Howdy all,
I have taken to writing a weekly (we'll see how long that lasts!) column on my website (www.paintedhorsegames.com) on topics of interest to the gaming community.
In my next column I am discussing games that do not have winners or losers (and I am not talking about simply failing to keep track of the score, as they do in some little league soccer games), but rather the types of games we played as children (Does anyone remember the parachute game that we used to play in physical education class? Ah the joy!) extrapolated to our adulthood.
I can immediately see game styles like roleplaying that lend themselves to precluding winners and losers, but what about board games or card games? As designers, what kind of mechanic would you develop for a game without a winner? What kind of condition would you invoke to end the game?
Any inputs, comments or ideas are more than welcome!
Steven F. Diaz
Painted Horse Games
While it is true that Knizia's Lord of the Rings does not have an individual player who is singled out as a winner, it is still possible to win or lose in the game. At the end of the day I can tally each player as a winner or loser (Though in this case they are either all winners or all losers).
Take the example of "Catch the Dragons Tail" where a row of people grab onto the person in front of them. The object of the game is for the head to catch the tail. One may make the definition that the head is the winner when he catches the tail (and would thus be a loser), but how do we define the end state of the players in the middle? Since the player in front of the tail somewhat dictates the movement of the tail, how does this effect our definition of the tail? Are they still a loser?
As for whether a game without winning conditions can be competitive, I believe so. While not preciesly a game, one example is the competition between video game consoles (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, XBox, etc...). The competition between these items is fierce, yet after 20 years of console design, who is the winner? Will there ever be a definitive winner?
If a game was designed with the theme of dueling video game consoles, some arbitrary end condition would most likely be put into place like households reached or target revenue amount. Of course there always exists the possibility of having an end condition based on the number of player turns (os something like that), and each player chooses how they will compete with the others (most money earned, most households reached, whatever) or even compete against their own personal bests.