Best Voting Methods for Board Game Vacation?

[Jan]

Hi everyone, I'm planning a board game vacation with four of my friends, it's basically going to be a week of heavy board gaming.
We all have large game collections at home, and we now want to decide what to bring, and then what to play. So I thought, why not use an established voting method for both?
So here's what I'm looking for:

1. a method for us to choose which games to bring. We will compile a huge list of games for everyone to vote on beforehand, and in the end I'd like everyone to bring the same number of games (say ten per person) that we selected by voting. So that's a "multiple winners" situation, although with the restriction that everyone should supply the same number of games (this maybe translates to "party seats" in traditional voting methods somehow?)
2. when the five of us are together, I'd like to have a second voting mechanism to select the game we should play next, so that would be a "one winner" situation.
   I'd be happy to hear your suggestions about which voting mechanisms you'd consider suitable and why

PS: I somehow could only post in this obscure subforum -- maybe an admin could move it to "Voting Methods" for me? thank you

[cfrank]

Hi @Jan—sounds fun

Since there are only five of you, I would not necessarily over-optimize the voting method. The harder problem is probably not the final vote, but reducing a large game list into a manageable and legible shortlist.

For choosing which games to bring, I would start with a simple structured survey. For each game, collect a few pieces of information, such as owner(s), expected duration, genre, who already knows it, who wants to play it, and maybe a 0–5 interest score from each person.

Then I would use that information to filter the list before doing any final selection. For example, remove games with very low total interest, games that are too long or too short for the trip, games too many people strongly dislike, or games that duplicate the same niche unless several people want them. If you can define those niches, you could even rank the games in each niche to help with pruning.

Since you want each person to bring the same number of games, you could then choose the top-rated games within each owner’s collection, with some manual adjustment to avoid too much overlap. Once you have a proposed list, you could also let the group ratify it before finalizing, using a simple majority or supermajority vote (or better yet, unanimous consensus), with room for minor adjustments.

For deciding what to play once you are there, I’d use something simple: score voting, approval voting, or even “everyone rates their current interest from 0–5, play the highest total unless there is an obvious objection.” Because the group is small and friendly, post-vote discussion is still cheap and probably useful. In the off-chance there’s a stalemate or something, you could have a fallback voting method.

In other words, I would use voting to organize preferences and as a fallback, not to replace conversation and negotiation. A formal voting method matters much more when the electorate is large, strategic, or anonymous, i.e. when collective conversation is untenable. For five friends, a transparent scoring/filtering process plus ordinary negotiation is probably better than a complicated multiwinner rule, in my opinion.

Still, using a voting system and seeing how things shake out can be fun in itself. So if you do want to go down that route, I’m sure others here would be able to offer interesting suggestions, especially on the PR front. And if you proceed with any voting systems, it would be interesting to hear about how you decided to manage the selection and any of the results!

[Toby Pereira]

@jan This sounds like it could get complicated. However, it doesn't need to be. If everyone is bringing 10 games each, I don't think there needs to be a vote on that at all. People just bring the games that they want to. Essentially everyone gets 10 nominations into the pool that you vote on.

It might be the case that one person's favourite game is owned by someone else, but they can easily ask to borrow it for their own 10.

As for what to play, if you are playing a lot of games, I would prefer some sort of proportional system rather than a simple single-winner type vote each time. E.g. If 3 out of 5 players generally prefer one type of game and 2 prefer another type, it makes sense for there to be a 3:2 split rather than the 3 choosing every time.

You could simply take it in turns to choose. Alternatively I would recommend a lottery method, so that you would get proportional representation over the long haul without having to keep track of what has already happened. I think simple random ballot, where you randomly pick who chooses each game, would be inferior to taking turns. Some people would get to choose more, just by luck.

But one alternative, which has a balance between randomness and consensus is COWPEA Lottery. Each person approves as many games as they want. Then you pick a ballot at random and if that ballot lists more than one game, you just pick other ballots at random as a tie-break. So if the next ballot approves all or none of the remaining games in contention, you ignore it. Otherwise you eliminate games not approved. Continue until one game is left. If there is still a tie after all ballots have been picked, just pick at random among the remaining games.