Competitive Board Games Find a Way Through COVID-19
One pro Settlers of Catan player says the scene is only going to grow
When you think of esports, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s shooters, like Fortnite, CS:GO, or Valorant. Maybe it’s fast-paced strategy games, like League of Legends, Starcraft II, and Dota 2. Maybe it’s car soccer, like Rocket League.
One thing it’s probably not, though, is the wildly successful board game The Settlers of Catan.
Catan is a simple enough game to learn, but there’s a ton of depth to its strategy, and my family, like many others, has enjoyed it a lot.
It was released in 1995, and has since sold 22 million copies in 30 languages, winning countless awards and spawning numerous expansions.
Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people can’t play board games with their friends anymore, at least, not in person.
But there are ways to play Catan online, and one of those, a website called colonist.io, has received some major attention recently.
“I think this is gonna be a turning point in competitive play.”
DylLighted, professional Catan player and YouTuber
It makes sense that online play is growing, since people can’t get together in person right now. But people aren’t going to seek out a game if they don’t remember it exists.
Catan isn’t the most well-known board game out there, but that’s where a YouTuber named ‘DylLighted’ comes in.
In early March, just before quarantines became commonplace, DylLighted began to receive a significant boost from the algorithm, and as quarantines set in across the globe, his channel grew even more.
Many people who had played Catan in the past found themselves watching a professional play, realizing that there was so much more depth to this game than anyone expected, and then wanting to try for themselves.
I spoke with DylLighted recently about the growth of Catan. He made many interesting points about playing competitively.
In particular, he noted that though Catan has luck-based aspects (dice rolls determine the distribution of resources), he believes that approaching it as a luck-based game is a mistake.
He compares it to poker, where, though there is luck, better strategy will often prevail, and believes that a good Catan player can optimize their gameplay to win 80% of their games.
I thought it was an excellent conversation. DylLighted raised a ton of interesting points, and his understanding of the game is unparalleled. So, without further ado, here it is.
SUPERJUMP
How did you first get into Catan?
DYLLIGHTED
I got into Catan how most people usually get into Catan, I was introduced through some friends and family. Back then I was still really bad at the game.
SUPERJUMP
Then, how did you discover the ‘competitive’ scene—that there even was a competitive scene?
DYLLIGHTED
First, I discovered the more competitive scene through a YouTube channel called Neonate Gaming. He’s a small Catan channel, but the information he possessed just totally rocked my world. I watched every single one of his videos at least three or four times. He talked about tournaments in his videos, which made me interested, so I looked for tournaments in my local scene and ended up winning my regional tournament and they flew me out to nationals.
SUPERJUMP
Then, what caused you to start making YouTube videos about it yourself?
DYLLIGHTED
My hero, Neonate, he stopped making videos for a while, so that, that broke my heart, and I told myself that I could probably make just as high-quality videos as him, I’d have to work hard for it. I wanted to breach that layer, and go much deeper into the reasons why things occur, and theory that no one’s ever talked about, that I’ve discovered while I was learning.
SUPERJUMP
What is the most complicated aspect of Catan?
DYLLIGHTED
I think a lot of people would argue settlement placement, but I think nowadays, people are getting a lot better, and you can almost, like, ‘solve’ the board (find the most optimal placements) pretty quickly.
I think nowadays, the most complicated part is trading.
It’s just been developing and developing, and trading — the reason why I feel it’s so complicated is because not only do you need to know what every single one of your cards are, you also have to know what your opponents have, and using that, you need to figure out what trades can go through, what possibilities can you offer, and if you want to take it a step further, you have to think about, ‘well, if I know my opponents’ hands, how would they trade, and how do I trade to prevent them from trading…’
It can get really complicated from there on out, and you can add on a lot more… there’s a lot more layers that I can go into.
SUPERJUMP
What was it like to be picked up by the YouTube algorithm right now?
DYLLIGHTED
It’s amazing! So many people are interested in Catan now, and so many people didn’t realize that there was a world of competitive Catan, so with my YouTube channel exploding, and the YouTube algorithm specifically recommending the tournament analysis video, I feel as if so many people are going to be interested in competitive Catan, so many more people, and so I’m really excited to see the scene grow.
I think this is gonna be a turning point in competitive play. Before, information out there was really scarce, it was really bad, and anything, like a strategy article, was very, very poorly written.
Even if there was competitive Catan, the players back then was just so… not developed. Even if someone won a tournament, they could still not be a very good player.
Now, everyone’s ‘DylLighted educated’, so now everyone has a strong fundamental understanding of the game.
SUPERJUMP
Speaking of becoming ‘DylLighted educated’, do you have any particular videos you would recommend as tutorials for people who are just getting into Catan?
DYLLIGHTED
Yes. It’s one of my videos called Gameplay with Thought, and it’s a low Ore (one of the resources in Catan) board. I really like this one because it shows how you’re supposed to think about this game, and it shows someone’s active thought process, and what a good thought process looks like on how to win the game.
(Here’s the link to that video.)
SUPERJUMP
Is there anything in particular you would like to say to players that are rediscovering Catan with all their newfound free time?
DYLLIGHTED
I think it’s really, really important to go into Catan not thinking that it’s just a, a luck-based variance game.
While there is variance inside this game, I think that it can be easily, easily overcome just by correct decision-making, or just by how much you can optimize the game.
I think you can optimize your gameplay to win 80% of your games.
SUPERJUMP
And if you’re blaming luck for all of your losses, it’s going to be really hard to improve. You mentioned poker earlier, and I think that’s probably really similar, right? Like, if you always say ‘ugh, I just got unlucky with the cards,’ you’re never going to analyze your own gameplay and improve on your faults.
DYLLIGHTED
Yes, exactly, and I think that’s one of the biggest issues I see.
The comments that sadden me the most are the ones that are just like, ‘ha, you’re analyzing this game that’s just all, like, rolling dice.’
That’s how I know that this is a student that’s not going to progress very far. They need a growth mindset, asking themselves, ‘what can I improve on, what did I screw up on, how could I have optimized my gameplay at all.’
I really think that there’s a lot more to learn inside this game, and there’s so much that I have not covered, also.
SUPERJUMP
What hopes do you have for the future of Catan? How do you think it’s going to grow and expand?
DYLLIGHTED
The two things that I see happening in the future, that I hope will happen, is mathematically solving the game, finding what moves can you do that make you win faster or more efficiently using math. That’s the first thing I really want to look at.
The second thing is AI, having a super-strong AI and being able to study the AI and figure out why it wins. Right now, most AIs suck, so you can’t really learn from them.
SUPERJUMP
And more specifically, for the community of Catan, do you think it’s growing, and do you think that it’s going to get bigger in the future?
DYLLIGHTED
Yes, of course, I think it’s just gonna absolutely soar.
I expect the next time I come out to a tournament, it’s gonna be way, way bigger, not only my local area but nationals, Catan nationals.
I feel like the competition is gonna really soar, it’s gonna become a lot better, since so many people are watching my videos.
SUPERJUMP
Yeah, and as for the online tournaments, it seems like every weekend there’s some new organization popping up that wants to organize tournaments.
Do you think they’re going to come together and hold something similar to Catan nationals online, especially this year, since it seems unlikely that Catan nationals will be able to happen in person?
DYLLIGHTED
Sadly, I don’t think that they’re probably going to come together.
It’s almost fine if they have many, many tournaments, I think that just means more people can play.
You’re right that there’s a strong chance that Catan nationals will probably be cancelled, due to COVID-19, right now, but I still think that there’s just been so, so many people, organizing different tournaments, and I think that’s a good thing, in general.
But about them coming together to host a national tournament, or a big tournament, the reason why it’s very difficult to do is because of language barriers, and time zones, too.
There’s tournaments that are specific to a language or specific to a time zone, because the social play is extremely important in Catan.
SUPERJUMP
That is one thing that makes it very unique, in the space of online games and in the space of physical games. There aren’t that many games that are strategic and competitive, and social and interactive.
DYLLIGHTED
Exactly! And that’s why I think Catan is such a unique game. It’s also really, really rare to see a competitive scene with a ‘1v1v1v1’.
Usually when you think of tournaments, it’s 1 versus 1 in a bracket. So there’s not only the social aspect, it’s also that fact that it’s four competing players, which is one of the reasons why I love it.
SUPERJUMP
Well, that wraps up what I’ve planned to talk about, but is there anything you’d like to leave us with?
DYLLIGHTED
What I would like everyone to take away is that, as a player who hovers around the top 50 in online Catan, the best way to improve is to have a growth mindset, realize that this game is not fully luck-based and that there’s a lot that you can do to improve your own gameplay.
I’d like to extend a huge thanks to DylLighted for this interview. It was enlightening and engaging, and I enjoyed the opportunity to get into depth about a game we both enjoy. You can find his YouTube channel here.
DylLighted and the Colonist team, as well as countless other members of the Catan community, are working hard to bring this decades-old game into a new era of play, and I, for one, am going to be rooting for them.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a game scheduled with my friends on Colonist. I’ll see you all later.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
