I played Race for the first time last night and enjoyed it, but now you make me think that the enjoyment will end after a few plays, when I have learned the optimal card combinations. I hope this isn’t so, but I suspect you are right. I have found several games that I just loved at first, then forgot after learning the best paths to victory.

Another well-written article, Aaron!  (Except for two occurrences of “because” that I believe were intended to be “became”.) Keep up the good work!

re: because…
Odd.  I guess my fingers were on auto-complete.

I find myself trying some of the harder or odder strategies in RftG to keep it interesting.  And I have yet to do really well using the mining starting planet for some reason even though I know at least a couple combinations that would work well with that planet.

Who does Footnote #4 refer to?

Never mind, I found it.

I think “overdeveloped” is not quite the right word for what you are describing. I don’t think a game can be “overdeveloped” per se. Development can take the game in the wrong direction, or actually detract from a game by changing the design for the worse in some way, but I don’t think you can really “overdo” it.

What I think may be a better description is perhaps “overbalanced”. If every game element is balanced such that everything you do is about the same and there is little leeway for applying skill, that’s obviously not good. Agricola might have this to a small extent - everything you do is worth points roughly in proportion to its difficulty. So one could try to make an argument that it’s over-balanced (I’m sure there are better examples).

But, balance is a complicated word in games. Usually when we think of balance, we think of the game having multiple ways to approach it, none of which is dominant under all or even most circumstances. Knizia is good at developing well-balanced games, games where you have lots of choices at any one time and the right one will be extremely situation-dependent, there will never be one thing that you have to do or one path that will succeed regardless of circumstances. He actually had a quote along these lines somewhere when he toyed with the idea of working with FFG on a CCG. This sort of balance is highly desirable in most games, but is almost an anti-requirement for a CCG - you need over-powered cards to drive the players to acquire more cards. If the game is well-balanced, there would be no drive to acquire tons of cards.

The dead-end for Puerto Rico is not really a result of game balance, but a lack of variability. There are a relatively small number of reasonably viable strategies, the game set-up is essentially always the same, the flow is only subtly different from game to game, so you don’t see much variability in the game-play. So after a certain point players figure out given a set of circumstances, what the right answer is. It’s balanced, but there is not enough variability to ensure that the choices are different enough from game to game. Thus the expansion helps you a lot, because it gives you so much more game-to-game variability by altering the mix of buildings. If only all the new buildings were balanced as well we’d be good, but they are clearly not.

In Race, though, there is tons of variability. You’ll see a dramatically different flow of cards every game. If the game were over-balanced, then the cards would all be of similar value and you would see very close games. But you don’t, you’re hunting for combinations, looking to form a viable strategy from the cards you’re given, taking risks, and so you see blowouts as well as close games even after dozens of plays (my play-count is up to around 50). Obviously, not everyone is going to like Race, but overbalance or overdevelopment is not one of its problems.

On the other hand, Outpost (which was not designed by Tom Lehmann, actually) has serious balance problems as the robot strategy is overwhelming and a sure-fire winner. Phoenicia does a lot better, but the Clothmaker I think is still a little too strong, and a little too dominant. But the variability of the tech draw deck in Phoenicia gives the game a much more interesting and variable flow ... but nowhere near as much as Race.

I think there can be a certain appeal to the unbalanced game, as players explore a complicated game to find the one game element that is overpowered and is the key to victory, puzzle-like. Martin Wallace does this sort of game. Certainly you can do something like this rather easily by making something complicated and then not doing playtesting.

Chris,

All your thoughts about Balance are certainly spot-on but I’ll disagree - Overdevelopment is what i’m referring to - not balance. 

I do believe it’s possible to overdevelop.  As you streamline and develop a game, you remove unneccesary bits.  The cleaner a game gets, the more bits you will take out.  If you continue to develop, a game can be sanded down, many times resulting in a stronger game.

Balancing is certainly an aspect of development, but it’s not what I’m referring to.  It might be appropriate to use the idea of plainness and smoothness - or streamlining.

In the case of race, I’m not stating that it is overbalanced.  I don’t believe it is.

But currently, the “Aha” moments have been removed from Race - presumably (from my perspective) in order to streamline and speed the pace of the game.  Once you’ve learned the base interactions, I don’t see how any combination of cards will do anything surprising, or how any player who does something unexpected will succeed.

It’s blandness that causes my disinterest in a game - an expectation that I won’t learn anything, or be surprised by another player.  This same fact will bring the game back into my interest when the expansions are released - to

I completely understand why some players love Race.  It’s a very variable game that (as you say) can be tightly contested, or a blowout.  And experience and skill still play a strong part.

And it should go without saying that I’d rather see an overdeveloped game than one underdeveloped.

Chris Farrell and Shannon Appelcline have often complain about game’s sharp edges (Shannon more than Chris).  I usually like and value the sharp edges they complain about and consider them strengths rather than faults of the game in question, I find they often add extra value and interest to the game.  They are bits that disproportionately hurt and reward, or pose a trap for the unwary or deceived, and those sharp edges provide interesting weaponry that can be wielded for an against the players.  That’s all good stuff as far as I’m concerned.

I think there’s multiple types of undevelopment.

On the one hand you have a sort of baroqueness, which is I expect also what Aaron enjoys in a game. It includes special rules that perhaps could have been simplified, but which might add to the theming or the general uniqueness of the game. I’m starting to enjoy these more, especially in the works of Mr. Wallace.

On the other hand you have what’d I have to call sloppiness. This is typically where rules work in variable ways or with special cases and which generally add nothing to the game. There was some game that had three different ways to resolve ties--and I don’t mean Liberte different, but rather some ties were friendly and some weren’t--and there was no particularly good reason why.

So, while I’d agree some special bits might be good, some most definitely aren’t, and when I’m talking about “sharp edges”, I’m usually talking about the generally damaging ones.

Aaron, I’m not 100% sure of the intent of this article, but if I just take your words at face value, then what you’re saying is totally foreign to me.  Do you really only like games you can exploit?  Games where there’s clearly a best way of playing, so that the goal is merely to find it?  That sounds like no fun at all.  I play with an experienced group, so naturally we will all eventually figure out this best path and the game will lose interest.  It’s the games with multiple good paths--i.e., the “overdeveloped” ones--that we keep playing.  It’s practically the stated goal for every game we play, so I’m confused by what appears to be your position against such games.

I agree that overbalancing is bad.  If every action pays off about the same, the closeness of the final scores are achieved artificially and players soon realize it doesn’t matter what they do.  But that obviously isn’t true of Race (and I’m not one of the game’s fanatics).

If Chris’ comments about the desirability of including unbalanced elements in CCGs is correct, that gives yet another reason why I’m not fond of that genre.  That makes it an economic model, not a sound game design.  But there’s probably more basic reasons why I’ve never gotten into the CCGs.

Even though I’ve played a good deal of Puerto Rico over the years, it may not be enough for me to authoritatively discuss optimal ways of playing.  But my problems with many of the strategies that have appeared is that they ignore the fact that the essence of the game is predicting what actions your opponents will take and using this to your advantage.  My games of PR have all been different and the challenge of trying to get into my opponents’ heads is still an excellent one.  My suspicion is that the overreliance on some of the posted strategies has led to a groupthink where the game takes a very standard path.  In particular, I think the BSW players have adopted a very strong groupthink, which makes for a much less interesting game.  I don’t necessarily accept that their way of playing is optimal, since optimal play requires that you take the methods of your opponents into account.  If a single BSW regular played in one of my group’s games, he’d probably do poorly, since we may not be following all of the “proper” rules.  This shows me that a true master of the game is one who can adapt to many different playing styles and not just the one he’s mastered.  I still think PR is a fabulous game, that the “subtle” changes in game flow that Chris accurately refers to make all the differences in the world, and that for me at least, it’s constantly different and surprising.

Heh. Hold on.. it’s..  Article - Part 2.

My intention was not to discuss exploitation, or balance - though it obviously came across that way.  My intention was to more discuss the concept of surprise, discovery and exploration present within a game, specifically how Race for the Galaxy has missed that mark - probably through the extensive streamlining that it has undergone.

The general overall genre under discussion is games that rule-bend.  Race is one of these, as well as almost all CCGs, Cosmic Encounter, and on a more removed branch - games like Through the Ages and Puerto Rico.

Part of the appeal of these games is discovering the interactions between the various rule-bends.  Within Race, it is discovering what cards mesh well together.  In PR/TtA, it is finding what buildings support what paths to victory, and to what degree they can provide back-up support.

CCGs are the extreme example, where the larger meta-game (what cards you actually bring into the game) provides part of the balancing mechanisms.  If a certain combination proves overly strong, a subset of combinations is developed directly to defeat combination A, which in turn results in opening up option C.  It’s an odd shifting of play and balance that has no real analog in board games.

I think i’m drifting away from the point though…

My point was that Race started to pale for me because the exploration “space” wasn’t very large.  Combinations of cards aren’t surprising.  Sub-optimal combinations are nothing more than sub-optimal.

The “rough edges” that I refer to in the original article are these sub-optimal cards.  Cards (or decision points) where the optimal strategy isn’t clear, and probably won’t -ever- be clear, no matter how much play the game gets. 

I feel that a strong example of the rule-bending genre will allow for a subtle (though I’m not sure if I like that word..) blending and shifting of strategies.

Within Race, this would be seen as finding the secondary benefits to cards (top-of-the-head example: the unforeseen ways that a specific card that is primarily part of the produce-consume cycle supports a speed build cycle.)

I think Race lacks these discoveries, and lacks the ability to successfully blend strategies (especially among experienced players).  I am postulating that it lacks these because during development the decision was made to streamline out much of the multi-purpose function to cards (see footnote).

By contrast, I feel PR has more space for shifting strategies and non-optimal buildings to succeed.  The University is clearly one of the weak buildings, but I have also seen it used to drive a player to victory.  In the correct combination, at the right time, a sub-optimal choice becomes a strong one.  I have yet to see that within Race.

While I could easily be wrong - I think that experienced players of Race will win by
a) getting the cards they need when they need them (and by extension, knowing which cards they need)
and
b) successfully predicting what paths and cards the other players are playing, and using that to their advantage.

Ultimately, I think that great games provide an ever expanding array of options.  I’ve found that the more time I play Race, the fewer my options become.  I’m not sure how I managed to communicate that I wanted less options.  The opposite is true.  I want more options and more hard decisions.  Race has failed that metric for me. 

Race has been a typical bell curve for me.  I went from lukewarm to very excited and back to lukewarm.

And - I agree with Larry re: PR and groupthink. Yay groupthink.

--

I do recognize that some (not many) cards within Race do support two paths.  However, they aren’t very subtle about it, and they are usually drastically worse than any single-purpose card.  You play those cards because you must, not because you want to.)

Final note, because I noticed it when I was playing Race again last night - I haven’t played more than one or two 2-player Race games.  I have a feeling these would be a drastically different experience.  I’m referring mostly to the 4 player game, which has been over 60% of my games.