Dale Yu: Crashing the Column

Hello gamers!  My name is Dale Yu, and I’m a gamer… [Hi, Dale!] I’ll be helping you get some more original, and hopefully enjoyable, gaming content here on BGN.  Rick had asked me (I think originally in jest) to possibly help out with some columns for boardgamenews.com, and I’ve decided to take him up on his offer.  I’m still not sure whether Rick was serious or not, but as my reputation on the Internet would apparently suggest, I’ve never really been afraid to show up in places where I’d really like to be!  Before I get started, I would like each and every reader to stop for a second and say thanks to Ryan B. for occupying this column space before me.  Go ahead and say it out loud, or better yet, shoot him an email to let him know that you’ll still be reading his At-Large columns.

Why me?  Primarily, I’m writing because Rick asked me to contribute.  Second, I’ve got lots of opinions, and I’ve never been afraid to share them; hopefully, this translates into some interesting columns for the readers.  Third, the last time that I spent the night at Greg Schloesser’s house, I rummaged thru his computer and got a list of his passwords.  So, until he changes his oh-so-hard-to-guess password, I’ve got admin access to this website and can post to my heart’s content!  I can also get access to all sorts of websites that I never knew existed… (but that’s a story for another column!) Fourth, I can offer an insider’s perspective to the industry as I’ve developed over 40 games for Mattel – with two new designs coming out this month!  Oh wait – that’s the resume of my more illustrious brother, Brian Yu, but it seems as if we’re always being mistaken for each other, so I might as well take advantage of that confusion as well. 

Fifth, I’m fairly active in the hobby and apparently am the target of the gaming paparazzi.  I was frankly surprised when I “googled” myself today and found that a search for “Dale Yu” in the images brings up 473 hits! Click Here to see For comparison, “Rick Thornquist” will get you 339 pictures, “Greg Schloesser” has 707!  I am happy to report that a search for ("Greg Schloesser” + naked ) brings up NO hits.  “Valerie Putman” will net you 44 hits, and “Larry Levy” has 264 links (though many of them do not seem to be our esteemed Larry Levy).  If nothing else, I’ll be able to use this column as a way to defend my honor against rogue Internet photograph captions.  Finally, there’s a fairly good chance that I will contribute regularly which may help make sure that you readers get your daily dose of gaming goodness here on the website.

But seriously – I’ve been involved in “German” gaming for about 14 years now.  I’m the nominal leader of the Cincygamers, one of the local gaming groups here in Cincinnati with around 40 to 50 gamers on the roster.  I used to be a fairly prolific game reviewer who has been on hiatus for the last few years given a severe decrease in gaming time – a direct result of working two jobs and having two children.  Despite my lack of gaming time and online presence, I’ve remained active in gaming via my two local gaming groups (the Cincygamers and the Liberty Gamers) as well as conventions/invitationals.  Though I don’t have much text online to prove my gaming, there are certainly plenty of pictures!

But, enough about me… Let’s talk about games for a bit!

I had to miss Origins this year as I was on family vacation that week in Southwest Michigan.  Unfortunately there was no gaming for me that week as my family members there don’t play games.  Furthermore, my usual gaming escape (driving up to Grand Rapids to meet up with the Lohroffs and Vanderarks) couldn’t happen due to scheduling conflicts.  At least I still had my camera, computer and TV.  At the end of the column is a nice sunset pic I was able to take on my first night up in Michigan this year.  Those of you that already know me know that I’m a soccer fanatic.  (Loosely translated – I follow soccer/football at all times, not just during the quadrennial World Cup).  Therefore, missing the World Cup matches was clearly not going to happen.  As I watched the finals last weekend, two of the matches went through overtime and into penalty kicks.  I’ve never been a great fan of this method of deciding a winner of a soccer match as it seems somewhat arbitrary compared to the rest of the match. 

However, the penalty shootout is part of soccer and I’ve come to accept it.  Soccer is a beautiful game played by two teams over 90+ minutes.  It involves teamwork, ball movement, fluid strategy during the run of play to have the 11 players move around the field with or without the ball, and moments of deliberate strategy and planning on set pieces such as free kicks or corner kicks.  The frustrating thing about the penalty shootout is that it imposes a completely different set of rules to decide a victor.  Despite the fluid action in the main portion of the game, the shootout only focuses on one player shooting from 12 yards out against the opposing goalkeeper.  Each team does that five times, and whichever side scores more goals is declared the winner.

Watching the shootouts did cause me to think of boardgames that also end in arbitrary fashion.  These “shootout” games are characterized by a completely arbitrary ending condition/rule.  To me, the archetype of this genre would be History of the World.  As many of you know, your success in this four-hour or more game is often determined more by your draw of empire in the seventh and final epoch than by your play in the first six epochs.  Admittedly, if you’ve not played well early on in the game, drawing the British in the final round will not guarantee you victory, but as long as you’ve played decently, you stand a better than average chance of winning with the Brits.  After many plays of this “classic” game, I’ve accepted this quirk as part of the game, but each time I play History of the World now, I always ask myself – why do we even play the first six epochs?  Shouldn’t we just go thru the distribution of the empires for the seventh epoch and then just declare a winner? 

This characteristic is unfortunately not limited to the classic games of old; there are a few examples of arbitrary victory conditions (at least in my opinion) in more recent games as well… Take for example, the 2006 release Mauer Bauer.  IMHO, the development of the board is interesting, but every game that I’ve played of this (four plays total so far and likely never again in the future) has come down to one single thing:  the winner was the player who was lucky enough to draw multiple high-scoring cards in his/her last draw phase. 

Playing with my kids has also led me to the very frustrating, Highly Suspect by Haba.  This is a beautifully done kids game that I would highly recommend to anyone with kids between 3 and 8.  It uses a great board to teach children spatial relationships as well as cause and effect.  The game is of a cops-and-robbers theme where each player is a detective trying to catch the thief by ending up in the space next to the thief.  When you catch the thief, you get a card as a reward. This card gives you anywhere from 0 to 3 victory points.  The game continues until one player has three cards. Then everyone adds up the numbers on their cards and whoever has the most points wins the game.  It’s fun enough for kids, but as a gamer, this type of ending is completely random and frustrating.  Even my five-year-old has already noticed that this is an unsatisfactory way of winning!

Another example might be Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot.  In this game, the winner is the player who draws the Magic Carrot.  Why bother playing the game – why not just deal carrots out to each player until we see who gets the Magic Carrot?  These three games are certainly not the only ones which have arbitrary endings, but they’re the ones that I happened to think of first while writing my column.  (What other games would you add to this no-so-illustrious list?)

For me, the dilemma of these “shootout” games is:  Should I play it or not?  On the whole, I usually try not to play games like this again if I know that the ending will be as arbitrary.  I’m all for light and fluffy games, but unless they game takes 15 minutes or less, I’d rather not play a two hour game that ends in such an unsatisfying manner for me.  Because of the short length (and the fact that my kids continue to request for it), I’ll play Highly Suspect with them.  But I’m very reluctant to play a game of History of the World anymore.  I think in general, I’d choose not playing the game at all instead of going thru the motions in order to get to the arbitrary ending.  But that’s just my opinion…

I would like to point out that though I do not like games with arbitrary endings, I am not against luck in games.  In fact, I prefer games that have some element of luck in them.  But that’s an idea for another column… Anyways, I think that this is enough rambling for now.  I’ll be around here on the website as long as Rick will let me (or until Greg S. changes his password!).  But I am off to Gulf Games today – you can expect a recap of events this time next week!

Here’s your picture as promised:

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

© 2006 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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Hi, Dale!  Welcome aboard! Having played Highly Suspect with your kids, I know exactly what you’re talking about.  Not fair when your son nabs more theives than the rest of us combined, but still loses because he drew all 0’s and 1’s and I happended to pull a 3. I’m guessing that you disliked Larry Levy’s favorite end game scoring mechanism, the shields in Louix XIV?  What about Vitrail, where the cards are worth different amounts, but that value is based on the level of difficulty of the puzzle--does that bother you as well?  I could win having solved fewer puzzles than someone else, but they would have been harder puzzles. Valerie Posted by Valerie Putman on Jul 19, 2006 at 06:59 AM | #

About time you got out of that cushy doctor’s office of yours and started to do some real work, Dale!  Welcome to the rotation.  And yes, we’ll miss you, Ryan, but we hope to see a lot of At Large columns from you in the future. It’s not quite the same kind of arbitrary ending that you’re talking about, but a small pet peeve of mine is the probabilistic ending.  The best known example of this is in I’m the Boss, but it also appears in Evo and a few other games.  The idea is that if the players don’t know precisely when the game is going to end, they can’t do gamey sort of stuff on the last turn (I’ve heard that complaint about the soon-to-be-released Tempus).  The problem is, the winner is often determined by a lottery.  This seems particularly prevalent in I’m the Boss.  If the game had ended on turn N, I would have won.  Fred did a big deal on the next turn, so if it had ended then, he would have triumphed.  Instead, it ended on turn N+2, so Ethel got the victory.  It’ll never stop me from playing I’m the Boss (or Evo, for that matter), but it does seem kind of arbitrary.  I’m also not sure that the problem it prevents is that serious--endgame machinations rarely bother me, they’re just part of the design.  So this may be a case where the cure is worse than the disease, something I’m sure you’re very familiar with, Dr. Yu. All kidding aside, it’s great to have you here, Dale.  I look forward to some terrific columns.  Have a wonderful time at Gulf Games! Posted by Larry Levy on Jul 19, 2006 at 08:35 AM | #

I see your point with probabilistic endings, however they aren’t as far into the “arbatrary ending” camp as the ones mentioned by Dale.  There is a much larger weight of the quality of play of the previous sections of the game. While I have been stung by them a number of times, I enjoy the probabilistic ending games as they add a nice amount of tension to the last few turns… nice for middle-weight games of 60-90 minutes or less.  Once you approach longer games (2+hrs) I could see a probabilistic ending game having some more significant drawbacks… It seems the longer the game the less “randomness” people will accept near the ending… Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Jul 19, 2006 at 09:19 AM | #

Valerie - the only thing good about the way Highly Suspect ends is that my kids haven’t figured out how arbitrary it can be.  They still enjoy it very much, and at this point, that’s what i’m most concerned with… The ending of Louis XIV is somewhat bothersome as well.  At least in that game, the primary component of your score is the number of mission cards completed, so at least it only determines a winner between people who have finished an equivalent number of mission cards (at least that’s what has happened in my experience) Posted by Dale Yu on Jul 19, 2006 at 09:24 AM | #

Actually, it is the “press your luck” ending of Union Pacific that makes it one of my favorite games.  Probabilistic endings add a nice risk management to the finale.  I do agree, though, that this loses its appeal when those final decisions end up being the sole decider of a game.  While I like that Euro games keep everyone in it until the end, I don’t like to see poor play rewarded with a win thanks to a high risk, low probability reward earned through pure luck. Posted by Valerie Putman on Jul 19, 2006 at 09:30 AM | #

As far as the “probabilistic ending” goes, i think i agree with Matt more than Larry.  Usually with that type of ending, I like the tension you get.  You are forced to make a choice of going for a large play on Turn X, not knowing for sure if it would be better to wait for a possibly better play on turn X+1 or X+2.  That is usually an advantage IMHO.  This type of ending is not arbitary to me because it still rewards players with a win if they have done well throughout the whole game— after all, regardless of when the end comes, the player in the lead had to have done something right to put himself in that position!  Which is very different from the arbitrary win conditions noted above.  And I’m also in the mood to disagree with Larry… Posted by Dale Yu on Jul 19, 2006 at 09:31 AM | #

Dale, I think you are going to be a FANTASTIC read.  Boardgame News readers are very lucky to have you on board to hear your insights.... and I personally look forward to reading your columns. The forum is truly yours now.  You are going to have tremendous success. Ryan B. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Jul 19, 2006 at 10:33 AM | #

Is it too late to get my money back?!?!  Just kidding Dale - looking forward to your columns.  You’ll be great! Craig Posted by Craig Massey on Jul 19, 2006 at 04:51 PM | #

Glad to hear there are no naked pictures of me on the ‘net.  My wife is probably even happier than me! Welcome aboard, Dale!  I look forward to reading your posts. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Jul 26, 2006 at 09:54 AM | #

Welcome on BGN Dale! I really enjoyed your two first posts! good play! Liga Posted by Andrea Liga Ligabue on Jul 28, 2006 at 01:18 AM | #

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