Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Misere



Misere is a french word for poverty. But in games it typically is used in trick taking card games (like hearts) to mean the taking of no tricks. This is typically a reverse of what the players are ‘supposed’ to do as most games are scored by taking the most tricks. However the dynamic of ‘playing to lose’ is an interesting notion and an important perspective to consider in games. By examining a couple of points about misere, I think some important insights can be gained.


A boundary for balance

The simplest use of misere as a mechanic is to prevent a runaway winner. Simply put if a misere gambit is a possibility, the end of a match can become much more tense if someone has dominated the round. Often this becomes a situation where players need to force the losing player to take a trick, creating a point of power for a losing player. In some ways it kinda feels like a ‘gotcha’ mechanic, a rule used to trick players before they realized it was too late. Either way it becomes a player enforced ‘rubber-banding’  or balancing technique. Often these types of balancing mechanics that are despised for the lack of agency. But when its made an obvious rule, players control it and enforce it themselves and don't feel disempowered. Mario Kart is a great game, but much maligned for its rubber-banding. I suspect that if it had much more clear and much less arbitrary rules as to how power ups were distributed players would feel better about the mechanic. It would create the option to strategize around the mechanic instead of them being randomly thwarted by it.




Playing a game to lose

Misere is an important perspective to understand because of how arbitrary game rules can be. Is there really any difference to winning and losing a game if you had to play optimally to do so? Often in certain kinds of puzzle games, the answer is no. Playing bejeweled to get the lowest score can be just as difficult as trying to get the highest and can expose different types of play. Triple Town is just as fun if you try to play to invoke its loss condition as fast as you can (instead of trying to win). Also there is no need to involve yourself in microtransactions if you play this way.


This really exposes just how arbitrary points are in some games. If it creates the same sort of challenge to score high or low, why not include both as a way to score in the game? Using misere, games can create this ‘difference in kind’ while it helps players to better understand the mechanics of the games. This is a rather simple way of expanding the possibility space of what the game is and get more out of game mechanics.


Changing how you play

The way in which misere changes how players play has some interesting results. One of the more famous examples is the Resident Evil 4 speedrun. RE4 (not shown) has adaptive difficulty, where the game gets easier if the player goes into encounters with less health. In this way speedrunners intentionally take damage to have easier encounters for faster play.
There are many other examples of players exploiting mechanics to change how games are played as well (save scumming, arbitrary restrictions, even just speedrunning itself). Using misere as another lens can help designers get the most and even add more to their games.


[the formatting seems to be a little off for some reason, I'm looking into it]