I doubt most of these “many”s. If you’ve seen more than one of all of these things, you’re using very different discovery channels than I (or most people) are.
You’re welcome to name these games if you wish to substantiate your claims.
There are many competitive games where short to long term, but not usually permanent, alliances are critical to victory, and many mutually beneficial decisions are negotiated in those alliances.
I’ve played them. The agreements made in such situations tend to of poor quality.
fully cooperative: Hanabi, The Crew, The Captain Is Dead, Pandemic
partially cooperative: Red November, Betrayal at House on the Hill (original and Legacy), Dead of Winter, Gloomhaven
competitive [...] strongly mutually beneficial deals: Catan, Diplomacy, 18XX (and almost any other game where players own stock in each other’s positions)
competitive [...] placement in each round matters: Power Grid, 18XX,
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
These are just the ones I’ve played in recent memory. I’d wager I can name 20 games in each category, with some overlap like above, with more time to think and research.
I made it pretty clear in the article that it isn’t about purely cooperative games. (Though I wonder if they’d be easier to adapt. Cooperative + complications seems closer to the character of a cohabitive game than competitive + non-zero-sum score goals do...)
Gloomhaven seems, and describes itself as being a cooperative game. What competitive elements are you referring to?
The third tier is worth talking about. I think these sorts of games might, if you played them enough, teach the same skills, but I think you’d have to play them for a long time. My expectation is that basically all of them end with a ranking? as you said, first, second, third. The ranking isn’t scored, (ie, we aren’t told that being second is half as good as being first) so there’s not much clarity about how much players should value them, which is one obstacle to learning. Rankings also keep the game zero sum on net, and zero sum dynamics between first and second or between first and the alliance have the focus of your attention most of the time. The fewer or the more limited mutually beneficial deals are, the less social learning there will be. Zero sum dynamics need to be discussed in cohabitive games, but the games will support more efficient learning if they’re reduced. And there really are a lot of people who think that the game that humans are playing in the real world is zero sum, that all real games are zero sum, so, I also suspect that these sorts of games might never teach the skill, because to teach the skill you have to show them a way out of that mindset, and all they do is reinforce it.
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
This category is really interesting, because the alliances expire and have to be remade multiple times per game, and I’ve been meaning to play some games from this category, but they’re also a lot more foggy, the agreements are of poor quality, they invite only limited amounts of foresight and social creativity, in contrast, writing good legislation in the real world seems to require more social creativity than we can currently produce.
Gloomhaven seems, and describes itself as being a cooperative game. What competitive elements are you referring to?
When characters pick up gold and items, they can’t be shared, so there’s sometimes a race to get them, and players might not work for the benefit of the whole party at that point.
Every session/scenario/map, each character gets a secret goal with a small character progression bonus for achieving it, and pursuing those often requires making one to a few selfish choices.
Also for the lifetime of a character there’s one secret goal, which again inspires some selfish choices on a longer timeline.
That’s interesting thanks, but I hope you can understand how keeping all of the individual goals secret would make it much harder to practice negotiation. It’s okay (great, even) if there’s some way of exposing the secret goals. In most games with secret goals that doesn’t happen during the game, but since, iirc, it’s a legacy game, maybe players tend to figure out each others’ secret goals as the campaign goes on. Is that the case? If so, I’d be very interested in seeing that stuff, and the late-game.
I doubt most of these “many”s. If you’ve seen more than one of all of these things, you’re using very different discovery channels than I (or most people) are.
You’re welcome to name these games if you wish to substantiate your claims.
I’ve played them. The agreements made in such situations tend to of poor quality.
fully cooperative: Hanabi, The Crew, The Captain Is Dead, Pandemic
partially cooperative: Red November, Betrayal at House on the Hill (original and Legacy), Dead of Winter, Gloomhaven
competitive [...] strongly mutually beneficial deals: Catan, Diplomacy, 18XX (and almost any other game where players own stock in each other’s positions)
competitive [...] placement in each round matters: Power Grid, 18XX,
competitive [...] not usually permanent alliances are critical to victory: Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium (all of them), Cosmic Encounter
These are just the ones I’ve played in recent memory. I’d wager I can name 20 games in each category, with some overlap like above, with more time to think and research.
(I’m aware of most of these games)
I made it pretty clear in the article that it isn’t about purely cooperative games. (Though I wonder if they’d be easier to adapt. Cooperative + complications seems closer to the character of a cohabitive game than competitive + non-zero-sum score goals do...)
Gloomhaven seems, and describes itself as being a cooperative game. What competitive elements are you referring to?
The third tier is worth talking about. I think these sorts of games might, if you played them enough, teach the same skills, but I think you’d have to play them for a long time. My expectation is that basically all of them end with a ranking? as you said, first, second, third. The ranking isn’t scored, (ie, we aren’t told that being second is half as good as being first) so there’s not much clarity about how much players should value them, which is one obstacle to learning. Rankings also keep the game zero sum on net, and zero sum dynamics between first and second or between first and the alliance have the focus of your attention most of the time. The fewer or the more limited mutually beneficial deals are, the less social learning there will be. Zero sum dynamics need to be discussed in cohabitive games, but the games will support more efficient learning if they’re reduced.
And there really are a lot of people who think that the game that humans are playing in the real world is zero sum, that all real games are zero sum, so, I also suspect that these sorts of games might never teach the skill, because to teach the skill you have to show them a way out of that mindset, and all they do is reinforce it.
This category is really interesting, because the alliances expire and have to be remade multiple times per game, and I’ve been meaning to play some games from this category, but they’re also a lot more foggy, the agreements are of poor quality, they invite only limited amounts of foresight and social creativity, in contrast, writing good legislation in the real world seems to require more social creativity than we can currently produce.
When characters pick up gold and items, they can’t be shared, so there’s sometimes a race to get them, and players might not work for the benefit of the whole party at that point.
Every session/scenario/map, each character gets a secret goal with a small character progression bonus for achieving it, and pursuing those often requires making one to a few selfish choices.
Also for the lifetime of a character there’s one secret goal, which again inspires some selfish choices on a longer timeline.
That’s interesting thanks, but I hope you can understand how keeping all of the individual goals secret would make it much harder to practice negotiation. It’s okay (great, even) if there’s some way of exposing the secret goals. In most games with secret goals that doesn’t happen during the game, but since, iirc, it’s a legacy game, maybe players tend to figure out each others’ secret goals as the campaign goes on. Is that the case? If so, I’d be very interested in seeing that stuff, and the late-game.