From: woods@colossal.Eng.Sun.COM (Don Woods)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Hostility in Gamers toward Certain Games
Date: 8 Sep 1992 17:50:45 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: colossal

David desJardins writes:
| Dave Lockwood <bsrae@warwick.ac.uk> writes:
| >I am hostile to a small number of games which either 
| >   ... e.g., exponential growth ... such as Civilisation and 1829
| 
| It seems incredible to me that exponential growth falls into this
| category.  Exponential growth is a direct consequence of investment and
| return on investment.  It is impossible to have a game of investment---
| and this includes such elementary games as Monopoly---which does not
| require a basic understanding of exponential growth.
| 
| Or are you commenting on a particular implementation or realization of
| exponential growth?  If so, I would be interested in hearing more about
| exactly what you object to.

I wasn't the original poster about this, but desJardins's question got
me to thinking about exponentiual growth games.  Yes, return on investment
is inherently exponential, and some people do seem to have trouble grasping
the implications of such growth.  And this isn't limited to money games.
Titan recruitment is to some degree exponential.   So is the growth of
power in Illuminati.  Some RPGs lead to exponential growth, most notably
AD&D where experience gains are proportional to the power of the opponents
defeated; AD&D balances this by using (roughly) exponential tables to set
the experience needed to advance the power of the players' characters.

I don't object to exponential-growth games in general, though there are
certain games that I dislike for other reasons.  But there are a few
aspects of such games that can lead to problems.  The two main problems:

1) If the game involves a random element, some early bad luck can push
one player back on the exponential curve, and it can be very hard to catch
up.  It depends somewhat on the nature of the random element; if the luck
element scales exponentially also, then later good luck may be able to get
the player back in the game.  If the luck element is more or less constant,
later good luck does not make up for early bad luck.

The same problem can of course occur in reverse, with early good luck
giving one player an easy win that is obvious to everyone after only a few
turns.  (But often there's a small chance of catching him, so you're stuck
playing out the whole game even though the result is unlikely to change.)

2) Depending on the victory conditions, the game may end rather suddenly.
I.e., you spend most of the game gradually building your way up, and then
in a turn or two billions of dollars pour into the game and it's over.
This can be good or bad, depending on what part of the game appeals to you.
If you like figuring out how to invest and plan your growth, then a sudden
ending is fine.  If you like doing something with the results of the growth,
it's not so fine.

Fortunately, there are games that span this spectrum pretty well.  E.g.,
the 18xx games and Outpost tend to end fairly quickly just as growth is
running out; Merchant of Venus and Empire Builder/Eurorails give you some
time to operate your holdings without growing further; Titan and Monopoly
don't end based on growth but instead require you use your growth to gain
an edge over your opponents.
--
--	-- Don Woods.				[*** Generic Disclaimer ***]
--				    ...!sun!woods.eng -or- Woods@Eng.Sun.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.board