New Rule

Yesterday, in my role as Teaching Assistant to Brenda for this quarter’s section of Game Design Criticism & Analysis, I supervised a student play session of Carcassonne. I noticed some interesting dynamics emerge between the players…

While not a trading game, Carcassonne incorporates a fair amount of diplomacy and interplayer negotiation. The tiles are the core resource and, with a limited supply of limited varieties, the right tile at the right time can make all the difference (and vice versa). In the game I witnessed (as in most games I have played), players actively sought to influence each other to place tiles in mutually beneficial locations — or failing that, to place them in mutually neutral locations.

When successful, the cajoling player feels satisfaction and triumph at having manipulated their opponents into acting in their (the cajoling player’s) interest. The manipulated player probably feels used, or at best indifferent. The other players feel vexed both at having failed to influence in their own favor and at the advantage their successful opponent has received. These are the immediate effects.

The intermediate-term effects I observed were curious. Influential players — players who actively tried to manipulate their opponents and who had a decent success rate — simultaneously gained a reputation as sharks: untrustworthy players out to win at all costs. This made it harder for them to cajole in the future, as their opponents grew suspicious of their constant “advice.” However, the suspicious players did not gain any suspicion of their non-influential opponents, in apparent defiance of any attempts those opponents had made to influence them. Players only appeared to grow to distrust those who had successfully manipulated them in the past. I suspect part of the psychological impetus behind this is a manipulated player feeling a certain amount of disappointment or distrust in themselves — an erosion of self-confidence — in addition to their opponents.

In the long-term, the results were equally curious. After a game had been won and a new one begun, players who had lost the first game seemed to instantly gain their trustworthiness back – even if they had been and continued to be influential. The act of losing seemed to redeem them in the eyes of their opponents — to validate their “honor” and sense of fair play by having not profited from unfair advantage (manipulation). In the new game, only the winner from the previous game retained a reputation as a shark. Interestingly, however, the winner received this reputation regardless of his or her attempts to manipulate. In reflection of the status gain of the losing players, the winning player apparently lost trustworthiness simply by winning.

In the second game, it was as if every player had learned their lesson about being too trusting. Players had influenced each other, or tried to do so, with varying success, and one had emerged the winner. With that experience informing their actions, all players appeared to play more warily. All attempts to manipulate in the second game met with higher resistance, and those players who were so successful at it the first time found that the new optimal strategy was to appear to be on the side of the angels — to not appear overtly manipulative at all; an almost passive manipulation, or manipulation by inaction. These players profited the most in the second game.

At first I found it curious that player seemed to evolve strategies of trust and influence that seemed to defy the evidence. But as I analyze it now, I can see some clear psychological undercurrents that might have informed their actions. It is intriguing that players took so naturally to playing the devil’s advocate, or “unhelpful helper,” but that they seemed to slow to recognize that motive at work in their opponents, and so quick to forgive or forget when circumstances conspired to gloss over their machinations.

Tags: Game Criticism, Schoolwork //