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The Feeling of Randomness
Roulette and Chess point to a very important aspect of uncertainty. Often, the degree of chance in a game has less to do with the actual mathematics of the game system and more to do with how the player's experience of the game is framed. When we look at only a single round of Roulette, the game is an experience of pure risk. But when we frame it as the gain and loss of money over many rounds, the overall outcome is more uncertain. Similarly, it is possible to produce a feeling of uncertainty in games that do not formally possess an element of chance. Below are two examples: Chinese Checkers. When four, five, or six players play this game, it can feel quite random. As the game unfolds and players move their pieces, the center of the board becomes crowded with a seemingly random arrangement of pieces. This is true even though every single move on the board is the result of a player making a strategic choice about where to play next.
If you closed your eyes and opened them only when it is your turn to move,it might seem like the board is merely reshuffling itself, particularly in the middle period of the game, when the center area is most crowded. This feeling of randomness is only an illusion, however, as there is no formal chance mechanism in the game. Perfectly logical players (who only exist in hypothetical examples) wouldn't feel any randomness: they could look at the board and immediately trace every move back to a series of strategic decisions. However, for human players, this feeling of randomness is an important part of what makes the game fun to play. Although it is not true of every game, in the case of Chinese Checkers, the feeling of randomness creates a sense of open-ended possibility and players are rewarded for taking advantage of chance configurations on the board. The rule that lets players move their pieces by jumping multiple times over other pieces is designed to emphasize the seemingly random arrangement of the board. Seeing a pattern emerge out the chaos that allows you to jump a piece back and forth all the way across the entire length of the gameboard is a moment of wonderfully meaningful play. SiSSYFiGHT 2000. In a multiplayer game that emphasizes social interaction, there can be a similar illusion of randomness. In SiSSYFiGHT 2000, because there are many players with their own agendas and strategies, game play often seems random. However, as with Chinese Checkers, there are no genuinely random elements to the game: logic, not chance determines the outcomes of player decisions. However, the unpredictable combination of events that occurs each round is part of the game's fun. Two players might by chance both attack a third player, creating the impression that they are allies working in concert. Are they actually working together? If not, will the chance event cause them to form an alliance for future rounds? And did anyone else notice? The complexity of possibilities leads to a high degree of uncertainty. Eliminating this feeling of randomness would require not only perfectly rational players, but players with special psychic powers that allowed them to look into the minds of other players and understand completely the strategies, rivalries, emotions, and other factors that led to their decisions. But who would want to play? Stripped to its logical core in this way, SiSSYFiGHT 2000 would obviously lose much of its appeal. Both games produce an experience of randomness, even though neither game contains chance-based mechanisms as part of the rule system. This "feeling of randomness" is somewhat paradoxical and mysterious. Does a game of Chess have a feeling of randomness that emerges out of the complexity of relationships between the pieces? Perhaps. But it probably has less of a feeling of randomness than a game of Chinese Checkers, and it most definitely has less of a feeling of randomness than a game of Pick-Up Sticks. The key point is that the feeling of randomness is more important than randomness itself. How much randomness should you put into your game? There is no magic formula regarding the degree of "feeling of randomness" or the degree of actual randomness in a game. However, the presence or absence of randomness does tend to move a game in one direction or another. A game that doesn't have any feeling of randomness is likely to feel very dry, and generally more intensely competitive than a game that does have an element of randomness. On the other hand, a game that is completely random can feel chaotic and unstructured. In both cases, the goal is to give players meaningful choices within the larger game system. A nonrandom, competitive game can be meaningful as long as the players have a fair opportunity to best their opponents. A completely random game can also be meaningful, if the players are making interesting choices as they explore the game's system, pushing their luck and taking risks.
