Finish the Game or Don’t Start It 🔥

[tbhp]

Well that’s your opinion. In my opinion games wouldn’t have elegant mechanisms and artful designs if the goal was just to win it and that’s it.

It’s as if you played a video game and simply cared about completing the game, not the artistic experience of playing through it.

I think board games have proven to have enough artistic value for us to view them as an art form of their own and treat them with the respect they deserve.

Inventing elegant mechanisms is what it's all about for me. Their beauty supercedes how a game is played, or even IF it's played.

From what little I know about video games, they seem totally irrelevant to this discussion. You're fighting to get to the highest level you can before you get killed, or before you get killed N times. At no time are you inanely making meaningless, random moves in a game you've already lost.

Games can certainly be played artfully. But the art is in the strategy. Interesting patterns can form, but that's not the objective. Competitive play is totally different from finger painting.

To me, both the general game and the individual instance of a game are art objects. The former is created by the creator of the game, and the latter is created by the participation of the players.

Now, not every instance of a game played is a masterpiece. Probably most are not going to be special, but you don’t know how your opponent feels about the current game being played, hence why conceding is problematic.

The relevance of video games in this discussion is that much of the experience of them is not about the challenge, but the appreciation of the game and its various elements. So your perspective reminded of someone who would say they just play video games for the challenge, and nothing else.

I think it virtually never is just about the challenge, because if that was the case then people wouldn’t have favorite games. Favoring a particular game must mean there is an enjoyment of something about the game, something that is not just winning.

I agree that the goal of winning and the goal of creating something beautiful don’t always correspond. Sometimes, when I play a game on this site, I’m forced to create patterns I don’t find elegant, because that’s what will give me the best chance of winning. But ideally, you’d want the two things to correspond, and I think you recognize a well designed game when the most efficient strategies also tend to be the most beautiful ones.

[Ceaseless]

Hi everyone,

I am perhaps an old generation guy but I also love to play a lot in real life around a table : association, pubs, friends.

In this real life no one would stop the game and rush away because it looks like he is loosing. We go to the end, we say thank you for the game (and we meant it) and have a funny time. By the way in such condition it can happen that someone has to leave for personal reason (emergency, etc, ..) but it is exceptional.

BGA is a wonderful place to play with remote or busy friends to game we love, but also play with stranger.

However, I understand that more and more people want to find here the chess spirit : it is perfectly fine to concede ; or even some want to find a kind of video game.

I am an old generation and dumb guy that would love to keep the real life board game spirit on BGA, and be able to launch a game by selecting in a settings that : "we play up to the end". Would love to have such a feature to make both world of users and user expectations live together.

Best regards and have fun

Or instead we could keep the real-life board game experience alive by remembering conceding is a natural part of board games, as you already pointed out in the case when you gave your Chess example, Chess being a typical board game.

What's wrong with having the option that there is no conceding in the game? Everyone gets their preference. Win win.

Would you enjoy someone with the game won deciding to keep making moves and not hit the game's end condition to see if they can get you to quit? Even without that, many players would probably join in an open setting, not even realizing it was disabled, and get stuck in some nonsense game where one player is just solitairing. So if it were implemented, there would be a warning needed to alert players of the negative condition attached to the game. At most it's just a way to know who to stay away from. More realistically it just adds a button everyone now has to click for every new game to ban any tables that prohibit conceding to ensure their basic gaming rights don't get snuck out.

[tbhp]

Or instead we could keep the real-life board game experience alive by remembering conceding is a natural part of board games, as you already pointed out in the case when you gave your Chess example, Chess being a typical board game.

What's wrong with having the option that there is no conceding in the game? Everyone gets their preference. Win win.

Would you enjoy someone with the game won deciding to keep making moves and not hit the game's end condition to see if they can get you to quit? Even without that, many players would probably join in an open setting, not even realizing it was disabled, and get stuck in some nonsense game where one player is just solitairing. So if it were implemented, there would be a warning needed to alert players of the negative condition attached to the game. At most it's just a way to know who to stay away from. More realistically it just adds a button everyone now has to click for every new game to ban any tables that prohibit conceding to ensure their basic gaming rights don't get snuck out.

It’s not the end of the world if the problem you cite happens. Plus, the people who would do this sort of shady thing already have options to do shady things the way things are now (for example, the ability to concede just to hurt their opponent).

No one said no conceding would have to be the default. It could be conceding as the default, and then the warning would say you can disable it.

[Ze Monstah]

What's wrong with having the option that there is no conceding in the game? Everyone gets their preference. Win win.

Would you enjoy someone with the game won deciding to keep making moves and not hit the game's end condition to see if they can get you to quit? Even without that, many players would probably join in an open setting, not even realizing it was disabled, and get stuck in some nonsense game where one player is just solitairing. So if it were implemented, there would be a warning needed to alert players of the negative condition attached to the game. At most it's just a way to know who to stay away from. More realistically it just adds a button everyone now has to click for every new game to ban any tables that prohibit conceding to ensure their basic gaming rights don't get snuck out.

It’s not the end of the world if the problem you cite happens. Plus, the people who would do this sort of shady thing already have options to do shady things the way things are now (for example, the ability to concede just to hurt their opponent).

No one said no conceding would have to be the default. It could be conceding as the default, and then the warning would say you can disable it.

It's definitely not the end of the world if people will go ahead conceding like they did until now, also! With less complications!
With all the bugs and errors that BGA is facing right now, the option to "both agree on not conceding" is definitely not a thing of highest importance.
And Ceaseless brought some very good arguments in my opinion, regarding your (IMO borderline absurd) ideas.

You keep saying: "in my opinion" and forever counter-arguing anyone saying something otherwise than what you are saying or thinking.
Just accept please that in games of 2 someone can decide to throw in the towel (after 50% and for WHATEVER REASON) and move on to another topic, of more importance for humanity in general, and for BGA... like the multiple Arena accounts, cheating, bullying, etc.
You won't die if conceding keeps happening like until now, the Earth will not suffer, everyone will be ok with it...

Sorry if I am aggressive in this and the other novel-long post, but am I the only one feeling these astronomically-long discussions about conceding are a tad annoying?

[MarkSteere]

I agree that the goal of winning and the goal of creating something beautiful don’t always correspond. Sometimes, when I play a game on this site, I’m forced to create patterns I don’t find elegant, because that’s what will give me the best chance of winning. But ideally, you’d want the two things to correspond, and I think you recognize a well designed game when the most efficient strategies also tend to be the most beautiful ones.

No. Ideally YOU would want the two things to correspond. I fully appreciate beautiful patterns. Sometimes beautiful patterns are formed in Blast Radius, for example, both temporarily during play, and in the final (unconceded) position. I've taken screenshots of these positions and posted them in other forums. But it's never my intention to create beautiful patterns. They just happen sometimes. I'm glad when they do, but I'm only trying to win.

I fully appreciate your point of view. What I don't appreciate is your proposition that your point of view is objectively more important than my point of view, and that I should subject myself to an unpleasant experience to spare you from an unpleasant experience. And all of these absurd arguments that I'm "devastating" you and "discriminating" against you, while you're doing nothing more than making me "stand in a room." I don't want to stand in a room, and I shouldn't have to.

I thought my solution was equitable. If you're losing and you want to play it through to the bitter end, I'm fine with that. If I'm losing with much of the game remaining, I will concede. But this solution isn't agreeable to you. The whole world just has to bend over backwards and play the game your way.

[tbhp]

I thought my solution was equitable. If you're losing and you want to play it through to the bitter end, I'm fine with that. If I'm losing with much of the game remaining, I will concede. But this solution isn't agreeable to you.

What solution are you proposing? You're saying you'd just keep conceding and doing what you like in any situation.

[tbhp]

It's definitely not the end of the world if people will go ahead conceding like they did until now, also! With less complications!

Compared to the other issue cited, it is.

Ceaseless brought up an example of shady behavior as if it was a counter-argument to those who wish to see no conceding, but it's not. I'll gladly put up with the possibility of the issue he describes, if it means conceding is not allowed anymore.

Just accept please that in games of 2 someone can decide to throw in the towel (after 50% and for WHATEVER REASON) and move on to another topic, of more importance for humanity in general, and for BGA... like the multiple Arena accounts, cheating, bullying, etc.

Everyone already agrees those things are bad, so there's not much for me to add on those topics.

[MarkSteere]

What solution are you proposing? You're saying you'd just keep conceding and doing what you like in any situation.

Right. But that's only half the solution. The other half is you just keep not concededing, and doing what you like in any situation.

I think you're confusing the concept of courtesy with the concept of "Me, me, me." If you were really as courteous as you pretend to be, you'd say, "Opponent, I don't like conceding, but if continuing to play after you've clearly lost is unpleasant for you, feel free to concede. I'll cherish the play we had before I essentially won, and I'll move on and start another game with someone else."

[Ze Monstah]

I thought my solution was equitable. If you're losing and you want to play it through to the bitter end, I'm fine with that. If I'm losing with much of the game remaining, I will concede. But this solution isn't agreeable to you.

What solution are you proposing? You're saying you'd just keep conceding and doing what you like in any situation.

Yes; Cause he's a human being different than you, who likes to concede when he is 100% losing, and go take care of other stuff in life.
I concede in games of 2, as well, for any reason, mostly 'cause I |feel like I'm losing so I am not having fun.
Why should your sadistic fun of obliging me to stay until the end be more important than my desire to give you the ELO you deserve and go away?

You simply can't comprehend that you are in no position to have people propose you a "solution" for a trivial non-issue?
This is a nothing-burger that you make it seem like the Apocalypse-burger.

It's definitely not the end of the world if people will go ahead conceding like they did until now, also! With less complications!

Compared to the other issue cited, it is.

From your point of view, only, because you are so... pushy with this non-issue. From my point of view, the conceding system is working just fine the way it is at the moment. Why make things more complicated when BGA has so many other things to take care of?
I suggest you talk directly to the BGA team and try to convince them of all these suggestions...

[Ze Monstah]

Just accept please that in games of 2 someone can decide to throw in the towel (after 50% and for WHATEVER REASON) and move on to another topic, of more importance for humanity in general, and for BGA... like the multiple Arena accounts, cheating, bullying, etc.

Everyone already agrees those things are bad, so there's not much for me to add on those topics.

How can you be so sure when there are so many smurfy accounts, with some top arena players defending the action as "smart"?
Perhaps someone should start a new thread of 100 pages of "smurfs vs. only 1 account".