Positive Player Interactions (Sunday Sitdown)

hello this is Jamie and welcome to this week's Sunday sit-down about positive player interactions I just tried to do this live on YouTube but and I think based on the comments that came in there if you've gotten coming to him in like the ten seconds that was live I think it was working but I could not see myself moving and so I really could not tell it was kind of weird I was talking to moving and I was looking at a still image which was throwing me off because normally I see I see a video of what I look like when I'm talking anyway it didn't seem to work or kind of works but not not the way I wanted it to so I probably won't try that again unless well you never know maybe I'll try to get one more time to see but anyway today I'm gonna talk about positive player interactions and there's a lot to talk about here this isn't a top ten list I'm gonna talk about a bunch of games that have positive player interactions and I'm gonna talk about my civilization game a little bit but and the reasons why you might want positive player interactions in the game or the reasons that I like them in games but the reason this is on my mind is that we are currently in the first wave of blind play testing for my civilization game and the feedback has been mixed so far it's been a little weird because I basically the the comments have been coming in and have been saying that they want more player interaction and that there is player interaction in the game but the theme of the game is that you are starting and growing a civilization over many thousands of years so it's not a little Empire building game it's not a slice of time it is a big stretch of time that you are covering and you it's it's a big civilization so it's if you look back at history civilizations that were far across the world didn't have many interactions until maybe that the 1600s when they that when the age of sail happened 1540 I guess 1400s goes back a little bit but these civilizations were I mean they are way far apart so there was a civilization in Africa they up until a certain point they had no interactions with anyone in the world until a certain point in time and so the game is representative of that to a certain extent but players are asking for more interactions and so I'm trying to figure out how to do that because I am NOT the type of I do not enjoy interactions as games for the most part where something you do completely interrupts what I do prevents me from doing what I want to do maybe basically negative player actions by conflict I yeah I don't generally enjoy that in games the types of somewhat negative player interactions that I do enjoy things like majority so if I'm moving up a track you were moving up a track whenever it gets farther up that track at the end of the game gets a certain number of points I'm okay with that but the type I really enjoy our positive player interactions and that's what I'm going to focus on today and some of the reasons I like positive player interactions they they give you a reason to pay attention to other players but in a positive way because you want to see what they're gonna do because that might benefit you and because you might be able to join in and help each other in ways that you wouldn't be able to do on your own I like positive player interactions that make you feel like you're better off working together rather than separately I'll give some examples of that in a minute I like positive player interactions because they don't disrupt your terms so if you were thinking very careful about your turn and then the player before you does something that radically interrupts your turn and a negative player interaction scenario then that means that all that planning doesn't mean anything and is really tough to plan ahead in those games would often you might notice this in games that have negative later player interactions you simply stop thinking about what you're gonna do on your turn until it gets to your turn because you feel like you don't have agency if you're just waiting to see what happens and then you can finally make decisions I don't like that I like to be able to plan ahead on my turn I like to be able to think about that when it's not my turn that way my turn is faster when it gets to my point my training I also like positive player interactions that make me feel more powerful even when I'm doing something that that does something good for you as well I have some examples of that and the last kind of category is that I can order it all right down here I can oh okay I can benefit from your presence I like that type of positive player interaction as well anyway let me talk about some games here so you can have some concrete examples I have a big long list and and I'll I'll talk about how some of these might be able to impact my sieve game and I'm certainly interested in your thoughts as well one is terraforming Mars terraforming Mars has these endgame tracts where you are trying to finish the terraforming of Mars and they move the game along so there's like the Occident track there's a temperature and there is the the oceans the water that you're trying to get on the planet and so players are working together to move the game towards its completion and also as you work together a lot of the cards are dependent on certain threshold so I might have a car that I can only play when we're at a certain oxygen percentage or a certain temperature and so I am depending on other players to help me reach those goals to get the oxygen to get the temperature and the way the game incentivizes this is that you get points whenever you advance the game in those ways so even if I can kind of get a feeling for that another player is waiting for me to get to a certain oxygen level I'm still incentivized to do that to help the oxygen because I'm getting points for it this is a common theme that you'll see as I talk about positive player interactions they they often move you towards victory even as you are doing things that impact other players in positive ways the next one and therfore Mars doesn't apply to the sitting in those ways because the moving towards end game is is done in a different way just two completely different mechanism near and far let me mention near and far because near and far I think it's the one that has the greatest chance of having an impact on my Civ game in terms of positive player interactions and this is in terms of route completion so a near and far on each map there are trade routes that you can complete I don't know what they are I remember maybe cabbage being an icon so there's cabbage on one side of the map and there's cabbage on the other side of the map to different spots and if you have control of both of them and you were can I believe you need to be connected through your camps to get from one to the other it might just be control it's one of those two things let's say it's control so if you have control of both of them you get say nine points but if you control one and another player controls another you each get like three or four points and if you control one and no one ends up controlling the other one you get zero points that's where the possible labor interaction comes in because it's on opposite side of the map so I might go up on this direction that have to get this one but they may be really hard for me to get that other one and so I might I will be positively impacted in terms of points if another player gets that because if they don't if no one gets it then I get nothing so it's one of those circumstances is almost like a prisoner still on the situation where you it's better if you get both of them but it does help you if if someone completes that other route and that's the one that I think could apply best to the Civ game and I'm actually curious if if it would work in the sieve game if because there is a map in the game if you actually get more points and if it can make the somatic sense if you get more points if you are sharing those with another player rather than like in the near and far situation where you get more points if you are the soul controller of both of those trade routes I'm a treat by that a little bit because it could be interesting if if you truly have that that really strong incentive to work with another player and actually get more points that way but I don't know I don't know about that I need to play around with that I also need to play around with if it's just control or if you actually need to control the route of control like every territory between those two points I don't know about that yet Concordia this is an example that I actually have here to show you I have the Box at least kind of Cordia has positive player interactions through the mechanism for getting the exact name for it I believe it is the harvest mechanism so the harvest mechanism is up here in Concordia I you can see up here there are all these territories that you can produce stuff on but whatever you produce the produce action you produce in the entire region so if I and other players have control of different cities in this region or have presence here and I produce in Libya as the purple region everything in Libya produces so everyone who has something that Libya produces whatever that resource is so it's one of these interesting interactions where there are times where you're producing something that definitely does help other players you do get a little bonus in the game the game gives you a bonus resource based on a randomized setup to encourage you to do that at all I think they probably found in play testing that players weren't doing it because they were just waiting for other players to do it but but it is a possible error actually it feels good when another player does it and when you do it you get that bonus so it also feels good that way Azul Azul lies a little subtle player interaction mechanism positive player interaction mechanism in that when you draft tokens in Azul the tokens that you don't select get pushed to the middle and so you are impacting a common pool that that grows over time in mostly positively if sometimes you might try to get like a bunch of red tokens in there where for someone who already has already tokens where they need to or they've already filled up certain slots and so they end up getting negative points but usually you are possibly impacting this common pool of resources that other players can pick from I don't know I wouldn't necessarily say that you feel good about it when you do that and like it's some of these other examples but it does happen it's a positive player interaction mechanism okay so this was actually an in-stream one story one of the feedback forms that I read the day about my sieve game blind play testing mentioned euphoria as a game with little player interaction and I was a little surprised by that because euphoria is on this list as actually I think having more player interact positive player interaction than possibly in any other game there's a ton of positive player interaction in this game in euphoria this if I pull it up show you all the examples so one of them one of the obvious examples is bumping you bump workers in euphoria on your eternity before you either place it in a worker or you're retrieving any or all of your workers usually all of them and so there are certain slots on the board the slots that have these arrows or if you have a worker there you or another player could place a worker there and bump the worker that was their back to the corresponding player and so it basically saves you a retrieve turn if you do that so that's like an overarching way of impacting other players having positive impact you're giving the spot you want you're not blocking it but someone else can jump in and they are impacting you by bumping your player your worker back there's I won't go into full detail on the allegiance tracks but the allegiance tracks are if if I have an active recruit active view so multiple players may be advancing these allegiance tracks basically and that impacts multiple players when you do that in a positive way the construction sites these require multiple workers and resources to build the construction sites depending on player count and so it's a lot easier to enter the cost resources which are a little harder to get in this game so it's a lot easier to build these construction sites when other players are doing it with you and you all get a star for doing this or you could do it all by yourself but only get one star or you could do it with three other players and you each still get one star which is the kind of the victory point condition in this game on that construction site so there's there's building and then there's the come out of the areas which are also let's see if I can show you come out of the interview sorry both of mic there come on the areas like this one the aquifer so the aquifer here is the the things that you get at the aquifer dot change kind of for the better its is somewhat subjective but essentially for the better you're getting more resources depending on the total knowledge of the workers there so if I have my workers there and you jump in you might get more stuff because there are other already other workers there so all of these are positive things they're not things where your you're disrupting other players you are I mean there's a little bit of that with those commodities in particular if you don't want someone to advance an allegiance track you might put a higher number worker there but there's a ton of positive player interaction this game so it caught me a little bit off guard to read that feedback from someone saying that euphoria and this was all this SIV play-by-play test they said that it it had even less positive Playa Plaza they said even less player interaction then you for I was like really before I had a ton of player interaction so I think me I think me when I'm reading that I'm I'm wondering if some people want combat in a sieve game there is certainly area control and there is a spatial element to the map in the sieve game but but there isn't combat I wasn't looking to book combat in it and maybe I just have to make that very clear to players that is not a combat game you're not fighting each other and that when people don't have their expectations for that anyway what's next down force down force is a very elegant player interaction mechanism down force here on my favorite racing games or my favorite games really in down force when you play a card to move way beyond your turn you play a card and you move all of the cars that have colors that are on that card so there might say blue six yellow four green two you will move all those cards that number of spaces a big part of the puzzle and downforce is trying not to move those other cars when possible but many times when is not your turn someone else will be moving your car and actually often if there's a car that's kind of blocking other cars it gives players a reason to move that car they need to move that car out of that way so that they can then move their car through that gap that's downforce 707 Wonders has positive player interaction through commerce so you have those yellow cards that say you can trade with maybe the neighbor on your left or your right for a lower cost if they have a specific resource resource so that is uh that's a trading mechanism I've thought about doing a trading mechanism in the sieve game but I don't I don't think it really works player resources are somewhat plentiful in the game and we've kind of hit a sweet spot of how many resources need to be in the game I don't want to add too many more opportunities to get them through trading so that's an obvious one but I don't think it works in the sieve game my little side has a brilliance positive player interaction system thanks to Kobe and his daughter what they thought of witches you want to get friendship in this game and so when you roll the sikh dice to put more resources on the board you're the choice of putting those resources maybe on a territory that you have your character on or on a blank territory or you can put them on a territory where another player's seeker is present and if you do for each of those resources you get a friendship you are being friendly to them so I really like this you're populating the board with more resources hoping to probably get some of your own but at the same time you are increasing your own friendship when you are helping other players let's see rise and Sun Rise and Sun has an alliance system and allies system that that is very positive so if you're you basically deciding are certain times to ally with another player and it's been a while since I played it but I believe when you do that if if they select an action on their turn you can also take that action even though it's their turn we used something kind of like this and and actually no I don't want to spoil it but we have used something like this in one of my games but yeah that's Rising Sun this is an example I gave earlier on water deep in Stone Age both had that type of mechanism where say like in water in water deep you might draw a bunch of quest cards you choose first and then you pass those around the table where other players draft the remaining quest cards so this is one of those examples like in Stone Age where you have these cards where you you roll some dice those dice determined some cool stuff that will be selected by players you get first choice so you probably get the best thing or the best thing for you and then the other players choose as well and I think the reason players do this is well in Stone Age in particular it's an opportunity to get something that usually is more difficult to get and the game allows you to do that because you are then also giving stuff to other players so I like this example A+ player interaction where you were doing something powerful more powerful than you could if you weren't also helping other players in the game that's something that might be able to find its way into the sieve game route the Vagabond character faction in route has something like this where that player wants other players to be crafting stuff because when they do they can give those players a card and get the crafted item and the Vagabond really depends on those crafted items so they're they're kind of this is a reason to pay attention to other players terms and to see what they're doing because you you're kind of encouraging that hey please craft I'll give you I'll give you cards I've cards that you might want if you are crafting because I need you to do that Terra Mystica has some great spatial elements that that benefit from having nearby players so Terra Mystica at first glance you might think ok I need to go off of my own little corner of the board and build there and do my own thing and not a lot of other players bother me but Terra muscare does two things to encourage positive player interaction one is if you are upgrading to a trading house I believe that's the name of the building it costs more if you are not adjacent to an opponent so you actually want to be near an opponent to upgrade to a trading house and that is the first level upgrade so to do any other upgrades you need to first get a trading house the other thing is with the power magic system in Terra Mystica where if someone else builds or upgrades next to territory you control you have the choice of giving some magic sometimes at a cost of victory points but sometimes not if it's just one magic so there's another reason to be nearby other players as they're doing stuff because you you're benefiting from that you're painting to pay attention to what they're doing on their turn and that's that's another one that might be able to make its way into the sieve game with the spatial element on the map I have a few more examples I know I'm talking a lot today but I love pasta player interactions I really really do brass brass has a great positive player interaction mechanism where if you have produced something on the board if you make coal or something you actually often want other players to use that coal because when you when you use up all the coal on a tile that tile flips and good stuff happens sometimes it becomes more powerful it means it's more permanent you want these tiles to flip you get more points from and I think you that's the point at which you get points in the game and brass and so even though you created these resources and you might be hoping to use them it also still feels good one of the use them and you get to flip that tile clans of Caledonia has a great positive player interaction system not always it can go both ways but with the economy the I forget what it's like a stock track where I might be buying something and that might positively impact another player who is then trying to sell that same thing because the impact in the price when I buy it so I think sometimes closed economies like this in games can have positive player interactions and I think this is the last one settlers of catan barbarians I believe that it's been awhile since I played Catan and and definitely this expansion but sometimes in games you have something bad that's gonna happen to everyone even in the competitive game and you can work together to prevent that bad thing from happening and the player who does the best job at preventing that bad thing from happening I think actually Troy is our Troy's whatever you said t ro IES choice they do that too so there's this bad thing that's gonna happen and everyone needs to work together to prevent it from happening it's something that's too powerful for you to do on your own and so if you it but the person who contributes the most to it gets the best benefit from it so that's another one that might be able to make its way into the sieve game I think there are some ways that we could incorporate that in that's it those are all the examples I had that doesn't mean that they're those are all the examples out there there are a ton of other ones I'm looking at my list to make sure I covered it I think I've covered it all but if you can think of a positive player interaction that you really really love I would love to hear about it in the comments it might have a positive impact on my civilization game and just in general I love hearing about this mechanism it's it's my favorite way of interacting with other players on the game we're doing something good for me also does something good for you and we have a reason to actually work together even in competitive games I'd love to hear about other examples in the comments yeah and thank for those of you joining me live for like 10 seconds thanks for giving that a try maybe I'll try it again in the future alright take care have a good Sunday

Channel: Stonemaier Games

Views: 12,375

Keywords: game design

Id: TLl2EXbOnjw

Length: 21min 57sec (1317 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 28 2018