

— Reiner Knizia mentioned Abalone as a rare exception, and said that that had gotten through because great care had been taken in its presentation and design. I couldn’t help feeling that there was a lot of truth in what he said

I’ll tell you an anecdote: a few years after I started designing games, Abalone was released and scored extremely well. I thought: fantastic! I thought it was the best thing that could have happened because it proved my point.

I already had had many discussion about the potential of abstract games but I was getting nowhere. And then suddenly there was Abalone, suddenly I had an strong argument, suddenly I could say: Do you know Abalone? Well, that is a perfect example of an abstract game that is published the way an abstract game should be published - and look at the result.

But the reply I got was: Abalone is not an example, it is the exception confirming the rule. Now, I ask you: is it an example or an exception?

— What is special about Abalone?

It is clear that the presentation and design of Abalone has been very important, yes, but that alone would not have been sufficient.

The biggest problem you face when introducing a new abstract game, is how to make a player aware of the difference between a good move and a bad move. Most will get the impression of wasting time if they don’t start having a clue about what to do after, let’s say, two games. If the click hasn’t come by then, most will never start a third game.

Abalone has an answer to that. Even if you haven’t the slightest idea about what you are doing in the beginning, that game still feels like having a good time because of the sheer fun of making a move. You enjoy yourself pushing the marbles for a number of games and meanwhile, bit by bit, you find out more about the strategy. That is the perfect script.

In the beginning you don’t play Abalone as a game, no, you play with it as a kind of gadget. And the more you play it, the less gadget it is and the more game it becomes. That is how you reach people who are normally not interested in playing an abstract game.

— Have you ever done or considered doing non-abstract games as well?

I did a few non-abstract games, in the late eighties, but they were never published. The problem is that I know very well what I’m doing when I work on an abstract game and much less so when I work on a game with a topic.

I guess it must be something like asking a novelist to write a script. If you are good at the one thing, it doesn’t automatically mean that you are also good at the other thing, even if they are close to each other. Any way, it happens that I have been working on a few card games recently.

— And so what does the future hold?

It is about time that I make a bit of room for other things again, the farther away from the game business, the better. A fact is that I never intended to become full time occupied with games, and certainly never had in mind to get obsessed by them.

I thought about quitting five years ago. I found that I had spent enough time in the game scene, but then I got the idea for GIPF and since then I work around the clock. I still often think about quitting, but I can’t. At least not yet.

GIPF is the best thing I ever did and I’m pretty sure that I will never do better. But I’m getting too tired to go on much longer. I’m not a businessman.

I have given myself one more year to get Project GIPF on track. The 4th game of the Project will be released in the beginning of 2001, but if things do not start to go a bit more easy, it may be about time to come to a few wise conclusions.

We’ll see. Meanwhile I go on. Finishing Project GIPF would be a dream come true. 3 down, 1 coming up, 2 to go!

(c) Kris Burm, Jonathan Tisdall, 07/02/2000

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