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Saturday, October 05, 2024
Arcs' generational conflict
Earlier this year, a "less competitive" version of Scrabble was released. Quote: “The makers of Scrabble, Mattel, have done some research and found that younger people, Gen Z people, don’t quite like the competitive nature of Scrabble.”. The same trend is also very visible in board games from a lot of other companies: Many of them minimize player interaction, making it so that every player just plays for himself, working on his game engine, while avoiding conflict with other players. I have played one game in which that went to the extreme of there being absolutely zero interaction between players, but far more frequently there is some very mild form of competition, like a common pool of cards to draft from, where you can grab a card somebody else wanted.
Arcs, one of the hottest games this year on the BGG hotness list, doesn't follow this trend. Just the opposite. In many ways it resembles much older games, like Risk, in that a players progress to victory can become rather obvious, and the other players can band together and stop that leading player by destroying his fleet, raiding his planets, and stealing his cards. Arcs actually has a rule about what happens if a player gets completely wiped off the board. That obviously doesn't sit well with people who think the original Scrabble is too competitive. And thus there are YouTube videos on "why Arcs isn't for you", and BGG reviews calling Arcs "mean".
I much prefer board games that have a good amount of player interaction, whether that is cooperative or competitive. Sitting around the same table, players are naturally more polite to each other, even in competitive situations. The toxicity, fed by anonymity and distance, of certain multiplayer online games isn't present in board games. Being in conflict with each other over a game situation while staying civil around the same table is good, it teaches us a lot about reasonable conflict resolution. There is an evolutionary aspect to games as tools to teach us about real world situations in safety, which is why even animals play.
Conflict and competition is part of the real world. Most of us are lucky enough to not have personally experienced armed conflict and war. But even if you are just working in a perfectly harmonious company culture, you can find yourself in a situation where both you and a colleague applied for the same supervisor position, and one of you is going to "win", while the other "loses". Helicopter parents trying to bring children up without ever letting them come into contact with any risk or any conflict aren't really doing their children a favor. Learning how to deal with risk, learning how to handle conflict is an important part of life. I wouldn't want to eliminate all competitiveness from board games, I think we would be losing something in the process.
I would agree that Arcs isn't a board game for everybody. It is not a casual game. While it doesn't have the most complex rules, it has enormous depth. You can't win the game once and then apply the same strategy in the next game: The combination of unpredictable randomness from cards and dice with even more unpredictable actions from other players strongly impacting you makes it necessary to constantly think on your feet and adjust. And that for 2 to 3 hours, or more if people are playing slowly. Arcs also isn't a game in which a first time player is going to do well against more experienced opponents. But for me there is something special about that sort of game, just like with Dune: Imperium: I love to reach the point after a few games where I feel that now I am playing competently, even if I am not winning.
Labels: Board Games
- posted by Tobold @ 10:26 AM Permanent Link
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I'm not sure that the shift towards less interactive board games is generational, because I'm not really sure the generation of board gamers changed.
What I see is gamers who were playing high-conflict games such as Twilight Imperium in 2005, were then playing low-conflict, moderate-interaction eurogames in 2015 (such as Terra Mystica and Imperial Settlers), and then the more or less the same people are playing low-interaction eurogames today. It might be not only the case of changing generations, but also case of changing tastes within generation.
The reason for this might be that the adults are often less competitive than teens, and it's often harder to play aggressively against your spouses and kids, so when people get those, they also tend to switch to less conflict-heavy games.
What I see is gamers who were playing high-conflict games such as Twilight Imperium in 2005, were then playing low-conflict, moderate-interaction eurogames in 2015 (such as Terra Mystica and Imperial Settlers), and then the more or less the same people are playing low-interaction eurogames today. It might be not only the case of changing generations, but also case of changing tastes within generation.
The reason for this might be that the adults are often less competitive than teens, and it's often harder to play aggressively against your spouses and kids, so when people get those, they also tend to switch to less conflict-heavy games.
I don't play board games but I'm very aware of what a huge growth area its been commercially these last few years. We barely used to sell them at all and now we have a whole room full of them and they're all over the rest of the shop, too.
I suspect the nature of board-gaming has changed enormously to include many people who would never have played in the past and also to become a much more social experience. In the context of "board game nights" where families and friends come together primarily to socialize with games as a kind of peg to hang the get-together on, it makes sense that co-operative games or at least non-competitive games would be more appropriate. Whether that's a generational shift or just a more general, social drift is another matter.
I suspect the nature of board-gaming has changed enormously to include many people who would never have played in the past and also to become a much more social experience. In the context of "board game nights" where families and friends come together primarily to socialize with games as a kind of peg to hang the get-together on, it makes sense that co-operative games or at least non-competitive games would be more appropriate. Whether that's a generational shift or just a more general, social drift is another matter.
Also, since Scrabble is literally the only board game I do play, I feel I ought to point out that it was originally conceived as a co-operative game, in which players try to achieve the highest collective score, and that it can still be played that way if preferred. No need for a new game, just a tweak to the rules.
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