Why Kingmaking is Objectionable
2024-05-02 13:53:33 UTC
Kingmaking is the action of a game agent in which they play in such a way that they increase an opponent's payoffs while disregarding their own payoffs.
Suppose a game with three equally competing teams of four players each. Now, suppose one player on one team decides to work against their team's best interest. The game's design and balance has been disturbed. The game is designed and balanced for three equal competitors all vying to win. However, at least one of those competitors has an additional, undue opponent (from within its own ranks, as it happens)
We can distill this further. Suppose a game with three equally competing teams of four players each. Now, suppose all four players of a single team decide to work against their own best interest. The game's design and balance has been disturbed. The game is designed and balanced for three equal competitors all vying to win. However, at least one of those competitors has an additional, undue opponent.
We can distill this to its furthest. Suppose a game with three equally competing teams of one player each. Now, suppose one of those teams decides to work against their own best interest. The game's design and balance has been disturbed. The game is designed and balanced for three equal competitors all vying to win. However, at least one of those competitors has an additional, undue opponent.
As tabletop gaming has grown, there has grown an audience who thinks kingmaking is acceptable. These folks generally come in two camps:
- The hyper-competitive. These are folks who think bullying players in order to ensure favorable outcomes for themselves in future games is a strategy.
- The non-competitive. These are folks who play games as a way to pass the time. They are unconcerned with the objective of a game and often find objectives, rules, and restrictions to be anxiety-inducing. They just want a proxy for hanging out with friends in a bar, going to the movies, or gardening.
Both groups ruin games. This is because games are designed and balanced with two primary conceits: that players are trying to win and that the entirety of the game is defined within the rules. That is to say: a game's intent is to provide limitations (rules) through which players navigate in order to maximize their own payoffs (winning). Moreover, a game starts and stops when the rules dictate they do and do not carry over to behaviors outside of that scope. When player are contemptuous of these two conceits, games very quickly break down. Balance often gets thrown out of the window and entire genres (e.g., negotiation games) simply stop working.
Kingmakers are often inconsistent with their viewpoint. Many kingmakers would consider collusion in a tournament to be objectionable and unsportsmanlike. However, that is precisely what kingmaking is. "Throwing" a game is a pejorative for kingmaking. Yet many kingmakers don't view themselves as throwers of games. They are.
18xx designer J. C. Lawrence suggests a superset of rules on top of any game in order to prevent kingmaking:
- "The only things to be imported to a game are the player's abilities and the only things exported are the results. Each new game is a blank slate."
- "Always maximise your ranking, maximise your delta from the players behind you and minimise your delta from the players ahead of you. This is the definition of 'playing to win'."
- "There is nothing that is off-limits within the game in the attempt to win. It is your obligation and duty as a player to exploit that fact without restraint."
- "Everything in every game is personal, but only until the game ends. Then there is nothing but the results and the blank slate begins anew."
- "Opposing players are your mortal enemies: They are following the above rules as well."