That's a good thing?

[dagibbs]

Though one player led the game early on, there were several reversals, wherein the leading and trailing players traded places -- always the mark of a great game. *

I think he and I have very different ideas of what is the mark of a great game.



* Cory Doctorow posting on Boing Boing

Comments

[horsetraveller.livejournal.com]

Why is that not a good thing? It indicates it's a close game, which makes it more fun for the trailing players, that it's not just an exercise in frustration to know that the early leader is going to take the game so what's the point in playing it out?

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

The phrasing "reversals" does not suggest that it is a close game -- it suggests that there are large swings involved. I like close games, I like hard fought games. But, I like games where the result, my success or failure, comes from my engaging in good, correct, error-free play. Games with low luck, and low randomness.

If you know the leader early on, sometimes there is no reason to play it out. Especially in two-player games such as Chess and Go, it is traditional to resign a game (as loser) if it is clear the opponent has a substantial lead that can not be overcome.

In multi-player games, there is less of a tradition of this, because there is still the question of rankings below 1st.

There are, also, the enjoyment of playing your situation to the best that you can, enjoying how the game system works, and learning the game system, so you can do better the next time you play.

[con-girl.livejournal.com]

I think you read too much into "reverses".

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. But, the game in question has both a bunch of card drawing, and a bunch of dice rolling. Now, maybe he meant that everyone was running neck and neck the whole way... it was close the whole way. But that's not what the phrasing said to me. And, sure it was just a quick review -- but he is, also, a professional author, so I'd generally expect him to use words reasonably carefully.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Tangent: In Scrabble, resigning in tournament is frowned upon because the point spread matters for ratings.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

In Go, it is actually frowned upon to not resign if a resignation position is clear.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

I recall that it's seen as insulting, implying a belief that one's opponent is so incompetent that they will throw away their advantage.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yes. At least, that is how I was taught when I was playing active face-to-face Go, lo those many years ago.

It was, also, of course, considered insulting to suggest that your opponent resign.

Further, this didn't apply nearly as much at the amateur level, because amateurs -- and the weaker the amateur the more the case -- weren't to be expected to actually have a good idea of whether or not they were winning.

[elizilla]

Reverses keep all the players engaged. It's no fun to fall behind early and never have a chance again.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I find it no fun to have a solid lead that I have achieved through careful play and skill taken away from me by a random reversal of fortune. I, also, have little joy in achieving a win in a game through sudden random reversal of position.

What I think makes a game great is different from what he does. There's lots of different games out there -- some will suit him far better, some will suit me far better.

[elizilla]

It also depends on who is playing. Most of us don't choose our opponents based on how well matched we are - we play games with people whose company we enjoy. Moderate randomness keeps us at the same table with our friends.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I do own, and play, and enjoy playing some games with more randomness. They just aren't in the category of what I consider to be great games.

[mycrazyhair.livejournal.com]

Well, different people do have different wants and needs about a lot of things, including games. I personally hate games where if one person falls behind early on then he or she knows he or she will lose and spends the whole game just waiting for it to be over or else playing as a spoiler or kingmaker among the other players. I don't find that to be any fun, regardless of whether I'm the winner or the loser.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Some games I think you find good can have large reversals. Mü, for example, can have such reversals, because there are relatively few scoring rounds (hands) in a game, which are largely independent, and in which player scores can vary over a wide range. Some engine-building games with intermediate scoring can also have significant reversals as different players' engines peak at different times.

I think few people like games in which an early lead avalanches into a widening margin of unstoppable victory.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I will play Mu, but I prefer my trick-taking games to be played in a duplicate style, rather than random-deal, play it as it goes. There are complications in trying to do a 5-player trick-taking game, and I think Mu provides some interesting mechanisms for doing this. But that wildness of swing is, in fact, one of the things I like less about Mu. It is not, to me, a feature of the game.

An engine-building game with engines with different peaks could, easily, have a reversal of lead position, as a late-peaking engine over-takes an early one. But I would be surprised to see "several reversals of last and first".

I'm not saying I want a game with no ability to over-take a leader. But the phrasing "several reversals of last and first" doesn't suggest a hard-fought battle to overtake the leader.

The phrasing, as I read it, suggests that there are wild swings in the game. I'm guessing that Cory and the people playing with him found/find such swings to be exciting and fun. And that is why they find a game with such reversals to be "always a mark" of a great game. I can find such games fun -- if they are reasonably light and short; which they usually are. I but I don't find them to be great games.

I like games that are, as I think foms coined the phrase, "crunchy". Crunchy games don't tend to lend themselves to "several reversals of last and first". They often have multiple paths to victory, and it is often unclear until the end of the game, who is, actually, in the lead.

Or, to put it another way:
He thinks that fast, light, exciting games are great games.
I think that longer, slower, crunchier games are great games.

Yes, he and I have very different ideas of what are great games.

[foms.livejournal.com]

I think that there's also a set of possibilities under the heading that this is writing about the game. It may be that describing it this way makes for better copy. It may be that his (or one of his) measure(s) of the game is in how exciting a story it makes.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

True, that.

[foms.livejournal.com]

A couple of other things occur to me.

A series of reverses between last and first may still be in increments of two points.

Leaving aside the sometime illusion of changes in points when those points are actually accrued simultaneously, in game terms, there are games (probably, some of them crunchy) in which points are counted as the game progresses (or at frequent intervals) such that the described reversals can happen. As you say and as Ironphoenix alludes to, sometimes, one doesn't really know or it is not evident from the shown points who is really in the lead. That doesn't stop people from taking the snap-shots and deriving excitement from how they change at different stages of the game.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yes, such reverses can occur in a crunchy game.

But the existence of several such reverses are not something that I consider "always a mark of a great game". Sure, the always is hyperbole, as most universal quantifiers are, but I still don't consider such multiple reverses as (perhaps, not quite so hyperbolic) a strong mark of a great game.