Snakes and Ladders | Hacker News Reader

Snakes and Ladders

entropicthoughts.com

23 pointssurprisetalk12 comments

I have mixed feelings about cooperative board games in general. I've played a select few that blend things well, but too often it becomes an optimization problem that one or two players really fixate on and end up directing the decisions for the group as a whole, leading the others to check out.

The games I've found to get past this and remain fun for everyone retain some element of hidden knowledge between players, such as Deadwood [1] where players are cooperative in groups up until a final duel or Hanabi [2] where everyone but you knows your cards and players take turns giving strategic bits of info to get everyone's cards down in the right order.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/245197/deadwood-1876 [2] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi

Some of that is just human condition. Some want to lead, some want to be led.

Ages ago I worked in qualitative market research. Which is like a game where the researcher is trying to find the truth. But in focus groups, for all kinds of reasons, some participants dominate the conversation. Answering first and forming a box for other respondents to fit in. And next thing you know the whole group loves blue pants. Even when they don't, because particatjng is not just voicing your opinion but also engaging with dominant-Steve who's trying to be the center of attention and curry favour with the researcher (and Steve ruins the whole FG)

What’s the benefit of asking the questions to a group at once (other than time)? Ask them individually, isolated.

Yes. The IDI is preferred. Time and location constraints are why FG exist. And a robot researcher is almost preferred. Humans are social creatures, so part of the challenge of research is to get the respondant to be open/Frank.

Edit: IDI is InDividual Interview; FG=Focus Group

Too late to edit but IDI also is used as In-Depth Interview by some researchers. Either way, it's a 1-on-1. Not a group.

The way all founders should do their first 100 customer-problem-fit primary research.

> Some of that is just human condition. Some want to lead, some want to be led.

Many do not want to be led, dont insist on leading others and find the above guy trying to make decisions for everybody killing their enjoyment of the game.

The kind of game OP described does not lead to happy players enjoying to being led. It leads either to them checking out or to a conflict between players. It is not "human condition" just a bad design.

I do get a bit tired of Hanabi when the "fixated" players all agree on a bunch of conventions ahead of time (e.g., if you don't know what to do or you are forced to play, always play your leftmost card, and put your most recently drawn cards on the right side of your hand).

I much prefer the element of chaos and trying to give people clues based on what you think they, based on their individual personality, would do.

Optimizing a game is fun in its own right (my colleague even published a paper with the best known Hanabi strategy: https://doi.org/10.4169/math.mag.88.5.323), but then trying to use that strategy to play the game is immensely dull.

You might enjoy Spirit Island, a cooperative game designed explicitly to make that "quarterbacking" strategy infeasible and encourage more interesting player interaction. Players have asymmetrical abilities and power progression, so it's hard to micromanage everyone, and everyone has enough choices to make that even the "I think we can win this turn if..." conversation generally depends on each person making their own reasonable choices rather than one person planning out the whole turn.

Snakes and Ladders is about learning social skills. That’s why who wins is random, it gives kids an experience at both. If you want to play a fun game, play something else.

No one must ever lose.

Or ever learn how to lose.

The game mentioned contains multiple ways to lose

But only as a collective.

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