Kris Hall: Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Loss

The other night at the meeting of the Appalachian Gamers I had what may have been the single greatest blow-out victory of my gaming career. I played Industria for the first time, and ended up with so many points that my score was way off the scoring track. I may have had more points than all the other players put together.

How did I achieve this fabulous victory? By brilliant strategy? Cunning tactical ploys? Actually, no. I stumbled onto my game-winning plan, and was allowed to carry it out only because none of the other players was willing to sacrifice his short-term gains for long-term profit.

If you haven’t played it, Industria (designed by Michael Schacht, published by Rio Grande Games and Queen Games) is an auction game in which players bid for spaces on the board that represent factories and technologies. Control of spaces that are connected by roads, railroads, or technology lines generate extra victory points. Early in the game, I gained control of the two technology spaces that came up for auction. And once I had two, then going for the rest only made sense. Technology spaces are especially valuable because they have low start-up costs, and because they tend to award high victory points.

I should mention that money is usually very tight in Industria. Players not only need cash to win auctions, but they need to set aside money every turn to build the factories that they’ve acquired. This lack of cash makes bluffing during auctions a risky endeavor. If someone calls your bluff, you may end up with a factory you don’t need and not enough cash to build any of your new acquisitions.

This explains why the other players were reluctant to fight me in a serious way for control of the technology spaces. Getting a technology space might not give them as many points as getting a factory near their other assets. They wanted to save their money for their own projects.

But eventually, they started realizing that this was a short-sighted strategy. “You let him get another technology!” someone would say after I won another space in my technology chain.

“I didn’t see you bidding him up,” the other player would reply.

I kept winning auctions even as my opponents pointed out to each other how foolish they were all being. They all knew that someone should challenge me, but no one wanted to be the one to bell the cat.

Thinking about the game later, I realized that what the game had illustrated was the basic human flaw that keeps people from sacrificing immediate gratification for long-term benefit. This inability to do what is in our own long-term best interest can help explain everything from the national obesity level, to the dismal American savings rate (which is in the negative numbers), to the human race’s probable inability to do anything meaningful to combat global warming.

It may seem like I’m throwing a ridiculous amount of significance on a game of Industria, but it’s not the game that’s significant—it’s the human behavior revealed by it.

If I wanted this story a to reveal a more positive human trait, I probably would only have to play another game of Industria with the same players. I doubt very much that they’d let me get away with the technology strategy again. The second game would most likely reveal something more cheerful—our ability to learn from our mistakes.

© 2007 Kris Hall

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