The Alpha Player Problem (or: How to Avoid Controlling Co-Ops Without Even Trying)

The biggest problem with cooperative game design is the issue of the controlling player — or if you prefer, the alpha player. It’s such a big problem that some players won’t play co-ops because of bad past experiences with controlling players. Meeples Together, my upcoming book on cooperative game design, offers eight game-design solutions to this problem: play patterns that designers can include in games to deflate or deemphasize alphas.

However, there’s a flip side to this. Few co-op designers with perfectly resolve the controlling-player problem, and some with accept it as the price of creating the sort of game that interests them. In fact, some of my favorite co-ops like Pandemic (2008) and The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Games (2017) have styles of play where alpha players can rise to power. And I know, because I’m one of them. When I play these games I end up fighting not just against the challenges of the game system, but also about my own urges to tell everyone else what to do.

And fighting is the perfect word, because I believe that if you’re a cooperative gamer who suffers from alphaplayeritis, it’s your duty to make the game more enjoyable for everyone else by avoiding controlling the game as much as possible.

Here’s how you do so in 10 easy steps. (And if you’re not an controlling player, this really doesn’t apply to you!) Continue reading

Don’t Be that Gamer

I game to be around people. It’s the prime purpose, ahead of intriguing mechanics and evocative settings, even ahead of beating the snot out of my friends, competitively. But, I work from home, and I’m not a natural socializer, so it would be all too easy to withdraw from society. Hence, I game.

Most of the people that I game with actively improve that experience, with clever moves and amusing wit, with fun anecdotes and interesting lives, with emotive sensitivity and over-the-top punning. But people can also negatively impact the gaming experience, sometimes in small ways and sometimes big, sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for the length of a game, sometimes on brief occasion and sometimes whenever they play. So, in my continuing guide to board game etiquette, I want to say, don’t be that gamer — with a description of 16 specific things that in my opinion you really shouldn’t do. (Feel free to disagree or add more personalities in the comments below.) Continue reading

The Ten Commandments of Gaming

Let the following be the ten commandments that all board gamers shall abide by.

1. Thou Shalt Be Even Tempered and Good Natured. Be not surly if the game goes poorly for you, if a neighbor breaks a deal, or if you feel your position is impossible to win. Instead, go forth with a smile, and thus continue to enjoy the game yourself and make it enjoyable for others. Further, address your temperament to the mood of the game. Do not be loud and boisterous if your gaming partners are not, and similarly do not be dour and sullen when there is an air of frivolity upon the table. If the temperament of the table does not suit your own, then find another table rather than forcing your mood upon others. Continue reading

Competitive Fun: It’s Not Whether You Win or Lose … Or Is It?

Knucklebones: July 2007This is a reprint of an article written in February, 2007 for first publication in the July, 2007 issue of the now-defunct Knucklebones magazine. Because of its origins, this article is more introductory and (hopefully) more polished than many of my online writings. Despite the original source of this article, this blog is in no way associated with Jones Publishing or Knucklebones Magazine.

For the original Mechanics & Meeples article that this Knucklebones article drew inspiration (and a few quotes) from, see: It’s Not If you Win or Lose.


Games are odd creatures. On the one hand they’re about socialization. You play cards with your family at Christmas, huddled around the dining room table with a fire going nearby. Or, you play Monopoly with your kids, crouched down on the living room floor. However games aren’t just social events, they’re social sports. They’re not just about gameplay, they’re about winning and losing.

And winning and losing can be somewhat tricky and sticky subjects. People can get upset if they lose, especially if they feel like other players are being too mean (or even too nice). Figuring out how to resolve fun socialization with overt competition — and how to play games that everyone enjoys — are some of the biggest challenges in gaming, especially when you’re playing with family and friends.

Fortunately, honestly talking about the issues — about why you’re playing, how important competition is, what winning means, and how to be good winners and losers — can often clear up any misconceptions or hurt feelings.

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Game Clubs

A game club is a somewhat odd social institution. You gather together with like-minded people every week or every few weeks … and you game. Certainly, other social interaction is possible. Perhaps you might sit around and chat before a game or after, but if the club is big enough you’re likely to play with an ever-changing group of people every week, and so it can take months or even years to start really knowing people, and in the meantime … you game.

My own game club is the weekly board game night most kindly offered by the folks at EndGame in Oakland, California. Every Wednesday night their beautiful mezannine is available for gaming from six-something in the evening to when the host decides he’s had enough and wants to go home — which is sometime well after I leave at 10 or 10.30.

I’ve been going there for a bit more than two years now, and in the process I’ve come to know quite a few of the regulars, but I still only have contact with a scant few of them outside of the club. And in that time I’ve also seen people just mysteriously disappear, never to be seen again. It underlines the sort of disconnected social atmosphere that a game club can generate. Because you don’t have a deeper connection with many of the people, and because you don’t really know them outside the club, when they’re gone they’re gone forever.

Continue reading

It’s Not if You Win or Lose

Grantland Rice, an American sportswriter who lived from 1880-1954, once wrote, “For when the One Great Scorer comes, / To write against your name, / He marks — not that you won or lost — / But how you played the Game.” I’m sure we’ve every one heard that saying, probably in its shorter, more succinct form.

There’s no doubt that Rice’s saying has become a touchstone for competition of all sorts. But, that doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with his point of view: Continue reading