Is Wingspan actually a game at all? Is it art?

August 17, 2021 10:12 AM

How a Board Game About Birds Became a Surprise Blockbuster
posted by Mchelly (38 comments total)

I’m not a board game person or a bird person, and I’m pretty bad at Wingspan, but I play it sometimes with friends who are bird-loving board game people who are great at Wingspan. I always have a lot of fun, especially because I get to listen to their commentary on how accurate the bird facts are and how good the game mechanics are. It’s one of those games that’s satisfying even if you’re losing the whole time, and it’s beautiful to boot.
posted by chaiyai at 10:44 AM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]

What a wonderful article. Of course Wingspan is a game and a brilliantly designed and developed one at that.

My only minor quibble with the article is that it starts out with pointing out the success of Wingspan has been in part by showing that games can be broader and more than what was traditionally thought - and then in the later paragraphs questions whether it is a game or something else. I get that it's for a bit of rhetorical effect, but games can absolutely be art and commentary and I'm eager to move past the bit where we are all astonished games aren't just something to keep your eight year old busy and on to deeper discussions of what games tell us about life.
posted by meinvt at 10:48 AM on August 17, 2021 [16 favorites]

It’s so pretty.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:53 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Agreed with meinvt. It's the equivalent of all those "Bam! Pow! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!" articles that were everywhere 20 years ago. There has been lots of really interesting innovation in game design for a long time before Wingspan and it will continue after.
posted by dfan at 10:58 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

Worth noting that over on BoardGameGeek it's #1 among Family games and #20 overall for all board games ever. That's very high praise.
posted by Nelson at 10:58 AM on August 17, 2021 [10 favorites]

This article is like someone played Monopoly, seventy decades of Carcassone, and then Wingspan. OMG it's pretty! And not about castles! OMFG not competitive! yea this is groundbreaking stuff dude. And she used NumBErs and mATh to design it? WHOA. It'll be so out of of place on my boardgame shelf. FFS.
posted by bashing rocks together at 11:01 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

"I get that it's for a bit of rhetorical effect, but games can absolutely be art and commentary and I'm eager to move past the bit where we are all astonished games aren't just something to keep your eight year old busy and on to deeper discussions of what games tell us about life."

I wonder how long it took radio, movies, and television to be considered artistic instead just being there to "keep your 8 year old busy?" The old photos of kids sitting around a radio certainly make me think that these technologies went through a similar genesis. I know for sure reading went through such a genesis, especially for women.

“Jane Austen is actually mocking a lot of the anxiety that surrounded women reading novels,” Barbara M. Benedict, an English professor who has written on “Northanger Abbey,” told Op-Talk. “Novel reading for women was associated with inflaming of sexual passions; with liberal, radical ideas; with uppityness; with the attempt to overturn the status quo.”

“Northanger Abbey” makes fun of “the stupidity of a social reaction that portrayed women as so stupid that they would not be able tell difference between reality and fiction, that they would really think when they were reading a novel that they were reading a blueprint for their own lives,” Ms. Benedict added.

Anyway, I suspect it will take a similar amount of time before games are viewed as art by the mainstream.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:01 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

Which is not to criticize Wingspan at all - but I would like to read an article that actually talked about how Wingspan became a success, and did so with a little more insight into the hundreds of other games produced each year with the same features this guy thinks are unique.
posted by bashing rocks together at 11:04 AM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

None of us are good Wingspan players in the house but it is a lovely game and it is a joy to look at. We liked it so much we gave it to my kid's teacher (who banded birds in her graduate school days) who had a tough year (generally and personally) but had been pretty good with my son with his challenges. We liked looking at it so much we got the Switch version as well.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:04 AM on August 17, 2021

I mean, the answer to that is probably the same as the answer to why a particular book or television show took off when other, arguably better ones did not: random chance.
posted by Scattercat at 11:05 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

No, no. The answer is birbs.
posted by feckless at 11:11 AM on August 17, 2021 [25 favorites]

I like Wingspan, but I wouldn't call it art. I don't think it is trying to accomplish anything beyond being a fun diversion in an attractive package. Games can certainly be art and I think that in order for them to become art they need to be doing something with their mechanics and game systems that goes beyond play. Being an attractive object, in my opinion, is not enough for a game to be art. The art must be experiential or procedural otherwise it is graphic/product design, which can also be art, but that's not the game being art.

I also think this article kind of underplays the diversity of the board game space. Patchwork has been a darling of board games for years now and it is about quilting. Not to mention beautiful games like Tokaido, Sagrada and Arboretum, which are themed around taking a pleasant walk, stained glass, and trees. Just about every style of board game has at least one beautiful object version of it with a theme that isn't based in violence or medieval villages.

Not to downplay Wingspan. It is a great engine builder with a lovely theme and nice components. I suggest you make the bird calls whenever you play a bird. I also agree with feckless, the success is because birbs. People love birbs.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 11:16 AM on August 17, 2021 [14 favorites]

Wow Ashwagandha, I had no idea about the Switch version. I bought the board game for my wife a couple of years ago (she loves birds and always says that we should play board games) but we've never played it, or more accurately we opened it up once, gave it a go, and then decided to save it for another time which hasn't come yet. I bet by playing on the Switch we could play on our own and learn how to play it so that then when we had time to play on the board game we'd all know what we're doing.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:22 AM on August 17, 2021

We're a Wingspan household and enjoy the game a lot, but a few things kind of bug me about it. The theme is great and a refreshing departure from other similar games, but in play we kind of ignore the birds themselves which seems like a lost pedagogical opportunity. This is enforced by the overall goal of attracting a somewhat random assortment of birds to a preserve regardless of climate, geography and such, which is kind of absurd. And yes, it's beautiful compared to most board games, but that's a pretty low bar unfortunately. Board games are such a natural application of a graphic designer's talent I am perpetually shocked at how poorly games are designed.
posted by St. Oops at 11:23 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Wingspan is amazing! Once again, if you play it with us, you HAVE to read the bird fact and it's span, kthxbai
posted by Kitteh at 11:47 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Also, if you end up getting a hawk or similar, you are the person with Murder Birbs for the duration of the game. (The Murder Birbs tactic usually ends up winning the game.)
posted by Kitteh at 11:50 AM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

OMFG not competitive! yea this is groundbreaking stuff dude. And she used NumBErs and mATh to design it? WHOA. It'll be so out of of place on my boardgame shelf. FFS.

Boardgaming is still a relatively niche topic and I feel like mainstream media coverage might eventually get better if we had way less 'comic-book guy' energy around it.
posted by Think_Long at 11:58 AM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]

Like Kitteh, I try my best to win with murder birds
posted by advicepig at 11:58 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

Worth noting that over on BoardGameGeek it's #1 among Family games and #20 overall for all board games ever. That's very high praise.

BoardGameGeek average rating: 8.1/10

Not surprisingly, those board game geeks are a critical bunch.
posted by meowzilla at 12:04 PM on August 17, 2021

Here is the rating scale for BoardGameGeek. People like to leave some headroom in their ratings (I've only rated four games a 10 and they're all over sixty years old). 8.1 is near-universal acclaim, and shouldn't be interpreted as a B-.
posted by dfan at 12:16 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Birbs are great. Article, less great.

I usually think of myself as not giving a shit about plot, I play board games and do puzzles for the mechanics. But it turns out that's not quite right; I just don't care much if it's all castles and knights. Tokaido is beautiful, I like Sagrada, and some of that like isn't about the mechanics of the games.

Other people have pointed out the problems with the article; I do think there's a valid question as to why this particular game got some action outside of the more intense gaming set, and maybe that is just random; otherwise, what sets it apart from other beautiful, non-tradiationally themed, good-mechanics games?

So, I don't *mind* castles and knights, but I actively *like* birbs and other pleasant themes. Birbs!
posted by nat at 12:31 PM on August 17, 2021

I enjoy playing Wingspan; what I find a drawback about it (and maybe others view as a positive) is that I have little interaction with the other players; we converse & chat, but there's not many ways to interact in terms of the game mechanics, either in terms of interference or support; the only real frustration I've seen between players is over food selection, which is just everyone dealing with a small resource pool. But for the most part, you just kind of build your own bird engine and watch other players build theirs, and then score everything.

It's not a major drawback, it is just what I have learned is part of playing Wingspan. And the birds are cool.
posted by nubs at 1:11 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

nubs, I think that is a quality of most engine builders. I feel like most of them play like solitaire games that you socialize with friends while playing. I think that is actually a selling point for a lot of people. You get gentle competition and it is better fit for players of multiple skill levels.

That said, you can pursue somewhat hostile strategies in Wingspan:

- Counter-drafting (i.e. buying up birds so others can't get them)

- Resource control/removal. You can play a lot of birds that remove resources for points and ultimately deny the rest of the players a specific food type if you are aggressive.

- Play for birds that have abilities that trigger when other players do something. This can force players NOT to play sub-optimally so that they don't give you free food/eggs.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:20 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

what I find a drawback about it (and maybe others view as a positive) is that I have little interaction with the other players; we converse & chat, but there's not many ways to interact in terms of the game mechanics, either in terms of interference or support; the only real frustration I've seen between players is over food selection, which is just everyone dealing with a small resource pool. But for the most part, you just kind of build your own bird engine and watch other players build theirs, and then score everything.

wait you don't create origin stories for your birbs with the other players
posted by Kitteh at 1:36 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

I agree that engine builders don't encourage/facilitate player interaction; for whatever reason, I notice it more with Wingspan, and I don't know why.
posted by nubs at 1:41 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Wingspan is THE BEST and I will evangelize about it to ANYONE who will listen and even to anyone who won't. IT IS SO GOOD.

Rules to play by:
~Each player must read the bird facts when playing a card. No exceptions.
~Have a bird call app ready to go and you can play the calls of the birds you play!

It's pretty and calming and slightly slow but not too slow and it doesn't have the colonialization problem that so many board games (yes, even board games that I enjoy) have.
posted by cooker girl at 1:52 PM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

What I've learned from this thread is that I want to play Wingspan with Kitteh.
posted by cooker girl at 1:53 PM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]

You can also play the competitive side of the round end goals, either to get the points yourself or as an attempt to get your opponents to chase you and detract from their possibly better moves. Plus one of the expansions adds more interaction. Some added birds allow you to take a food from an opponent; they can replace it from the feeder.
posted by expialidocious at 2:54 PM on August 17, 2021

Wingspan is a great, entry-level Euro with an unusual theme. Totally deserves all the credit it has gotten. The Ticket To Ride of it's era.
posted by Windopaene at 5:21 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Boardgaming is still a relatively niche topic and I feel like mainstream media coverage might eventually get better if we had way less 'comic-book guy' energy around it.

I agree, and another thing that annoyed me in the article, as a woman who plays board games, was the emphasis on boardgaming finally having found a sweet pretty non-competitive art piece that will enable all the board game men to entice their wives into playing, since women can't play any of the existing games.
posted by bashing rocks together at 6:04 PM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]

Katherine Cross has an interesting observation about this article, which I think speaks to some of the concerns here re: how Wingspan is framed as an antidote to designer board games:

...a key sociological insight here is understanding that people respond to culture as much, if not more than, biology. In other words, with certain kinds of board games, women on the outside perceive the space to be male dominated and associate a theme or genre (e.g. wargames) with that dominion; they then look elsewhere. But it's not the theme per se that's repulsive. And articles like Kois', which are well-meaning and even celebratory of diversity, risk undermining that by making a reductive point that's essentially "women will like a game about pretty birds but reject a game about mean ol' robots." Meanwhile like half my friends do gunpla... in a world where all else was equal but men had built an exclusionary culture around Pusheen games, then Pusheen games would largely be avoided by women. The theme is not the problem. It's the culture built around them.

posted by Merus at 7:41 PM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]

I love Wingspan, I'm a bird nerd, and I love the bird artwork. So I actually bought one of the original drawings: the Mourning Dove. Not a print - the actual drawing used for the card. It's properly framed and on my wall, and I'm a bit in awe of it.

I also bought four prints: Cardinal for winter, Robin for spring, Red-winged Blackbird for summer, Wild Turkey for fall. They rotate according to the season in my game room, and all of them are visitors at my bird feeders right outside the window (okay, not the Red-winged Blackbird...but they live a block away in a small wetland). (And we do have Wild Turkeys in the neighborhood...stubborn jerks but they're so cool looking.)

I'm also a convention-going strategic and euro board gamer. Wingspan is the synthesis of both of my nerd hobbies
posted by Gray Duck at 8:21 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

Prospective Wingspan players should be forewarned that the Oceania expansion, as played out of the box, breaks the game - it introduces a new, sixth type of birdfood, nectar, which is wild for the purpose of all other types of food, which you accumulate points by using, and which you lose if you don't use it fast enough. The problem is that with these new rules, the game becomes entirely about pursuing and using nectar, which sucks.

After a lot of discussion on BGG, players have decided that the best way to deal with it is simply to ignore the rule that nectar should be treated as wild, but just instead just treat it as another resource, which rebalances the game almost entirely.

(The European expansion is excellent.)
posted by mightygodking at 9:47 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]

MetaFilter: best to win with murder birds
posted by Gelatin at 6:32 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I love Wingspan, I'm a bird nerd, and I love the bird artwork.
posted by Gray Duck at 11:21 PM on August 17

Eponysterical!
posted by Gelatin at 6:40 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's a great game and will always stay in my collection. It doesn't re-invent the genre, or even any of the mechanisms found in modern board games, but it flows nicely and looks beautiful, with premium components (probably thanks to Stonemaier) and the amazing artwork.
The article mentions the "beautiful, hand-painted cards", but doesn't mention the artists, which most modern games also display prominently on the front of the box, alonside the designer's name.
Without the artwork of Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, & Beth Sobel, I don't think Wingspan would be as popular.
posted by Laura in Canada at 8:12 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

The digital versions of Wingspan play each bird’s unique song when you tap that bird’s card.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:12 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Shut Up & Sit Down have (like usual) a good and thoughtful (and entertaining) review of Wingspan, for those interested.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:46 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]