wfmag.cc \ 33players to hide. If you lose, it’s because you
simply didn’t play as well as your opponent.
This will spur competitive players on to learn
and do better, but in general, it’s nice for our
ego to be able to assign at least some of the
blame for the loss to bad
luck. Pure skill games also
require players to learn,
think, and focus, making
them tiring to play –
sometimes it’s fun to just
bash some buttons with your friends!
Weirdly, games of pure chance tend to have
two extremely distinct audiences: gamblers
and kids. Presumably, the gamblers enjoy their
success coming down to forces outside of their
control (even though they may try to alter the
odds with superstitions and gut feeling – more
on this later). On the other hand, kids’ games
use luck because their audience may not yet
have developed the ability to make valid tactical
choices, plus luck-based games can go on
forever, suiting kids who are ‘time-rich’ (see
Fireball Island, Frustration, and more besides).
DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?
Relatively few games are 100% skill- or chance-
based, with most blending skill with some
elements of chance, for the reasons listed
above. Including elements of chance also adds
the fun of ‘risk mitigation’ to the things you
have to think about, so let’s talk about ‘risk’
versus chance.
If chance is the likelihood of a given thing
happening (70% chance that this shot will hit
its target), then risk is that
chance balanced against
what you stand to gain if
it succeeds, or lose if it
fails. In short, risk is where
games get interesting.
Let’s say a shot by one of your XCOM snipers
does have a 70% chance of hitting. That’s fine,
it’s fairly likely, so why not go ahead and tell
them to fire? But what if you know that the
success or failure of an entire hour-long“Relatively few
games are 100% skill-
or chance-based” As games which use loot boxes
have learned, never under-
estimate how exciting the
build-up of suspense is before a
success or failure result is revealed. Some games, like Betrayal
at House on the Hill, revolve
around using layers of
chance to give themselves
variety and surprise,
sacrificing player skill to
try and tell a cool story. A complaint levelled at kids’
games is that they’re too
random, but strong chance
elements are ideal for their
‘time-rich’ audience.
(Image by Druyts.t.)LUCKY LAYERS
Something I’ve noticed is
that players can tolerate
one ‘layer’ of chance, but
more than that makes a
game seem too random
and arbitrary. For example,
imagine a game where dice
are rolled to see if your units
can attack. Or another game
where you get to choose
whether to attack, but dice
are rolled to judge the
success of those attacks.
Either of those options is
fine, but a game using both
means chance determines
if the event happens and if
that event succeeds or fails,
which is incredibly random.Skill versus chance: using luck in gamesToolbox