Defeating the Accumulation of Advantage

“Accumulating advantage” is a general term, describing the tendency of the rich to get richer though positive feedback. This happens in many strategy games, in two slightly different ways. First, the rewards of success, like money, can be turned into an engine for later success, like the purchase of factories. This is positive feedback through accrual. Second, there can be positive feedback through loss, where reductions in initial resources create disadvantage. Many naval wargames show this behavior. They demonstrate classic attrition warfare: nothing like terrain or morale complicates a relatively straightforward game of inevitable resource degradation.

In such naval attrition games, each ship is defined primarily by two simple properties: its ability to give damage and its ability to take damage. The loss of a ship means not just a loss of victory points but also capability, which means a greater advantage for the enemy come the next turn. This snowballing can create a position so inferior a player cannot recover; leading to certainty of defeat well before the game is over. Usually, this is less than satisfying, even though it may elevate tension in early parts of the game before any advantage exists.

If this kind of dynamic is strong, even a very small advantage in the early part of the game can guarantee victory; an especially bad problem when randomness can create that disparity.

Responses

One “solution” is to introduce powerful randomness that can undo any advantage. This does indeed preclude certainty in the outcome, but at high cost: the loser will not have recovered on merit and the early winner will have his advantage—even if achieved by skill—wiped out. Gambling is not the fix for a serious game design problem.

A second option redefines victory around objectives that only incidentally deal with the primary units of play. For instance, navigating to a designated location, or destroying a single key target, could replace a simple count of ships-left-standing. But this only eases and obscures the problem without really eliminating it, since the loss of units will inevitably make most any victory condition more difficult.

Anti-advantage

A real solution requires direct counteraction of resource loss throughout the game; giving effectiveness back to the loser. Of course, this cannot be done at a 1:1 ratio or the game goes nowhere — unless some abstract victory points are also tracked, but at this point why are we playing an attrition game at all? Even a portion of direct resource replacement will not work, as this only slows the process of accumulating advantage. The key is not to undo game events by, say, introducing reinforcements that exactly replace lost ships, but to provide compensating elements in a different realm that could be translated into a comeback with good strategy. It may help if these new elements are difficult to use well, so that they provide potential but nothing like an immediate reversal of fortune.

What are these elements that counteract advantage? Perhaps bonuses that affect randomness in the rest of the game. Perhaps a finite number of actions that bend the normal rules. Perhaps changes in movement or firing order. Perhaps a new kind of unit that behaves differently from all others. Perhaps something clever that meshes perfectly with the rest of your game!

Oct 13, 2009 | Filed in design | Tagged: ,