Very nicely put.
I have at least one friend who really really wants to win (the Wiesenleger). But… she doesn’t mind losing either. And I can play any new game with her. She’ll probably beat me on game 2 or 3…
But I admit that is a rare case… where thhe competitiveness is coupled with a lot of resilience. It helps that she knows that she will win eventually.
I always prefer the megagames that have no win conditions.
You can all make up your own.
I don’t play with this person nowadays, but I remember him taking such a long-ass time to play his turn and then whine ‘oh it’s just a game anyway’. Maybe that’s just his way of coping that he shouldn’t take it too seriously, but ack. I still thought “Well, yeah. It is just a game. That’s why we are sitting here, moron.”. But that was many years ago. I don’t know why I’m pretty chill with @EnterTheWyvern 's train group .
I think the times I complain (internally) is when someone snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. I’m still telling myself to suck it up. Those stings a lot. It’s easy to laugh on a last place with terrible delta than to have a close defeat - it means I didn’t play well enough to win.
To mix the two, if we compare LARPing to a megagame, the very worst larpers I’ve met (who should/could be contributing to a fun shared creative experience) are the ones who have to WIN. It’s like winning at theatre. It’s not the point.
Now okay, most larps have to have some competition to be interesting, and megagames certainly have a winning team, but the kind of players who want to win at roleplaying are the kind who enjoy “I’M KING SO YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT I SAY” and social co-op games in particular don’t work like that. It’s not even where the fun is. So the win vs play category is particularly noticeable there.
I feel relatively lucky in that it’s very rare I feel grumpy (in games); for the most part I just enjoy playing and having the social experience with friends. I like winning but I often have as much fun if not more losing. The problem occasionally comes when I get good at games (very rare) so that I can sometimes feel very frustrated by a hand in Magic. The games are so quick though that this isn’t a problem for long. I think I’m one of those people that goes out of their way to have fun and enjoy being with people mentioned by @Benkyo , and as a result I think I’m quite fun to play with.
On the flip side, I’m absolutely awful at explaining rules, even if I think I y see stand them I just find the process of explaining incredibly painful. I’m very sensitive to people looking bored or expressing frustration during a rules explanation, and if someone is looking bored or grumpy during a game I find it greatly affects my mood and enjoyment.
I don’t think I really get grumpy during games (we all have our episodes, of course, I mean generally). If I minded losing, I would’ve stopped playing with my wife LONG ago, my win-loss record is abysmal.
Weirdly, while a close defeat will sting for a minute before I can bask in coming THIS close, an utter curb-stomping never does. It’s just too funny! I remember getting lapped in Terraforming Mars and, famously, getting lapped TWICE in Quacks of Quedlinburg and Carcassonne. I just couldn’t stop laughing. I remember my wife magnanimously (no sarcasm here, she was genuinely concerned I was having a bad time) offered to end these games early, but no, I wanted to see how BAD it would get.
My friends, it got REALLY, TERRIBLY, HILARIOUSLY bad. 
I like the hybrid approach where you get a half game scoring then in the dark till final scoring
Or
Only some of the scoring is happening throughout the game with half of you scoring hidden to be revealed at the end.
Do you have an example of a game you consider to have this? I’m kind of thinking a lot of games with end game scoring can still have assessable game states, hidden objectives I suppose but I’m intrigued as to which ones you think of and like
Complaining, like anything negatively focused, should be done little, and late. I haven’t found many winners/complainers, so I consider myself lucky in that respect, but I have found plenty of players who play only to win, and fall into a lot of AP for it. Which can be really annoying, specially when you know that they are running away with the win, but they are still slowing the game down to maximize their score. Like winning by +21 instead of +19 is going to matter.
I certainly play for the fun of it, and winning is a plus. Actually, some of my most memorable games were games where I came close second, or we all were in a tight bunch of scores.
I may only complain if a game is taking too long and it is either: very random, or very sided for people that know the game very well (Terraforming Mars or Race for the Galaxy come to mind). I could actually write a long article about why I dislike TM, but that is another story.
To answer your question, the train only runs from Seattle to Portland. The journey from Vancouver, BC to Seattle was by bus, and pretty cramped feeling. Bus was about 3.5 hours, a little more due to the border crossing. Then about the same amount of time on the train.
Unlike the train ride up, this time I think the coach carriages were actually business class cars, as there was a lot of legroom and tables in the middle of the car, and we were lucky enough to snag one of them. Initially we had a couple of people across from us, but after a little bit they moved. Whether to get out of the sun or because we were making a tiny bit of noise rolling dice for Railroad Ink, I don’t know. But, it let me be able to switch to the other side of the table, which made Hanamikoji a lot easier to play.
As far as the topic goes, I don’t think we have any players that really complain about a game, at least not during the game. My brother-in-law might afterwards if he did not enjoy the game, and that just tells me not to invite him to play that particular game anymore. I’ve gotten pretty good at rolling with the punches, and would really only get grumpy if everyone teams up against me for no particular reason. If I’m winning, that’s one thing. If it’s just to keep me down, that sucks. Does not tend to happen much, if at all, these days.
A righteous complaint is if I miss something in the rules explanation, which does happen now and then, and usually only comes to mind when I can take advantage of it, which my family/friends call me out on. So that’s fair. It’s not intentional, I’m just usually the only one who reads the rules and explains the games, and for some games there are just little minutiae that get overlooked in the initial explanation.
I see what you’re saying, but I find this often comes across as selfish. I play with a guy who regularly throws in the towel at the slightest provocation. This means he loses games he would otherwise win. I don’t get to experience any success or enjoy a plan coming to fruition. We have fewer “tight” games, and less dramatic turnarounds. Conversely he gets to enjoy winning and I fight hard to come back, or to enjoy the systems and learn something.
Ultimately if your only aim is winning then I agree in calling the game. For me, who wins is irrelevant - it’s about the dance along the way. Calling it just says "stop having your fun if I don’t get to be called ‘thewinner’ ".
That’s why the table has to agree to end. Not just someone vetoing the whole thing
Thanks for putting this into words. my partner often wants to give up even when i can still see ways for him to win. and I don’t care a lot about winning, I care about making a cool move.
When someone is obviously not having fun because they think they are losing and don’t see a way forward… it has been contentious at our table what to do. and your explanation helps me understand better why I keep wanting to play.
There’s a stronger formulation of this, which is that if everyone agrees there is a clear loser, the game can be called.
I like both, although I find in practice it’s rare to get a table full of players who know a game well enough to make such a call early enough to make any difference. It usually only comes up in near-perfect information two-player games.
I find ending a game early complicated. I agree with @Mintochris about throwing in the towel easily sort of robs the game of the sense of shared endeavour and the savouring of a hard fought victory or close attempt at glorious failure and just seeing what you can find out about a game. Learning has some value in itself. I also dislike a defacto throwing of a game by giving up and playing in a way that puts the result and balance in disarray.
That being said some games are worth stopping when a game state is less fun and some obvious foregone conclusion aren’t worth dragging out. I think @Benkyo makes an excellent point about experience being needed table wide for calling early.
Sadly, given the nature of winning-focused players, they are very likely not going to give the monkeys about it, because they still want to win, or find out who will win from the leading pack. I think if it ever happens to me it will be very commendable, but I never see it happening outside of a one on one, as you mention.
And being honest, unless somebody is really struggling openly(which really makes me think “it’s only a game”) I probably would be a bit disappointed if that is the reason to finish the game. That would be very anticlimactic… Unless we are talking about a game that is taking way too long.
Gosh, the more I think about it the more factors that weigh in…
To be clear, there are a few necessary conditions:
That said, there is the other extreme where one or more players are learning the game - I’ve ended a few early, or even planned on doing so from the outset, and for that you don’t really need to meet any of the above conditions.
For new players I like the strategy brass encourages of playing half the game and then scoring and stopping the game to allow new players a restart.
I would love to see more abridged first games, possibly even having players start from a partially pre-populated board state.
Setting context and expectations is very important. For complex games, I try to remind everyone that the first game is a learning game and we’ll all make mistakes. We might check in after the first round or two if we want to continue or start over, but in my experience, players just want to soldier on.
Adding to that, I love how the tables can be still turned after that halfway stage.