Rules.of.Play.Game.Design.Fundamentals [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Case Study Two: Pig

The game of Pig differs from Thunderstorm in that it offers choice within the context of a game of chance. Like Thunderstorm, Pig demonstrates how meaningful play can be designed into a system with a great deal of uncertainty. The description from Dice Games Properly Explained is as follows:

Pig

This is an amusing family game based on a very simple idea. You throw one die and keep adding to your total. If you do not stop before you roll a 1, everything is lost.... Any number of players can play, best is for three to five. You need one die and a notepad.

Object. The aim of the game is to avoid rolling 1s and to be the first player who reaches 100 points or more.

Play. One player begins, then play progresses clockwise. On your turn, throw the die:

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  If you roll a 1, you lose your turn and do not score.



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  If you roll any other number, you receive the corresponding points.

As long as you receive points you can throw again, and again. Announce your accumulated points so that everybody can easily follow your turn. You may throw as often as you wish. Your turn ends in one of two ways: Record all scores on the notepad and keep running totals for each player. The first player to reach 100 points or more is the winner.[7]

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  If you decide to finish your turn before you roll a 1, score your accumulated points on the notepad. These points are now safe for the rest of the game.



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  If you roll a 1, you lose your turn and your accumulated points.

The first thing to note about Pig is how it creates interesting game choices from a very simple structure. A core component of the game—to avoid rolling 1s—is actually an inverse of the formal demands of Thunderstorm, where the players attempt to roll 1s. In Pig, the player has to balance the desire to keep on rolling and accumulate a higher score with the risk of rolling a 1, which becomes more and more likely each time the player chooses to roll again.

We can analyze the game mathematically. From a probability point of view, one out of the six basic outcomes spells disaster for the player: rolling a 1. This means there is a 5/6 or 83.33 percent chance of rolling safely each time you roll—or conversely, a 1/6 or 16.66 percent chance of rolling a 1. However, even though the chances are the same for every roll considered in isolation, the more that you decide to roll, the more likely it is that you will eventually roll a 1. If you decide in advance that you are going to roll twice, the chances of rolling a 1 on your turn is the combined outcome of a 2-die roll. In the 36 possible 2-die rolls, there are 11 ways you can roll a 1 (1~1, 1~2, 1~3, 1~4, 1~5, 1~6, 2~1, 3~1, 4~1, 5~1, 6~1). This adds up to 11/36 or 30.56 percent chance to roll a 1 in two rolls.

Each time you roll again, your overall chance of rolling a 1 increases, and as soon as you roll a 1, your entire accumulated points for that turn are erased.The drama of the decision to roll or not to roll is that each time you roll the die, you increase your chances of getting more points, as well as increasing your chances to fail. But because you have control over your decision to roll more than once, you know the degree of risk. Knizia plots out the chances of rolling a 1 with successive rolls in the table above . He also calculates the average points you are likely to earn with a certain number of rolls, using 4 as the average number of points per roll (as your possible earnings are 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6). See Table 3.

Table 3

Knizia suggests that the best Pig strategy is to stop rolling once you have 20 points or more. However, he also acknowledges that a good player takes into account the progress of the other players as well. There are two sides to the formal strategy of playing Pig. On the one hand, there is the aspect of a single player playing against chance, trying to maximize points earned each turn. But this moment-to-moment decision-making process also takes place within the larger context of the other players' scores. In other words, if you are falling behind, you may want to press your luck to try and catch up; but if you fail, you will have to risk even more to regain ground. If you are in the lead, perhaps you should play more conservatively. But then it might be easier for other players to catch up to you.

Pig is an elegant game design because the player's simple choice to roll or not to roll is a decision that sits at the nexus of many intersecting vectors of game play meaning. The result is a game that is astonishingly simple, strategically deep, and increasingly dramatic. Pig is a great example of how pure chance can be harnessed through simple choices and transformed into meaningful play. Can you say that the decisions in your game are as meaningful the decision to roll in Pig?

[7]Ibid. p. 128–29.