Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
 
Player interaction in board games

This year, Mattel launched a new version of Scrabble, that is less competitive. Market research had shown that younger people didn't like the competitiveness of Scrabble. This is part of a larger trend in board games. Older games, like Monopoly or Risk, are frequently about taking stuff away from others to win. Many modern games are much less aggressive, and some have gone so far as to avoid any player interaction at all.

Over 30 years ago, I was part of a student organization that organized once a year a long weekend in a house in the Austrian alps for first year students and older students to get together and get to know each other. At the time I frequently brought the board game Junta, because it best plays with 7 people, and outside of a large group weekend getaway it is hard to get 7 people together for a 4-hour game. But Junta is a game that is not only competitive, but also somewhat evil about it: There is a lot of negotiation, and you can't really win without betraying somebody. The game had a lot of success at these weekends, but I know of at least one case where among the players were a couple, and one of them felt an in-game betrayal was so serious, that the couple split up afterwards. It isn't always easy to separate feelings and trust from outside of the game and inside the game.

The biggest trend in making competitive games less hurtful to others was an increase of games where there was less "take that" player vs. player interaction, and more of a parallel race for victory points. It partially solved the problem of better players crushing less good players, because at least the less good player could still in repeated plays improve his personal score and feel good about it, even if better players had far more points. A huge percentage of Eurogames these days work with victory points. The more thematic American style games had a different solution: Cooperative games, with all players together playing against the game. You can win in Gloomhaven, but you can't win *against* another player, only *with* him.

The question is, if you want to make a competitive game, how do you let players interact with each other? A typical answer of those Eurogames in which you compete over victory points is that players interact with each other by competing for in game resources. There is a whole style of worker placement games, where the fundamental rule is that only a limited number of workers can be placed on a spot, so that the players who goes there first can block others. In card-based games there are often drafting mechanics, where again you drafting a card means that somebody else doesn't get it. Good players often are able to understand not only their own situation in game, but also that of the other players, and sometimes placing a worker to strategically block another player, or "hate drafting" a card so somebody else doesn't get it, is the winning move.

But there is a growing trend to make it even less likely that one player upsets another, by limiting player interaction even further. For example Wyrmspan removed some player interaction, like the competition for food dice, from its predecessor Wingspan. I played one game this year, Imperial Miners, which had gone all the way to remove *all* player interaction. There is nothing you can do in Imperial Miners that would influence another player at all. It is a "multiplayer solo" game, where playing it with other players just means you play the same game simultaneously and compare you scores, without one player being able to help or hinder another.

As some cooperative games had an alpha gamer problem, with better players telling other players what to do, the trend towards less player interaction even exists in cooperative games. Congratulations to Daybreak / e-Mission for winning the Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 award, but the one thing I don't like about this otherwise great game is how limited the interaction between players is, with only a few cards specifically allowing you to help another player. They probably wanted to prevent alpha gamers from bossing around other players by having each player keep his hand of cards secret and building his own tableau, but if nobody makes an effort to actually cooperate you can end up with a game in which everybody does his thing completely alone. The only positive thing is that once players decide to cooperate, they'll see that it is more likely to win that way.

While consistent with modern trends, I am not absolutely certain that preventing players from "hurting" each other in game is really such a good idea. A "game", by definition, is a safer environment, which can often be useful for learning about interactions without real harm. Maybe somebody who got betrayed in Diplomacy will learn a valuable lesson about trust, and then not so easily fall for the next online scam. The real world isn't free from conflict and aggression, so learning how to deal with it in a competitive game is maybe not such a bad idea. Having no player interaction at all certainly can't be the right solution, as then what is the purpose of gathering players around a table at all, if they don't get to interact?

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- posted by Tobold @ 12:41 PM Permanent Link
Comments:
I can see how a 'multiplayer solo' game like Imperial Miners could still be enjoyable as you can see the other players' progress, and it would be interesting to watch how they are doing, as well as the 'race' aspect. I suppose it's possible that you would choose between safe or risky plays depending on how your board compares to others.

Still, it only really matters if the 'nasty' games disappear altogether. If they are less popular, it's not altogether a bad thing because they only suit some players, and players who are forced to play them can often get mad and quit the game or start griefing in the 'wrong' way.
# posted by Blogger Gerry Quinn : 23/7/24 13:45
 
A friend of mine explained multiplayer best when I started playing MUDs with him long ago. He said that he envisioned entering a game where everyone helped everyone else succeed against "evil". However, he quickly learned that other players were the "evil" due to what he called IGM ... I get mine.

Anytime the players can compete for anything, even if on the same team, there is going to be betrayal. If the grocery stores run low of food in your area for a long period of time, when people start getting hungry, you'll see competition for food.

The best coop games in my opinion allow a player to only make teammates stronger. I think passive positive bonuses when playing with teammates are best if you truly want to make a coop. Not everyone you play with on the same team ends up being your friend, being fair, or having the team's goals as a priority. I've seen things as simple as damage meters turn friends into enemies as one attempts to top the other. Griefing even among teammates is a thing.

If a game has any competition between teammates, then players on teams where they are truly working together will dominate random groups of strangers to the point where the game is no longer fun for both sides. WoW battlegrounds is a perfect example. I've been on teams where I played with a guild, and we dominated PUG teams to the point where it wasn't competitive. I've also been on PUGs where we barely scored a point, much less a kill because people refused to work together due to IGM or griefing.
# posted by Blogger B Jordan : 23/7/24 14:56
 
You make a fair point of the educational aspect of boardgames.

On the other hand, aren't boardgames as entertainment a repriece of the shite of the real world?
# posted by Blogger Caldazar : 23/7/24 15:44
 
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