Playing for placement

I re-entered this discussion a little late, but it did pique my interest and I'd like to add a few more points to those I've already mentioned...

Jeff said, "My objection with the kind of people Fast was talking about is that they give up without even trying to win, and try to sabotage the game by ending it as quickly as possible. That's just being a poor sport."

I agree. As long as the person is playing in his own best interest to achieve his own personal goal (whether it's an outright win or the best placement possible), I have no objections to whatever he does. Yes, although I may have played a superb game myself and one of my gaming friends makes a decision to whack me for reasons on his own agenda, whereby he doesn't win and neither do I, those are the breaks. That's the nature of the multi-player arena.

Jeff continues, "But again, if someone does all they can to maximize their score relative to what they believe the winning score will be, I just don't see anything to object to there...What am I missing?" and then he later went on to back it up with a pertinent Wallenstein example.

Again, I am following wholeheartedly. Each player is entitled to meeting whatever goals he sets out for himself. (I completely agree with Jeff's assessment of his Wallenstein example.) On the whole, Jeff and I seem to be in agreement. I only get miffed when a player who is out of the running becomes whiny or disgusted and he starts doing crazy, senseless things to end the game, to screw purposelessly with the positions of others, and so on. It's at this point that the player has dropped all personal self interest in either victory or the highest finish and has, instead, decided to make the game his own personal playground. When this happens, it wreaks havoc with everyones game so that the outcome has nothing to do with a measure of skill. That's where I draw the line. Do what you want, whatever you want, so long as it's in the name of your own self interest, so long as you're still making an attempt at exercising intelligent decisions, and I won't complain.

I'll say it again. It all comes down to self interest. So long as a player is making a move or decision based on achieving some goal that he feels will increase he chances of success--however he equates success--we have no right to complain. It doesn't matter if we agree with none of his logic or if the move is completely foolish or seems completely random, he's entitled to make it as he sees fit. All you have to determine is whether the player is still seeking after his own self interest.

The issue with kingmaking is also an issue of self interest. Sometimes a player will find himself in the unique situation where he can make move that will either award victory to John or to Mary, he decides. No one wants to be in that position; however, we can't always avoid it. In this case, the player should decide which move will result in his best outcome and take it without regarding who the game will be given to--this goes back to the unspoke law of objective of playing games: to win. If the player assesses that he can't win, he may decide to accept the best possible placement, or, if he thinks he has a chance, he may decide to go for it. In either case, he's free to choose.

Bandecko said, "I think it's a human condition to want to spoil things for others if you realize that no matter what you do you can't win. Some people I've played with do this, others just flat out quit... which unfortunately takes the desire RIGHT out of the sails of everyone else playing and the game usually ends then and there."

Well said. This goes back to the fact that the spoilsport has lost all self interest and is merely making the game his own personal playground or is abandoning it altogether. He's robbing everyone's fun.

I'm just the sort of player who, once knocked out of the running, might choose to vie for position. As a result, I may end up attacking someone other than the leader, even though some responses in this thread seem to be against this. Disagree with my logic if you will, but you can't disagree that I have the right to decide what my "self interests" are. You might not like them if I smack you while you're in second place (and have a descent shot at first) in order to attain my own self interest which is to attain a higher final placement. You may not like it, but that doesn't make me a spoilsport, just different than you. I think it's easy to define a spoilsport. The spoilsport drops all self interest in personal outcome and seeks an alternate means of pleasure: ending the game sooner or wreaking havoc just for fun.

Fast chimed in, "For the record, btw, I don't advocate creating a bunch of rules (or any rules) to keep people from being spoilsports (besides kingmaking), sore losers, or cheaters."

Yes, Fast. This would be an utter waste of time. Why write rules to stop humans from exhibiting human-like character?

I think I know the root of the whole argument about going for first or for best placement. Some of us have been in a position whereby we might have pulled out of second to win a game EXCEPT for the guy who decided to whack our position so that he could achieve a better placement. It's almost as if some are arguing, "Well, although I do have a chance, I'm not the frontrunner, so go ahead and whack him, but not me."

Get over it. There are psychological factors that enter into the gaming equasion. Although I know little about him, I'll bet Napoleon, knew quite a bit about psychological warfare. People who can understand and predict how events will steer others will have better chances of winning.

First, the issue we've been discussing--about whether a player should go for first place or best placement--exists only in the multiplayer environment where a sense of fairness comes into question. Take any game and play it with just two players and, although the game won't be as much fun, this issue dissolves. In one-on-one bouts there's no debate about fairness (except to blame the cards or one's luck). Your opponent can make foolish decisions or pursue any crazy goal and we won't care a bit. It won't affect our chances of winning; in fact, it'll probably increase them.

When we're looking at a multi-player environment, on the other hand, trying to create fairness can become a big issue. I say, screw fairness! Life's not fair and you shouldn't expect the deity of fairness to come down from his heavenly cloud to enforce the laws of fairness in your strategy board game. You should only expect ethics and good sportsmanship at the game table.

First, your friends have usually chosen to join game night because they like playing competitive thinking games and because they're fun. Second, there is an unspoken law and objective of playing games--to win--and it's the key to this who discussion. No one would be happy if Tom's wife Marissa sat down and exclaimed, "I don't really like playing strategy board games, but I usually play so that I can spend my resources helping Tom win." No one would want to play that game. Why? It's against the purpose of playing games. If people created games where there were no winners and no losers, there wouldn't be a hobby called "gaming"; no one would bother with it.

If we can agree on the fact that all the players at a game table, at the outset of the game, should have the objective of winning, and I think we do, that doesn't mean everyone will necessarily agree on what a player's objective should be come mid-game. Sure, it should still be to win, if possible. The problem is that, a player might decide that winning is no longer attainable, or if it is, that it's unlikely. In this situation, no one has the right to declare a fallback objective that all players must assume. Each player gets to decide for himself based on his own values. The player can freely decide to take a risky shot at first place or a more certain shot at a better position. It may largely depend on whether the player values high finishing positions other than first.

Now, let me take all of my wordiness and restate my points:

First, the unspoken law and objective of playing games is to win. Once a player assesses that he is unlikely to attain or cannot attain that goal, he may pursue any other self-interest-seeking goal according to his values--namely taking an unlikely chance at victory or taking steps that will likely result in a better final placement.

One idea that I have been thinking about is coming up with a rating system that gives the winner of a game a higher rating than 2nd place, which is higher than 3rd place, etc. The ratings are (maybe) percentage based, and a players rating is based on their total games played. So a player that plays well all the time might have a rating of 87 while a player that does poorly all the time has a rating of 31. At the beginning of each subsequent game, each person begins with an advantage that reflects their rating, or alternatively each person is handicapped or assisted because of this rating. So for example, the highest and lowest rated players receive the others starting advantage or disadvantage.

With this system, all players would be encouraged to play for the highest position possible, especially when it means that your starting position in the next game will be affected by how well you play during the current one. New players would also get an advantage that might make them feel more "in" the game.

One problem that I can see with this is a player might play to lose badly, so that they can gain a better starting position in the next game, when using a kind of handicap/assist system. However, I can't see someone doing this as a matter of course, because if the strategy of "I'm playing to lose so that I can win the next game" pays off, they will win the next game and their rating will go up.

This issue comes up frequently in our games of Settlers. We (my wife, my cousin, my cousin's roommate, and whoever happens to be in town that weekend) generally play with both Cities and Knights, and Seafarers, with 4 or more players. Often, due to poor placement (the player's fault), irregular dice rolls (some number coming up more than statistically expected), or a lucky progress card draws, by mid game there are 2 people who are almost assured of losing, and 2 or 3 vying for the leader position. In fact, the last game we played on Saturday I was mathematically eliminated due to the fact that I had nowhere left to build, and all of the metropolises were clinched.

In reality, the player is almost always to blame; there have been few times where a 2 or a 12 has been rolled more than a 6, but those are extremely rare. Most of the time the player either chose poorly, or took a risk (such as trying to hoard 1 or 2 resources and denying themselves others) that didn't pay off.

The important part is based on human psychology, however: regardless of the cause, when you are only 45 minutes into a 90- or 120- minute game, and you know that you have lost, a lot of the desire to play is lost. We don't usually have a problem with 'kingmaking' per se, but players will quit paying attention as much, and watch TV or read a book when it is not their turn.

In our case, it may help to establish either a long-term ranking system based on your placement of each game, so that coming in 2nd means more than finishing 4th, or give some benefits to the 2nd (and possibly 3rd) place finisher. Not sure what those would be at this point... just thinking out loud.

I think the main element necessary to prevent whining and chaotic play with the intent to ruin the fun is to either 1) design the game so that any player could theoretically win, no matter how far behind they are, 2) design a game where placement matters (the Great Dalmuti comes to mind), 3) have the players add this on their own, in the form of a ranking system or ladder.

1) sounds ideal to me at first, except that if you are way behind because of your own bad play, why should the game try to compensate for that?

Because some of the games take so long (often we only have time for one game), each game stands alone; that is, players get the mentality "if I don't come in first, what's the point." I realize that this is somewhat childish, and nobody really minds losing to the point they act like a baby, but if we were to implement idea 3) then this might alleviate that issue.

I realize that I'm somewhat rambling now, so I'll stop for now. Just my two cents.