Acquire – Board Game Analysis

Overview: Acquire is a business merger and acquisition themed board game in which players vie to become the richest investor on the board. It is a classic business game with more than half a century’s history.

Players: Acquire (version 1999) is designed for 2 to 6 players. In fact, in the previous version, the smallest number of players is 3, but this version introduces special rules to deal with shareholder bonuses for 2 players, which perfectly spreads acquisition funs to 2 players. And the maximum size of players is decided by one of the end conditions of this game – All active corporations are safe which means each corporation acquires 11 tiles at least. In the game rules, there are 7 corporations. According to the form below, with an increased player number, play tiles have a corresponding decrease. In that case, the average tiles for each corporation are below 11 when the player number is greater than 7. It means the game may not achieve ending conditions.

Player interactions in this game are in the shadows. Players cannot trade directly with each other. However, players have to analyze other players’ investment and placing’s strategies to make their own actions gain the most benefits.

Objective: The aim of this game looks fair simple – Have the most money at the end of the game. But to achieve this goal, players have to make money by forming corporations, analyzing the trend of the market, buying the right stock at the right time, as well as merging and expanding corporations in which their own stock.

Procedures: In this game, core procedures mainly are set-up, playing a tile, buying stocks and drawing a tile. The most important procedure of this game is playing a tile, because players’ strategies and different situations will come from it.

Set-up: This game provides a fixed gameboard with 108 numbers. And there are 108 corresponding grey tiles which should be clustered facedown near the gameboard. If there is no banker, the various stocks, 7 plastic buildings of corporates and the different denomination of monies should be placed orderly around the gameboard. Each player gets $6,000(four $1,000 bills, three $500 bills, and five $100 bills) and an information card from the bank. The various combination of the denomination of monies makes players easy to pay.

The next step is to determine who goes first. Each player draws a tile from the face down cluster and puts it faceup on the matching letter/number space on the gameboard. The player who players a tile closest to 1A goes first. All the faceup tiles should be left on the gameboard. Meanwhile, it represents the initial market(gameboard) environment.

Then all players draw six tiles randomly and stand them up to avoid other players seeing them. In that case, each player’s handle tiles and play order will change from game to game. Different handle tiles combining with different players’ strategies will create different situations in the gameboard, so gameplay experience will not be the same during each play.

The design reason for each player has 6 handle tiles is same as the restriction of up to 6 players: the increased number of handle tiles will cut down play tiles, so that game may not achieve ending conditions.

The final component of the set-up is the decision of showing or hiding assets. As the players with the most and second-most stocks are declared majority and minority stockholders’ bonuses, when each player’s asset is hidden, players have to calculate whether they have the most or second-most stocks for each corporation and other players investment states as well, which will make this game more challengeable.

Playing a tile: This is the first step of a player turn. The production is putting a tile on the gameboard. Depending upon where a tile is played, it may create three situations: form a corporation, merge two or more corporations or a tile be played with nothing happening.

1) Form a corporation: when a tile has been placed vertically or horizontally next to an unincorporated tile already on the gameboard, a corporation is founded. The corporation founder first selects an available corporation building marker from the stock market bank and places it on any one of the corporation’s tiles. Unless players are already holding all the corporation’s stock cards, the founder then receives a free founder’s bonus stock. During the game, players are very keen to do it, because the founder will receive a free stock and if she purchased three stock in current and each next turn, she has a much higher chance than other players to become the majority shareholder of the corporation. There are three purposes to set free stock: 1. Encouraging players to form various corporations; 2. Creating corporations’ majority shareholder for other players to pursue; 3. Keeping each active corporation has at least a shareholder.

2) Merge corporations: When a player places a tile so that it connects two or more corporations, a merger takes place. This is the most crucial event in this game because except ending liquidation, a merger is the only place where players can earn money by gaining bonus or selling their stocks during the game. But only the top 2 shareholders can gain bonuses. The merger is manipulated by each player, so others have to consider their tactics by collecting information form gameboard and other players actions, then arrange tiles and manage their stocks’ storages. Players are also allowed to deal with their defunct stock cards by holding, selling or trading.

Buying stocks: Each turn a player can buy up to 3 stocks in any active corporation. This is the main chance to become majority shareholder of a corporation. It is worth mentioning that there are total 25 stock cards for each corporation.

Procedural in Each Player Turn

Rules: The game of Acquire is rule-heavy design. As the flow shows above, players are allowed to take limited actions in each turn and have a strict limitation in stock cards trades.

The player turn starts with playing a tile has avoided players buying at a low price and then immediately raise the stock price. And checking a merger and forming before buying also comes from the same consideration. Up to 3 stock cards purchase provides all the players a relatively fair investment environment.

In the most of the time, merge rules decide players’ strategies in the whole game. For example, players prefer diversity investment tactics rather than investing only one corporation, because it is risky. Money will be locked until the ending of the game in a corporation that contains 11 tiles.

The design purpose of shareholder bonus for 2 players is clear: 1. Shareholder bonus system brings a reasonable competitive mechanism, which makes all players try to become the majority shareholder; 2. The 2-shareholder bonus system makes the competitive mechanism become diversity. Because it provides a space for players to distribute their stock cards, not just chasing the majority, but having various investment strategies. In addition, if the rule stipulated bonuses for more than top 2 players, then there would be much less competition around at least 2 players’ game.

The 7 corporations are designed because in the 108 tiles, the maximum number of 11-tile corporation is seven.

7 Safe Corporations on The Gameboard

There are 3 different stock prices for 7 corporations which hides a trick. It looks like Phoenix and Quantum are more valuable, but they also cost more money when buying their stocks. Actually, they have the same benefits as Sakon and Zeta when player purchasing and selling these stocks in the same tiles range. As the right table shows, players can gain $800 from each of them, but Zeta need less cost. And the majority bonus of Phoenix is $12,000 whereas Zeta is $10,000, only $2,000 difference at 41 tiles, but totally different investment price. The fact that the design of 3 different stock prices is an important way of increasing various investment combinations in the game. Furthermore, the left curve shows that this game encourages frequent short-term investment rather than fixed long-term investment.

Resources: In Acquire, each player has three types of resources: money, stock, and tile.

Acquire Economy Flow

Money and stocks can convert directly at a particular time during the game. Tiles are used for improving the stock’s unit price, in the meantime, it provides a gradually changing game environment. The freedom usage of tiles offers various strategies in this game. Bonus is a stimulant for intensifying competition in the game, because if bonus system was removed, this core loop would also work, but it would be boring and short of dramatic change.

Conflict: Rules and procedural conflict, as mentioned earlier are restrict players behavior in game. Moreover, there is player vs player conflict as well. Because of the upper limit number of stock cards and the shareholder bonuses, each player actually plays a non-zero-sum mini-game to contest stock cards in each turn.

Boundaries: The physical boundary of this game is the gameplay board. However, the conceptual boundary is the social agreement that they are playing the game and they will follow the rules to achieve their goal, not just roughly grabbing the money from the bank. In this game players are not allowed to trade with each other and they should keep their own handle tiles and assets in dark.

Outcome: Because this is a turn-based game, every player has chances to end this game in her own turn by using a particular tile and an announcement. But the winner cannot be figured out immediately, because bank should pay majority and minority shareholders’ bonuses for all active corporations and all stocks should be sold back to the bank at current prices. After all of that, the player with the most money wins. As mentioned above, the outcome of this game is mixed with strategy, fortune, and insight. Acquire is extremely re-playable, not only because it has deeply tactic spaces and various gameboard situations, but neat gameplay circle as well.