wfmag.cc \ 37whole area is very closely tied to psychology, so
if you’d like to find out more, check out books
such as Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.
MAKING YOUR OWN LUCK
This article was a bit of a skim of a deep subject,
but hopefully, I’ve at least demonstrated that,
more or less, chance doesn’t make a game
better or worse – it simply means it will appeal
to different audiences.
As previously mentioned, knowing your
game’s intended audience means you can work
out the right balance of skill versus chance.
If you’re making a retro platformer to appeal to
hardcore speedrunners, then the more success
comes from skill, the better those players can
get at your game, encouraging them to practice
and show off their tricks. But if you’re making a
slower game where players have time to think
through decisions, a little chance will stop them
from being able to ‘solve’ your game and force
them to think about risk versus reward.
A final note on why I always favour including
at least a little chance: having such elements
will occasionally cause swings of luck to
happen, leaving the way open for sudden
turnarounds. For instance, in a first-person
shooter, causing a gun’s bullets to spray
out in a cone may mean a shot on target
actually misses, or maybe guns have a slim
chance of backfiring in your face. Annoying
or lucky? That’s for you to decide.FIND OUT MORE
An article of this length can only introduce some of the
elements of luck, so here’s some further reading if you’d
like to dig deeper:-^ GameTek by Geoff Engelstein is a collection of short
essays on luck and mathematics, written by a board
game designer.
-^ Anydice.com is a useful site that provides the chances
of each result you can get by rolling different numbers
and types of dice.
-^ A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster is a
seminal video game design book which digs into player
psychology and why risk grabs us.
Cards represent ‘fixed
random’, meaning all
possible results are
guaranteed in time, whereas
dice are ‘true random’ and
may never balance out.Skill versus chance: using luck in gamesToolbox