In the card/board game Dominion, there is an emergent game mechanic I find interesting.

Dominion is a deck building game, where the ultimate objective is to purchase the largest amount of victory points (VP) throughout the course of the game. This is accomplished by using your currency cards to buy VPs at any time throughout. However, the VPs are much more expensive than the scant seed money given to each player at the beginning of the game.

To get around this limitation, the bulk of the gameplay revolves around investing that seed money into other currency generating cards that are not VPs. The hope is that by investing and reinvesting those scarce resources into non-VP cards, eventually you will be able to purchase the VP cards.

The thrill and strategy of the game comes from being able to invest in a way that generates the largest return as quickly as possible while everyone else is doing the exact same thing with the same pool of resources.

The mechanic I find so interesting is an unspoken shift in gameplay that emerges when a collective tipping point has been reached. When a player has enough money to start buying VPs, other players notice. When other players notice, it organically signals the beginning of the endgame ((Actionable Gamification #citation) - p.41), where the players all scramble to purchase as many victory points as possible before they are all purchased.

The unspoken communication (Conversations keep learners engaged, Strong communication builds healthy connections) makes for an interesting group dynamic (Groups create new entities beyond individuals).

#toolong