Flavour comes up in a lot of conversations about Commander. “Commander is a flavour based format,” or, “a thing I disagree with is contrary to the format's flavour.” These talks, I think, need some definitions that I see lacking when people talk about “flavour,” and that goes beyond Commander and Magic, and even gaming in general. Flavour is a really broad thing that describes several really separate concepts in design of games and other entertainment, and each of those concepts have their own requirements and needs, so it would be useful to split that up a bit. I believe there are two main pillars that prop up “flavour,” so I'll start with that.
“Fluff” is the first one, and it's the one that's already well-known and written about. Fluff is all of the stuff that comes with a game that isn't directly related to the mechanics of it. Fluff is mainly a tabletop RPG term, since that's the genre to which fluff is most critical, and entire sourcebooks are filled with the stuff: world-building, foreign cultures, alien anatomy, heroes, villains and history are all examples of pure fluff. On the other end of the spectrum are abstract games like Chess, where only the names of the pieces suggest any kind of story, or Go, to an even greater extent, where there's none at all (here's a highly decent post by the Rules Committee's own Devon Rule on the subject). Magic is somewhere in the middle, since actual storyline materials like the novels are completely optional and separate from the game itself, but WotC utilizes their free game space to inject a lot of fluff via art, card names and flavor text onto the game pieces themselves. That creates a much more engaging experience than an abstract game would provide.
“Qualia” is the second pillar. I tried hard to find articles speaking about this concept and came up empty (though there's this textbook, which I haven't read but might have something close), so here's my attempt at establishing a new definition. If you're unfamiliar with the term qualia it's stolen from philosophy, where it's used to discuss the mental experience of the individual when he or she is experiencing physical stimuli. The concept of qualia separates the sensation of taste from a wine's acids, tannins and alcohol; the sensation of the colour “red” from 700 nm electromagnetic radiation; the sensation of a toothache from the impulses of an exposed nerve, and so on. There's the physical object or action that can be objectively measured and described, then there's the subjective experience that only exists in the observer's consciousness that's impossible to describe without providing the experience itself. That's qualia.
Fluff is on the designer's end. It's one of the biggest knobs available to adjust how your product is perceived. Qualia are on the player's end. They are the player's actual perceptions of that product.
Qualia are the end result and goal of flavor and fluff (and maybe the entire game itself, if you want to get philosophical), but are also affected by the game mechanics, as well as the environment in which the game is played. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:
Fluff and qualia, two sides of the same flavour coin. Like chocolate money. The fluff are the ingredients and spices that go into the thing, qualia are the tastes that the players get to savour. The perfect qualia are what designers are trying to achieve, but of course it's impossible to know how the player will ultimately experience it. The designer has to craft the fluff (and the game mechanics, and everything else), then deliver the package, hoping it has the desired results.
“Qualia” is the second pillar. I tried hard to find articles speaking about this concept and came up empty (though there's this textbook, which I haven't read but might have something close), so here's my attempt at establishing a new definition. If you're unfamiliar with the term qualia it's stolen from philosophy, where it's used to discuss the mental experience of the individual when he or she is experiencing physical stimuli. The concept of qualia separates the sensation of taste from a wine's acids, tannins and alcohol; the sensation of the colour “red” from 700 nm electromagnetic radiation; the sensation of a toothache from the impulses of an exposed nerve, and so on. There's the physical object or action that can be objectively measured and described, then there's the subjective experience that only exists in the observer's consciousness that's impossible to describe without providing the experience itself. That's qualia.
Fluff is on the designer's end. It's one of the biggest knobs available to adjust how your product is perceived. Qualia are on the player's end. They are the player's actual perceptions of that product.
Qualia are the end result and goal of flavor and fluff (and maybe the entire game itself, if you want to get philosophical), but are also affected by the game mechanics, as well as the environment in which the game is played. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:
- Type of opponent: I'm sure that we've all played games where there is an opportunity to play against either the computer or another human player, and I'm guessing that you all have a fundamentally different experience when playing against one or the other (I definitely do). Heroes of Might and Magic, Street Fighter, Unreal Tournament, Starcraft, Chess and MtG (through Shandalar, and I think Duel of the Planeswalkers is the same deal?) are all games that I really enjoy which feel entirely different based on what my opponent is (even when the computer opponent has objectively the same “difficulty” as the human one). When I play against a computer, I'm primarily looking for patterns to exploit and focusing hard on optimizing play. Against a human opponent, I'm inside that person's head, trying to deceive and manipulate them directly, often sacrificing optimal play to trap them, constantly changing tactics as they learn my habits, and being as vigilant as possible about identifying weaknesses in my own game plan that a computer player would generally be unable to exploit. This is a great example of how one aspect of the game can change the game's qualia entirely, even though the game mechanics are identical. Again I want to stress that the list of strategies and tasks above is not included in the definition of qualia, but the experiences that they provide are. The experience of solving a computer player compared to outwitting a human opponent, or the experience of providing the wrong “answer” to the computer compared to being outwitted yourself. Another example which might be similar is playing a game against a much weaker opponent. When you're teaching someone to play Magic obviously the game is much easier and less demanding, and the goal of winning becomes secondary at best, but beyond that the game feels fundamentally different in a way that's unrelated to those things. Different qualia.
- The stakes of the game: Most of us have played at least a little competitive Magic, right? We've gathered a gauntlet and spent afternoons pitting our homebrews against the known metagame decks, or just showed up for a Friday draft? I assume we've all played Standard for fun as well, either as part of a game night or just to kill time between other stuff. Despite the fact that you're not only playing the same game, but probably nearly-identical decklists, the rounds at a PTQ or a GP feel entirely different than the ones at the kitchen table. Competitive Magic is exhausting, and not just because you spend six or eight hours in a row doing it (more than once I've left a grueling tournament completely spent, then gone to play a few rounds of cube draft at a friend's house to relax). That impossible to describe feeling that makes your hands shake, puts a pit in your stomach and makes it like nothing else matters is a great example of how qualia are very dependent on environment.
- Game mechanics: Have you ever played Munchkin? Apples to Apples? Killer Bunnies? All of those games are random as heck. It's impossible to give even a fraction of a damn about the outcome of the game (not to say they aren't fun). What makes those three games so light and casual, whereas a game like Chess can be so stressful that lots of people refuse to play at all? The game mechanics (random outcome vs. zero luck or hidden information) are the cause of the effect, but more fundamentally it's the game's qualia that change how people react to them. Chess is a game of pure conflict, your intellect striving against your opponent's, while Killer Bunnies is a comedy game, luck based, where the winner is literally determined by the toss of a die. I can't describe the actual qualia of either game but we know them pretty well anyway, probably well enough to feel them while reading this paragraph.
- Scope of the game: Here's the first factor contributing to a game's qualia that is (in my opinion) entirely driven by fluff. Almost all games are about conflict in one form or another, and almost all modern games try to couch that conflict in a metaphor of some type. MtG uses the struggle for power between omnipotent wizards, Diplomacy uses pre-WWI European tensions, Killer Bunnies lets the players take on the role of sociopathic rabbits questing for a magical wishing carrot or something I don't really know. Given identical game mechanics, a game dressed up as a war simulator and the same game dressed up as a Christmas simulator (“who can get the most presents???”) will have fundamentally different qualia. The best example I can think of here are the differences between Twilight Imperium (the best board game) and Game of Thrones (maybe the second best). If you haven't played them, they aren't identical, but they are both turn based, VP based games of territory control, with minimal die rolling, open info aside from a hand of cards that can be used to change the properties of battle, and a strong focus on inter-player diplomacy (maybe they're more similar than I thought). The main difference is that Twilight Imperium is a game of intergalactic space combat, while Game of Thrones is a battle between different Houses in the same realm. Twilight Imperium is a struggle between species and planets, Game of Thrones depicts small skirmishes between armies controlled by individual characters. As a game, Twilight Imperium feels vast and open, with distant, unknown enemies, while Game of Thrones feels like a dirty war against antagonists who are on your doorstep. Both games, though, take about five or ten turns to complete, player armies butt up against each other on the second or third turn, and each player has approximately the same number of tiles or spaces that they naturally get to occupy. Further, army size is limited in much the same way in both games, and forces are generated at about the same pace. The qualia of the games are much different, but if the mechanics and the fluff were switched, Game of Thrones would still be Game of Thrones and Twilight Imperium would still be Twilight Imperium.
Fluff and qualia, two sides of the same flavour coin. Like chocolate money. The fluff are the ingredients and spices that go into the thing, qualia are the tastes that the players get to savour. The perfect qualia are what designers are trying to achieve, but of course it's impossible to know how the player will ultimately experience it. The designer has to craft the fluff (and the game mechanics, and everything else), then deliver the package, hoping it has the desired results.