The Two Types Of Work
2025/07/18, Mark
Imagine that someone made an adaptation of Pong (the old Atari game from the 1970’s) as a board game. This would be a strange thing to do, but bear with me. Two players sit across from each other at a table. They place down rectangular tiles (which represent their paddles). They place down a small disc-shaped cardboard token with an arrow on it (which represents the ball and the direction it’s moving).
Being a physical board game, play proceeds in a turn-based fashion through a sequence of rounds. A round starts with the ball moving in a random direction and ends when one of the players scores a point. Player-1 is responsible for randomizing the initial ball direction, so –
Player-1 rolls a 20-sided die (and gets 15)
Player-1 multiplies 15/20 * 360 degrees = 270 degrees
Player-1 uses a compass and rotates the ball token to 270 degrees
After this setup step, we enter the main phase of the round, where the players alternately move their paddle tiles back and forth trying to score points. The turn order within a round is randomized to give equal strategic advantage to each player, so the players will have a roll-off to determine who goes first –
Player-1 rolls a d6 (and gets 3)
Player-2 rolls a d6 (and gets 4, so Player-1 has to move first)
Now the players commit their moves, knowing that each paddle can move up to 1 inch per turn.
Player-1 decides they want to be on the left hand side of the board
Player-1 uses a ruler to measure an inch
Player-1 slides their paddle tile to the new location
Player-2 decides they want to move just slightly to the right
Player-2 uses a ruler to measure a half-inch
Player-2 slides their paddle tile to the new location
Now that the players have each moved their paddles, they need to update the position of the ball. In this game the ball moves 2 inches per turn, and it’s Player-2’s responsibility to update it.
Player-2 uses a ruler to measure 2 inches in the direction the ball token is facing
Player-2 slides the ball token forward
Start reading again here if your eyes have glossed over… :-)
I think you will agree that this game sounds rather tedious (and we haven’t even had to make the ball bounce off a wall yet). When you play Pong: the video game, a lot of this work is done for you by the computer. Of course, the computer doesn’t do all the work, since then the players would just be passively watching a movie. Let’s put the work into two categories:
Type-1 Work
Player-1 rolls a 20-sided die (and gets 15)
Player-1 multiplies 15/20 * 360 degrees = 270 degrees
Player-1 uses a compass and rotates the token to 270 degrees
Player-1 rolls a d6 (and gets 3)
Player-2 rolls a d6 (and gets 4, so Player-1 has to move first)
Player-1 uses a ruler to measure an inch
Player-2 uses a ruler to measure a half-inch
Player-2 slides their paddle tile to the new location
Player-2 uses a ruler to measure 2 inches in the direction the ball token is facing
Player-2 slides the ball token forward
Type-2 Work
Player-1 decides they want to be on the left hand side of the board
Player-1 slides their paddle tile to the new location
Player-2 decides they want to move slightly to the right
Player-2 slides their paddle tile to the new location
When you play Pong: the video game, you only need to do Type-2 work. You make strategic decisions about where to go, and then you execute your plan with some basic physical action (moving a joystick). When you play Pong: the board game, you need to do both types of work, because there’s no computer to do the Type-1 work for you. In almost every physical tabletop game, the players need to do both types of work.
For the most part, Type-1 work seems to be more tedious, and Type-2 work seems to be “the fun part.” It is useful to characterize it in a bit more detail though. Pong is an abstraction of the sport of table tennis. The “fantasy” of Pong is that you are playing table tennis. Consider this mapping –
Pong (Abstraction) —> Table Tennis (Fantasy)
Pong Player —> Table Tennis Player
Deciding where to move —> Deciding where/how to stand
Moving their joystick —> Moving their body/paddle
Each action of Type-2 work directly corresponds to what the player is doing within the fantasy of the game. Each action of Type-1 work corresponds to either something the environment should do “by itself” (a ball moving and bouncing), or to something which is an artifact of the abstraction (a roll-off is required to normalize turn-order advantage because the abstraction is turn-based).
As an aside, in this example all of the dice rolling happens to be Type-1 work, but this isn’t always the case. For example, rolling dice for an attack in D&D maps well into the fantasy as casting a fireball, or swinging an axe. That’s why Scepter will eventually support three different kinds of dice rolling (but more on this later).
As the amount of Type-1 work in a game increases, it becomes harder to maintain the suspension of disbelief. As the amount of Type-2 work in a game increases, players more easily enter the trance-like state of mind known as “group flow.”
If you’ve experienced group flow during a tabletop session then you already know how much fun it is. It really feels like visiting another world, and your friends are there with you (getting up to shenanigans no doubt).
If you haven’t experienced group flow during a tabletop session, you’re certainly not alone – it’s a fragile state of mind, and reaching it is hard work. It’s such hard work you might wonder if technology could do it for you – and we’re starting to see that yes, it can. Leveraging recent advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer vision, we’re building Scepter, our platform and game console that will eventually automate all Type-1 work in tabletop games. What worlds do you want to visit?
