I was listening to an interview on NPR with author Daniel Pink, who wrote an article for the Washington Post titled “Why Not Get Rid of Grades?” I apologize that the article is behind a paywall and the link is to a podcast. But you won’t need to see or hear any of that to get the point of this post.
Students often chase grades. They work hard to get the ‘A’ in a class, but often don’t master the material. Daniel Pink talked of his own experience taking six years of French class and only knowing how to conjugate irregular verbs, something that would not be very useful if he were to get hired in a bakery in France. I don’t see this as a great example of how “grades” are problematic, but rather, it’s a problem with what is being taught; French lessons should be more about speaking and reading in the language and less about learning the minute details that are unnecessary for everyday use. But this does serve as a starting point when discussing school grading and how grades don’t often reflect a student’s mastery of a topic.
How could school grades possibly relate to board games? That’s an excellent question, and the answer is that board games are a way of grading a player at “the game.” Think of your score in a board game as a measurement of how well you have mastered the material. Playing the game is the process of studying, and the test itself, all packed into a single event.
At the end of last night’s game of Andromeda’s Edge, I was about 10 points behind my opponent when the end of the game was triggered. Each player gets a single final turn after the current player finishes their current turn. The end of the game came one or two turns sooner than I had hoped, and I was stuck without any good moves. I was able to get myself five more points on that final turn. My opponent retrieved all his ships and gained the maximum resources allowed. And having increased his position on a scoring track that also awards bonus points for resources, he gained about 50 points worth of resources. He also got about the same number of points on the turn that I had gained. My score ended up being about 60 points lower than his, with my scoring being about 150.
I definitely got a lower grade. I did worse than my opponent. But may I also suggest that my opponent crammed for the exam? He performed some actions at the end of the game that gave him many “extra’ points compared to me, but they were not necessarily good in-game actions. They were more of good end-game actions. This is all perfectly fair, and I was outplayed, no question about it. And my opponent did much better than I did, besides getting the big jump in score at the end. And he “played” the game as much as he played the game – he did things to get the big score bump I failed to do. Andromeda’s Edge grades players fairly; everyone knows where points are scored. But maybe it isn’t grading just based on how well a player masters the game, but also on how well they cram for the final exam.
Board games often have problems where actions taken during the game that are integral to the gameplay are also useless or even punished at the end of the game. These types of actions are the “test” on which players are graded. Mastering the game for the first 9/10ths of gameplay can be negated by the “test.” Another example of a rather obvious test is in Wingspan. Wingspan is a game where you actively try to get food, lay eggs (on bird cards), and then play your bird cards onto your player board. This is the essence of the game, and being efficient at getting the right food, having the right number of eggs, and playing the best choice of bird cards is what a master would do. But then, on the last few turns of the game, not only will bird cards provide no future benefit, they also cost more to play than cards played at the beginning of the game. Given that near the end, a player can take a “lay eggs” action to getfour points, and that playing a bird worth six points will likely cost two points worth of eggs to play, it’s a much better choice to just take “lay eggs” actions for the last two or even three turns in a game. That’s a lot of turns where you the player, are no longer playing the game you started playing. Now you are chasing a grade like a student cramming for a test. Your focus shifts at the end of the game from taking optimal actions to get good bird cards played onto your player board, to gain as many points as possible through whatever action gets them.
Board games are all like this. They all require mastery of the subject for you to do well at them. But they also require mastery of just a tiny portion of the end-game, where points are king and having a good strategy, good tactics, or clever turns, means nothing if those actions don’t score as many points as possible. In a game like Ark Nova, releasing zoo animals into the wild is a great way to trade zoo appeal points for zoo conservation points at the end of the game. But is that really making your zoo great? Nope, it’s just working to get a good grade.