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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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One of my sins as a gamer is that I don’t have the best tolerance for slow play. Analysis Paralysis is something that not everyone can help and I do try to be understanding about it. However, I feel that all games have a natural rhythm and tempo to them. When someone plays in a way that grinds that to a crawl, it’s frustrating for me.
Part of the problem, I know, is that I have to budget my gaming time and when someone starts chipping away at my game time, sometimes to the point where I have to seriously think about leaving before the game is over, it really aggravates me. I know that’s part of the problem because I play plenty of games by e-mail and I can wait days in between moves without a problem.
(People arriving chronically late when they know that people have to leave at a certain point is a rant for another time)
Another part of my problem with AP is that, in addition to the whole sense of game flow and time management thing, I feel that AP makes games more antisocial. If a game gets derailed because we’ve accidentally started a fun conversation, that doesn’t bother me. One of the reasons I game is to have a good time with my friends. However, if a player is trying to create a mental map of the next several moves, there’s not a lot of chatter going on. If everyone else starts talking, we start becoming one of the AP’s player’s pet peeves 
It doesn’t help that I am one of those people who likes to learn a game by playing it fast and loose and worrying about playing well and winning after I’ve gotten some repetition under my belt. Some of my friends learn games by carefully going over each piece and turning it over in their minds.
Of course, not all game turns are created equal. Some games demand more concentration and will take more time. For instance, every time I have ever played Java, every turn took a long time for every player and was made with great deliberation. And that felt perfectly natural to me. That was the right kind of pacing for Java.
On the other hand, I also remember a game of Carcassonne where, in order to speed the game up, we would draw our next tile at the end of our turn so we would have time to plan out our next move. One player, who was not a newby at Carcassonne, took longer than everyone else combined. He would make a move and the other four of us would complete our moves in about the time it took for him to draw a new tile. Looking back, our impatience made us play faster but it was still ridiculous.
Many games do have a crucial point where you have to stop and make a critical decision. While I know AP players who will argue that every move is a critical decision, I don’t agree with that. In most games, you pick a path and it is not going to fork every single time. If you know what you want to do, you can usually narrow your viable choices down to a few options. Sometimes you make a crucial decision. Other times, you are just playing that decision out. There is a time and place to take your time and that time is not every time.
Go, a game that I don’t play nearly as often as I would like to, is a powerful example of this. In the course of a game, you will be forced to make decisions that will define the outcome of the game. One stone, in the right place, can become the deciding factor of the entire game. That being said, a lot of the other stones are just finishing what that one critical stone started.
Okay, so now that I’ve talked about it, what do I do about it?
Well, the first thing that I should ask if I am in a game that has actual AP or if someone is using gamesmanship. (See, I get to use a word I learned on this blog!) Are they really trying to figure out what move they want to make or are they just wasting my time in order to make me frustrated and play badly.
If the former is the case, then I need to be patient. Unintentional Analysis Paralysis isn’t intentionally rude. It’s just tragic. Intentionally being a jerk, though, is rude and I just need to keep my mind on the game. Either that or lose my temper and focus on crushing them, even it makes me lose the game in a childish temper tantrum. That works too. 
Seriously, though, if you know you are dealing with probable AP players, you need to plan accordingly. Adjust your expectations about how many games you are going to get in on a game night. Instead of five games, you might only be playing one. Choose your games carefully. Does Le Havre cause his brain to melt down? Then you probably don’t want to put that on the table.
Most importantly, ask yourself this question: do I really want to play with this guy? If the answer is yes, then hopefully repetition will help him play faster.
Analysis Paralysis is a crime but hopefully we can find it in our heart to make it a pardonable one.
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