Calculating Winning

So previously discussing using unknowns as well as making the calculation of the winner (during the game) tricky, there's also a system of obfuscating the score by making it tedious.

Ticket to Ride won a huge game award in Germany (Spiel de Jahres, 2004). It allows for quick play, interesting player interactions...great! As you play trains, you score points for them. You also get bonus points (or penalties for not completing them) at the end of the game. I'm a stickler for keeping track of points during the game. I want to know who's ahead...if I have a chance to cut them off, I'll consider it. (Likewise, I want other players to elevate their game by knowing that information as well.)

We can't know their tickets - they get scored at the very end, when it's too late to interfere. Those are a known unknown. Even knowing what's possible is kind of a help - I keep my 1910 copy around, so that they represent more of an unknown unknown for me...a little more of an equal ground. But this is all a sideshow, for the main topic today.

What happens if people aren't sticklers for keeping track of the score? Some play groups don't bother keeping track - just count it at the end. They seek to avoid bad information...if Alex appears in last, but he's actually in first all due to bad scorekeeping...some say it's an unacceptable risk. In my mind, they then miss out on part of the game.

In this regard, Ticket to Ride (for them) is suited for obfuscated scoring. Everyone knows people have points, and they could add them up if they wanted to. It would slow down the game, so no one does. (If they do, maybe they keep it to themselves.)

Other games hide the data by overloading players with information. In the Thebes game last night, nothing stopped us from figuring out how much the other players had...except for the amount of little chits that each person had. My final game had 57 points in chits, primarily in values 1 through 3...some as much as 5. None of us were counting chits, beyond seeing what colors were still 'rich' in points.

In computer games, it's assumed that the computer will keep track of everyone's score - and if they are known quantities, it's assured. Some of my friends love playing Race for the Galaxy on the computer, as it keeps track of a tempo of the game...should they end it or not? An accurate count of points is key...but they're reluctant to stop a game in real life to manually count points. (Jason, I'm looking at you!)

When designing (and playing) a game, it's important to see how points flow during the game. You can have players generalize 'first place' if you want to avoid the 'hit first place' default strategy...or if you just want randomize acts of intervention-interaction between players.