When I try to summarise a game within a few sentences, often I find myself saying, "... and whoever has the most points wins the game." So many games use this victory points concept that we don't really think about it anymore. When we sit down to play a new game, we just ask, "so what do I do to score points?" Sometimes it is difficult for me to get excited about a new game, when I see it as yet another game where you try to score the most points.
The victory points mechanism is a convenient one. In complex games where the designer wants to reward you for various different good actions, giving you victory points is a simple solution. Otherwise it might be impossible to unify the many different actions or aspects of a complex game. Your success is measured in one consistent currency. Bad actions get no points, or even cause points to be deducted. Good actions earn points. It is a little like how society generally defines success by wealth. Money is victory points. Straight-forward, quantifiable, unambiguous. I'm not making any political, sociological or philosophical statement. I certainly do not believe our goal in life is to chase money. It's just that money is easier to measure than happiness. Maybe.
Wingspan
Many of my favourite games use victory points. Through the Ages, Race for the Galaxy, Food Chain Magnate, Carcassonne. Many popular games use it - Terraforming Mars, Wingspan, Terra Mystica, 7 Wonders. Victory points is not a problem per se. I just wish there were more games which use other ways to determine victory. There are many such games. Many war games determine victory based on area control, e.g. capturing the opponent capital in Axis & Allies. In Chess you win by cornering the opponent king. In Mahjong, there are many different game-winning combinations you can aim for. There are race games where you try to cross the finish line first. In head-to-head battle games you try to reduce your opponent's health to zero. It's arguable that this is just another way to present victory points. Your victory points is how far you have reduced your opponent's health.
Cooperative games tend to use victory points less, and are objective-based
instead. In Pandemic you need to cure four diseases. In
Samurai Spirit you need to protect the village. You don't need to
compare whether one player is doing better than another, so you don't need
victory points to measure the success level of any player.
Samurai Spirit
Games which use victory points apply different granularity. I find that those with fine granularity feel more distant from their theme. Building a monument gives you 20VP. Leftover money is 1VP per $3. First player to pass in a round gets 3VP. The VP starts to feel more and more like just a number you manipulate. In a game with coarse granularity, you think about the VP less and more about the action you need to perform. In The Settlers of Catan you only need 10VP to win. The contest for that 2VP for longest road feels more real than just one out of ten ways to score points in other point salad games. To take it to an extreme, in Chess you need to score 1VP to win, and trapping your opponent king is the only way to score 1VP.
The Settlers of Catan
The number of different ways to score points affects how real the victory points feel. In Russian Railroads there are many ways to score points, even for not being start player of a round. Victory points become just an abstract measure of success. Many different accomplishments in the game give you victory points. It is almost like whatever you do, you'll be praised. You just try to get praised more efficiently than others. If a game only has a handful of ways or just one way to score points, the corresponding actions will feel more real. In Power Grid, your victory points is the number of cities you can power. There is much you need to do to power cities - buy resources, buy power plants, build your network. You think in terms of powering cities instead of scoring victory points.
Power Grid
I am tinkering with game design now, and one thing I try to do is to not use victory points. I want people to slay dragons, and not increase the dragon kill count by 1. Victory points is a useful tool. It's just that sometimes it takes away some immersion. We already have so many victory point games. Let's explore more different and fun ideas.
6 comments:
I've been thinking somewhat along the same lines - that optimizing VPs is a flexible, convenient way for a designer to motivate player behavior but not necessarily satisfying to gameplay.
I just checked my own game list, and the first two games I identified that don't use VPs are cooperative or semi-coop - Robinson Crusoe, which is trulty cooperative, and Betrayal at Baldur's Gate, which can turn into a one-vs-many game or a co-op game, depending on the haunt. One truly competitive game I have that doesn't use VPs is Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, which is a race to solve a crime.
It's interesting to highlight games that don't use VPs and see what's different about them. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
Thanks Paul. Glad you find this interesting.
I've been following your blog for years, and I don't think I've ever commented, so I should start by saying, thank you for the content, and I really enjoy your blog!
I've been involved in the game design community for a few years (I have two games coming out this year), and avoiding victory points is a popular new trend. As a player, I'm not bothered by lack of immersion or thematic disconnect, so I don't mind victory point conditions in games. They are very useful in certain types of designs - primarily heavy eurogames. I also think my counter-culture attitude kicks in sometimes and I design with victory points just to spite the current trends.
For any game designed to appeal to casual gamers or family gamers, avoiding victory points is very, very useful. It makes the game much more thematic, and thematic games are easier to teach (because the purpose of theme is to make game actions intuitive).
Anyway, I enjoyed this post, and I enjoy your blog!
Thank you Nathan! I didn't realise there is a trend towards games not using victory points. Maybe it's because I tend to play heavy Eurogames, and these still mostly use victory points. I'm new to game design and the game design community, so I may be behind in terms of the latest game design trends. And I thought I was being the counter-culture guy wanting to avoid victory points, LOL.
Since you've been doing game design for some time, perhaps you can help me with this. I recently designed a 2-player game for the BGG 9-card print-and-play nanogame contest. If you can take a look and give me feedback that would be much appreciated!
https://bgg.cc/thread/2601382
Congratulations on your upcoming games!
I apologize for not responding sooner.
I played Dancing Queens last night with a designer/publisher friend of mine. It's a good game. I'm going to leave you some feedback on the BGG WIP page.
I found it ironic that the winner is the first one to get 4 victory points. (I know they are called trophies in the rules, but we just called them victory points. If you are teaching a game and you say "the first one to get 4 trophies wins" then you have to explain what a "trophy" is. If you say "the first one to get 4 victory points wins" then you don't have to explain more.) I think maybe we called the hearts victory points too sometimes. It's just a game term that players are very familiar with.
My publisher friend likes to publish small card games (Glass Shoe Games is the name of his company). He seemed very interested in the game, but I know he has a pretty long backlog of signed games to publish since last year he basically ceased all activity.
You are absolutely right - in Dancing Queen, the trophies are essentially victory points. Because a round is very short, and luck certainly will greatly affect some rounds, I decided to have players play multiple rounds as a complete game, as opposed to one round being one game. So I made it a best of 7 series.
I don't consider Hearts victory points, but I certainly understand how they are perceived as victory points. In fact I even explain the rules that way, because that's easier for players to understand. Hearts actually represent levels of success, with 1 being the lowest level, and 4 being the highest. You don't accumulate Hearts like how you can collect victory points. You achieve certain levels of success based on how well you manipulate the board situation.
You raise a good point about the trophies. Indeed it might be better to just call them victory points. It would be easier for players to understand quickly.
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