Not that kind; the playful kind. 

Two days ago, Partner asked, “Are most games races?” 

As a lover of games and bad puns, I present to you: 

RACE-IAL DYNAMICS: a taxonomy of games if we assume all games are races.

Why Touch Upon Race? 

Race is a touchy subject. Why perform this taxonomy at all? 

Story structures come from games. Flirting often mimics tag. Political jabs often mimic “I’m not touching you”. 

Separating the races allows us a clearer vocabulary about the different race mechanics found in a game. 

If you’re playing game A, which has race dynamic Alpha, would the game be better with race dynamic Beta? 

What’s in a Race? 

A “race” is approximately a competition involving time. Common words/constructions include: 

• “First to X” 
• “Most Y in [time]” 

RACE-ISM is the categorization of games by their races. (People who subscribe to 

this categorization are therefore RACE-IST.) 

Segregating the Races

Some races are pure: reach the victory condition before the opponent. Most games contain some amount of RACE MIXING (the incorporation of different race-like components, which tends to create stronger games, as we’ll get into later). Let us attempt for a moment to see the races in their purest forms. 

Who’s Racing, How & When? 

• SIMULTANEOUS RACE
  • “I race while you race” 
• SEQUENTIAL RACE
  • “I race, then you race” 
• ASYMMETRIC RACES
  • “Can I X before you Y?”
• ANTIPARALLEL RACE
  • “You want to go in one direction; I want to go in the other” (e.g. tug of war). 

Race Physiognomy 

• RACE-RACE
  • “First to X”. 
• SLOW RACE
  • “Who gets there last?”
• SCORE RACE
  • “Most points wins” or, for golf “least points wins”
• QUALITY RACE
  • “Best X within [time]”, where X is about quality traits, not numerical (e.g. the Great British Bake-off or gymnastics.) 
• ENDURANCE RACE (or SURVIVAL RACE)
  • “Who quits last?”

Race Ends

The word “end” can mean either culmination (“the end of my work shift”) or goal (“you are working to what end?”). As this piece contains copious puns, I shall employ the word to mean both. 

• RACE CULMINATIONS
  • TIME-ENDED RACES
    • A clock concludes the race 
  • PLAY-ENDED RACES
    • A player action concludes the race
• RACE OBJECTIVES can be
  • the SAME
    • (“first to touch the tree”)
  • DIFFERENT INSTANCES OF THE SAME
    • (“first to checkmate the opponent’s king”)
  • DIFFERENT
    • (“can I tag this runner before they get to the base?”)
  • SUBJECTIVE
    • (“most satisfying to X person”)
  • OBJECTIVE
    • (“Highest measurable count of X”) 

Race Mixing

Most people only watch footraces at the Olympics once every four years, which implies we find them less interesting than other sports. Football, for example, contains:

• An antiparallel asymmetric race
  • (offense vs defense) 
• with mini asymmetric antiparallel races
  • (cornerbacks guarding wide receivers; offensive line protecting the quarterback while the defensive line attempts to pressure and/or tackle the quarterback), 
• with multiple race ends and sub-ends
  • (the game itself concludes after the clock runs out of time (time-ended race), but the clock can pause due to various in-game mechanics)
  • (the number of downs is a play-ended race, influenceable by both teams) 

Football’s different races require different skills: speed, strength, and hand-eye coordination of course, but also time management, rapid-fire decisionmaking, and balance of risk-taking. Since games parallel the skills we use in the rest of our lives, the simple ones tend to be less generally valuable, just as the ability to perform one simple task (picking up a pencil) is less valuable than performing a more complex task (writing a biography). 

Inferior Races 

There are no inferior races. RACE-IAL PREFERENCE is a matter of taste. 

For example, my favorite type of race happens in cooking: One person speeds to finish the rice before another person can toast the marshmallow, all before the oven is pre-heated. As an added benefit, at the end we enjoy a tasty race krispie treat.