There are many fully cooperative board games, where all the players work together to win or lose as a group.
But these do not involve bargaining or compromise, because all players are aligned. (They may involve strategizing about which goals to prioritize, but this is not the same thing.)
There are many partially cooperative board games, which can only be won through cooperation and negotiation.
Based on my experience in the board game hobbyist community over a number of years:
Games that describe themselves as partially-cooperative are a very small percentage of all board games
They have a reputation in the community for being terrible
Mostly they are just typical MostPointsWins games except that there is also a possible outcome of “everyone loses”
Their payout functions are often so loosely defined that players cannot even agree on whether they are zero-sum or not (and then players get mad at each other because each of them thinks the other is intentionally throwing the game). In particular, it is usually not clear whether “everyone loses” is different from a “tie”, and if so how.
My model says that approximately all of these are designed by people who are interested in the partially-cooperative story but aren’t particularly paying attention to the strategy of the game
That said, I surely haven’t played every game in this category. I’ll add my name to the list of people who would be interested if you can point out specific games that do this for real and do it well.
There are many competitive games for 3+ players where it is common for two players to make strongly mutually beneficial deals, especially when the third player is currently winning.
Yes, but with the possible exception of some games from the previous category, these are all zero-sum. This really colors things quite a lot.
Typically these games are primarily about convincing your enemies to attack each other instead of you, which in turn is primarily about misleading your enemies about how well you’re doing. (I’ve found I can get a surprisingly large advantage just by pointing out every time something goes badly for me, fueling a subconscious impression that I’m not a threat.)
There are many competitive games that run multiple rounds, where placement in each round matters, not just who gets first place, so negotiating to end up in second instead of third has value in the long run.
These can be viewed as a single long game that is still zero-sum.
But these do not involve bargaining or compromise, because all players are aligned. (They may involve strategizing about which goals to prioritize, but this is not the same thing.)
Based on my experience in the board game hobbyist community over a number of years:
Games that describe themselves as partially-cooperative are a very small percentage of all board games
They have a reputation in the community for being terrible
Mostly they are just typical MostPointsWins games except that there is also a possible outcome of “everyone loses”
Their payout functions are often so loosely defined that players cannot even agree on whether they are zero-sum or not (and then players get mad at each other because each of them thinks the other is intentionally throwing the game). In particular, it is usually not clear whether “everyone loses” is different from a “tie”, and if so how.
My model says that approximately all of these are designed by people who are interested in the partially-cooperative story but aren’t particularly paying attention to the strategy of the game
That said, I surely haven’t played every game in this category. I’ll add my name to the list of people who would be interested if you can point out specific games that do this for real and do it well.
Yes, but with the possible exception of some games from the previous category, these are all zero-sum. This really colors things quite a lot.
Typically these games are primarily about convincing your enemies to attack each other instead of you, which in turn is primarily about misleading your enemies about how well you’re doing. (I’ve found I can get a surprisingly large advantage just by pointing out every time something goes badly for me, fueling a subconscious impression that I’m not a threat.)
These can be viewed as a single long game that is still zero-sum.