Wow, that got deep. It's kind of funny as you were talking about how the bag takes a life of its own, and in my head it resembles organic virality (what I mean is that it didn't get actively pushed by some strategy), where you don't know what will get popular in an equal environment, but as soon as one gets more traction than the rest, it just continues to do so.
It certainly could be interesting to use this as a game mechanism. Imagine a game like Orleans where the content of a _shared_ bag was managed this way. You'd get games where "this game was all about the engineers/priests,…". I think I'd want regular (but not necessarily _frequent_) partial resets. Perhaps halving the number of each colour, leaving a minimum of two. Resets could happen at the end of each "era" in the game - or on some player-action-related trigger.
Using the mechanism as an analogy of the real world, I'm not sure that this modification would work IRL! There are some ethical considerations 😉
This reminds me of information cascade in economics! Really cool concept if someone could implement in a design. The fundamental problem I see is that it's nearly impossible to come back after a certain point. Most games give you a fighting chance even through the late turns.
That said, I could see a cooperative game where there is a solution you're all working towards (to find which rumor is true, for example). However, due to the nature of the bag, you might inadvertently end up in the wrong equilibrium, losing the game. Not sure this addresses the issue above though. If you give abilities that allow them to manipulate the bag in big ways, it kind of defeats the purpose of the mechanic I think.
Wow, that got deep. It's kind of funny as you were talking about how the bag takes a life of its own, and in my head it resembles organic virality (what I mean is that it didn't get actively pushed by some strategy), where you don't know what will get popular in an equal environment, but as soon as one gets more traction than the rest, it just continues to do so.
It certainly could be interesting to use this as a game mechanism. Imagine a game like Orleans where the content of a _shared_ bag was managed this way. You'd get games where "this game was all about the engineers/priests,…". I think I'd want regular (but not necessarily _frequent_) partial resets. Perhaps halving the number of each colour, leaving a minimum of two. Resets could happen at the end of each "era" in the game - or on some player-action-related trigger.
Using the mechanism as an analogy of the real world, I'm not sure that this modification would work IRL! There are some ethical considerations 😉
This reminds me of information cascade in economics! Really cool concept if someone could implement in a design. The fundamental problem I see is that it's nearly impossible to come back after a certain point. Most games give you a fighting chance even through the late turns.
That said, I could see a cooperative game where there is a solution you're all working towards (to find which rumor is true, for example). However, due to the nature of the bag, you might inadvertently end up in the wrong equilibrium, losing the game. Not sure this addresses the issue above though. If you give abilities that allow them to manipulate the bag in big ways, it kind of defeats the purpose of the mechanic I think.