Tuesday, May 24th 2005 In last week’ column, “…but is it fun”, I led you down a rather general path of how I feel a designer insures their game is fun, without getting into the specific nature of what fun is. If fun is the payoff of playing a game, then what is it about play that makes for fun? This is a huge topic in and of itself; certainly not within the scope of a single column.

Are Games Without Winners Fun?

One particularly insightful way to separate games into categories has been offered by James Ernest in Rules of Play:

“Most games can be sorted into two categories, based on their scoring system: racing games and fighting games. The distinction makes the most sense with multiplayer games, because in a two-player game the two types are essentially interchangeable. In a racing game, players are trying to get the most points, and can’t directly interfere with other players … If fighting games, the object is to take away the other player’s points or to do him as much damage as possible.”

But, what happens when you play a game where no score is kept? Does a game which provides no clear cut winner provide any competition (out-damaging or out-racing one’s opponent)? Must a winner exist in order for a game to be fun? Do games without victors even exist?

The final question is the easiest to answer. In short, yes. Roleplaying games are one example, though they are sometimes executed in a manner which makes it seem like there are winners and losers. The degree to which a roleplaying game exhibits a victory versus non-victory experience lies in the GameMaster/player relationship. The more the two compete, the greater the game seems to be a win or lose proposition. In my opinion, a game where the players compete against the adventure itself, where the GameMaster merely adjudicates and everyone ably acts out their role provides an ideal experience where fun can exist without a victory condition.

 I can also think of some video games out there that don’t really crown a winner, but just get faster or more crowded as the player progresses (Frogger for example). A player could possibly compare their all time high score with those of another player, but I don’t recall that being the driving urge keeping me glued to those joysticks. However, the lack of a finite winning condition strikes me as a symptom of solitaire style play and an open ended level system rather than any intentional design considerations.

Though slanted towards a more physical education style of play, books such as New Games Book and More New Games offer a cornucopia of games where there are no winners (or the winners are difficult to pick out). Flipping through these texts brought back wonderful memories of my childhood. I was delighted to find a description of a game I adored as a child where the instructor would unfurl a parachute, throw in a rubber ball, and let us flap the edges of the parachute causing the ball to careen wildly. While I would define this experience as informal play rather than a game, my own frantic efforts to get the ball to fly off on the opposite side of the parachute indicates that a competitive goal can exist, if only in the mind of a single player. I cannot recommend these books strongly enough to both the game designer and player.

Games which are not open-ended (like card games or board games) tend to be more difficult to design without a victory condition, though I can imagine a case where this can be achieved. Imagine, if you will, a game with multiple pathways to victory (Multiple victory conditions are not uncommon, take Legend of the Five Rings where you can achieve victory by honor, military conquest or by being the first to collect all Five Rings). Now, instill the condition that none of these victory conditions trumps or is additive with any other victory pathways. Each player could seek their own victory independent of the other players. Or perhaps one could make the goal at the end of the game subjective, and completely unquantifiable.

While an example of an existing card or board game without winners escapes me, I have run into circumstances where I pursued my own goal in a game, contrary to the victory conditions provided by the rules. In White Wolf’s collectible card game Vampire the Eternal Struggle for example, I would try to build the perfect blood generating engine during the course of the game before making way on the declared goal of eliminating my opponents. I often felt a greater sense of accomplishment from setting up that engine than in many games where I played a winning round.

I could easily imagine a card game espousing this last idea where players play cards from their hand onto a diagram created between them. Each card has a limited number of ways they can fit onto the diagram, affect how future cards are played and may have an associated numeric value. The game continues until the diagram has no more legal positions available for card play. When the diagram is completed the players evaluate what they have created. Perhaps one of the players wanted to maximize the number of points they have played out of their hand or make the diagram as complicated/simple as possible.

I encourage both designers and players to think about games without victory conditions. For players, try pursuing your personal, alternate victory conditions when you play a game. You may open up a completely different way to enjoy some old games. For designers, this strikes me as an interesting experiment: try creating a game that does not rely on crowning a winner. Perhaps by applying this limitation you may force your gameplay to be more involving and fun to make up the lack. But, isn’t that what we as designers want in the first place?

Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman,Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

Andrew Fluegelman ed., The New Games Book. New York: Doubleday, 1976.

Andrew Fluegelman ed., More New Games! – And Playful Ideas from the New Games Foundation. New York: Doubleday, 1981.

-Steven Diaz
President & Chief Game Designer, Painted Horse Games