There are many fully cooperative board games, where all the players work together to win or lose as a group. There are many partially cooperative board games, which can only be won through cooperation and negotiation. There are many competitive games for 3+ players where it is common for two players to make strongly mutually beneficial deals, especially when the third player is currently winning. There are many competitive games that run multiple rounds, where placement in each round matters, not just who gets first place, so negotiating to end up in second instead of third has value in the long run. There are many competitive games where short to long term, but not usually permanent, alliances are critical to victory, and many mutually beneficial decisions are negotiated in those alliances.
As a rationalist, I don’t put much stock in the conclusions reached from what seem to be extremely faulty premises.
As a gamer, I don’t expect to find a well designed game when you seem to have missed or ignored so much prior art that could better inform your design.
There are many fully cooperative board games, where all the players work together to win or lose as a group.
But these do not involve bargaining or compromise, because all players are aligned. (They may involve strategizing about which goals to prioritize, but this is not the same thing.)
There are many partially cooperative board games, which can only be won through cooperation and negotiation.
Based on my experience in the board game hobbyist community over a number of years:
Games that describe themselves as partially-cooperative are a very small percentage of all board games
They have a reputation in the community for being terrible
Mostly they are just typical MostPointsWins games except that there is also a possible outcome of “everyone loses”
Their payout functions are often so loosely defined that players cannot even agree on whether they are zero-sum or not (and then players get mad at each other because each of them thinks the other is intentionally throwing the game). In particular, it is usually not clear whether “everyone loses” is different from a “tie”, and if so how.
My model says that approximately all of these are designed by people who are interested in the partially-cooperative story but aren’t particularly paying attention to the strategy of the game
That said, I surely haven’t played every game in this category. I’ll add my name to the list of people who would be interested if you can point out specific games that do this for real and do it well.
There are many competitive games for 3+ players where it is common for two players to make strongly mutually beneficial deals, especially when the third player is currently winning.
Yes, but with the possible exception of some games from the previous category, these are all zero-sum. This really colors things quite a lot.
Typically these games are primarily about convincing your enemies to attack each other instead of you, which in turn is primarily about misleading your enemies about how well you’re doing. (I’ve found I can get a surprisingly large advantage just by pointing out every time something goes badly for me, fueling a subconscious impression that I’m not a threat.)
There are many competitive games that run multiple rounds, where placement in each round matters, not just who gets first place, so negotiating to end up in second instead of third has value in the long run.
These can be viewed as a single long game that is still zero-sum.
I’m not a board game buff, but I think their critique applies to video-games as well, where I feel much more confident asserting that there is a dearth of such games as do not fall into some sort of zero-sum or adversarial paradigm. Where they do not, they are increasingly strapping on extrinsic reward frameworks that are almost equally harmful to effectance motivation in the sense of being diametrically opposed.
I too would be interested in any examples you have to the contrary, mostly to see what you think constitutes a contradiction here. This is a pretty undernourished subject and the way that people think about these concepts is often fuzzy to the extent that it’s worth exploring common definitions before exchanging conclusions.
I doubt most of these “many”s. If you’ve seen more than one of all of these things, you’re using very different discovery channels than I (or most people) are.
You’re welcome to name these games if you wish to substantiate your claims.
There are many competitive games where short to long term, but not usually permanent, alliances are critical to victory, and many mutually beneficial decisions are negotiated in those alliances.
I’ve played them. The agreements made in such situations tend to of poor quality.
fully cooperative: Hanabi, The Crew, The Captain Is Dead, Pandemic
partially cooperative: Red November, Betrayal at House on the Hill (original and Legacy), Dead of Winter, Gloomhaven
competitive [...] strongly mutually beneficial deals: Catan, Diplomacy, 18XX (and almost any other game where players own stock in each other’s positions)
competitive [...] placement in each round matters: Power Grid, 18XX,
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
These are just the ones I’ve played in recent memory. I’d wager I can name 20 games in each category, with some overlap like above, with more time to think and research.
I made it pretty clear in the article that it isn’t about purely cooperative games. (Though I wonder if they’d be easier to adapt. Cooperative + complications seems closer to the character of a cohabitive game than competitive + non-zero-sum score goals do...)
Gloomhaven seems, and describes itself as being a cooperative game. What competitive elements are you referring to?
The third tier is worth talking about. I think these sorts of games might, if you played them enough, teach the same skills, but I think you’d have to play them for a long time. My expectation is that basically all of them end with a ranking? as you said, first, second, third. The ranking isn’t scored, (ie, we aren’t told that being second is half as good as being first) so there’s not much clarity about how much players should value them, which is one obstacle to learning. Rankings also keep the game zero sum on net, and zero sum dynamics between first and second or between first and the alliance have the focus of your attention most of the time. The fewer or the more limited mutually beneficial deals are, the less social learning there will be. Zero sum dynamics need to be discussed in cohabitive games, but the games will support more efficient learning if they’re reduced. And there really are a lot of people who think that the game that humans are playing in the real world is zero sum, that all real games are zero sum, so, I also suspect that these sorts of games might never teach the skill, because to teach the skill you have to show them a way out of that mindset, and all they do is reinforce it.
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
This category is really interesting, because the alliances expire and have to be remade multiple times per game, and I’ve been meaning to play some games from this category, but they’re also a lot more foggy, the agreements are of poor quality, they invite only limited amounts of foresight and social creativity, in contrast, writing good legislation in the real world seems to require more social creativity than we can currently produce.
There are many fully cooperative board games, where all the players work together to win or lose as a group. There are many partially cooperative board games, which can only be won through cooperation and negotiation. There are many competitive games for 3+ players where it is common for two players to make strongly mutually beneficial deals, especially when the third player is currently winning. There are many competitive games that run multiple rounds, where placement in each round matters, not just who gets first place, so negotiating to end up in second instead of third has value in the long run. There are many competitive games where short to long term, but not usually permanent, alliances are critical to victory, and many mutually beneficial decisions are negotiated in those alliances.
As a rationalist, I don’t put much stock in the conclusions reached from what seem to be extremely faulty premises.
As a gamer, I don’t expect to find a well designed game when you seem to have missed or ignored so much prior art that could better inform your design.
But these do not involve bargaining or compromise, because all players are aligned. (They may involve strategizing about which goals to prioritize, but this is not the same thing.)
Based on my experience in the board game hobbyist community over a number of years:
Games that describe themselves as partially-cooperative are a very small percentage of all board games
They have a reputation in the community for being terrible
Mostly they are just typical MostPointsWins games except that there is also a possible outcome of “everyone loses”
Their payout functions are often so loosely defined that players cannot even agree on whether they are zero-sum or not (and then players get mad at each other because each of them thinks the other is intentionally throwing the game). In particular, it is usually not clear whether “everyone loses” is different from a “tie”, and if so how.
My model says that approximately all of these are designed by people who are interested in the partially-cooperative story but aren’t particularly paying attention to the strategy of the game
That said, I surely haven’t played every game in this category. I’ll add my name to the list of people who would be interested if you can point out specific games that do this for real and do it well.
Yes, but with the possible exception of some games from the previous category, these are all zero-sum. This really colors things quite a lot.
Typically these games are primarily about convincing your enemies to attack each other instead of you, which in turn is primarily about misleading your enemies about how well you’re doing. (I’ve found I can get a surprisingly large advantage just by pointing out every time something goes badly for me, fueling a subconscious impression that I’m not a threat.)
These can be viewed as a single long game that is still zero-sum.
I’m not a board game buff, but I think their critique applies to video-games as well, where I feel much more confident asserting that there is a dearth of such games as do not fall into some sort of zero-sum or adversarial paradigm. Where they do not, they are increasingly strapping on extrinsic reward frameworks that are almost equally harmful to effectance motivation in the sense of being diametrically opposed.
I too would be interested in any examples you have to the contrary, mostly to see what you think constitutes a contradiction here. This is a pretty undernourished subject and the way that people think about these concepts is often fuzzy to the extent that it’s worth exploring common definitions before exchanging conclusions.
I doubt most of these “many”s. If you’ve seen more than one of all of these things, you’re using very different discovery channels than I (or most people) are.
You’re welcome to name these games if you wish to substantiate your claims.
I’ve played them. The agreements made in such situations tend to of poor quality.
fully cooperative: Hanabi, The Crew, The Captain Is Dead, Pandemic
partially cooperative: Red November, Betrayal at House on the Hill (original and Legacy), Dead of Winter, Gloomhaven
competitive [...] strongly mutually beneficial deals: Catan, Diplomacy, 18XX (and almost any other game where players own stock in each other’s positions)
competitive [...] placement in each round matters: Power Grid, 18XX,
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
These are just the ones I’ve played in recent memory. I’d wager I can name 20 games in each category, with some overlap like above, with more time to think and research.
(I’m aware of most of these games)
I made it pretty clear in the article that it isn’t about purely cooperative games. (Though I wonder if they’d be easier to adapt. Cooperative + complications seems closer to the character of a cohabitive game than competitive + non-zero-sum score goals do...)
Gloomhaven seems, and describes itself as being a cooperative game. What competitive elements are you referring to?
The third tier is worth talking about. I think these sorts of games might, if you played them enough, teach the same skills, but I think you’d have to play them for a long time. My expectation is that basically all of them end with a ranking? as you said, first, second, third. The ranking isn’t scored, (ie, we aren’t told that being second is half as good as being first) so there’s not much clarity about how much players should value them, which is one obstacle to learning. Rankings also keep the game zero sum on net, and zero sum dynamics between first and second or between first and the alliance have the focus of your attention most of the time. The fewer or the more limited mutually beneficial deals are, the less social learning there will be. Zero sum dynamics need to be discussed in cohabitive games, but the games will support more efficient learning if they’re reduced.
And there really are a lot of people who think that the game that humans are playing in the real world is zero sum, that all real games are zero sum, so, I also suspect that these sorts of games might never teach the skill, because to teach the skill you have to show them a way out of that mindset, and all they do is reinforce it.
This category is really interesting, because the alliances expire and have to be remade multiple times per game, and I’ve been meaning to play some games from this category, but they’re also a lot more foggy, the agreements are of poor quality, they invite only limited amounts of foresight and social creativity, in contrast, writing good legislation in the real world seems to require more social creativity than we can currently produce.