For this week’s critical play, I chose to play Splendor. Splendor is a multiplayer card-based board game designed by Marc Andre and published by Space Cowboys in 2014 intended for players 10+. In comparing my P1 game, Tiger Moms, to Splendor, I found that both games engage players in strategy and resource management but with differing thematic narratives and gameplay mechanics. Tiger Moms encourages more social interaction between players because of the game’s intended nature of negotiation, whereas Splendor is way more strategy based as an engine-building game with no resource trading involved.
My core argument is that Tiger Moms and Splendor have similar foundations of strategic play, but they encourage different levels of social interactions because of differing player motivations. Tiger Moms inherently promotes social dynamics through its negotiation of its 4 resources and recovery from player-wide tragedy cards. In contrast, Splendor focuses on individual strategy development as players compete for scarce resources with their own plan to achieve prestige point gems.
When I played Splendor with my group this weekend, I found that most of the social interaction was driven by wanting to figure out other player’s strategies to gain prestige points. For example, I knew that I wanted a direct shot to a yellow-tiered gem card, so my motivation of picking up green chips and trying to achieve green gem cards might have been obvious to others. However, there was tensions and conversation with my suspected opponents if they were also picking up chips that would allow them to pick up green gem cards. This social interaction driven by suspicion was quite limited because me and the other players didn’t want to give away any information about our strategies, since this could’ve made our required resources become scarce quicker. This type of social interaction is different than the conversations that came up during my group’s playtesting of our first Tiger Moms prototype. In Tiger Moms, each player has an equally difficult goal that they are trying to achieve for their kid. We found that the winner is not only determined by who is “luckiest” in drawing the resources they need, but also how well and quick you can negotiate with other players to get your resources. For example, when playing Tiger Moms, I was still getting familiar with what symbols on our resource cards corresponded with what resource, so I required extra time to think about whether or not a proposed trade would benefit me. My friend Ayana, on the other hand, would be quicker to say yes to a proposed trade and was therefore able to obtain her resources the quickest and win the game. Therefore, as opposed to a lack of resource negotiation in Splendor, Tiger Moms encourages more quick-thinking player to player interaction as players follow their own resource management strategies.
Tiger Moms is similar to Splendor because they are both player vs player narrative games where the game ends when a certain player achieves the most prestige points/required resources. In Splendor, players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, transportation, shops, and the boundary of the game is when a certain player acquires the most prestige points. Similarly, in Tiger Moms each player is a stereotypical strict mom following the theme of parent-guided child development toward a prestigious career. The boundary of this game is when a player is the first to achieve all the needed resources to get their child to their renowned career. In applying the Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics (MDA) framework, the aesthetics of these two games seem to differ. Tiger Moms is heavy on the aesthetics of narrative and fellowship, so it is more likely to resonate with an audience that is familiar with the cultural narrative of a tiger mom, whereas Splendor has a more abstract and historical theme that offers complex strategic thinking with the aesthetics of challenge and competition. This is seen in the fact that Splendor players must decide from the start what their personal goal will be. For example, I knew from the beginning I wanted to hoard and slowly make my way up to achieving green gems, whereas another player had secretly aligned goals with mine and I had to pivot my strategy as resources became scarcer. In Tiger Moms, everyone was working towards the same 1-3 number of required resources, so there was less deception and secrecy involved with each person’s strategy.
One mechanic that is different between games, is that Splendor has more layered mechanics in the sense that each acquired card furthers a player’s ability to purchase more valuable cards. This progressive building of resources makes players have to prepare a way more personal strategy to win the game. This contrasts with Tiger Moms’ mechanic of achieving a certain amount of specific resource types to win the game. The trading element and aftermath of tragedy cards allow for a game of Tiger Moms to go quicker and create a confrontational and communicative dynamic between players.
Here is a photo of my group as we negotiated resource cards during Tiger Moms:
