Are auctions evil?

I absolutely disagree. I will preface this by saying that I am not a huge fan of auctions in general. I think they are a valid mechanic and when done right they can add a level of strategic thinking that is unique to the auction mechanic.

When used sparingly and in the right situation, auctions are a tremendous equalizer. I don't think you need to worry about having any separate entity controlling it. I don't even see that as a negative. Players will not take advantage of the mechanic because they are all out to win. If the concern is that they will make deals or somehow "cheat" the system, then your rules aren't good enough.

As for "realism", I for one look to games to escape reality to some degree. If I were faced with a game where every mechanic was a perfect facsimile of real life, I probably wouldn't play it. In addition, there are situations were the auction mechanic could work perfectly well to mirror reality (ie: stock market, resource collection/worker placement, business simulation, etc...). How about abstract games where not of the mechanics mirror ANYTHING in real life. I've never "rejected" a game because it didn't resolve itself according to real world rules or mechanics. Sorry, I just don't agree.

To the OP, count me as one who sees auctions as perfectly valid under the right circumstances and not evil.

Just my 2 pennies,

Bill

Putting my ( extended 2 cents in here as well. :) )

I think to take a wholesale scorched earth approach to saying any kind of game mechanic is just evil and should be thrown out completely is a tad myopic. I mean, if you don't like a certain game mechanic/style then don't PLAY IT!-- but to say that it's not just a matter of personal preference for one mechanic or the other, and to say X given mechanic is just " EVIL"-- well I personally find that unconstructive.

I have mechanics I don't like as does every gamer. I have a design colleague who doesn't really like resource gathering games. I don't hear him saying playing Puerto Rico is evil and a total waste of time, it's just his preference.

On the subject at hand of auctions, again to just say they are all evil once again seems a tad myopic.

On the most base of levels.. how about games like nightstalkergames.com Auction Junktion? I mean, IT'S A GAME ABOUT AUCTIONS!!!!-- are you just saying it shouldn't exist? :) And despite this OLD BG classic being flawed otherwise what about Masterpiece? And as said earlier.. what about stock market games, or ALL of the art games? We just wholesale say they are **** because they have auctions inherent in their makeup? :)

On a more extended level, doesn't virtually every single current " hit" card game have something AKIN to an auction in it's card mechanics.? When saving/buying/attaining cards in something like Dominion or RFTG, aren't you doing something that is at least RELATED to auctioning? "Bidding" indirectly as it were to get action cards that will get you possibly more resources or cards? And isn't there a factor of luck in what cards indeed come up especially in RfTg?

However to play devil's advocate --- I do agree that if a game is of a supposed " heavy weight"-- then having far too many blind bidding issues especially combined with too much dice luck, is definitely a flaw IMO -- this is why I and many others have issues with Civilization at times. ( a zillion hour game with that much luck at times? Really? ) -- but again I emphasize this is my opinion, many other people adore that game. I am just proposing that you can't totally escape ANY luck factor, nor do I think at least some type of auction element in many games.

And finally, since this door was opened in L's essay on hating auctions and in his arguments of why they are evil. This whole issue of " it takes away from a realistic feel or mechanic" , well if you take that to the nth degree, isn't this, sorry to be harsh, NONSENSE? :) I mean do people who don't like RftG say " Well, ya know it just really doesn't feel like laying a card down is really developing a world in outer space."

Do the majority of the gamer community who despise Monopoly say " Ya know, I hate this game because colored cards just don't make me feel like I am buying property in Atlantic City, New Jersey?"

And finally to plug one of my own games in development , will someone judge my SUCK IT UP!! card game and say " Dude, your game is broken because I don't get the same thrill I do cleaning my carpets in real life?" :)

I am sorry if it seems I am carrying your argument here Eric/L to the nth degree and I don't mean to so harshly attack you to the point of ridicule , but when you open this door, someone indeed might have to walk through it. :)

To conclude my essay length post at last-- I re-emphasize my main point-- I don't think telling a designer certain mechanic is totally evil and worthless for the reasons you stated above ( or any reason for that matter ) without clarifying that this is YOUR PERSONAL OPINION as opposed to stating it as objective given axiom isn't terribly productive.

My extended 2 cents. :)

This clarifies your position better, I apologize if I mistook it earlier. Thanks for said clarification. :)

In some games, the values of various resources can vary wildly depending on the player who acquires them, the phase of the game (early, middle, or late), and the state of everything else in the game. There is no fair way (that I've heard of, anyway) other than an auction to allocate those resources among the players. Anything other method becomes a matter of luck.

And please don't tell me that these designs are flawed by the imbalanced and varying values of those resources. The essence of a game like that is to correctly judge the true value of something, and to try to get it for a good price, and especially without over-bidding and paying more than it's worth to you. I'll agree that if it's easy to judge an item's value, an auction is silly and dull. But if it's difficult to assess value, then the auctions become very tense. Age of Steam, Ra, and Power Grid are all excellent examples of games that implement auctions very effectively.

Like any other mechanism, auctions are a tool to be used judiciously.

One of the argument about auction is that instead of making the designer balance the game, they give the job to the player. I find this pretty lazy: "I'll let the player finish my design".

The problem is that it does not work all the time because each player has various game play experience about the game. So inexperienced players will have a bad perception of the value of an item and their bid will unbalance the game anyway.

So unless you are playing the with very experienced players, you will never achieve a balance. Designing a game with fixed values will be as unbalanced than with auctions.

It reminds me of Cleopatra, where the bid were something like: 0, 1, 3, 15, 20. If you use the triangular number table, 15 and 20 should have been the right value for the bid, but the 3 first player failed or did not care to recognize the real value of the auction.

The biggest problem I have with auctions is how to evaluate the value of something. In Medici, or in Power grid, it is very hard to determine how much you will gain if you win the auction.

If I would be forced to have an auction in a game, I would use a system similar to Ra. Since you only have 3 values to bid with, you do not have to know the precise value of the item being auctioned, but rather an approximation. So it is easier to take a decision and it makes it easier for unexperienced players to judge the value.

i'm not saying auctions aren't a good tool, because they're a great tool. the problem is that they're such a good tool that people use it for everything. it's like taking an adjustable wrench and using it to loosen bolts... and then deciding you shouldn't buy a screwdriver because you can just grip the screw and undo it, and furthermore you don't need a hammer, because the wrench is heavy enough to just pound the nails in. if the auction isn't a good thematic abstraction of what's actually going on, OR interesting mechanically, then the designer is pounding in nails with the wrench because they're too lazy or too cheap to find the actual right tool for the job.

it's a good tool if you know when to use it... but most people don't.

I am surprised that I am not alone against the Auction mechanics. I am sure if the same question was posted on BGG, the odds would have been 1000:1 FOR auctions.

It's normal that some cards are more powerful than other, and I should say that a game is better designed if all cards are not exactly equally powerful.

this almost didn't deserve a reply, but here goes:

absolutely, your original post included a few words at the end about looking for ideas. but your responses up until now were almost purely to defend auctions as a choice. similarly, you offered the single game you are familiar with as evidence that auctions weren't over-used. I offered 2000 as counter evidence, which you immediately trivialized? a 2000 PERCENT increase over your proffered sampling, and it's not enough? It doesn't actually sound like you're looking for input, it sounds like you're looking to argue.

but let's look at the small part of your post you're now putting forward as if it was the overarching theme- here's a listing of about 40 commonly recognized mechanisms:
http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/mechanism#

a chunk of them are heavily random in nature (dice rolling, roll and move, rock paper scissors) or not really relevant to distribution of resources (pencil and paper, variable phase order, etc). leaving you with 20 or 30 options that could be explored to distribute resources in a non-random way. Perhaps you gain resources only if you manage to pick-up-and deliver them to a main city. Perhaps it's done by drafting. Perhaps you need to area-enclose a field, and the first person to do so gets the resource provided. Perhaps you need to tell a story about why you need a resource, and the other players can vote on whose is best.

Honestly, my best advice on this front is to play as many games as you can. if Tikal is the only auction game you're familiar with, a good place to start might be with a few of the top-rated auction games.

OK, I have new numbers which include strategy games only and exclude the expansions.

From 1996 to 2010
130/630 = 20% of games have auction

From 2001 to 2010
114/539 = 21% of games have auctions

From 2006 to 2010
67/346 = 19% of games have auction

So in average, it seems to be around 20%

Off-Topic: I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to edit my user name. Any tips?

The only difference, in my opinion, is quantitative, not qualitative. Sure, in an auction, valuation is more difficult than in a fixed-price system, but newbies will still be disadvantaged to the extent that they should lose the game against more experienced foes. The net result is the same - the newbie loses, but learns more about proper valuation in the context of that game.

We do a variant of this, since a "fair price" is usually different for different players (in well-designed auctions). We explain the influencing factors and how those affect the value of the lot for various players. Sometimes, this is easy to put into terms of victory points (in Ra, for example), and sometimes it has to be explained more generally. By explaining the REASONING behind the "fair price", newbies are able to understand how to value lots on their own in the future.

It depends what you mean by "variable seat order". We always randomize seating at the beginning of each game, so that each player has an even chance of sitting adjacent to each other player. Re-seating in the middle of the game might work to alleviate the left-right binding, but would be more than a trivial physical inconvenience if repeated multiple times. Caylus deals with this problem in a rather elegant way by allowing you to purchase your place in the auction order. (Note: Your are not literally purchasing your place, rather you are giving up an action that could be utilized elsewhere, in order to take actions earlier in future rounds. By giving up an earlier action to get this spot, you are essentially "paying more" for that privilege.) This varies the order in a way that is controlled by the players, and its value changes based on the players' relative positions in the order.

Without knowing your game, it's hard to comment, but here's a thought: If items are worth similar amounts to each player, find a way of making items worth different amounts based on the time in the game. For example, in Puerto Rico, a Warehouse is practically worthless early, very valuable in the middle, and either very valuable or worthless in the late game, depending upon an umber of other factors. An auction would make the valuation of these buildings very interesting, because a player would have to decide whether the price of an item was worth the "fair value", when the value would change as the game progressed.

How many times do you replay a game? My gaming group is stuck with the cult of the new, I happen to play a game I already played at most 3 times in a year. This means that in this case, players will ALWAYS be a NEWBIE. This is why the newbie MUST have a chance to win.

I have played a short game of age or renaissance lately. You start with 40$ and there is a starting bid to know who is going to have which faction. It's the only bid in the whole game. The owner of the game clearly said that you should not want to spend more than 5$. But imagine he did not say that, some people could have bid 15$ without knowing they were actually overbidding.

It's hard to point out games with auctions that are wrongly used, because I hate all most all games with auctions in them. Here is a pseudo list of games I have played where auction gave a very bad taste to the game.

1856
Amazones
Before the wind
Cleopatra
Cyclades
Giants
Hermagor
Justinian
Leonardo Da Vinci
Medici
Phoenicia
Power Grid
Princes of florence
The sceptor of Zavandor
Shazamm
Siena
Wild Life

I get a chance to replay some games more than others. When I play a game that I have a lot of experience with, I tend to beat players with very little experience and vice versa. But, in the scenario you describe above, if all players are newbies, then there is no problem.

You're right. And they would learn this through the playing of the game. Did the owner of the game also clearly tell everyone which moves to make throughout the course of the game as well? This may sound sarcastic, but I mean it quite literally. If he didn't explain the best moves, then the newbies still had a huge disadvantage. It only seemed like the auction mechanism was faulty because it was the only one the owner addressed.

Of these, I've played Medici, Power Grid, and Princes of Florence.

In Medici, the auction IS the game. There would be no way to re-design the game without an auction mechanism. So, an auction isn't a "lazy design" in this case, it's THE design.

Surprisingly, I'm going to have to agree with you as far as Power Grid is concerned. There are multiple design issues with that game, one of which is the way power plants are distributed. I agree that a fixed-price purchase system or some other way of distribution would have served the game better.

It's been awhile since I've played Princes of Florence, but from what I can recall, players need different items to achieve their goals, thus creating a very interesting balance in pricing. The valuation in this game is about so much more than finding the correct point of equilibrium; it's about determining its value to you, its value to others, your place in the bidding chain, what professions players may hold based on their bidding, what point in the game you are at, and myriad other factors. Fixed pricing would "work" in Princes of Florence, but it wouldn't be nearly as good of a game without the auction.

The auction in cyclades gave you a bad taste? That is one game where the auction perfectly compliments the theme. Hmmm... Oh well! :)