In Defense of the Auction...
I was reading through the blogs I follow yesterday and came upon an interesting article on Pawnstar about the use of auctions in games. Basically, it was a diatribe about the misuse of auctions in games to spackle over shoddy game design and shirk the responsibility for game balance to the players. Here are a few snippets from the article, but I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing to really understand his argument:
"Lately, the auction mechanism has become the gaffer tape of game design; pulling the loose ends into a neat line. But I have to ask, is it necessary to employ an auction mechanism where something else could have done?
... Auctions in their basic form are rather time-consuming game elements... Much better, in my opinion, to assign fixed prices to actions or commodities; and use some other method of distribution...
In other games, however, the auction sits uncomfortably as a workaround solution for something the designer seemed unable to implement for themselves...
When all is said and done, the auction is a useful means of putting in-game value on something of indeterminate benefit; but if you're going to design a game, I would recommend you consider other options first rather than leaving it to the players to decide. That would be a cop-out."
I started to write a comment on the blog itself, but quicly realized that it was going to be a lot more than a comment could handle, so let me make this a superstar cross-over event instead and write about it here.
Fellonmyhead did a pretty good job in giving a balanced view of auctions and even pointing out a few games that did them well or where they were appropriate (Goa, Modern Art, and The Speicherstadt). But he also gave some examples of where he thought a different approach would be better (Age of Steam and Manilla). I didn't necessarily disagree with most of what he said, but I did think that there are maybe some other perspectives to take note of when discussing, and especially when judging, auctions as a tool in the game designer's hand.
In addressing the main point of putting the responsibility of game balance on the shoulders of the players, there's definitely some truth there. One of the biggest issues with auction-based games is that the players must have some ability to evaluate the worth of what they're bidding on in order for the economy to work. In The Princes of Florence, for instance, new players have no idea about how powerful the Jesters are, and if someone is able to pick them up cheaply, they will have a definite advantage in the rest of the game. In Modern Art (one of his "good" examples), players often go in the other direction and spend way too much on the auctions, often giving the game to the person who bought the fewest things.
But really, this "flaw" is usually just a symptom of the game's learning curve. While it may be unfriendly to new players, it also opens up room for more experienced players to develop in their skill and knowledge of the game. To really do well, you have to be able not only to evaluate what something is worth to you, but also to the other players around the table. And to me at least, this kind of depth in repeated play is a really good thing for a game to have.
When this becomes a problem, however, is if the game doesn't provide even experienced players with some reliable basis to make evaluations of the worth of what they're bidding on. But there are crappy game designs out there with all sorts of mechanics in them, not just auctions.
And I think it's important to consider the possibility that using an auction to deal with having unbalanced objects (i.e. of widely different values) available to the players may not be a "cop out" or lazy design at all. Having that sort of asymmetrical element to the game is actually pretty interesting, or it is at least once players develop the ability to value the elements appropriately. So whether it's meant to simulate real-life situations (where objects and/or actions rarely have equivalent value) or just to bring some tough choices into the game, an auction like this may be a very deliberate design choice rather than a quick fix to cover up something they couldn't balance on their own.
The other big use of auctions that he didn't even mention is to introduce player interaction and (to some extent) conflict into what may otherwise be a low-interaction game. Without its auction, The Princes of Florence is still a decent game of action optimization, but it loses that nugget of challenge and struggle against other players that makes it truly great (in my opinion, of course). A hallmark of eurogame design is the lack of direct conflict, which works really well for families and better suits the preferences of a lot of people. But an auction is a subtle way of keeping the players tied in with each other and giving them a way to have some effect on each other, but without the openly confrontational conflict that some sort of attacking or "take that" mechanic would bring.
And to speak to the idea of them being time-consuming, I think that depends a lot on the nature of the auction and its effect on the game. If you were to have an auction that took a lon time each turn but had a minor effect on the game, that would be bad design. But if, instead, the auction is the main way that players can interact with each other in the game (as in Age of Steam, perhaps), then why would it be a big deal for it to take a while? And a lot of games (like Goa, from his example) have shortcuts in their auctions (like being once-around) that make them move faster. Again, bad game design is bad, but that's not necessarily the fault of the auction mechanic itself.
And in the end, I guess that I sort of just disagree that alternate machanics would usually be preferable to auctions. Like in his Steam/Age of Steam example, for instance. I've never played Age of Steam itself, but I've played both the basic (no auction) and advanced (uses an auction) versions of Steam, and for experienced players, I think that the auction really adds a lot to the game. There are still interesting choices in the basic game, but the player interaction brought by the auction definitely elevates it for me.
So, in summary, I guess that I just didn't want to see auctions get an unfair shake. Bad design is bad design regardless of the mechanics used, and for me at least, I've probably seen less "abuse" (or at least no more) of auctions that I have many other mechanics.
I couldn't agree more. I miss the days of heavy auction driven euro games. Auctions seem to have been replaced with worker placement. I prefer the analog interaction of auctions to the binary interaction of worker placement.
I'm ready for the next Goa.
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Yeah, I think it's a symptom of the mandate these days that a player understand the game immediately and have a good time with it on the first play. With so many games being produced each year, they've got to make a strong impression right off the bat, becasue if not, they probably won't get a second chance. Worker placement is much more discretely defined and understandable than a complex auction system.
And I'm ready for the supposed reprint of the old Goa...
Oh, and by the way, I keep holding out hope for some sort of Metagamers reunion show. I still have all of your old podcast episodes on my computer and occasionally load them up and listen to them again; you guys were probably the best and most thoughtful boardgame podcast there's ever been.
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I dont play a lot of games that have Auctions. In general I don't like them because it is so heavily based on knowing the game so well that the value of the items you are actioning for is not completely opaque.
The one game I have played that I feel it works well is RA, because the entire game is all about the Auction. The only other game I can think of is Colosseum, and it suffers from the same issue I mentioned before. Only a player who knows the game really well, has any understanding of the value of the tiles you are bidding on.
I dont think auctions are a bad mechanic, it just had to be done well, and used in a way that makes sense for the game. It its just tossed in to create player interaction or to solve a balance issue, thats bad game design.
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Yep; learning curve.
Since Mark popped into this conversation, let me direct you and everyone else paying attention to two old Metagamers podcast episodes that go into this subject in a lot of detail:
- Episode 16 was their Auction episode, and they covered it better than I ever could hope to do here
- Expansion 2 was their episode focusing on Amun-Re, in which (IIRC) Mark talked a lot about how to value the auctions, which gives a lot of insight into the kind of thought process you need when facing any sort of auction
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When doing auctions well, one has to avoid the auction becoming the dominant mechanism, though. I mean, so far we have established that:
1. Experience of play brings understanding of value, which makes the auction more interesting.
2. Auctions bring interesting player interaction to games formerly devoid of this.
3. Auctions effectively deal with the issue of imbalanced actions.
It's not easy for an auction to do any of those without becoming the core mechanism; which can detract from the game. Further to this, #1 is often prevented by external chaotic elements (Manila), #2 is a good point but rarely the reason for introduction of auctions (would you try this with PR, for example?), and #3 frequently results in the balance being tipped in another direction.
Still, nobody said game design is easy...
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Well, I don't know that you always need to prevent the auction from becoming the dominant mechanism. I like a lot of games that are mostly "auction games". But I do get the point (and agree for the most part) that introducing an auction mechanic as one element to a larger game can run the risk of it becoming the dominant element.
As for your other points...
1) You're exactly right. As I mentioned originally, if it's impossible to make an accurate valuation of the thing up for auction (due to various random or chaotic elements), then the auction will be inherently flawed.
2) Auctions are a way to introduce player interaction, not the way. Puerto Rico already has a lot of player interaction with the way it handles the action selection, so an auction for something (like turn order, perhaps) would just muddy the waters too much and add unnecessary time and complexity. But in The Princes of Florence, once again as an example, there's a relatively simple auction phase each turn where each player can win exactly one thing. Without it, there is almost no player interaction at all, which would make the game a lot weaker.
3) I'd love an example of what you mean here. The flaw that I see with this is often the same as #1, that if most players don't recognize the inequality of the items up for auction (as with the Jesters in Princes of Florence), then the player who does get it will have a huge advantage in being able to get that item cheaply.
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No, you're correct; you don't need to prevent the auction becoming dominant all of the time, just when the auction shouldn't dominate. AoS is a game about transport and networking, in which the auction dominates. PoF is a game about spending money on the best palaces, so auctions are a much better fit.
I agree with you about PR; a lot of people don't agree with you, and feel it is multiplayer solitaire.
As for number three, it's exactly the problem I'm talking about. Auctions are frequently used with this purpose in mind, and something else usually works better.
Now you mention it, though, I think a single auction in PoF would work exceedingly well; quite possibly lowering the value of a Juggler/Jester.
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Well, if worker placement is sort of seen as an alternative for the auction mechanic, there can still be a high learning curve there. Just like new players may not know the values of what they are bidding for in auctions, at the same time they can just as easily be ignorant of the value of what they're placing workers on or what they're trying to build, etc. OTOH, Cyclades has an auction mechanic (and a very important one, at that), but the game does not inundate you with so many options that every thing is hard to process for new or inexperienced players.
So high learning curves are not just a problem with auction games that can be magically fixed by removing that mechanic and replacing it with something else. And it is possible to include auctions as a small component of a game's design without being cumbersome. Auctions will appeal to some and not to others - there's a niche for all of the varied gaming mechanics of the hobby.
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