Every Game is Broken

Recently I have mentioned A Few Acres of Snow more than once, using it both as an example of an innovative design, as well as a tragically flawed one. Indeed, a specific, flawlessly executed strategy will win the game for the British pretty much every time. There seems to be no doubt that the game is broken – so broken in fact, that it has been given as a single example of a design that is beyond repair. Is it however as lonely in its misery as we grew to think?

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The answer is simple: it is not. There are many games from less known designers that would also quickly turn out to be subpar, with either a single strategy being prevalent, or a specific swing of luck being the force that is most influential when tallying the final scores. Nobody seems really surprised when an unbalanced game published by a smaller company hits the shelves. We do seem to expect, however, that the biggest and brightest will always deliver a product we will not be able to break.

The truth is that deeming a game broken is a somewhat fuzzy process, dependant on a variety of different factors. Is Munchkin broken? Is Fluxx unplayable? Many people might say that they are, but what they are in fact expressing is their dislike of the genre those games represent. Those games were never meant to be balanced, the design goal was not to give all players equal chances, to provide them with a catch-up mechanism or to ensure there is more than one way to victory.

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The problem gets even more complicated when we take a look at some of the German style games, especially those simpler, family oriented ones. Take Coal Baron for example – a rather light game with a simple and straightforward path to victory and a few interesting mechanisms, that can still be taken apart by a player able to optimize their every movement. How about Russian Railroads? It is a seemingly more complicated design that can still be played according to a very simple algorithm that, if used by one player, will make them the victor every time or, if executed by more than one person, will hand the victory to whoever made the first move.

The problem is that the same may be basically said about chess. It is a perfect example of a game that, when played by opponents perfectly executing the best strategies, will always end in white’s victory. Does it mean that chess is broken? Again, based on their dislikes, some people would probably say that it is, but it is not true.

Now, the problem with A Few Acres of Snow is a slightly different one. Due to its asymmetry, the design favours only one side of the conflict. It still requires perfect or near-perfect execution of the winning strategy, but with two equally skilled, experienced opponents, winning the game might as well be determined at the stage of randomly assigning who gets to play the British. This, again, is not a very unique problem.

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A similar one is easily found in the previous editions of Twilight Struggle, which seemed to favour the Soviets (and, by some accounts, still favours them, regardless of the fix offered in an early errata and then incorporated into the deluxe edition). Some wargame designers are even conscious enough to offer a simple balancing mechanism, with opponents bidding to play a specific side of the conflict. The last game I came upon this in was Red Winter – and nobody even suggests that it might be broken.

Again, A Few Acres of Snow seems to be further down the path of broken, as its structure makes the bidding pointless. The winning strategy is not based on victory points, so the players would just be buying a victory before the game starts, provided they know what to do exactly to win the game. But to know that means to either find out by visiting the game’s BGG profile or to be smart and determined enough to actually discover the strategy and perfect its execution, so that any semblance of game balance is irrevocably lost. Still, if you do not simply use other people’s experiences, there is usually a lot of game to be had before you are able to deem A Few Acres of Snow broken. And for most players that will mean playing the game about as many times as one plays any other game in their collection – especially if the collection is at least fifty to a hundred boxes strong.

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The amusing conclusion here is that games are not broken by finding an outstanding design flaw – they are broken because people who are too smart or too determined play them. If not for the great following, A Few Acres of Snow would probably still be considered a flawless design. If not for a disturbingly inquisitive presence at my gaming table, I would probably still be able to enjoy Russian Railroads, oblivious of the way it can be played to win every time.

It may, thus, seem that the biggest plight of designer board games are the people who seem the best gamers: the smart, analytical minds, able to pull a design apart and utterly annihilate the illusion that there are many equally viable strategies to play and win. And it may also seem that there is no game that is not broken – and that it is more a matter of how broken any given design really is than if it is breakable at all.

From a design standpoint, however, the player that is much smarter than average is not as dangerous as the average player that, for whatever reason, decides to assume the mantle of the village idiot. This, however, I will analyze next time – for there is even more to consider here, as not all of us gamers can be exceptionally smart all the time, but we can sure act like half-wits whenever we damn please. And we do, more often than we would like to admit.

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