A charge that can be leveled at some games that they are “multi player solitaire”, which means that each player is basically worrying only about his own sphere, and doesn’t really have to worry much about what the other players are doing. I’d like to briefly explore different kinds of player interaction that can happen in a game, and hopefully spark discussion about how to build interaction into our designs.
First, I want to make a distinction between “interaction” and “interactivity”. I consider a game’s interaction level to be a statement about how much my moves affect the standing of the other players, and vice versa. Interactivity, on the other hand, is more a matter of how much I am actually talking to the other players. So, for example, chess is a game with a tremendous amount of interaction, but relatively little interactivity. I’m mainly interested in discussing the former, although some mechanics that create the former will also create the latter.
So, what kinds of player interaction are there? I claim there are at least 4: scarcity, combative, cooperative, and turn order. These aren’t mutually exclusive; a game, or even a single mechanic, may contain more than one.
Scarcity
With scarcity, I have in mind the idea that there is some limitation present in the game, the acquisition of which by some players will necessarily exclude equivalent levels of acquisition by other players. Some games have player-specific scarcity issues that players must deal with: Carcassonne, for example, limits each player’s supply of meeples. However, interesting interaction can arise when players’ actions are restricted or guided by mutual scarcity concerns.
Scarcity issues can come in the form of spatial limitations. A good example of this is the area-majority game Web of Power. In Web of Power, players seek to gain majority status in a variety of different territories in two different categories: cloisters and advisers. The game’s placement system creates two different scarcity issues. First, the number of cloisters that can be placed in each territory are limited. Second, the number of advisers that can be placed in a territory are limited a total equal to the number of cloisters of the majority player in that region. So if Joe has the majority of cloisters in Frankreich, with 4, then all players may only place, collectively, 4 advisers in Frankreich. These scarcity concerns make placement interesting, particularly for the majority player: expanding his majority also can open the door for other players to place advisers. So, too, can attempting to overtake the majority cloister player.
Mutual scarcity can also come from limitation of resources. In Acquire, each hotel chain has 25 stock shares that can be bought. This can lead to some very nice decisions. In Acquire, when 2 chains merge, the smaller chain is absorbed by the bigger, and shares of the smaller can be exchanged 2:1 for shares of the bigger chain. Sometimes, the value of the bigger chain’s shares doesn’t equal twice that of the smaller chain’s, yet because of the limitation of stock, it can sometimes be a good move to make this exchange anyway so as to prevent yourself from getting closed out by waiting to buy.
Puerto Rico gives another example of scarcity issues in (at least) two of its main mechanics. One is the Trading House, to which players may sell one crop each for money. However, the trading house has two limitations: first, only one of each crop type may be sold to the Trading House, and the Trading House only accomodates 4 crops. These can motivate what crops you will choose to sell; you don’t want to be selling crops that the player to your right is selling, since he’ll often get to sell his first, closing you out of the sale.
Puerto Rico’s shipping system also gives a nice example of mutual scarcity. Although there are 5 commodities, there are only 3 ships, and each can only accomodate a limited supply of one type of crop. This again makes turn order important: you want to make sure there’s space on a ship for your crops. But sometimes, you’ll have to ship in an order that will reduce your overall payout in order to block another player from shipping something (for example, placing Coffee on a vacant ship so as to prevent the Corn King from shipping 5 corn).
In this sense, the important consideration that runs common in all of these examples is the way in which the interaction associated with mutual scarcity concerns motivates interesting decisions. In these cases, we see that it can involve sometimes making a play that is “suboptimal” in order to prevent being closed out of a resource or position, or to affect another player’s position.
Combatitve
By combatitive interaction, I have in mind the idea of one player directly interfering with another player’s position in a way that hurts that second player, and, presumably, helps the former player. This type of interaction is well-known, exemplified by combat-heavy games like Risk, and can come in a variety of forms.
The most common version is military combat. Games like Risk and Axis and Allies are classic exemplars of mechanics where you attempt to improve your position by taking away territories from other players.
Other games have mechanics in which you can take actions that hurt other players’ positions. One such mechanic is known as “take that!”. This refers to, typically, a card-based mechanic where players can play a card on another player that hurts that player in some way. For example, in the game Illuminati, there are a variety of cards that interfere with the other players’ actions; “your die roll is an automatic 2 (a failure)”. The role selection mechanic in Citadels has a “take that!” mechanic, since some roles allow you to directly interfere with other players -- the Assasin lets you take away another player’s turn; the thief lets you steal another player’s resources.
“Take that!” mechanics can be amusing, but they should be used cautiously for a variety of reasons. One is that a mechanic that only hurts another player, but doesn’t help you directly, is not of much use for helping you towards winning the game; it only allows to you to prevent another player from winning. This is a way to combat a runaway leader problem, but it often involves “taking one for the team”, which often just hurts the player who decides to hurt the leading player -- he spends his action hurting the leader, which frees the other players to take actions that improve their own positions.
Additionally, all combatitive mechanics have an “emotional” element. How many times have we found ourselves saying “I can’t believe you’re attacking me! Joe is the real leader!” Being attacked is, in and of itself, sometimes frustrating. But above and beyond this, poor players often make moves that aren’t necessarily in their own best interest. In a combatitive game, this can lead to the reduction of a player’s position in a way that doesn’t help the attacker win the game, but does hurt that player’s chances. Combatitive interaction can also devolve into “petty diplomacy” -- “You attacked me, so I’m going to attack you back.”
Some games have peaceful versions of combatitive mechanics. A good example is Princes of Florence: players can “take away” the characters that other players have used, but they give the player a place-holder card so that the player still derives the benefit of having the work. Mechanics where players can take things held by another player, but in a way that does not actually hurt the player, can be a nice way to reduce the potential emotional consequences of combatitive interaction.
Combatitive interaction is common because it is the most direct route to player interaction. Games without a direct way to influence the other players’ position can result in players feeling like they are playing “multi-player solitaire”. On the other hand, combatitive interaction has an emotional ingredient that must be factored in to the player experience that the designer is creating.
Cooperative
Cooperative interaction occurs when players must work together in some way to achieve some mutually benefecial state of affairs. Ironically, fully cooperative games like Knizia’s Lord of the Rings fall outside the scope of this discussion, because there are actually relatively few cooperative mechanics in this game, and none are central to the game’s action. The game has an essential ingredient of interactivity, i.e., table talk, but relatively little in the way of interactive mechanics.
A better example would be the trading mechanic in Settlers of Catan. Trading gives a perfect example of cooperative interaction: two (or more) players are able to, by exchanging resources, able to improve both of their positions. The much-maligned Monopoly also has a strong trading element.
Other games have an element of “deal-making”, which is a close cousin of trading. Games with deal-making include Diplomacy, in which players negotiate as to what moves they will make; include supporting the military maneuvers of the other players (in that sense, Diplomacy also has a strong element of combatitive interaction!). Deal-making games expand the scope of negotiations beyond the simple exchange of tangible goods, to the trading of consideration or actions as well. It’s the classic “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine”.
The trick in deal-making and trading games is to arrange things so that you gain more than the other players. This can often be facilitated by hidden information; I may not know that giving you Stone gives you enough to complete a City. Other games, like Civilization and Big City, have “bomb” cards hidden in the commodity decks, so that when trading, you may end up with something that actually hurts you (obviously, this risk factors into decisions about whether to accept a deal or not).
Some games have cooperative scoring mechanisms. A good example of this is Web of Power; players place cloisters in regions, and the person with the most cloisters in a given region receives VPs equal to the total number of cloisters in the region. The next highest total receives points equal to the first player’s total, and so on. So, if player A has 4 cloisters and player B has 1, A gets 5 points and B gets 4. One can see that scoring systems that pay out based on the contributions of all players can create interesting decisions for the individual players, since the goal becomes to shoulder as little of the work as possible but to reap the largest VP payout.
Turn order
A corollary of scarcity issues is turn order effects, whereby one player on his turn makes a move that affects a subsequent player simply by virtue of the fact that he gets to go before the other player. Obviously, scarcity amplifies turn order effects, since if there are only 3 widgets to buy, and players 1, 2, and 3 buy a widget, player 4 is closed out. But in some situations, simply going before another player gives an advantage to that player.
A textbook example of this effect is Puerto Rico. In many of the game’s systems, going before another player gives you an advantage. As mentioned above, this is often related to scarcity, but it isn’t in all cases. For example, since choosing a role gives you a special upgrade for that role, getting to go earlier and choose the role you want could give you a benefit that you need, such as a disount on building when you need to buy a more expensive building.
Other games like Citadels, Mahajara, and the new Twilight Imperium, have mechanics built around turn order effects, in which players choose various roles and the roles act in a specific sequence. The special power associated with each role is proportioned according to the position in the sequence that the associated role will act. In other games, like El Grande, New England, and Shogun, players bid for turn order. Both of these styles of games take into account the fact that turn order matters in the game, and incorporate this as a way to motivate interesting decisions.
Conclusion
Just as some games may have too little interaction, other games have so much interaction that players feel like they don’t have much control of the game. A good example of this is 6 player Acquire, where so much changes before your next turn comes that there’s very little strategy in the game. It’s important, with any game, to understand what sources of player interaction could be operative, and to use the ones that will emphasize the player experience you’re trying to create for your players.
Feel free to chime in with any comments!
-Jeff
I actually think that "interaction" is the best word for this effect, it's just that some people conflate the concepts that I'm calling "interaction" and "interactivity". Maybe the differentiation could be amplified by coming up with a more appropriate word for "interactivity", like "table talk" or some such.
The point I'm trying to get at is that some people consider a game where all players are silently sitting around the board, studying the game, to be "non-interactive", because the players aren't actually talking. What I'm trying to get at is that, for the purposes of this discussion, the relative amount of "table talk" is not an area of primary consideration.
I don't disagree, but don't misunderstand the goal of my post. More than creating a toolkit per se, I was simply trying to analyze patterns of interactivity in games, with the idea that these patterns could be incorporated into one's toolkit based on one's design goals. The main point I was trying to make was simply (and I know we agree on this), "these categories appear to exist". But how to make a good game out of them is an excercise left to the reader!
You make a great point. I would say that to say whether a game has a particular interactive mechanic depends on whether a good player would have to consider the other players in determining his use of that mechanic. A fine example is turn order mechanics. Every turn-based game has a turn order, but not every turn-based game has a turn order interaction effect. In some games, the turn order really doesn't affect the game. And as you say, sometimes the game gives you "workarounds" for scarcity issues. For example, in PR, the Office lets you ignore the scarcity issue of the Trading House. Yet, I would claim that this building's utility is entirely motivated by scarcity issues, since it's only worth having because of the unique rules associated with the Trading House. In that sense, often a workaround strategy will itself be a way to circumvent a scarcity issue, thus retaining an element of interaction.
First, a request for the usual suspects (and you know who you are!) to please not hijack this thread for a rehashing of the endless PoF debate!
That said, PoF definitely has, in its bidding mechanic, an element of player interaction. Hmm...not sure where bidding fits into the 4 categories I discussed above; does my list need to be expanded?
Thanks for your thoughts!
-Jeff