Do board games need victory conditions?
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- Опубліковано 14 сер 2023
- Game designer Amabel Holland asks what kinds of human things the medium of board games can express and explore once we let go of winning or losing as sources of meaning. She looks at four games - two of her designs, and two from other designers - and how each game approaches their victory conditions, or lack thereof.
00:01 Introduction
03:31 I. Meaningless Victories (This Guilty Land)
05:22 II. Continue Playing, and Learn From Your Failures (That Others May Live)
06:56 III. Messy Human Things That Can't Be Solved (Endurance)
10:28 IV. How and Why We Play Games (VelociRapture) - Ігри
I struggle with board games since my brain injury. I recently played the very simple Just One, and it reminded me that I personally enjoy collaboration more than winning. Your lovely video furthers my ruminations on where the joy lies in the process of gaming. Thank you 🙏
Im struck by the thought of a solitaire game simply saying "learn from your mistakes, try to do better next time". I mean, to me, that's the experience of most solo games. It's a recognition of skill meeting rng, and that sometimes one simply could not have done better at all. Many games take the "high score" approach as a recognition of this experience. By having no hard victory condition, a high score simply says "we believe you did better his time", and it focuses the experience on that number, not on what occured. By taking what would normally be the "high score" style of game but removing the scoring entirely, I'm left with asking myself "how do I define success?" Which could be so much more impactful
Essays / conversations like this are one of the main reasons I love board games!
Thank you!!
Very insightful! Games are cardboard journeys to another place and time, where the lived experience takes center stage over the final outcome.
Very nice video :) Can't wait to have another go at Endurance.
I don't remember the winner of any game of Twilight Imperium I've played (except the one time that was me!). I remember moments of surprise and betrayal, luck and circumstance, alliances and grudges. The win condition is the worst part of that game, and I'm confident in that assessment because it's many of my friend's favorite game ever, and they only finish about 25% of the TI games they start, and that's not a problem for them.
Interesting to hear your thoughts on win conditions. I actually started a game a while back, based on Kafkas "the trial" which have a different take on win conditions. If it ends up being any good, I'll send you a copy :)
This is absolutely beautiful and necessary, thank you!
I really appreciate discussions like this about the nature of games!
Thank you for this video! As a designer myself, I'm hyped and excited to see more games coming out that try to go over the black and white mutually exclusive "win/lose" condition.
The whole video reminded me of playing fighting games while there is the goal for the match it is usually more about each players own goals of self improvement or even player expression
That's actually something I considered bringing up - I've been hyperfixated on fighting games for most of this year - but couldn't quite work in with the format of this video. I absolutely will be talking about fighting games in the future though. :-)
I really enjoyed this, thank you!
Really interesting. Before you mentioned the velveteen rabbit (which 100% yes) I was saying, I'll play the turkey every time in Wingspan whether it fits my strategy or not. That's half the fun of games is the connection with the theme.
Very thought provoking. Thank you.
PS. When does Velocirapture release?
This isn't directly relevant to the specific topic being discussed, but thinking of games both "thematically" and "non-escapistically" (by which I mean the idea that rather than just being pure "entertainment", games can have a purpose to: convey an idea + reflect [on] reality) is from my experience such a niche approach, unfortunately, that each find of this kind is precious.
A bit less rare in board games than in video games, but still.
I think this concept could work very well as a “competitive” civ building or kingdom management game. Just make some “history” (in a historical, fantasy, or sci-fi setting) ad see how your world unfolds with your friends and discuss that “history”
Damn this is so good. Thank you!!
All good points raised 😀 I recently had an interesting discussion with my gaming group - I'm not a "competitive" gamer and really play games for the story/emerging narrative, noticed last few times we've switched to Euros that I'm zoning out pretty easily and focus only on enjoying the company, not the game.
Keep doing amazing things and making great games and being an all around amazing person. ❤
Great discussion / thoughts!
I will absolutely play scrabble words that are more aesthetically pleasing to me, over and above playing something worth more points. :) To me, that's a more enjoyable way to play, instead of squeezing out most points from boring 2-letter words. It might not be "playing to win" I guess, but I rarely play to win. I play to enjoy playing.
I will also often know that I have no chance of winning a (VP-based let's say) game, but I'll still keep playing to see just how close I can get to the winner, and I imagine most people would do - they don't just stop playing because they see the leader is so far ahead they likely can't be caught. That is somewhat synonymous with the example you give about continuing playing even though you know you've lost (although in my example, I guess you could *potentially* win if something happens you hadn't foreseen that jumps you into the lead; with a game which is "you have definitely lost, but carry on playing anyway", there's quite a different feel).
Another game that I think gives a similar feel to what you're discussing here, is Dávid Turczi's "Nights of Fire", where the revolutionary team know they can't win the war - it's a foregone conclusion that the soviets will beat them; their task is instead to try to bring the soviet's morale down enough to "morally" win the game.
More essays please :)
Role playing games are games which often do not have victory conditions. I wonder if Amabel would ever design an RPG.
My wife wins most games we play. But between you and me, I think I'm the real winner.
MMOs generally don't have a long term win condition. Sure, you can raid or whatever, and you can win at the thing that's right in front of you, but at the end of it all the next expansion hits and none of it mattered except for maybe the memories you made along the way.
I think every board game should have a defined goal and one or more conditions when it will conclude.
Personally I would only use the term "winning condition" in describing a goal in a cooperative game where the end of the game is achieved by reaching a goal and at the same time successfully concluding the game. Some games give you measurement how well you did, but that does not change that you won the game or, at least achieved the ending condition.
In an competitive game using "winning condition" makes little sense to me. There should be a form of measurement of how well you did in the competition. Competetive games should have end conditions and means to determine the victor after one or more of these conditions has been reached. But those are generally separate from one another. So that Scrabble example feels a bit off to me. Making up your own challenges or goals, and feeling good about your choices in the game does have little to do with a victory condition. You could feel a personal victory by achieving your own goals or the ones that feel right, but I think some kind of equivocation error sneaks in here. You are talking about something different then.
Yes, when a rules set uses the term "victory condition" it could be interpreted in a way you could read as something positive, which ironically can be untrue however you look at the situation, especially when you are playing a historical simulation. Still, having reached the predetermined game end does not say anything about feeling good about your choices. Having the feeling the party you were playing as did a permissable/moral/acheivable/meaningful job is a thought process you surely could invoke by design. But again, I feel that has nothing to do with the question at hand.
The book "Characteristics of Games" uses the worth orthogame to describe games between 2 or more players that result in a ranking of the players at the end. In other words, competitions with winners and losers.
Orthogames dominate the gaming discourse, but are honestly a relatively small portion of the games that are played by people. And even when people do play orthogames, they rarely treat them as such. People are playing pickleball and Catan for socialization, rarely for victory.
The games you describe in this video I think I would honestly classify as role playing games. I think the public perception of what counts as a role playing game is too narrow because of the dominance of D&D.
Excellent video essay, but you made one crucial mistake. You forgot about the essence of the game; it's about the Cones.
Such an interesting question. As I watching the video and seeing the games discussed, I was thinking surely these are major exceptions.
Even if I don't really care who wins, having that victory condition helps provide the structure for me to engage with my friends in. Buuuut then thinking about it, I've definitely played Scrabble of only made-up words where the score didn't matter. How we used these made up words in a sentence was the game. Or how many games of telestrations just ends in being silly.
Maybe this is where the "more of an activity than a game" people come in. But I don't know. Even in the game-iest of games, the most memorable bits for me at least are usually not "oh I did this one thing that gave me so many points" it's more something stupid or silly or cool even outside the context of the victory conditions
I ruined Scrabble for my mother-in-law when I showed her that the game is really a tile placement game and not about making the best words. She never played with me again (and I don't blame her 😀).
wtf