Tennis is structured as a series of sets (best of 5 sets for men, best of 3 sets for women), with the first player winning six games winning the set (assuming they win by two.
I'm in full agreement on the tennis proposal. Totally unnecessary and makes the game more complicated without really adding anything.
The most obvious game that jumps to mind regarding resource efficiency is one where you have no control over that efficiency: War. Taking a 2 with your Ace is a disappointment, even though you 'won' the exchange. You want to be getting a King with that Ace! If nothing else, War can at least be instructive to young kids about resource efficiency in games.
Oh, here's another one from a game I pulled out just this past weekend: in Space Cadets, the Tractor Beam station wants to try to be as efficient as possible with their tiles. If they burn pairs of 3s and 4s when they don't need them, they might run into real trouble later on when all they have left are 1s and 2s.
Ha! Another one I should have included is Alhambra, where you can't 'make change' when purchasing tiles. This adds an additional puzzly aspect to figuring out which tile to pick up.
I would say not only does it not add much, it removes the odds of epic / tension moments that is another skill check for the players and fun to watch: having points in the sets and match that matter more, makes it MORE interesting. More chance for interesting spectatorship/narrative
A large part of tennis--especially 1 v 1--is the psychological aspect. If you give it your all in the first set and then lose a close one, it can be devastating. Coming back from 2 sets down is one of the most dramatic moments in sports--and I've seen it in Grand Slam finals!
Probably a better alternative to War is Raj (Hol's der Geier), where you do have a choice which card to play. Any blind-bidding games works, but Raj is the most basic. It's a great feeling when you choose a card that is only 1 greater than your opponent's, but awful to win with a 10 when your opponent plays a 5.
Brilliant framework for understanding efficiency in games. The chunking lens really clarifies why area control games create such satisfying tension - its not just about winning territories, but the constant calculus of when to accept losses vs overcommit. I've noticed this same dynamic in deckbuilders too, where buying a slightly weeker card to preserve economy often beats chasing the perfect purchase.
Archery is another game that the total number of points shot does not always determines the winner--in qualification rounds that works, but not match play.
I think it is one problem with the idea of "points." Is a game about the demonstration of skill or the measure? Particularly with sports where there are environment and psychological factors in performance, the measure does not reflect the skill. An archer that can shoot a high score on a practice field on a calm day does not exhibit more skill than an archer in completion shooting in the wind and rain with a lower one. The score is just a temporal measure of a particular place and time. The score is valid relative measure for a particular condition, not an absolute measure that is true universally. The score creates the distinction to identify a winning condition, but it does not define it.
Interestingly, Soccer and other European sports don't do a "best of 3/5/7" series for their tournaments. Instead, for the knockout stages of the Champions League, for example, they play home-and-away and if each team wins a game, goal difference decides who moves on. So, essentially, the number of goals decides, not really the individual matches (of course, winning both matches means you've score more goals than the opponent). The people proposing the rules change for Tennis were probably soccer fans :-). This was really odd for me when I first move to Berlin and watched the pro basketball team play in a home-and-away European tournament like the Champions League. The home game, which I attended, ended in a tie! I couldn't believe they did not play an overtime period, but my German friends didn't bat an eye. Apparently, if Berlin had won by 2 points, then they still could have been eliminated by losing the away game by 3 points. Weirder yet: if the away game had ended with Berlin behind by 2, they would play overtime!
Not only Gerrymandering, but also the Electoral College is an example in chunking: a president can get elected without winning the popular vote.
Fun fact: I, too, have a Gerrymandering/electoral college/area control prototype, and I know of at least 2 other well-known designers who do as well. It's one of our inside jokes that "everybody has a gerrymandering prototype." But it is a fascinating mechanism for games.
I agree with respect to the effect on both tennis and baseball, particularly since fatigue is a factor in both games. A baseball coach behind 11-4 in the eighth inning will not bring in his closer to contain the damage (except in Game 7) but will rather rest him for a save situation in a subsequent game, sacrificing any chance of winning the current game. I don't follow tennis closely, so I don't know whether a tennis pro will try to come back from a 5-1 deficit or instead sacrifice the set to save their energy to try to win two in a row, but it would make sense to me.
All of which supports your ultimate point regarding resource efficiency.
Pleased to see the reference to Gerrymandering because the article immediately put me in mind of the board game Distrix, which was specifically themed around Gerrymandering. Here's a review of it that we published on Board's Eye View (www.facebook.com/boardseye) in 2021: https://www.boardseyeview.net/post/distrix
I'm in full agreement on the tennis proposal. Totally unnecessary and makes the game more complicated without really adding anything.
The most obvious game that jumps to mind regarding resource efficiency is one where you have no control over that efficiency: War. Taking a 2 with your Ace is a disappointment, even though you 'won' the exchange. You want to be getting a King with that Ace! If nothing else, War can at least be instructive to young kids about resource efficiency in games.
Oh, here's another one from a game I pulled out just this past weekend: in Space Cadets, the Tractor Beam station wants to try to be as efficient as possible with their tiles. If they burn pairs of 3s and 4s when they don't need them, they might run into real trouble later on when all they have left are 1s and 2s.
Ha! Another one I should have included is Alhambra, where you can't 'make change' when purchasing tiles. This adds an additional puzzly aspect to figuring out which tile to pick up.
I would say not only does it not add much, it removes the odds of epic / tension moments that is another skill check for the players and fun to watch: having points in the sets and match that matter more, makes it MORE interesting. More chance for interesting spectatorship/narrative
...and it's a type of catch-up mechanism as well!
A large part of tennis--especially 1 v 1--is the psychological aspect. If you give it your all in the first set and then lose a close one, it can be devastating. Coming back from 2 sets down is one of the most dramatic moments in sports--and I've seen it in Grand Slam finals!
Probably a better alternative to War is Raj (Hol's der Geier), where you do have a choice which card to play. Any blind-bidding games works, but Raj is the most basic. It's a great feeling when you choose a card that is only 1 greater than your opponent's, but awful to win with a 10 when your opponent plays a 5.
Brilliant framework for understanding efficiency in games. The chunking lens really clarifies why area control games create such satisfying tension - its not just about winning territories, but the constant calculus of when to accept losses vs overcommit. I've noticed this same dynamic in deckbuilders too, where buying a slightly weeker card to preserve economy often beats chasing the perfect purchase.
Archery is another game that the total number of points shot does not always determines the winner--in qualification rounds that works, but not match play.
I think it is one problem with the idea of "points." Is a game about the demonstration of skill or the measure? Particularly with sports where there are environment and psychological factors in performance, the measure does not reflect the skill. An archer that can shoot a high score on a practice field on a calm day does not exhibit more skill than an archer in completion shooting in the wind and rain with a lower one. The score is just a temporal measure of a particular place and time. The score is valid relative measure for a particular condition, not an absolute measure that is true universally. The score creates the distinction to identify a winning condition, but it does not define it.
Interestingly, Soccer and other European sports don't do a "best of 3/5/7" series for their tournaments. Instead, for the knockout stages of the Champions League, for example, they play home-and-away and if each team wins a game, goal difference decides who moves on. So, essentially, the number of goals decides, not really the individual matches (of course, winning both matches means you've score more goals than the opponent). The people proposing the rules change for Tennis were probably soccer fans :-). This was really odd for me when I first move to Berlin and watched the pro basketball team play in a home-and-away European tournament like the Champions League. The home game, which I attended, ended in a tie! I couldn't believe they did not play an overtime period, but my German friends didn't bat an eye. Apparently, if Berlin had won by 2 points, then they still could have been eliminated by losing the away game by 3 points. Weirder yet: if the away game had ended with Berlin behind by 2, they would play overtime!
Not only Gerrymandering, but also the Electoral College is an example in chunking: a president can get elected without winning the popular vote.
Fun fact: I, too, have a Gerrymandering/electoral college/area control prototype, and I know of at least 2 other well-known designers who do as well. It's one of our inside jokes that "everybody has a gerrymandering prototype." But it is a fascinating mechanism for games.
What an insightful post! Thank you!
I agree with respect to the effect on both tennis and baseball, particularly since fatigue is a factor in both games. A baseball coach behind 11-4 in the eighth inning will not bring in his closer to contain the damage (except in Game 7) but will rather rest him for a save situation in a subsequent game, sacrificing any chance of winning the current game. I don't follow tennis closely, so I don't know whether a tennis pro will try to come back from a 5-1 deficit or instead sacrifice the set to save their energy to try to win two in a row, but it would make sense to me.
All of which supports your ultimate point regarding resource efficiency.
Pleased to see the reference to Gerrymandering because the article immediately put me in mind of the board game Distrix, which was specifically themed around Gerrymandering. Here's a review of it that we published on Board's Eye View (www.facebook.com/boardseye) in 2021: https://www.boardseyeview.net/post/distrix
I will check that out!
The book Math Games with Bad Drawings also covers Gerrymandering.