How important is winning?

Clearly playing the game is meant to be where a player has fun with a game, but does this mean that a win/lose state is superfluous?

I thought of a weird turn based game earlier where players are each given a resource and actions to spend it on, and the game ends when one of them spends all of their resource. One Action per turn.

Action 1.) Allows the spending of an unlimited amount of resource, but with a chance for skipped turns. The chance increases according to amount of resource being spent, and also for each time you use the action.

Action 2.) Results in a per-turn spending for the rest of the game, increases the risk of penalty for action 1, and allows the taking of Action 3.

Action 3.) This action can only be taken the number of times the player has taken Action 2. Results in a per-turn spending of resources over a number of turns, but with a chance to increase resources at the end of the turns. This action reduces the risk of penalty for action 1, and also scores permanent points (not Resource).

At the end of the game, titles/trophies are awarded according to numbers of which actions taken, Points scored from action 2, highest risk taken from action 1- basically it gives you a funny name depending on what you did and depending on what everybody else did.

I wondered if being the one to end the game is an implied winner, Or is the existence of points indicative that the person with the most points is the winner?

What if there were red points and blue points? What would decide the winner then? Total points of both colors?

Is this game weaker without stating winners/losers?

When shouldn't a game decide winners and losers?

 

None of this makes any sense.

 

Maybe not. Just trying to gain a new perspective.

Some games are just an exercise- there aren't winners or losers.

Minecraft brought the concept of user-defined goals into the spotlight- what if winning/losing was user-defined as well?

The part of the game that is the most fun is when you are playing it- engaging with the mechanics. The "Win State" is just the resolution- perhaps some games could effectively do without saying "you win!"

The game I described allowed for several things:

The accumulation of points- does just the fact that the game keeps track of points mean that the one who gets more points wins?

The spending of a resource- If actions cost the player something, does that mean reaching 0 is to lose the game?

A player's actions can end the game- Any player spending all of their resources ends the game. This is a common mechanic- The first player to go out in "go fish" wins, but this isn't always the case- just because something ends the game doesn't necessarily mean the player to do that first is the winner.

But if there isn't a winner, does that mean a game is no longer compelling?

 

So you basically have something like this?
A game with >1 players; resources; points; different actions, which can manipulate those resources/points;
When resources of any player reaches 0 - the game says "The end! But there's no winner! You supposed to have fun getting points and spending resources! Haha! Want to try again?"
Well... if the process is going to be REALLY fun, it might work, moreover players will still say that they're winners, if they reached highest points anyway, because it's just common sense.

If it was just a strange example, and you just asked if game may have no "end state" such as win or lose, then it's a strange question, because the answer is obvious - yes. Any simulation game or a game where you achieve something and then maintain it or an open multiplayer game - they all better not to have an end, because it means you lose everything you built/achieved and this is the core of such games.

If you mean just "The end" thing in the end, instead of "You win" or "You lose" to not let people know that they're better than someone or that they succeed/failed - then it's just an illusion to hide their success/failure, I don't even know what to say, if your players are very very sensitive and will commit suicide if they see "You lose", then yeah, you better just tell them "The end".

If you mean that you yourself don't know the goal of your own game and just want to make a game with resources, points and the way to manipulate them and then game ends when someone reaches 0 resources... well... that's a strange game! Probably a new game genre - "Strange".

 

This is the core of what I was thinking about.

 

Well obviously any "sandbox" game doesn't need a win state. It doesn't particularly need an end, either.

The only strange thing I see in what you're describing is that the game has an end state, without a win state. That is unusual. If you're going to let the player decide what their goals are, don't you need to also let them decide when they're done?

 

Maybe prototype it with paper cutouts or something as a board game and see how it goes. If your play testers are bored with it, there's your answer.

It seems to me that there are very few general rules of game design that truly apply to every type of experience. There are some concepts like "balance" and "flow", but even then, many games are actually better off breaking from conventional thinking. You have to use your instincts, prototype something, and see what sticks. Like any other art form.

 

I wrote an enormous wall of text, but it was more about the concept of failure than on whether games need to be "winnable" or not.

They don't, but you run the risk of losing interest over time as the mechanics themselves become less interesting. With strong mechanics, a player will play for the mechanics rather than a win state.

 

if your game is about exploration or creativity or humor, you obviously dont need win states. the joy of exploring or creating or laughing is often enough in itself.

however, if your game is competitive, about taking and giving resources from and to players. and doing things to each other. then some players will benefit more then others and "be better" or "win" in that game. in these cases, you DO need something to tally it all up and visualise the progression of the players.

what i mean is: just image a shooting game where players shoot each other. but there are no points for a succesful shot, no penalties for shooting badly, ...
=> i believe the players will become desilusioned. you shoot to win, if you cant win, why shoot?
=> i also believe that if the shooting is funny (for example, you shoot random funny fluffy animals at eachother which make cute sounds) it is no longer competitive and no scoring or win/states are expected.

so, i agree with EternalAmbiguity, it goes hand in hand with your game type or core mechanics

 

I don't follow in the slightest, but whatever.

Players having different objectives and notions of winning isn't anything new. Asymmetric gameplay is as old as (if not older than) chess, with games that define victory in completely different ways. Then there are progression systems that provide a meta-context to a match, where a player might play sub-optimally for the style of match to achieve a side objective.

From the sounds of it though, you're faffing about on what the point of the game even is. I am terrified when you bring up minecraft and player defined goals, because that sounds like justification to throw a bunch of random mechanics together and have the player figure out what the game is.

The thing about engagement is that it's not simply about doing. Hitting a button is meaningless without a string of cause and effect to give that decision weight. Engagement is fundamentally about problem solving, where mechanics only matter to resolve conflicts and create outcomes.

 

The problem is that you are thinking game are the set of action and rules, it's not, it's the experience created by these set of actions and rules, think about what experience you want first then find the set of actions and rules that support it. Now all you have is just mechanics, not a game

 

I'm not sure I understand your game idea, but if a game has an end-state that's anything other than players simply opting out, it's hard to imagine it being anything other than some kind of win/lose state. If it has an end point that is simply "the end," and it is neither a success or a failure, some would suggest that it's more accurate to call it interactive fiction rather than a game -- assuming that the definition of a game is to achieve a goal within some kind of restrictive context.

Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, etc. have clearly defined win and lose states, like a sport. But like a sport, you can enjoy losing but that doesn't mean it's not a clearly defined loss in the game's mechanics.
Minecraft ends when the players want it to end, and whether they accomplished their goals or not is decided by the players and not the mechanics. Dying just creates an inconvenience and doesn't act as an end state, there simply isn't one.
Dwarf Fortress is an example of emergent storytelling. If I remember correctly, the only objective end state is a failure state, yet the success is subjective. Maybe your play of the game was a failure because you didn't build the fort you wanted. Maybe it was a success because your battle against your inevitable defeat was ridiculously funny.

Winning and losing can be defined in so many ways. But in my personal opinion if there is no failure end state, its safer to call it a sandbox or interactive fiction. From the sound of your game, there's many potential ways of defining who wins and loses, but that's something you have to do as the designer. Otherwise its like letting footballers kick the ball in the wrong goal and let them score a point anyway because of their opinion on the matter.

 

I think I did a terrible job in articulating the topic, but I'm loving all the input all the same.

I think in my idea going without a win-state makes it un-compelling. Maybe it works functionally, has some depth with the interacting actions, but certainly not something that a person would want to play without a win state.

 

That's why I insist in the fact you must look at the experience, if you ask yourself is it compelling, you can't if you don't have a target experience to share, because then anything goes! Mechanics are true neutral, it's only compelling in the context of an experience. Is an unfair game compelling? well DayZ, ARKS and RUST have an experience that makes it compelling and so do roguelike and infinite runner where you eventually lose. Context define what will be compelling.

 

Games aren't really about winning, you're right, they are about fun... but what is fun? I tend to think fun is learning. As long as the player is learning new things then the game is fun. Learning new things often leads to winning as a way the game can tell the player that they have indeed learnt the correct thing.

 

The main problem with this thread is you're basically talking about unplugging something from a system without understanding why it's there. It's not that every game needs a win state (much less a clear, binary one), but you can't simply pull out the win state and expect the game to work just as well.

The little I can understand about your idea is that the game has a competitive match structure, so inherently the game has an end state. You're just not sure by what metric the resolution should be judged by.

 

It sounds like you are describing a eurogame here. Which in loose terms is a game with a end state and win state, but typically without a conflict state.

On win states and end states in general, there are multiple game types that don't have explicit win/end states

• Idle games. There is no end state, the numbers just get bigger
• Party games. These games tend to be more about social interaction
• Simulations. MineCraft, SimCity, Kerball. These games are more about exploring the mechanics
• Story games. Check out the single player campaign in any FPS. Or Assasians Creed. Death tends to be a 'reset your game play to a minute ago' as opposed to an actual loose condition. And 'running out of levels to play' isn't really the same as winning.

 

There's no need to "win" a game, but it is important to give the player the opportunity to have certain victories while playing the game. For example, there is no way to win any MMO game out there, but killing another player, defeating a tough boss, winning a battle, even winning at a big trade, all are important victories along the way that keep the player playing.

This applies to a variety of games. Take a grand strategy game like Europa Universalis 4. While it is technically possible to win the game (conquer the entire planet by the early 1800's), generally players aren't trying to do that. They are just trying to do well with their chosen country.

 

When I saw this post, I immediately thought of this wiki article entitle "Losing is fun" from the Dwarf Fortress wiki: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Losing

To answer the OP, the importance of winning depends on the context of the game and how the players perceive winning/losing. In some games, such as Kerbal Space Program and Minecraft, winning is userdefined. Same to a certain extent with open world games such as X3TC and Skyrim.

But in the end, it all boils down to player's perception of winning and losing. If you have win/loss conditions, winning needs to be rewarding and perceived as fun by the player. Losing can be perceived as fun as well, but I've long held the belief that a loss condition should also carry the motivation for the player to replay instead of encouraging "rage quitting."

 

With "endless"games you can sort of argue that its more important that you lose, because it builds the sense of inaccessibility of what you want, which produces addiction. The player might think it's important to win which compels them to keep trying to, but endlessly fail at some point. And they love it. Because people are sadistic and insane. lol

 

Games with neither win conditions nor end states tend to cross over into simulations such as SimCity, the Sims, and Minecraft. So that's a definite vote for YES you can do it. Though, I'm still not sure what the OP is asking.

Gigi

 

A "game" must have win state by definition. When you build a game without win state then it becomes a toy where you just explore what can be done with it. Games are pleasant problem solving activities. Solving any challenging problem is always conceptually some kind of "win".

 

That's just symantics. About half the games I play have no explicit win state.

I guess you could extend the definition of win to include achieving anything in a game. So building a cool house in MineCraft might be an implicit win state. Landing on Jool in KSP might be an implicit win state.

But that sort of definition is about as useful as the participation awards I got for coming last place.

 

"Coming last place" is not a win because it wasn't your goal and it's not an achievement.

 

It can be an achievement, don't overestimate how going at the pace the second t last can be boring and need some control

 

But there are ways to solve problems without eliminating them, making this statement define games by play, not goals. Ultimately though, the only thing defining games by the presence of any win state only does is put down a blurry line between "games" and the rest of interactive media. Most of theses outcasts are designed exactly like "games" and are played exactly like "games," so what's the point of the definition then?

 

Fun things is that game is exactly most activities, in fact we turn most activities into game by just saying it's a game (cooking mama, deer hunter, skate, sim city, endless ocean, pokemon snap), and removing them in their own magic circle. Game is about the framing in which an activity is partakes, ie there is (seemingly) no stakes and no continuity relevant to the normal flow of life outside it's entertaining diversion from it. Game are activity with the pretend to.

Don't look for a definition of game, look for a "frame".