I Hate These Board Games Because the Winners Are Determined From the Start
and my thoughts on fun and real strategy
One of my biggest pet peeves is “strategic” board games that have wide appeal yet the winners are chosen from the start.
Take for example the popular card game War.
War
The game War has an ironic name because it’s nothing like the chaos of war.
The goal of War is to obtain all of the other player's cards by successfully winning a series of “battles”.
The game goes as follows:
Each player begins with one half of the deck that they can’t look at. (26 cards each)
To play, they each take the top card of their half-deck and place it face-up in front of themselves.
Whoever has the highest card gets to take the other player's card.
The players keep doing this until one player has all the cards and is declared the winner.
Do you see what’s wrong with this game?
Before the game even starts, the winning player is mathematically determined. If each player plays the game correctly, the player who happens to have the half-deck that has higher cards & tends to match those with lower cards of the opposing side will be the winner.
The players have no choice in who wins are not. Their choices mean nothing. In fact, they have no choices to make. Why are we wasting each other's time playing such a game?
Even worse, are games that come off as strategic, but at a closer look, aren’t.
Monopoly
I’m assuming you’ve played Monopoly before so I won’t bore you with the details of how people play.
The problem with Monopoly is that it is heavily reliant on randomness to select who wins and who doesn’t. Monopoly is slightly better than War since it gives players a smidge of autonomy, but primarily, who wins is determined by dice throws.
When a player lands on a property, most default to buying it, because the more properties you buy, the higher your chances of getting a matching color set are. This “buying strategy” is the single, best way of acting that everyone adopts sooner or later. Whoever gets the matching set first tends to win the game.
Real strategy games produce differing opinions on what works and what doesn’t. And sometimes one strategy works and another doesn’t depending on how the game is progressing. Games like that are fun because your choices matter.
But with Monopoly, there’s one definitive best strategy that most people adopt. And everyone who adopts that strategy is in a “competition” of randomness. They win based on how well they roll, which, in my mind, is another form of a pre-determined outcome.
A Better Game
In a Medium post from February this year I wrote about one of my all-time favorite games RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe. (RCT)
RCT is an amusement park & money management game. It’s one of my favorite strategy games because it contains many moving parts, legitimate choices, and legitimate consequences.
The goal of RCT is to make money, like Monopoly, but rather than unrealistically taking money from other capitalists, you provide value in exchange for money from your ride-goers.
The success of your park is determined by how well you listen to the feedback of your customers and how well you invest money to support those demands. You do better based on how you invest your money and reinvest it. There are many choices you can make. Some are optimal, others sub-optimal, and a few, are game-ending.
The fun of the game is found in learning how to deal with random events, like bad weather or competition, and dealing with the dilemma of choosing between advertising or building a cotton candy stand. You might also find enjoyment in hearing the feedback of your customers, many of who make snarky remarks, and, if you’re managing your park well, they’ll express their enjoyment of the quality they’ve been experiencing.
RCT and games like it, are games worth playing because winning isn’t determined by how the deck is shuffled or how the dice roll.
Your choices matter. Much like in real life.
I totally agree with this sentiment esp with monopoly - I am often called a sore loser with monopoly even when I play the perfect strategy bc i blame it on dice.
That being said, i totally plan to have a soul crushing and family destroying game of Monopoly over this holiday season haha