Five Designs of Dutch Auctions

Merchants of AmsterdamAuctions have faded a bit from the euro-scene. They were a prime euro-mechanic during the genre’s youth, but pure auction games like High Society (1995) and For Sale (1997) soon turned into auction hybrids like Amun-Re (2003). Then auctions became just another mechanic — a part of more complex games like Age of Steam (2002) — and even that has mostly disappeared in the modern day.

There’s one prime exception: a style of auction that has survived well into the present day. It’s called the Dutch Auction, and I think it’s survived better than standard auctions because it can be so tightly integrated into a game that you might not even realize it’s an auction at all.

In a Dutch Auction, prices on an item drop until someone decides to purchase it. That’s its power: there’s only one bid, none of this round-after-round silliness that can go on forever. If done well, it can look like a purchase — not an auction at all; the price just happens to drop as part of the normal flow of turns. And that’s how some of the best Dutch Auction games of recent years have done it.

I’ve listed five of them below, arranged in ascending order of elegance.. By chance it’s also a climb toward in the modern day. This isn’t unusual in designs: I think it shows how the use of the mechanic has matured over time.

Continue reading

Auctions: Bidding on Fun, Part One

Knucklebones: March, 2007This is a reprint of an article written in October, 2006 for first publication in the March, 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.


“And what I am bid for this fine replica Napoleonic sword? 5? 5? I have 5. 10? Do I hear 10? 10. 15? 15 to the lady in red. 20? Do I hear 20? How about 25?I have two 25s!”

Auctions are an element of modern life, from the cheap knockoffs being sold en masse at your local flea market, to the sale of Picasso’s “Dora Maar with Cat” last year, auctioned by Sotheby’s for $95 million. The ever-popular eBay is an auction service as are the zShops at Amazon, which jointly lower their prices until they find a sale point.

The point of an auction is simple: to allow multiple buyers to compete fairly for the purchase of a limited good — or alternatively to allow multiple sellers to compete fairly for a sale to limited purchasers. Auctions quickly achieve balance in a world of unequal supply and demand.

Because of the innate competition that they embody, auctions are also great systems to include in games. A few American classics feature them, but they’ve become even more popular among modern designer games.

Continue reading