Risk, reward, luck and skill

[wee bull]

I finally pulled my finger out and wrote the kind of games-related piece on my blog that I've been meaning to for months, and I figure that since this is a Site What Has Writers On It™ and everything, somebody might "enjoy" reading it here too. It is rather on the lengthy side though, and it doesn't quite get to a proper point like I meant it to, so be warned.



One of the fundamental parts to understanding good computer game design is the implicit risk and reward scheme within them, which applies not only to computer games, but to all games as a whole, from card and board games to full-fledged professional sports.

The theory behind the system is that, rather obviously, human beings play games to win, because winning carries some form of personal reward for that person. Often this is little more than ego gratification, knowing that you’re better than everybody else at a particular task and so on, but it can also include more concrete benefits such as money or trophies. These concrete rewards offer more incentive for a person to attempt the game at hand, and dedicate more time to practicing it. Gambling, in its most basic form (a lottery, or similar), is a game that offers no real sense of accomplishment or victory over others (as no skill is involved to win), but instead a purely physical prize for a winner (money or gifts). As the success of various national lotteries proves, the lure of a financial gain by itself is substantial. Thus the appeal of more ’skilful’ forms of gambling is obvious, providing the chance of winning big money, while also rewarding any hard work or skill used by a player in order to better understand or play the game in hand. Sports and games and the like are in many ways simply other forms of gambling, where the reliance on skill outweighs that of luck. Most still contain some element of luck, as the world is too random and chaotic to provide a truly perfect environment for any game, but the luck involved is not significant enough to be considered the deciding factor in the game. Naturally, the less luck involved within a game, the greater the sense of accomplishment is upon winning said game, and the more it feeds the ego.

While it might seem that computer games would be relatively ‘pure’, and free from such worldly things as mere luck, the frequent presence of random variables within the code for most games (say, to determine the precise direction of bullets when you fire in an FPS), and the myriad of possibilities opened up by real-time control within a three-dimensional world (think of all the times you’ve “gotten lucky” by avoiding some obstacle in a game before you realise it’s actually there) actually provide a fair amount of luck to the world of computer games. The most luck-free genres of games would probably be turn-based strategy games with a consistent damage model (for example, a hit from weapon A onto enemy B will always do the same damage, because all calculations are exact instead of using random variables.), and with a grid system or similar (thus providing a more finite amount of possiblities per turn than full, open control). At the other end of the spectrum would sit a game like Championship Manager, where player input is fairly minimal, especially on the actual match days. You assemble a team, do your best to train and organise them, but once they take to the field, the game becomes little more than a constant stream of random variables, with some hidden weighting depending upon how the game views your earlier choices.

As for the reward system within computer games, I think the type of game is a key factor in the reward given. Multi-player games are usually always competitive battles, and the reward for victory is usually therefore merely the glory of victory itself, and proving yourself better than your opponents. Very few multi-player games (or multi-player modes within games) will feature any kind of extra bonus beyond this, and a win for one player will very rarely provide them with anything new or different upon starting the next ‘go’ on the same game. Single-player games, on the other hand, often rely on the pursuit of concrete rewards in order to drive the game itself forwards. For the player this means gaining new items or weapons as a game progresses, or unlocking a character upon defeating them, or reaching the next part of the story within a more plot-based game (the RPG genre), or simply progressing and seeing what new challenges the game has to offer. However, there are also many single-player games where there is very little in the way of concrete rewards, and of course, once completed, the same rewards mean far less to the player than they did the first time in games that offer many. Games with high-score tables are often played for no reason other than to beat the est score and master the game more fully, which is in many ways a solitary version of multi-player gaming, since the person with the top score will thus consider themselves better at the game than anyone else on the scoreboard.

What originally irked me into writing this piece though, was the way that quite a few games often fall back onto very basic, and somewhat pointless concrete rewards for players, particularly when the game no longer has need for the rewards provided, as though the achievement of completing the game itself is not enough of an incentive to tempt the player to continue. Bonuses are all very well and good, but what am I supposed to do with this new car or engine parts I’ve unlocked now I’ve just completed the game? I’m looking at YOU, Need for Speed series. GTA is the same for this, but given it’s free-roam nature, extra unlocks right at the end of the game do still have a point really. I’ve never really gotten the point of “just messing around” in GTA though. Sure, you can kill a lot of people and chase the cops and stuff, but so what? Where’s the goal in all this, what happens after you get away/captured? Where’s my reward for doing these things?

Oh wait.