Designing better war games through statistics

[Con]

I am a big reader of Nate Silver and his empirical methodology.  On his 538 website he has an article on the worlds best board game with some very interesting stats.

I was wondering if this would hold true for wargaming as well or if wargamers use different inputs (I think length of time might be different for us personally)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/designing-the-best-board-game-on-the-planet/

Con

[Mad Russian]

It would be interesting to see where other wargames fall in the range of that chart.

Good Hunting.

MR

[jomni]

Monster war games are a NO NO?

[ArizonaTank]

Great article.  But interesting that Twilight Struggle designers says the was not designed by the numbers, but with "horse sense."

[Nefaro]

Great article.  But interesting that Twilight Struggle designers says the was not designed by the numbers, but with "horse sense."

Yeah.  And that's probably the best way to go about some of it, or at least inject that loose method in there.  It's gotta give good impressions.

One big issue I've seen with statistics being used in gaming is the improper application of them.  A fine example being the rate of catastrophic magazine explosions on the British side (Clarification Edit:  At the battle of Jutland).  The Battlecruisers were by far the ones susceptible to this, and the numbers show it.  But I've seen games use those inflated rates fleet-wide when in reality the Dreadnaughts had approximately the same rate of magazine explosions as the opposing German ones. 

So the application and circumstances in which such historical statistics are used can also be detrimental to the end result.  When it comes to boiling things down to a few numbers, many factors are lost in the translation.  Sometimes very important ones that may not be afforded the proper attention in the design.

[Mad Russian]

No question you have to be careful how you analyze the data.

Everyone knows that early versions of the Sherman tank burned easily. What is not so well known is so did the early version of the Panther. But you never hear about them being fire prone.

Histories, books and games all come with a bias. The best ones have as little bias included as possible. It's impossible to keep it all out.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Con]

And the follow up tot he best board game on the 538 is a new article on the worst board game

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-worst-board-games-ever-invented/

The author points out that the term worst is very subjective and I like how he finishes off the article that even these worst games are important stepping stones to better ones.

Con

[GJK]

How could Monopoly (and some of the others on that list) possibly be considered the "worst" games of all time when it is probably one of the all-time best selling games?  How?  Because when "intellectuals" that play Magic and ASL are asked on boardgamegeek what is the worst boardgame, they say "why it's that bloody Monopoly!"; said mostly out of envy I would interject.  I could only wish that ASL or some of my other favorite wargames were half as popular as Monopoly is.  And frankly, Monopoly is not a bad game to play.  I certainly enjoy other games more but it does achieve what it sets out to do better than many of our niche wargames - it gets many families of all ages together sitting at a table and interacting with one another.

[Staggerwing]

Meh.
Whenever my family played Monopoly my sister always had hotels on half the board before either of my folks or myself had so much as a set of bungalows in a row and that gets old after a few times. I'm still not sure why she didn't grow up to be a billionaire slumlord collecting coastal mansions and filling them with shoes.

[bayonetbrant]

probably one of the all-time best selling games

There is significant market research that over half of all copies of Monopoly never get played.

Part of the issue is that most of their game sales are - no shit! - middle-age women purchasing it as a gift.  Lady knows that her nephew likes "gaming".  Lady goes to Target to get a birthday present for him.  Lady has never heard of "Catan" or "Munchkin" and thinks "Walking Dead" sounds too violent.  "Ah!, here's Monopoly - the new Star Wars Monopoly!  He'll love this!"  And it gets unwrapped on his birthday and a thank-you note dutifully written and then goes into the closet and the shrink never gets cracked.

[Con]

How could Monopoly (and some of the others on that list) possibly be considered the "worst" games of all time when it is probably one of the all-time best selling games?  How?  Because when "intellectuals" that play Magic and ASL are asked on boardgamegeek what is the worst boardgame, they say "why it's that bloody Monopoly!"; said mostly out of envy I would interject.  I could only wish that ASL or some of my other favorite wargames were half as popular as Monopoly is.  And frankly, Monopoly is not a bad game to play.  I certainly enjoy other games more but it does achieve what it sets out to do better than many of our niche wargames - it gets many families of all ages together sitting at a table and interacting with one another.

What I got out of the article is not that Monopoly is a bad game but there are some specific elements in it that contribute to a bad rating. 

KO players have nothing to do in a team game,
In very short order of playing one person can build such a dominant position that they are unbeatable
It takes a loooong time to resolve to the end
Its repetitive
Players in weak positions can sell out when bored to other players and dramatically and unfairly change the gameplay balance.

I think it would be really interesting to see if there was a way of aggregating data about grogs or at least more serious wargaming statistics to see if our hobby had similar patterns.  I would suspect it would not but I think we could be very surprised by what some of those trends would show.

Maybe they could look at all the serious Grog foums and go by number of posts on a game, posts by different authors, length of thread, and some metrics around the game (PC vs AI) PBEM, board wargame, nos of players etc. compared to some analysis of game scope.  Anyhow probably just me but I do find some of these things fascinating.

Con

[Nefaro]

Stuff like Monopoly is so maligned because it's a long & dull design from a century ago.  It sits in people's closets for traditional and familiarity purposes rather than enjoyment.  One thing I've learned about the vast masses - they absolutely hate reading instructions so they stick with the same 'ole uninspired drudgery.

I don't recall ever really enjoying the few games of Monopoly I played.  Nor many of the other "classics".  That old crap was out the window once I discovered the new hotness long ago. 

[airboy]

I am a big reader of Nate Silver and his empirical methodology.  On his 538 website he has an article on the worlds best board game with some very interesting stats.

I was wondering if this would hold true for wargaming as well or if wargamers use different inputs (I think length of time might be different for us personally)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/designing-the-best-board-game-on-the-planet/

Con

Interesting read. 

[Nefaro]

There is another issue I've seen with historical games using old performance statistics.  The controls used by different countries, and even teams of testers, were probably different.  Same for environment and other factors.

A good example is some of the flight sims which base much of their aircraft performance models on old test statistics from the period.  Unfortunately, they vary widely across a range of countries, test teams, and conditions.  That makes utilizing them in such a way very questionable.  For example, what if one aircraft test was done using a low fuel level and no armament while the other was full?  Done at different altitudes?  There can be too many differing factors in such cases to plug them into the modelling, together, as hard immovable numbers.