Azul's Player Interaction Stat

[calebkkub]

Does anyone else wonder why the interaction stat for the board game Azul is zero?

I personally find nearly half of my game relies on slowing down my opponents as long as my board is being set up right

Let me know your opinions on whether interaction should by higher than a zero... if so, what do you suggest it's changed to?

[FDHenneberg]

If I remember correctly, it’s the publishers who decide about these ratings. Aside from that, I think it boils down to the age old question how to define interaction in board games. There is nothing which I would call direct/true interaction in Azul, but at the same time it is very far from being a multiplayer solitaire game, for the reasons you stated. Through the Ages is rated 3, which seems apt to me, so Azul should be lower. A two maybe, like Ark Nova (which has a tiny bit of direct interaction and a lot of indirect interaction, though some people claim that it’s MPS)? Or a 1?

[calebkkub]

If I remember correctly, it’s the publishers who decide about these ratings. Aside from that, I think it boils down to the age old question how to define interaction in board games. There is nothing which I would call direct/true interaction in Azul, but at the same time it is very far from being a multiplayer solitaire game, for the reasons you stated. Through the Ages is rated 3, which seems apt to me, so Azul should be lower. A two maybe, like Ark Nova (which has a tiny bit of direct interaction and a lot of indirect interaction, though some people claim that it’s MPS)? Or a 1?

Thanks for the insightful reply! After posting this I was thinking about higher player counts, which I rarely play but it definitely feels like there is much less player interactions with higher player counts,

[robinzig]

If I remember correctly, it’s the publishers who decide about these ratings.

That's not true. Unless something has changed recently, it's whoever develops the game who decides these ratings.

Of course, if the publisher wants to tell the developer what to put here, the dev is likely to do as they are told. And maybe that can happen - but I've no evidence this has happened with Azul, or any other game, and it seems unlikely to me.

You're certainly right that, whoever decides what to put here, it's very subjective and not even clear what different values mean. I think most would agree that Azul is not a high-interaction game, but whether the rating out of 5 should be 0, 1 or 2 is far from clear. I'm sure some would even say that 3 makes sense.

[Jellby]

Bottom line: it means nothing.

If you see a game with 3 or 0... it could be because the developer just left it the default and didn't bother changing it.
It seems that for some "interaction" means off-the-board player-to-player interaction, so to say: trades, alliances, table talk bluffing... and many games (including Azul) have none of that.

[thoun]

Probably a dev mistake, I changed it to 3.

[Jellby]

Probably a dev mistake, I changed it to 3.

Really? Then why do games like chess and go have 0 too?

[thoun]

Probably a mistake too. Interaction is sometimes called Diplomacy in the doc, which is confusing for the devs.

[Jellby]

OK, so I'd say the mistake is in the docs, and in not having clear definitions of what each category and score means.

[FrankJones]

I would think there are two components of interaction:

1) The ability to block or interfere with the opponent's strategy
2) Being able to do things on opponents' turns.