On Player Interaction

Way back when Keeps was but a collection of neural firings, I envisioned it a quiet, cognitive game.

Boy was I wrong.

What might be a useful system for defining types of player interaction in games? Perhaps someone might sit and work through the nitty gritty, might establish a taxonomy or set of metrics to dictate what "player interaction" entails (ok, it does sound kind of fun. A blog for another time). But you must recall my purpose in this pursuit and in life. The world needs to get better and richer before it gets bigger. So I think I have a pretty good indicator of quality of player interaction in a game: laughter.

Sure, a suppressed giggle here, or a wry smile at some impressive deceptive posturing there has its value. But I'm talking doubled-over can't-breathe belly laughter. Or at least something approaching it. Not from low-brow digs, or even from rote yet humorous jokes, but from the deep, satisfying mirth found in spinning interpersonal situations. And I've been delighted to find that Keeps does a fine job in bringing those about.

The card Pluck allows a player to look at every other player's hand and choose any one card to steal. It's a very good card (situationally, as all Keeps cards are), but that is not why it is among my favorites. That honor lies in the reactions it evokes in the other players. As soon as someone drops Pluck, the chorus of groans and of dismay, of sardonic "Nah, you don't want my cards. They're all garbage" and of truthful "I promise, you actually don't want any of my cards. I don't even want them", the hand-hiding, the face-palming, the standing up and stomping of feet. That's why I love it so much. That and the exaggerated glee of whoever played Pluck when they scan their eyes over a reluctant player's hand, as though finding a winning lottery ticket. Everyone can't help but laugh.

One of my friends (who has asked to remain nameless) has this absolutely wonderful habit during a game of Keeps. At any time, and for seemingly no reason, he just starts laughing. And the thoughts that go through my and the other players' heads are surely not good, that he has discovered a kind of master plan that will soon fall into place, or some devious chaotic twist to uncoil purely in pursuit of pandemonium, and so we start laughing at the possibilities ourselves. Then the interpersonal part kicks in, and all of the sudden the game grinds to a halt as we share a moment of pure joy. Ideas for what could be so funny run through our heads, but it's the bare fact that we are all laughing just because this one friend did that thing again, where he starts laughing out of nowhere, that really makes the moment. I'm smiling just thinking about it. It's absurd and it's perfect.

I'd love to share a great many more moments like these, simply because I am so fond of them. Yet you would need to know the Keeps cards better before you could understand why we were all laughing so much. So, instead, I have a different question on player interaction for you to mull over:

How can a game be both competitive and collaborative?

Keeps is not a cooperative game. There are multiple players and only one winner. It's not, at face value, a recipe for collusion. But I want to share with you one final phenomenon that hopefully captures some of the essence of Keeps.

At the end of the best rounds, people forget about winning. It becomes this funny thing where, in the process of thinking through the path to victory, we get so lost in talking it out that our hands are laid bare, and we work together to solve the puzzle of who should win under optimal play. What once was conflict dissolves into the chase for a good game. In other words, what was once competitive, turns collaborative.

It’s rare a game makes me lose sight of personal victory to appreciate the endless new situations that arise, and their respective solutions. For those of you who play chess, a friend said it well in likening it to "when you quit the time controls on a blitz game to do the position justice". It is not unusual that we sit around the table for a bit after a round of Keeps ends, surveying the played cards, ruminating on and cementing the final few actions. I've just recently begun taking a picture of the field after the best rounds for posterity (and to add to the puzzles page). For direct mechanical gameplay, I have not yet seen a stronger sign that Keeps has something special.

No, I didn't exactly intend for Keeps to be so jubilant as it is. And yet I find that really there is laughter abundant, which is uncommon in a game that takes this much thinking! Imagine breaking into amiable guffaws at a chess tournament. Keeps sincerely connects and brings people together; perhaps the best way to sum this all up is in relating how each day, a little pack of high schoolers come up to my desk at the final bell:

“Keeps! Keeps! Keeps!”

-David Buffkin