Aaron Lawn: I hate to love you
Or love to hate you? A recent game of Age of Steam with my game group1 set me to thinking about the extreme reactions2 that Age of Steam is prone to creating, and exactly why this is the case. I realized that Age of Steam is one of a small number of games where failure, not just loss, is an option.
I don’t mean the specific player elimination that can occur within Age of steam, but rather the fact that a well-played game of age of steam never lasts much past the first blush of success. Players start the game with expenses higher than their income, and must maneuver within that range against the players and the game itself. A tough distribution of cubes on the board can present a game where massive deficit spending is required during the first several turns of the game. And deficit spending in Age of Steam doesn’t feel good. It feels like you are on a 80% glacial incline scrabbling with your ice pick.
So I looked out at other games that share this trait with Age of Steam - The trait of failure and victory of the game system over the player. Surprisingly, I found it first in Agricola and Le Havre. A recent two-player game of Le Havre invoked some of the same feelings from Age of steam, as the escalating food costs within the two player cardset left both of us off-balance for the first half of the game. Larger player counts of Le Havre and most plays of Agricola are a bit tamer, but still there remains the need to balance the game’s demands versus the demands of the other players. I have crashed and burned in Agricola, much to my own amazement.
So obviously the linking feature is that the game demands feeding by the players. Money for expenses in age of steam, food in the two Rosenburg games.
The other interesting note is that all three of these games have single player options. While a single player game will never prepare you for a multi-player contest, they do offer actual choices and decision making, simply because the game is providing challenges for the players.
Another game that came to mind is Splotter’s Antiquity, where the rapid escalation of deaths and pollution can overwhelm a player and send them spiraling into conflict with the game itself3. And this is perhaps the fundamental basis for the strong hate that Age of Steam (and Antiquity) can produce. Because players must combat the game itself, not just the players.
Most games are simple to succeed if the other players don’t exist… So does this mean that the above games actually have something in common with the recent spate of cooperative games? After all, most cooperative games pit you against the game system, which has been balanced to provide a challenge for the cooperating players4. Pseudo-co-op Battlestar Galactica is even closer to Age of steam since players must combat the game system while attempting to ferret out their opponents and neutralize them as best as possible.
Returning to Age of Steam, it’s worth noting that it really isn’t unlike most other games. Players compete for resources/victory points which can be scarce or plentiful. But in Age of Steam, the drawback to losing a round of competition can pit you directly against the unmerciful demands of the game system. This risk is exactly why I like Age of Steam and similar games, including cooperative ones. I like the ever-present risk of failure and the added trauma that it brings to the table.
But I don’t mind failure. I even get a perverse enjoyment out of the occasional in-game trainwreck5. But not everyone does, and that gap is fundamental to the Love/Hate relationship6. Age of Steam provides many things that gamers like along with many things that are unusual and many players dislike. I think that is why there are so many iterations of the AoS game system, and why Le Havre and Antiquity will always be contentious games. Agricola? I think that failure rears it’s head in Agricola less often, and less drastically, so that it is easier for players to forgive the looming threat of spiraling failure.
It is also a hard type of game to design. There has to be room for the players to interact in a meaningful way, while still giving them the challenges of the game system.
I’d be interested to see if anyone thinks I’ve forgotten any major candidates within this sub-sub-genre of game. There are numerous games that have ways for all the players to lose, but I think those are a different style of game, since they provide something that all the players must worry about without adding extra risk to personal failure.
I’ll close with a mention of the small-but-vibrant current crop of single-player games, which share some similarities with the above games. Most of these games are DIY projects, and there have been several strong games among them. I’ve got a column about them brewing, so I’ll try to get on it in two7 weeks.
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1Which I have recently christened “whiner’s anonymous”. We admit we’re whiners. And not afraid to let you know.↩
2Please note that while this extreme reaction apparently includes the various and sundry arguments and finger-waving that you can find on BGG, I’m not talking about production, publication, or rights issues here - just the game itself.↩
3I also considered La Citta, which has a similar spiral of population exodus that can effectively cripple a player. La Citta contains the same sort of slippery slope, but that slope is created entirely by the other players in the game. Play La Citta against yourself and you won’t find that there are many impediments to your progress. As such, it gets a nod but falls short.↩
4Supposedly. Some cooperative games fail this test. Sadly.↩
5My long-time favorite electronic games are roguealikes, which offer a higher trainwreck-to-success ratio than most other games in existence.↩
6It is probably worth noting that the dollar auction is the other major contender of love/hate.↩
© 2009 Aaron LawnComments:
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In the Year of the Dragon is another system that fights you tooth and nail, Aaron. Under the right circumstances, a solitaire game would be a good challenge. Through the Ages requires the players to keep a lot of balls in the air. Maybe not the same thing, but certainly very challenging, particularly when you’re still figuring out how to deal with the basics of maintaining the infrastructure. There’s a good solitaire game posted on the Geek that is quite challenging. Posted by Larry Levy on Mar 12, 2009 at 01:10 PM | #
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I was thinking of In the Year of the Dragon all the way through the article as well… Its only main contrast is that is has slightly less direct player interaction. Choosing roles can make-or-break players at times, though so even though its fairly indirect it can have important outcomes. Thus, I agree with Larry that it would be a good fit. I certainly have that Looming Doom feeling nearly every time I play the game. Depending on the order of the months, it can be pretty unforgiving… I’ve now played it enough so I have far less fear of doom, but its there. (Shoot, my last game I made it to the end of the game and NOBODY DIED! At least in my empire. Unfortunately, I didn’t win, either… :( ) Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Mar 12, 2009 at 01:48 PM | #
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Reminds me of my first BGN column:
Besides In the Year of the Dragon, I think La Citta and to a lesser extent Notre Dame are other examples of this type of game (which I call “Survival Games"). Interesting article Aaron. Le Havre came out after I wrote about the topic, but you’re right that it definitely belongs on the list somewhere. And I agree that cooperative games are also related in a way as a sibling to this genre for sure. Posted by Tom Rosen on Mar 12, 2009 at 03:42 PM | #
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I like the term which I think originated on The DiceTower: “scarcity games”. I’d definitely include Notre Dame & In the Year of the Dragon in the listing, as other folks have said. Oddly enough, I wouldn’t have included Age of Steam in the set, but I see the connections you suggest. Posted by Shannon Appelcline on Mar 12, 2009 at 04:30 PM | #
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Railroad Tycoon is a game of efficiency. Age of Steam is a game of survival. Posted by Eric Brosius on Mar 12, 2009 at 04:44 PM | #
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Yup yup, In the Year of the Dragon and Notre Dame both came up in my mind as well. When I describe Dragon to people I say that it’s a game about surviving the very bad year of the dragon, and when I remind people who have played ND before which one it is, I say “the one with the plague rats” and they know. ND isn’t quite as horrible as Dragon as far as being able to totally scorch you, so that tends to get more play. But when I first started playing Agricola, Dragon was the first game that came to mind as far as punishing you for not preparing (or for just being hosed by other people’s plays). Appropriately enough, one of the only older games I can think of with any hint of this mechanic is Bohnanza: the game makes you deal with 2 beans per turn whether or not you need them, and a good deal of the game revolves around how well you manage to prepare for what those beans (and your card draws) will do to your strategy for your limited fields… Posted by Joseph Cochran on Mar 12, 2009 at 04:53 PM | #
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I’m liking In the Year of the Dragon more and more with each play, whether in person or on MaBiWeb.com. In my current online game, for example, I’ve been able to stuff people so that two of them will have no coins for the upcoming tribute round. (It would have been three opponents, but one of them has played more and recognized the trap, choosing to take 3 coins this round so that he’ll lose only one person next round.) I saw the potential for this a couple of rounds ago, and I imagine that players with more experience than I have would have trampled me. Still many rounds to go… Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Mar 12, 2009 at 05:15 PM | #
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I think you skirt a bit around what really makes Age of Steam divisive. It’s not so much that failure is an option; that’s just a question of bad game design. I can’t think of a good reason to design a game such that players are put out of contention in the first quarter of the game but are forced to continue playing with no hope of winning. Player elimination is a better option than that, in general. Good games are games where you always *feel* on the verge of being totally completely hammered, but on balance very rarely actually are (or everyone else is getting hit just as hard), like Antiquity, Galaxy Trucker, Container, or Year of the Dragon. Or where, like Titan or Diplomacy, once you fail you can go off and do something else. No, I think the real point of divisiveness for a game like Age of Steam is players vs. the game or players vs. the system. Some (I’d say most, but that’s me) players like a game where you play with the other players and the game system itself does its best to not get in the way. Some players prefer games where they the system is the game and it tries not to let the other players get in the way. Age of Steam is pretty far towards the gaming the system end, so a lot of people who like playing other players don’t care for it. Cooperative games come on the same spectrum, sort of. A good cooperative game in my opinion is one where the game is in the interactions of the players, where the system being gamed is too complicated or too subtle to be gamed tactically, so the game is in working together to make sure you get everyone’s best ideas; that is to say, a bad cooperative game is where the system is obvious enough to be gamed. Posted by Chris Farrell on Mar 12, 2009 at 06:13 PM | #
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I think that Age of Steam is divisive because it manages to be both extremes at once. It’s impossible to play ignoring the other players, and it’s impossible to play while ignoring the system. As such, players have to love -both- extremes in order to love AoS, while lots of people love aspect A and hate aspect B (or vice versa) I don’t think that aspect is bad game design, but it certainly isn’t going to be wildly popular. (and the mention of games like AoS that keep players playing a losing position is valid, but a wider discussion that may be the primary design problem of most euro-boardgames - exasperated by the 2-3 hour game length of AoS) Posted by Aaron Lawn on Mar 12, 2009 at 06:25 PM | #
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What you two are forgetting is that Age of Steam IS a wildly popular game. I don’t see how anyone could characterize it any other way. It’s certainly a tough game with a definite learning curve, but once the players get a little experience, the death spiral is rarely seen. I’ve also seen some very nice come-from-behind victories. It might be a little easier to give yourself a hopeless position through poor early play, but I don’t think it’s that much more likely than a lot of hard euros (like E&T, for example). The bigger factor, as Aaron says, is that you might have to deal with this throughout a long game. But it’s hardly unique there (take Antiquity, which is just as long, and where it’s VERY easy to screw the pooch early on). Posted by Larry Levy on Mar 12, 2009 at 08:51 PM | #
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Larry, Puerto Rico is a wildly popular game. Settlers is a wildly popular game. Ticket to Ride is a wildly popular game. Even Pandemic could be called a wildly popular game. Age of Steam is a game that has found a nice niche and which has a lot of fans, and whose value has been heightened by relative scarcity. I don’t mean to beat on Age of Steam too much, because in spite of its quirkiness I kind of like it, sort of. But it’s still a pretty niche game by the standards of euro stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Posted by Chris Farrell on Mar 13, 2009 at 12:15 PM | #
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Keeping losing players in is not a general eurogame design problem. Plenty of longer euro-type games that eurogamers like succeed, notably games like Civilization, 1825, Die Macher, and Britannia. Age of Steam’s problem, although common in small-press games, is very specific to itself: bad tension management. In AoS, the high-stakes choices occur in the first few turns, with decisions becoming less and less impactful as the game goes on. The sensible way to do it, and what the pros do, is do things the other way around - have stakes increase as the game goes on, which is helpful in too many ways to enumerate, while not really changing the overall sense of a skill:luck ratio in the game (unless you’re an experienced player who likes to see newbies screw themselves in the first 15 minutes because they don’t understand the game yet). Posted by Chris Farrell on Mar 13, 2009 at 12:38 PM | #
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I didn’t intend to say the ‘losing players, et al’ is a problem with eurogames, but rather a problem that eurogame designers must surmount - something that is often done successfully, as you note. As such, designers must account for losing players within the game, especially long ones. (aside - missing this design problem is what causes games like Through the Ages, and many multi-player wargames to be strong games at low player counts and weak games with more) Perhaps the sub-genre of Survival games is pushing the far end of the the ‘no player elimination’ eurogame tenet. What can the game do to players that will generate the same feelings that player elimination does, without actually removing anyone from the table? Posted by Aaron Lawn on Mar 13, 2009 at 01:02 PM | #
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Chris, popularity is a subjective concept, of course. All I can go on are the ratings at the Geek and what I view as the overall impression of the game. Age of Steam is the 11th highest rated game on the Geek. Despite a limited press run, it has almost 3000 ratings and has maintained an extraordinarily high average rating of over 8.0. It seems to have a large number of obsessed fans and a small cottage industry has sprung up to supply expansions to the game (the Geek lists over 30 of them). At events like Gulf Games and the Gathering, I am far more likely to see an AoS game than Puerto Rico or Power Grid. That, to me, is a wildly popular game. If you want to respond by saying that this popularity doesn’t extend to the broad gaming market, I would agree. I also don’t care. None of the games Aaron discussed in his article has any traction outside of the niche of hardcore boardgamers. The question that was cited was, is AoS divisive? There are certainly those who think it’s too hard and too unforgiving (just as there are those who think E&T is too tough of a game), but the game’s overall reception *among its intended audience* is highly positive. It is widely considered to be a great game (just going by the numbers) and it and the 18xx games are the two big favorites of train game enthusiasts. I also don’t think I agree that the high-stakes decisions in AoS occur at the beginning. They certainly don’t for me--survival isn’t nearly as big a problem for me as setting myself up for big deliveries at the end of the game. However, I’m not a particularly good AoS player, so I’ll let someone more experienced answer that criticism. Posted by Larry Levy on Mar 13, 2009 at 01:50 PM | #
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AoS is generally both too mathy and too unforgiving for me, but I still think it’s a very good game. Posted by Shannon Appelcline on Mar 13, 2009 at 03:37 PM | #
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Possibly not your main point, but one that you made click in my head suggests an explanation for a puzzle I’ve had. My son, 11, plays just about anything. He wins a little less than his share, but is usually cheerful even when losing. However, both Agricola and Le Havre upset him when he tried them. So the point that your article illuminated is that in most games, everyone has a positive score and whoever has the most positive wins. Throughout the game, your score goes up, more steeply for some, but in general everyone’s position is improving. Both Agricola and Le Havre (like Age of Steam) have the very real potential to get a negative score (or go bankrupt). And, more to the point, you feel like you are losing when you spend all your actions keeping your people fed even if you do have a positive overall score at the end. Thanks for the thought starter! Posted by Scott Russell on Mar 16, 2009 at 12:02 PM | #
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AIUI Age of Steam now has north of 10,000 copies in print. While perhaps not Carcassonne or Settler of Catan territory, I believe that puts it well ahead of most euro-style games. Perhaps it’s not quite worth a “wildly popular” but it is a pretty impressive showing worthy of a positive adverb. Posted by J C Lawrence on Mar 18, 2009 at 02:51 AM | #
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