Kuang-Hsin Liu
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Little Things about Win

2/27/2014

4 Comments

 

Everything starts from an interesting article "Games with Judges" by Marlena Abraham, one of our adventure partners in Ludus. Through this article, Marlena discussed whether a game is not a "game" anymore if the winner of a game is decided subjectively. Under the article, I replied I don’t think the decision method of the winner in a game would always affect that much. I think a "game" is an "interactive experience that players pursue one or more goals under certain rules". And the idea of "win" comes from achieving SOME goal(s) of the interactive experience. However, there are some goals that might not lead players to the "win state". Hence, how to win a game might not be the whole game. Players could also get other interesting experience by pursuing other goals.

Moreover, "reaching the win state" does not mean to cause an end in some games. That is, there are some games do not use "satisfying certain winning conditions" as the ending condition. For example, in traditional "tag", players run around while "it" chases after them. We can say that "it" WOULD lose the game, and other players WOULD win the game, they are in win state currently. However, "tag" does not end when someone accomplishes some winning condition, reaching win state. Instead, traditional "tag" ends when "it" gives up chasing anyone. In this case, whether there is someone standing inside the win state will not interrupt the interactive experience of a game since ending conditions do not depend on the goals leading to win state. Therefore, again, "win" may only represent part of the game. A game will not lose its whole "game" spirit only because the varied ways to get win. That is, "how to get win" is not sufficient enough to determine whether that activity is a "game" or not. If the "win" relates less to the end of a game, the way how to choose the winner is less important in a game.

What's WIN for?

Then, what does "win" matter? I think it matters because the desire of "win" is one of the most effective ways to trigger players to be devoted in playing games. The competitions between players’ desires of win make the game more intense and push players to concentrate more. Especially when a game ends when some player reaches the win state, the conflicts between players’ desires become more obvious, and conflicts will reach the maximum when someone is close to the "win".

Some games would intentionally emphasize the maximum of coompetitions to enhance the intense atmosphere and to bring the interest curve to a higher level. For instance, calling "check" in chess and shouting out "Uno" in Uno. In Uno, the only goal is to play out all your cards in your hand. The game ends while one player has no more cards in his/her hand, and that person is the winner. It is a game whose win state extremely relates to the ending conditions. Players try their best to face the challenge of each turn and to play their cards with some kind of strategy in order to beat others and get the win state first. That has already made Uno into a highly competitive game. Moreover, the mechanism of yelling "Uno" to claim the win state stimulates the extreme intensity in the game. Other players will grab their last opportunities to hinder the player who claims to be so close to the "win state". It pushes the interest curve to a new peak and forces all the players to raise their heads from their cards and pay more attention on what other players are doing.

In conclusion, the importance of the role "win state" plays in a game is positively correlated to the relationship between the "win state" itself and "the end of the game". Even though the desires of win can drive players to be deeply devoted in the game, the idea of "win" would never completely represent a whole game.

4 Comments
Eric Chang
3/3/2014 01:46:08 am

This made me wonder at how winning could be interpreted differently by different people. In tag, I consider that I win if I was "it" the least amount of times, or less than the average amount, but different people could see it differently. Perhaps in a game with loosely defined winning conditions and a separated end case, everyone could win. Perhaps everyone has some kind of mission they need to achieve, competing against each other for it, yet all being able to accomplish their mission. The desire to win is very strong, and is a great driving force for many players in games. Winning is definitely a concept that can be played around with to great effect.

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Eugenia Lee link
3/4/2014 06:42:28 am

I suppose I'll share my thoughts on tag as well. In my opinion, some games don't have a "win state." The goal of the game is to play until you lose (e.g. Flappy Bird) or to keep playing until everyone gets tired or bored (hide and seek, tag). I think the very fact that we all seem to have different definitions of the "win state" of tag shows that "winning tag" is not a primary motivator for playing it.

I suppose that just supports your point that "winning" doesn't represent a whole game by itself.

As another note, I thought your paragraph on Uno was a really great explanation of how saying "Uno" contributes to the excitement of the game.

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Erik Harpstead link
3/5/2014 12:37:29 am

I think its an important distinction to point out that the winning state of a game is not necessarily equal to its end state. I think another interesting aspect that your framing of winning brings up is that players might be playing for completely different sets of goals, that might have nothing to do with the game as it was designed. For example when I play most shooter games with my friends I don't like to take them seriously so my goal is to cause as much random chaos for the other players as possible. While I might "lose" by the rules of the game as written I will have succeeded by the rules that I am choosing to play with. I think it is interesting to consider from a design perspective whether or not such repurposings are something we want to support in our design or not.

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Eric Kron
3/6/2014 01:05:33 am

It seems reasonable that the importance of a win state is positively correlated with the end of a game. One thing I like about your conclusion is that it might even be applied to games which do not have a predefined end state. As Eugenia points out, Flappy Bird does not have an end state, but because the game cannot be infinite, any score which is higher than another correlates more strongly with the end state (whatever that may be) and can be considered a win state.

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