Winners Without Losers, Games Without End

A few weeks ago, I wrote of the glory and beauty of victory conditions and how, if your game doesn’t have them, it’s not really a game: it’s a toy.

I wrote it. I believed. And I still believe it. And yet today, I want to look at games without true victory conditions that are nevertheless considered by many (including myself) to be true games.

The Obligatory List of Examples

Tabletop RPGs are the ultimate examples of these games. For decades, the idea that these games “have no losers and cannot be won” has been part of the whole RPG ethos. (It’s also part of what makes them hard to explain to Aunt June, who still thinks they’re a gateway to satanism. “A lack of victory conditions is the devil’s playground!”) You can complete your adventure, or your character can die trying, but the game is never over.

MMORPGs follow the same philosophy. You might get your character to max level (“I win?”) but the game goes on.

The Sims, anyone? More than RPGs, these games have been accused of being toys rather than proper games, but I think they stand up to that accusation as well as World of Warcraft does, for reasons I’ll get into below.

Minecraft has also been accused of toyhood not only for its lack of end game, but its lack of any directed game play at all. At least The Sims gives the player some direction via its characters’ aspirations. In Minecraft, the most direction you get is, “Try not to get blown up or eaten.”

Many Facebook games have no obvious victory conditions. You harvest your crop, feed your fish, collect your rent — but at what point do you win? Even in this new wave of strategy games, there is no true winning or losing, just the constant struggle. (There are exceptions, of course: Bejewelled Blitz and its brethren, trivia games, and other short-session puzzles and arcade games that can be won or lost in 60 seconds. No one’s challenging their game-hood.)

So are these not games? They’re commonly thought of as such, but without victory conditions, are we all just fooling ourselves?

No

No, they’re all games. They even have victory conditions. But unlike “normal” games (especially those played on the tabletop with boards, cards, and dice), they don’t have game-ending victory conditions.

Win or lose, the game goes on.

Within a game, there are smaller “game units,” which I’ll call “sessions.” In an RPG, a session might be an adventure into a dungeon. In an MMO, it’s a quest or quest-chain. In a Facebook game, it could also be a quest, or it might be simply the gameplay you have until you run out of game energy.

Each session has its victory conditions: Kill the dragon. Reach level 10. Get that magic shiny horse.

A session can also be defined by its victory conditions. This is especially true if the player can set his own victory conditions. In The Sims, for example, if you want to build an expansion to your sims’ house, all the game play leading up to that point could be considered its own session. Ditto for Minecraft. Whether your goal is to build a castle, craft a suit of armor, or fully explore a new cave system, all the play leading you towards that goal is its own session.

A game session continues until you achieve victory. You kill the dragon, get the mount, build that expansion, or explore every inch of a Minecraft cave.

You’ve done it! You’ve won the session!

But the game goes on.

And on and on and on…

I stand by my original statement: Games need victory conditions to be more than a toy.

But achieving those conditions need not end the game. It only ends the session. And there’s always another session right around the corner.

If you have any thoughts or questions – or a better term for “session” – I’d love to hear them in the comments.