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If anyone here plays board games regularly, what's your opinion on kingmaking? I'm aware there are a range of opinions on this, and this is a point of contention for many players out there.
Kingmaking, for the uninitiated, is basically a behaviour players can engage in during board games where after you fall behind the other players to the extent that you're effectively out of the game, you can throw the game in favour of the player you want to win. This is usually based on in-game grudges (someone absolutely screwed you over, so you'd rather they not win) and it regularly rears its head in social board games, one of the most common games I see it in being Settlers of Catan.
Personally, I am not against kingmaking. I think kingmaking, teaming, and all other related behaviours are inherent in social board games with more than two players and can't really be avoided (nor should it). A big part of any social game is about judging your adversaries' personalities and playing the players accordingly, and if you engage in aggressive behaviour early on and make enemies, there's clearly a risk that comes with it. You can't make it difficult for a player to win then expect them not to take their revenge. Additionally, strategically employing kingmaking and threats thereof can set a meta-rule for future games - if you screw me, I'll screw you back - which might make a player think twice about taking their chances to screw you in the future. The humans you're playing with are part of the game, and the relational dynamics are what make a lot of social games interesting in the first place.
It goes without saying that if the player still has a good chance of winning kingmaking would probably be a poor strategy, but I don't inherently have a problem with pursuing revenge in and of itself.
Kingmaking based on in-game grudges is fine.
Kingmaking based on out-of-game status seeking is not and always what I think of.
Tricky line to cross because people who take games seriously and aren't able to compartmentalize can end up turning in-game grudges into real ones.
But yeah, if the person who is about to win actively screwed you over in-game on their route to victory then I don't see how they can complain if you, in-game, decline to assist in the final stages and end up hampering them enough that someone else snatches victory.
In my view though even if you're losing the game badly enough that you have no real chance of winning, the 'sporting' thing to do is to keep playing your best to prevent any other particular person from winning. That is you just make it harder for anyone to meet the win condition to the best of your ability. Even better if the game has conditions that allow you to 'force' a draw.
If this requires you to hold out in some position that basically just blocks the game from advancing very quickly, so be it.
Of course that can run into the different constraint, when it starts getting late and people are getting tired and cranky and just want to finish up and if you're the guy dragging things out they may just want you to pick a winner and get it over with.
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