What Makes a Board Game Mean? A Deep Exploration

As with all of my reviews, I post them over on Board Game Geek. With Arboretum, a comment came about meanness, what is it? A great question. One I was not prepared to answer at the time.

Now with the fullness of time, I’m ready.

I found it both interesting and challenging to settle on an answer. And in all honesty, it requires someone smarter than myself to make it correct. But I’ll do my best.

My immediate response to the question ‘What is meanness?’ Was dividing actions into positive and destructive actions, i.e. you’re creating points for yourself, or you’re taking points away from your opponents. Doing too many destructive actions makes the game feel mean.

The follow-up question to this then was what about Chess? Is it a mean game?

All of your actions are negative.

My next stab at an answer revolved around the feeling of the actions themselves. A mean action makes me feel bad. But at the time, I didn’t have the mental space to answer why it made me feel bad and bowed out of the conversation.

Since then I’ve been on a mental vision quest, trying to understand why I thought Arboretum was mean, and I don’t consider games like Santorini, or Chess to be mean.

I want you to join me on this quest, and for that, it needs to start with three little words.

The three words

Competitiveness

Competitiveness is the act of there being a winner and a loser associated with an action. For example, in a running race, two people compete to come first. They’re not directly interacting with each other, but they are trying to beat each other in the activity.

Combativeness

Is a subset of competitiveness where for one player to win something, they must directly interact and take from the loser. Think of a game of Chess, where a good move for me, means taking one of your pieces off the board.

Meanness

An emotional layer above these two concepts.

My thinking is threefold:

• Everyone’s tolerance for meanness is different. What affects me, may not affect you, or vice versa.
• Games can be competitive or combative without being mean.
• Actions within games can be mean, without the game itself being mean.
• Meanness is contextual to the state of the current game.

Therefore, I define meanness as the feeling emerging from the ratio of how unnecessary a competitive action is compared to the destruction it causes.

I’m going to go over some examples which I hope will help illuminate what I mean.

Example 1: -20 points card

In this example, imagine four players playing a game where the winner is whoever gets the most points. It takes some effort to generate the points, and players can expect to generate around 5 per turn.

The four players are currently on the following scores:

Player 1: 55

You: 40

Player 3: 35

Player 4: 10

You have a card giving someone -20 points. Use it on either Player 1 or Player 3, to either gain the lead, or to defend your position as number 2. I would argue is not mean because it enhances your chances of winning, or getting as close to winning as possible.

However, using the -20 points card on Player 4 is mean, and a good way to make a gaming enemy for life.

So what’s the difference?

In this example, it’s an unnecessary move. It does not affect your chances of winning or doing well. However, it lessens the chances of Player 4 winning.

Example 2: -40 points card

Same game. This time you’re playing two players, and you have a -40 points card. Here are the scores:

You: 350

Player 2: 40

Is using the -40 point card on Player 2 mean?

It’s a move that is competitive, and theoretically, it puts you in a better position to win. However, I would argue that it is mean because it’s excessive, it doesn’t put you in a better position to win because you’re already so far in front.

It’s also not good sportsmanship, as you’re piling onto a player who’s going to lose.

But in the same example, if Player 2 had 330 points. Then the move wouldn’t be mean, because it is necessary to give yourself distance.

Bringing it back to Arboretum

In Arboretum, you’re forced to decide which cards to keep, and which cards to discard. The cards you keep impact which suites of cards you and your opponent will be able to score. Often you’re choosing between holding cards to increase your score, or to stop your opponent from scoring.

If playing two players, this sounds like the second example where for the most part it should be competitive. However, because points aren’t tallied up until the end of the game. You can’t comprehend the destructive impact of your move and or how excessive it is – is the game close? Or is it a blowout? Instead, you’re hoping and wishing for the maximum amount of destruction, with no idea how necessary it may be.

It’s this wishing for destruction, without any validity to it, which makes Arboretum feel mean.

With more plays and more expertise, I could see it becoming less meaningful. Eventually hitting the point where you consider these actions to be competitive or combative, rather than being mean. But for some of us, it’s an emotional journey to get there, and one I’m not ready to take just yet.

I hope this provides some illumination around meanness in board games, or at least my interpretation of meanness.