Exploring the idea of "garbage time" at the end of a game through the psychological lenses of cognitive closure, ambiguous loss, and the framing effect.
Interesting exploration of psychological impact! As a solution to the Goblin game I kept envisioning a framework that allows the player to Retreat into the Underground---the game ends in a loss---but the Goblin player, in a future game, receives a starting bonus.
I realize that's sort of cheating the intent of the article, and may not be possible for some games, but it made my mind happy to think, in Skeletons voice "You may have stopped me this time He-Man, but I'll be back!"
Great article! And I like Jason’s suggestion of a retreat mechanic (with or without a subsequent bonus), that seems like an equivalent to conceding defeat that might be more palatable to some (“The survivors live to fight another day.”)
Yeah, it's not the loss that bothered me. It was the feeling of "ending the game early" and/or "not finishing the game." An explicit concession with narrative connection would make it feel like we actually finished the game. Thanks!
Bit of a tired joke but I can't help thinking a game of Call of Cthulhu is ALL garbage time. If you're playing the game in true Lovecraftian form, winning became impossible when you decided to play.
And now I've reminded myself of the ending of War Games…
So some games are definitely "play to see how you lose" and Call of Cthulhu is one of them. Arkham Horror is a board game with the same vibes. The thing is I *love* those style games and don't consider any of it garbage time. Perhaps because of the promises the game makes going in and the expectations of the players. Perhaps because they aren't competitive games, so the point is not to "see who wins."
In fact, one could argue I've made such a game with Exclusion Zone Botanist. If played in a way to get the most plants documented.... you aren't making it out unscathed.
That's a good point. I guess reframing the game at the beginning makes the "win" condition less about winning in the conventional sense and more about telling an interesting story.
I'm reminded of an interview Graham Walmsley gave on the Yes, Indie'd podcast. He mentioned some moments playing either Cthulhu Dark or Cosmic Dark where players actually chose terrible ends for their characters just because it made for a good narrative. I guess the "play to see how you lose" is a kind of built-in resignation mechanic.
Also, if you didn't see them yet, there are a few comments above about "play to lose" games... which ironically happen to be my favorite style of TTRPG!
This sounds to me a bit like a question of how to lessen impact of skipping turns, while in modern game design skipping turns is mostly viewed as an anti-pattern to avoid, rather than making it more tolerable. I think that a game continuing after the outcome is obviously decided points at problems in design, and should be fixed by preventing those situations from happening in the first place.
There are a lot of tools that could help, such as:
- catch-up mechanics that help the losing player
- diminishing returns/upkeep mechanics that hinder the leader
- escalation mechanics that make later turns more impactful for everybody, mitigating relative harm from earlier mistakes
- delaying resolution of crucial game questions until the very end (for example, you commit goblin units to sieges of different cities, but sieges are only resolved in the last round)
- making goals volatile (especially if the involve leadership which can be both lost by someone and attained by someone else, which produces bigger difference in score)
- probably the most fragile, but also the easiest to implement - hiding VPs or other information crucial for winning until the endgame, or making it cumbersome to count (which is functionally the same). Wargames rarely used this, but I remember Runewars had VPs hidden, presumably for this reason.
It seems to me that you did achieve a kind of cognitive closure: you realised you could not win the game. You achieved understanding of something, and you realised that the pieces could no longer be fitted together in such a way that the goblins win.
It is tempting to say you lack closure in the informal sense — ‘a sense of certainty and finality at the end of an event’ — because the ‘event’ (the game) hasn’t ended, you cannot feel any particular way about the ending. It feels more like a desire for endings than a desire for understanding.
But then again, we could reframe it cognitively: it is not about knowing whether you would lose, it is about knowing whether you have lost. Now we could add a rule that says: a game abandoned when you would have lost is a game you lost. Although you know perfectly well that you would have lost, would this have provided the closure you think you want?
(In other cases, a game might be abandoned without either player knowing who would have won had it been played out. Closure denied. But in this case, you do know you would have lost, so that is not a worry.)
With a resignation mechanism, you tidy up cases where you only think you would (or might) lose but don’t know it — by knocking over your king, you MAKE it the case that you have lost, even if you could have come back from your desperate position. So it functions differently.
Surely, closure is always closure with respect to something. In the case of death of a loved one, the thing has already happened — the event ended — you just need to make your peace with it cognitively or affectively. In the case of the game that is not officially lost, the bad thing hasn’t happened. Isn’t resignation a bit like pulling the plug on the life-support machine to achieve closure? Ugh!
We don’t need cognitive closure with respect to everything, else we’d go nuts. If thinking about inserting ‘closure mechanisms’ into games, don’t we need to consider the kind of closure and the ‘object’ of closure, too?
Maybe in this case, you just need to know the game is finished, and it doesn’t matter that you were losing (in some sense had already lost). Not about trauma, just about being tidy: this game is done and not forever hanging, incomplete. I don’t know.
I think Dr. Boss would agree that cognitive closure is not always necessary and/or required, as even her book is titled The Myth of Closure. (To be clear, she is dealing with far more serious issues than board games.)
You probably nailed it in your last paragraph. I just prefer the feeling of the game being finished as per the rules. If we end the game early, we didn't follow the rules to the end and it feels unfinished. There's a tiny part of me that thinks, "Should I log this as a play in BGStats?" however silly that might be. An explicit end isn't so much about closure perhaps as it is my pedantic thoughts about my BGStats numbers! :) :)
Interesting exploration of psychological impact! As a solution to the Goblin game I kept envisioning a framework that allows the player to Retreat into the Underground---the game ends in a loss---but the Goblin player, in a future game, receives a starting bonus.
I realize that's sort of cheating the intent of the article, and may not be possible for some games, but it made my mind happy to think, in Skeletons voice "You may have stopped me this time He-Man, but I'll be back!"
Anyhow, thanks for another great read!
I like that as a thematic and narrative connection to the resignation mechanism! Fun idea!
Thanks for the comment!
I was thinking about a ransom / bribery mechanism.
Great article! And I like Jason’s suggestion of a retreat mechanic (with or without a subsequent bonus), that seems like an equivalent to conceding defeat that might be more palatable to some (“The survivors live to fight another day.”)
Yeah, it's not the loss that bothered me. It was the feeling of "ending the game early" and/or "not finishing the game." An explicit concession with narrative connection would make it feel like we actually finished the game. Thanks!
Shocked no one has replied "GET GUD." to my story of loss yet. 😂
Bit of a tired joke but I can't help thinking a game of Call of Cthulhu is ALL garbage time. If you're playing the game in true Lovecraftian form, winning became impossible when you decided to play.
And now I've reminded myself of the ending of War Games…
Oh, I love that you brought this up! Thank you!
So some games are definitely "play to see how you lose" and Call of Cthulhu is one of them. Arkham Horror is a board game with the same vibes. The thing is I *love* those style games and don't consider any of it garbage time. Perhaps because of the promises the game makes going in and the expectations of the players. Perhaps because they aren't competitive games, so the point is not to "see who wins."
In fact, one could argue I've made such a game with Exclusion Zone Botanist. If played in a way to get the most plants documented.... you aren't making it out unscathed.
That's a good point. I guess reframing the game at the beginning makes the "win" condition less about winning in the conventional sense and more about telling an interesting story.
I'm reminded of an interview Graham Walmsley gave on the Yes, Indie'd podcast. He mentioned some moments playing either Cthulhu Dark or Cosmic Dark where players actually chose terrible ends for their characters just because it made for a good narrative. I guess the "play to see how you lose" is a kind of built-in resignation mechanic.
Thanks for giving me something to chew on!
Same!
Also, if you didn't see them yet, there are a few comments above about "play to lose" games... which ironically happen to be my favorite style of TTRPG!
This sounds to me a bit like a question of how to lessen impact of skipping turns, while in modern game design skipping turns is mostly viewed as an anti-pattern to avoid, rather than making it more tolerable. I think that a game continuing after the outcome is obviously decided points at problems in design, and should be fixed by preventing those situations from happening in the first place.
There are a lot of tools that could help, such as:
- catch-up mechanics that help the losing player
- diminishing returns/upkeep mechanics that hinder the leader
- escalation mechanics that make later turns more impactful for everybody, mitigating relative harm from earlier mistakes
- delaying resolution of crucial game questions until the very end (for example, you commit goblin units to sieges of different cities, but sieges are only resolved in the last round)
- making goals volatile (especially if the involve leadership which can be both lost by someone and attained by someone else, which produces bigger difference in score)
- probably the most fragile, but also the easiest to implement - hiding VPs or other information crucial for winning until the endgame, or making it cumbersome to count (which is functionally the same). Wargames rarely used this, but I remember Runewars had VPs hidden, presumably for this reason.
I confess to being a little confused.
It seems to me that you did achieve a kind of cognitive closure: you realised you could not win the game. You achieved understanding of something, and you realised that the pieces could no longer be fitted together in such a way that the goblins win.
It is tempting to say you lack closure in the informal sense — ‘a sense of certainty and finality at the end of an event’ — because the ‘event’ (the game) hasn’t ended, you cannot feel any particular way about the ending. It feels more like a desire for endings than a desire for understanding.
But then again, we could reframe it cognitively: it is not about knowing whether you would lose, it is about knowing whether you have lost. Now we could add a rule that says: a game abandoned when you would have lost is a game you lost. Although you know perfectly well that you would have lost, would this have provided the closure you think you want?
(In other cases, a game might be abandoned without either player knowing who would have won had it been played out. Closure denied. But in this case, you do know you would have lost, so that is not a worry.)
With a resignation mechanism, you tidy up cases where you only think you would (or might) lose but don’t know it — by knocking over your king, you MAKE it the case that you have lost, even if you could have come back from your desperate position. So it functions differently.
Surely, closure is always closure with respect to something. In the case of death of a loved one, the thing has already happened — the event ended — you just need to make your peace with it cognitively or affectively. In the case of the game that is not officially lost, the bad thing hasn’t happened. Isn’t resignation a bit like pulling the plug on the life-support machine to achieve closure? Ugh!
We don’t need cognitive closure with respect to everything, else we’d go nuts. If thinking about inserting ‘closure mechanisms’ into games, don’t we need to consider the kind of closure and the ‘object’ of closure, too?
Maybe in this case, you just need to know the game is finished, and it doesn’t matter that you were losing (in some sense had already lost). Not about trauma, just about being tidy: this game is done and not forever hanging, incomplete. I don’t know.
Thanks for the comment! A lot to think about!
I think Dr. Boss would agree that cognitive closure is not always necessary and/or required, as even her book is titled The Myth of Closure. (To be clear, she is dealing with far more serious issues than board games.)
You probably nailed it in your last paragraph. I just prefer the feeling of the game being finished as per the rules. If we end the game early, we didn't follow the rules to the end and it feels unfinished. There's a tiny part of me that thinks, "Should I log this as a play in BGStats?" however silly that might be. An explicit end isn't so much about closure perhaps as it is my pedantic thoughts about my BGStats numbers! :) :)