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We often hear the question "Does this game have a catch-up mechanism?". if the answer is "no", most people and most publishers are disappointed as they can imagine a friend stuck in last place, way behind feeling crummy like there is no point in continuing to play. Nothing they can do will let them catch-up that point gap. They feel hopeless. But a game doesn't need a catch-up mechanism if it has, what I like to call, a Hope of Winning mechanism. Some popular games have this but not everyone realize it.
A Hope of Winning mechanism keeps all players in the game psychologically. There is no feeling of being too far behind, no feeling of pointlessness, no feeling of hopelessness. Ticket to Ride has it, Quadropolis has it, Wingspan has it (a new game by Stonemaier and Elizabeth Hargrave), and other highly ranked games have.
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In Ticket to Ride and Wingspan, players start with a goal card or multiple goal cards. These are private/hidden information and give you points at the end of the game if you meet certain thresholds. In Wingspan you are never sure what your friend's scores are, until the game has ended. In Ticket to Ride you could be in last place on the score track by a large amount of points. That is fine as you have a few tickets, a few goals cards, that will give you a great amount of points at the end. In Ticket to Ride you can also create long routes to gain extra points and you hope your competitors somehow got blocked from completing all their tickets. In both games you always have a sense that you could win. Right until the end you feel like you have a chance to win.
Giving all players, especially the one that could be in last position, a psychological feeling that they might still win counters the problems of games that need catch-up mechanisms. Most catch-up mechanisms tend to "fix" hopelessness by punishing skilled players. In 7 Wonders if you feel you are behind at the start of the last round you still have hope that you could get the best cards of the last and highest scoring round. You might even get some perfect guild cards. Guild cards act like goal cards and only appear in the last round.
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What about fighting games? Fighting games thrive on direct player conflict and knocking down the leader which acts like a catch-up mechanism. That was not added to a fighting game to fix a problem. It is a main feature of the game design. Small World creates a Hope of Winning situation by obfuscating victory points gained. Your victory points are coins. All coin values have the same back illustration. When you get coins you keep them face down. When you look at your opponents big pile of coins they could all be be tens, but you hope they're ones.
Game Design Hope
It's a problem when a game makes players want to stop playing by making them know they've already lost at the halfway mark. My hope as a gamer and designer is that "Hope of Winning" mechanisms are used more often than "standard" catch-up mechanisms. If a game makes all players feel interested and competitive right up until the end, every time, does it need punishing or unfairly rewarding catch-up mechanisms? I feel no, resist the popular term "catch-up" mechanism if you can, and your game design can.
Do you find game design fascinating, and want more in-depth nuggets and tips? If yes, then welcome to the Game Nuggets blog. I'm Gerald the designer of the soon to be released Banker of the Gods.
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