I learned a new term today, it is Intelligence Augmentation (IA). Many of us have heard about AI, or Automated Intelligence, but the term IA was something I haven’t really considered much until now. It’s not a new concept, in fact it’s as old as dirt. If you’ve ever notched a stick to keep count of something, looked up a mortgage payment in a mortgage table, used a slide-rule or one of those fancy new electronic calculators, you have Augmented your Intelligence.
IA is simply the act of using an external means to keep track of something or perform minor decisions for us while we focus on more important matters. How many of us currently have a cell phone nearby which is sifting through news to bring relevant information to our attention, keeping track of our schedules, and providing a link to the “Hive Mind” so we can ask it just about anything. IA has become an integral part of our lives. Many people fear AI (Artificial Intelligence) will somehow take over and make us obsolete, but in reality, we’ve been using technology to enhance our intelligence from day one and this can lead to newer and better versions of ourselves.
There are many examples of IA in tabletop games. The unique decks for each character in “Un-Matched” spare the player from having to create a custom deck and trying to get it to work properly with each character. The player boards in many games like “Scythe” and “Brass” reveal bonuses and actions as you remove components or re-arrange them on the player board. This reduces the rules overhead and pushes the player towards the fun and interesting decisions rather than the menial bookkeeping and minor decisions that don’t contribute much to the gameplay. Even a minor thing like placing an action token onder each spider token on my “Arachnid” game helps to reduce unnecessary rules overhead. As soon as a player places a new spider onto the web, an action token is revealed providing an additional player action.
Many of us have experienced AI in some form in a board game. It may have been an “Automa” deck used in a solo variant of a game like “Wingspan”, or perhaps the “Bots” used in “Power Grid” or “Root” to emulate additional players. Most of us, however, may not have considered how prevalent IA is in our board games and life in general. It is good to know that games are trying to make us smarter and our gaming experience more fun. I will gladly hand over the boring bits of a game to some device, or even an app. if this means more fun for me.
I welcome your thoughts on this?
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