Ameritrash versus Eurogames
Until recently I didn't know board/card games were worth playing (Monopoly and Risk are horrific multi-hour trials of attrition and endurance), let alone that there was a distinction between "Ameritrash" and "Eurogames" (and wargames).
The following comment sums it up as a philosophical (rather than historical or cluster-based) difference:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1268120#1268120
Essentially, Ameritrash prioritise drama and Eurogames prioritise elegance (wargames prioritise realism).
My initial attraction to Eurogames stemmed from the correlation with elegance and simplicity; I could get into a simple game faster, and find more people to teach it to and to play it with. Note that an elegant game with simple rules can actually be very complex, and an elegant game can have complex rules as long as there is an appropriate consequential depth.
The next link is an article ragging on Eurogames from the perspective of an Ameritrasher:
http://www.gameshark.com/features/616/Cracked-LCD-112-The-Game-That-Ruined-Eurogames.htm
Unfortunately it's not a very good article; rather than analysing the flaws of Eurogames it uses emotional assertions that provoke me into defending the attacked mechanics rather than examining them more closely. It turns what could have been an interesting review into a polemical statement of aesthetic values. Barnes caricatures Eurogamers, puts words into their mouths and attitudes into their heads, then attacks them with a thesaurus. He equates enjoyment with a casual playing style (kids with balloons), and sees the ideal of Eurogames being simple, short accessible games - party games with depth; current Eurogames as dry, solitaire planning puzzles; and Ameritrash as epic dramatic conflicts.
Barnes's understanding of conflict and interaction is weak, or at least biased; Wei-Hwa Huang, "onigame" and co-developer of Race for the Galaxy taxonomises interaction and randomness here (I disagree with the taxonomy but that's another post):
http://onigame.livejournal.com/39411.html
Clearly Eurogames have denial and leech interaction, and playing to benefit your opponent less than yourself is equatable with playing to disadvantage your opponent. In a related note, Barnes apparently got banned from BGG for being obnoxious (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/156320).
The Barnes article does cluster up Eurogame versus Ameritrash attributes:
* elegance - the rules lack exceptions and fit together well
* short playtimes
* accessibility to casual gamers, simple rules
* no player elimination
* more abstract, simpler, non-integrated (and non-violent) themes
* emphasis on process and efficiency planning, a lack of randomness leads to more predictable outcomes
* indirect conflict such as auctions and card drafting
In my view, the differences in preferred game mechanics between Eurogames and Ameritrash contribute to a massive psychological difference:
* Eurogames have less perceived conflict and perceived interaction, which changes the tone of the game; you won't attack someone outright, you'll outbid them or subtly block their plans. This means that you're less likely to pursue vendettas or gang up on people.
* Eurogames have structured turns that force you to choose between benefits, (great design-wise for strategic depth), which can feel very constraining to the player.
* Eurogames can be exercises in lookahead, which I find very taxing, while the payoff horizon of an Ameritrash is much nearer - you might be blocking shipping for an endgame in Puerto Rico rather than killing units for a definite benefit in Warhammer.
* Ameritrash games involve more counters, tokens, tracks, and action points and can feel like there is more going on, even though they might move in very correlated ways.
* Ameritrash games have lots of randomness, which increases the perceived uncertainty; Richard Garfield (designer of Magic the Gathering, http://www.threedonkeys.com/blog/) explains that you can have just as much uncertainty in a deterministic setup. If there are sufficient plausible plays, you don't know what your opponent will do whether there is hidden information or not.
* Ameritrash emphasises theme all the way, it frequently feels excisable in Eurogames.
Most of the time, I prefer the more muted emotion of indirect conflict; no one is going to fly into a rage because I've screwed them, and I can do my own thing if I'm feeling sleepy (which is most of the time). I've found Agricola's all-or-nothing choices (6 wood or plant vegetables) claustrophobic because you never can do a bit of everything; however this mechanic reduces the probability of a single dominant strategy that involves pursuing all the goals a little bit, which is good design-wise. I dislike lookahead and will lose games because I don't want to do the "if I do that, he'll do that, and then I'll do that, and then..." thing; I played chess a lot in my youth, and would rather leave that move-tree searching exercise to a computer. Puerto Rico offered enough options for each player that the uncertainty removed a lot of the lookahead.
I don't like chits and counters and the rest, especially if they can be simplified to something almost-as-good. I have no problems with randomness, though knowing statistics I find that it contributes less to strategic depth than many people think. I've found some Eurogames very bland, and I prefer sci-fi/supernatural themes to the historical.
Having played a lot of computer/video games that are structurally Ameritrash, I enjoy the Eurogame focus on elegant and unusual mechanics. Computer games tend to design their "units" or "characters" in isolation on top of a conventional system with perhaps one innovation; this leads to insoluble balance issues and a sameness of experience between games of the same genre. Holistically designed games have fewer rules exceptions, and start off closer to being balanced, and the fundamental mechanics are more likely to be unusual, cohesive, and interact in interesting ways.
The following comment sums it up as a philosophical (rather than historical or cluster-based) difference:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1268120#1268120
Essentially, Ameritrash prioritise drama and Eurogames prioritise elegance (wargames prioritise realism).
My initial attraction to Eurogames stemmed from the correlation with elegance and simplicity; I could get into a simple game faster, and find more people to teach it to and to play it with. Note that an elegant game with simple rules can actually be very complex, and an elegant game can have complex rules as long as there is an appropriate consequential depth.
The next link is an article ragging on Eurogames from the perspective of an Ameritrasher:
http://www.gameshark.com/features/616/Cracked-LCD-112-The-Game-That-Ruined-Eurogames.htm
Unfortunately it's not a very good article; rather than analysing the flaws of Eurogames it uses emotional assertions that provoke me into defending the attacked mechanics rather than examining them more closely. It turns what could have been an interesting review into a polemical statement of aesthetic values. Barnes caricatures Eurogamers, puts words into their mouths and attitudes into their heads, then attacks them with a thesaurus. He equates enjoyment with a casual playing style (kids with balloons), and sees the ideal of Eurogames being simple, short accessible games - party games with depth; current Eurogames as dry, solitaire planning puzzles; and Ameritrash as epic dramatic conflicts.
Barnes's understanding of conflict and interaction is weak, or at least biased; Wei-Hwa Huang, "onigame" and co-developer of Race for the Galaxy taxonomises interaction and randomness here (I disagree with the taxonomy but that's another post):
http://onigame.livejournal.com/39411.html
Clearly Eurogames have denial and leech interaction, and playing to benefit your opponent less than yourself is equatable with playing to disadvantage your opponent. In a related note, Barnes apparently got banned from BGG for being obnoxious (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/156320).
The Barnes article does cluster up Eurogame versus Ameritrash attributes:
* elegance - the rules lack exceptions and fit together well
* short playtimes
* accessibility to casual gamers, simple rules
* no player elimination
* more abstract, simpler, non-integrated (and non-violent) themes
* emphasis on process and efficiency planning, a lack of randomness leads to more predictable outcomes
* indirect conflict such as auctions and card drafting
In my view, the differences in preferred game mechanics between Eurogames and Ameritrash contribute to a massive psychological difference:
* Eurogames have less perceived conflict and perceived interaction, which changes the tone of the game; you won't attack someone outright, you'll outbid them or subtly block their plans. This means that you're less likely to pursue vendettas or gang up on people.
* Eurogames have structured turns that force you to choose between benefits, (great design-wise for strategic depth), which can feel very constraining to the player.
* Eurogames can be exercises in lookahead, which I find very taxing, while the payoff horizon of an Ameritrash is much nearer - you might be blocking shipping for an endgame in Puerto Rico rather than killing units for a definite benefit in Warhammer.
* Ameritrash games involve more counters, tokens, tracks, and action points and can feel like there is more going on, even though they might move in very correlated ways.
* Ameritrash games have lots of randomness, which increases the perceived uncertainty; Richard Garfield (designer of Magic the Gathering, http://www.threedonkeys.com/blog/) explains that you can have just as much uncertainty in a deterministic setup. If there are sufficient plausible plays, you don't know what your opponent will do whether there is hidden information or not.
* Ameritrash emphasises theme all the way, it frequently feels excisable in Eurogames.
Most of the time, I prefer the more muted emotion of indirect conflict; no one is going to fly into a rage because I've screwed them, and I can do my own thing if I'm feeling sleepy (which is most of the time). I've found Agricola's all-or-nothing choices (6 wood or plant vegetables) claustrophobic because you never can do a bit of everything; however this mechanic reduces the probability of a single dominant strategy that involves pursuing all the goals a little bit, which is good design-wise. I dislike lookahead and will lose games because I don't want to do the "if I do that, he'll do that, and then I'll do that, and then..." thing; I played chess a lot in my youth, and would rather leave that move-tree searching exercise to a computer. Puerto Rico offered enough options for each player that the uncertainty removed a lot of the lookahead.
I don't like chits and counters and the rest, especially if they can be simplified to something almost-as-good. I have no problems with randomness, though knowing statistics I find that it contributes less to strategic depth than many people think. I've found some Eurogames very bland, and I prefer sci-fi/supernatural themes to the historical.
Having played a lot of computer/video games that are structurally Ameritrash, I enjoy the Eurogame focus on elegant and unusual mechanics. Computer games tend to design their "units" or "characters" in isolation on top of a conventional system with perhaps one innovation; this leads to insoluble balance issues and a sameness of experience between games of the same genre. Holistically designed games have fewer rules exceptions, and start off closer to being balanced, and the fundamental mechanics are more likely to be unusual, cohesive, and interact in interesting ways.