Loved this. The vast majority of analysis on games is shallow, tending to look at the stated rules and explicit mechanics, and ignoring derived and implied rules (the vastly different property value-payoff heatmaps in Monopoly, the “genre awareness” here), ignoring tempo/timing issues, and ignoring win conditions / endgame considerations.
I love when stuff like this gets boiled down elegantly:
>You want to accumulate contracts in suspects you ‘like’ (which mostly means the ones you think are good bets), so you can get ‘control’ of one or more of them. Control means that if they did it, you win.
Ah, cool, that’s a win condition.
And then the logical corollaries:
>… Suppose you’re a poor player. … A basic gambit would be to buy up all the contracts you can of a suspect everyone has dismissed. Even if there are very good reasons they seem impossible and are trading at $5, you can still get enough of them to win if it works out, and you might have no competition since players in better shape have juicier targets. Slim chance beats none. But if even that’s out of the question, you’ll have to rebuild your position. You will need to speculate via day trading. Any other play locks in a loss.
And tempo:
>This is a phenomenon we see in many strategic games. Early in the game, players mostly are concerned about getting good value, as most assets are vaguely fungible and will at some point be useful or necessary. As the game progresses, players develop specialized strategies, and start to do whatever they need to do to get what they need, often at terrible exchange rates, and dump or ignore things they don’t need, also at terrible exchange rates.
A gem of a broad overview that similarly looks in depth across the whole stack. Puerto Rico is a wonderful game in that it’s incredibly simple and satisfying for new players — no overtly destructive actions against fellow players, everyone gets a turn, you’re always building up your island no matter what — but has incredibly deep mathematical and behavioral complexity underneath the hood. Rare that games can hit both of those notes.
Definitely recommend that one if you haven’t read it. Seriously, huge respect and hat’s off for this article — being able to intuit game dynamics, strategic and tactical considerations, elucidating win conditions and relevant play adjustments when winning or losing before having played the game extensively is… damn impressive.
I’m totally hoping you teach a class on game analysis at Stanford or MIT or whatever someday, and put the lectures online. I’d watch ’em. What you do is, frankly, really damn impressive. No idle flattery, but where do you reckon you’re at percentile-wise in this skill? Top 0.00001% of analysts/theorists would be 1 in 10 million or so. There’s probably not more than 30 better analysts in the USA than you, no? No flattery, more like a factual statement. If someone gave me an under/over bet of “100 more talented game analysts than Zvi in the USA”, I’m leaning super strongly to the the under; under/over of 1000 people and I take the under without hesitating.
That’s some strong praise there. It’s great to hear and I hope I can live up to it. I think I’m one of the strongest at some aspects of analysis, and this task here plays into a lot of my strengths including my trading and market making experience. In other ways, I’m not as strong. I
really enjoy doing this type of analysis not only on games but on real world situations, problems, mechanisms, business opportunities, and so forth. If I could get fairly compensated for that type of consulting I’d love to do it, but alas the consulting business is mostly a self-selling business and the internal corporate politics business as far as I can tell—you get advice like “never improve things more than 10%, and if you do improve it more make sure to hide it.”
In much more promising news, I’m exploring a potential game design opportunity, but it’s too early for me to say more than that yet.
I’ll check out the guide, looks cool at first glance.
Loved this. The vast majority of analysis on games is shallow, tending to look at the stated rules and explicit mechanics, and ignoring derived and implied rules (the vastly different property value-payoff heatmaps in Monopoly, the “genre awareness” here), ignoring tempo/timing issues, and ignoring win conditions / endgame considerations.
I love when stuff like this gets boiled down elegantly:
>You want to accumulate contracts in suspects you ‘like’ (which mostly means the ones you think are good bets), so you can get ‘control’ of one or more of them. Control means that if they did it, you win.
Ah, cool, that’s a win condition.
And then the logical corollaries:
>… Suppose you’re a poor player. … A basic gambit would be to buy up all the contracts you can of a suspect everyone has dismissed. Even if there are very good reasons they seem impossible and are trading at $5, you can still get enough of them to win if it works out, and you might have no competition since players in better shape have juicier targets. Slim chance beats none. But if even that’s out of the question, you’ll have to rebuild your position. You will need to speculate via day trading. Any other play locks in a loss.
And tempo:
>This is a phenomenon we see in many strategic games. Early in the game, players mostly are concerned about getting good value, as most assets are vaguely fungible and will at some point be useful or necessary. As the game progresses, players develop specialized strategies, and start to do whatever they need to do to get what they need, often at terrible exchange rates, and dump or ignore things they don’t need, also at terrible exchange rates.
I love this stuff. It’s so cool. Hat’s off.
Incidentally, did you ever read “The best Puerto Rico strategy”?
A gem of a broad overview that similarly looks in depth across the whole stack. Puerto Rico is a wonderful game in that it’s incredibly simple and satisfying for new players — no overtly destructive actions against fellow players, everyone gets a turn, you’re always building up your island no matter what — but has incredibly deep mathematical and behavioral complexity underneath the hood. Rare that games can hit both of those notes.
Definitely recommend that one if you haven’t read it. Seriously, huge respect and hat’s off for this article — being able to intuit game dynamics, strategic and tactical considerations, elucidating win conditions and relevant play adjustments when winning or losing before having played the game extensively is… damn impressive.
I’m totally hoping you teach a class on game analysis at Stanford or MIT or whatever someday, and put the lectures online. I’d watch ’em. What you do is, frankly, really damn impressive. No idle flattery, but where do you reckon you’re at percentile-wise in this skill? Top 0.00001% of analysts/theorists would be 1 in 10 million or so. There’s probably not more than 30 better analysts in the USA than you, no? No flattery, more like a factual statement. If someone gave me an under/over bet of “100 more talented game analysts than Zvi in the USA”, I’m leaning super strongly to the the under; under/over of 1000 people and I take the under without hesitating.
That’s some strong praise there. It’s great to hear and I hope I can live up to it. I think I’m one of the strongest at some aspects of analysis, and this task here plays into a lot of my strengths including my trading and market making experience. In other ways, I’m not as strong. I
really enjoy doing this type of analysis not only on games but on real world situations, problems, mechanisms, business opportunities, and so forth. If I could get fairly compensated for that type of consulting I’d love to do it, but alas the consulting business is mostly a self-selling business and the internal corporate politics business as far as I can tell—you get advice like “never improve things more than 10%, and if you do improve it more make sure to hide it.”
In much more promising news, I’m exploring a potential game design opportunity, but it’s too early for me to say more than that yet.
I’ll check out the guide, looks cool at first glance.