Game design / history question - why four players?

[radiantfracture]

A mistaken text¹ started a conversation about game theory and game design. None of us knew enough about game theory to get very far with that, but my game-loving yet math-phobic friend did ask: is there a reason why (many? most?) tabletop games are designed to include about four players? Specifically, is that a sweet spot for games? for cognition? for social interactions? Is it to do with the size of kitchen tables? Is it magic?

Is there math in there, I guess is what we want to know.

There are lots of one-person games, and maybe two-person games are actually the most common (?), and heaps of games scale in various ways, but it feels like four is the mode social game size.

Is the four-player game model based on the nuclear family? On two couples playing together? Does it come from historical card games like whist?

Cursory web searching did not reveal an answer. Do you have any knowledge or wild speculation to share?


{rf}

^I accidentally texted the bus stop number to our group chat. If you text the bus stop number to 11111, it will tell you the bus schedule. If you text the bus stop number to human beings by mistake (as I have done more than once) it provokes a variety of amused responses.

Comments

[thewayne]

I think one reason might be your 'two couples' theory. Most card games were played around card tables, which typically have four sides, so easily accommodated four players.

When I buy board games or card games, I look for games that support 2+ players, because typically it's just my wife and I. When I design games, I mostly design card games which take a variable number of players. And if a card game is well-balanced, the number of players doesn't matter except for purposes of deck exhaustion: you want to factor the deck size for the number of players so that you're not shuffling the discards constantly. And there's nothing saying the deck size must be a multiple of 52 (or 54/56, actually), though that may be a factor when it comes to mass production price.

[radiantfracture]

Does the 52-ish-ness go back a ways? Has it to do with the weeks in the year or something else calendrical?

[thewayne]

I don't think so.  I think the 52 cards in a deck of playing cards was gradually arrived at, because many games that use what is recognized as the standard suites use different counts.  The 52 card deck doesn't have 52 cards as it arrives in its box when you add in the jokers and the two 'publisher' cards, as it 'rounds out' the rectangle for single-sheet printing and cutting.  So when it comes to publishing your own game, it's usually advantageous to make your card count as close to and under 52 as possible as that's the way the large presses and cutters work. If you want to look in to it, backgammon has some interesting numerology/symbolism behind its board counts and design.