Skillful Sandbagging
How do you make 1v1 games fun for players with a wide skill gap? Suppose newbie Ned and expert Ellen want to play some games. Ned has heard this game is fun and wants to learn, but he has a sensitive ego and doesn’t want to get beaten too badly. Ellen wants to show Ned a good time while also showcasing and refining her skills. Ellen could “sandbag” by acting like a training dummy, but that’s no fun for her. Ellen could handicap herself by picking a weak character or giving Ned a headstart, but those handicaps are difficult to tune precisely and the game is likely to end up one-sided. Ellen would likely spend time finnicking the handicap to try and create an even game, inadvertently drawing attention to precisely how much worse Ned is. Ned would feel pressure to perform rather than experimenting to learn or focusing on the experiential joy of play. The crux of the problem is that the handicapped game still remains adversarial. Ellen’s in-game goal is still to beat Ned as badly as possible.
Sandbag looks bored
Tennis offers a solution I call “skillful sandbagging”. In tennis and other racquet sports, ball control and spot placement are key skills. In a competitive match, players place shots to be difficult to hit. However, in a friendly match, expert Ellen uses her ball control skills to place easy-to-hit shots for newbie Ned. In this way, Ellen exercises her footwork and ball control and Ned gets to hit plenty of slams. Ned still has the same goal – hit the ball so Ellen cannot return it. Ellen’s goal is no longer “beat Ned (with a handicap)”, but rather “keep the rally going”. If Ellen succeeds at her goal, Ned has a great time. If Ned succeeds at his goal, Ellen’s skills are pushed harder.
Contrast this with a handicapping method where Ellen plays with her left hand. Even if matches are even, this likely creates a worse play experience. Tennis requires a minimum skill of hitting the ball into the court. Bad tennis involves a lot of shots flying out of bounds and downtime picking up balls rather than back-and-forth rallies. Moreover, Ellen is developing irrelevant skills in her left hand when she would rather be improving her right hand’s ball control. Both players would have a better time if Ellen was skillfully sandbagging.
Neo skillfully sandbagging vs Agent Smith
Skillful sandbagging works particularly well in tennis, but perhaps it can be translated to other games. The key attributes are:
The expert’s new goal hones relevant skills
If the expert achieves their goal, the newbie has a good experience
The newbie’s goal is mostly the same as standard play
Games with a high degree of technical skill fit attribute (1) well, such as fighting games, Rocket League, or meatsports. In these games, players often practice their control and movement in solo environments, and the extra factor of skillful sandbagging adds more context and goals. However, turn-based strategy games like chess are lacking here.
The dynamics of offense and defense affect (2) and (3). In many games, offensive play is more appealing and interactive to a newbie than defensive play. Skillful sandbagging in tennis could be summarized as “only play defense while enabling your opponent’s offense as much as possible”. I think an attack/defend mode in fighting games could fit this bill, where the expert’s goal is to block and dodge while the newbie’s goal is purely to attack. However, this doesn’t work in many genres where pure offense vs defense becomes degenerate. In real-time strategy games like Starcraft, defensive play amounts to turtling up and avoiding interaction, which isn’t particularly fun. Offense vs defense in soccer degenerates into goal shooting practice, with the expert relegated to blocking shots and passing it back.
Skillful sandbagging is particularly helpful in games where large skill gaps are common, such as in-person games or niche esports. While it seems difficult to design in a skillful sandbagging mode in most games, I do hope this becomes a more common and intentional feature.