
How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games (2017) - bookofjoe
http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/how-designers-engineer-luck-into-video-games-rp
======
CM30
The talk of luck and how sometimes games fake it to make it seems fairer to
the player reminds me of how certain games tweak their mechanics to make
things easier on the player or feel more cinematic.

For example, in Bioshock 1, the enemies will always miss their first shot,
whereas Assassin's Creed and Doom have the last part of the health bar
actually take more shots/attacks to deplete to make it feel like players are
winning by the skin of their teeth.

There's a whole list of examples here:

[https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640](https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640)

~~~
scoggs
I'm not positive but I think one of the first examples of a game accommodating
players in a more extreme sense was in Crash Bandicoot during the famous
boulder chase level where Crash was running toward the screen / player. If the
game detected you were having trouble clearing the stage each subsequent
replay would slow the boulder down a bit. The goal was to ensure the player
wouldn't rage quit thus allowing for longer play sessions.

If it's not the first it's at least one of the best early examples of this
mechanic.

~~~
projektir
Crash Bandicoot is one of the very few platformers that I can actually stand
(got to 103% completion). It's just so very well designed to avoid annoying
the player while retaining difficulty.

~~~
Pocketknife
Crash Bandicoot has a highly entertaining development story as well. They
straight up violated Sony's hardware rules, and Sony was so desperate, they
let them.

[https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ba...](https://all-
things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/)

~~~
sdrothrock
I was curious about what rule they violated -- it comes up in part 5:

"The first is Sony’s first viewing of Crash in person. Kelly Flock was the
first Sony employee to see Crash live [ Andy NOTE: running, not on videotape
]. He was sent, I think, to see if our videotape was faked!

Kelly is a smart guy, and a good game critic, but he had a lot more to worry
about than just gameplay. For example, whether Crash was physically good for
the hardware!

Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail
through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that
any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD
“hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these
CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some
thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very
silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is
‘rated’ for 70,000.”

Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went
back to get Sony on board with Crash."

~~~
scoggs
That entire Development Story is such a massive gem. Everyone interested in
programming, game programming, and video game creation in general should fully
dig into it:

Making Crash Bandicoot

\----------

As one of the co-creators of Crash Bandicoot, I have been (slowly) writing a
long series of posts on the making of everyone’s favorite orange marsupial.
You can find them all below, so enjoy.

[https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/](https://all-
things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/)

------
danso
The anecdote about Sid Meier hard-coding a guaranteed "win on the third
attempt" for a battle with a 1/3 victory probability was very interesting. It
reminds me of the way designers of the modern XCOM games have also fudged with
probability to mitigate the anger of missing a 85% shot [0]:

> _“The fact is, we’re trying to entertain players,” said Solomon. “So how do
> you deal with a player who’s missed an 85 percent shot? Emotionally, they’re
> probably strained. We don’t want the players missing multiple 85 percent
> shots, because then the game starts to feel punitive...That 85 percent isn’t
> actually 85 percent. Behind the scenes, we wanted to match the player’s
> psychological feeling about that number.” That 85 percent, according to
> Solomon, is often closer to 95 percent. "_

As much as I love the XCOM games, I really enjoyed the refreshing
deterministic approach by Klei's Invisible, Inc. [1], another turn-based squad
tactics game, in which all valid shots are guaranteed to hit. This places all
of the onus on the player to correctly anticipate positioning -- so, basically
like chess. There's still plenty of luck involved, with the levels and loot
locations being randomly generated. But the "luck" feels more of a fun
obstacle to overcome, rather than a cruel arbiter of fate.

On a tangent: the fact that the human mind finds randomness to be unappealing
reminds me of another game design essay, "The Nebraska Problem", about the
optimal way of generating visually-pleasing grass [2]

0:
[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266891/Jake_Solomon_expl...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266891/Jake_Solomon_explains_the_careful_use_of_randomness_in_XCOM_2.php)

1: [https://www.klei.com/games/invisible-
inc](https://www.klei.com/games/invisible-inc)

2:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692332)

~~~
alanfalcon
“Humans are bad at understanding probability, so lets make it impossible for
them to get better by lying to them and reinforcing their poor internal
model.”

(I know games are ostensibly about fun rather than betterment, but they
originate from the opportunities for betterment that they provide and breaking
that connection does a disservice to ... mankind. Not to put too fine a point
on it. If you want your game to be fun and the numbers aren’t fun, don’t lie
about the numbers, change how you present them.)

~~~
ryandrake
I agree. If 85% is not fun, make it 90%. Don’t try to change what 85% means.
If as a game designer, you’re finding that random isn’t fun, maybe you ought
to consider dropping the randomness and coming up with something better.

~~~
seanwilson
Any idea what's a better system then? Over 80% is guaranteed? After the first
attempt your chance of success doubles?

For example, you'd want it to be pretty much guaranteed a trooper can beat an
alien at close quarters with a chain gun and an archer can't beat a
helicopter. You want some degree of randomness but you want the rules to be
easily understood as well.

~~~
ryandrake
I’d prefer documenting the actual behavior/rules. In the Civ example, if the
3rd try always succeeds, display 100%. If the archer vs helicopter attack
doesn’t make sense, show 0%. I’m a big boy, I can take the truth. If the
monsters run slower when you’re not looking at them, find some sensible way in
the story to explain it. Maybe your eyes feed their rage and give them powers
when you look at them.

Giving the player an artificial boost when he’s behind is like giving 4 outs
to the losing baseball team.

~~~
seanwilson
> If the monsters run slower when you’re not looking at them, find some
> sensible way in the story to explain it

Most games are suppose to feel like an experience though and make you feel a
certain way. They're suppose to be scary monsters - less so in a Civ-style
games but you're not suppose to be decomposing them into integers and
algorithms.

------
tablethnuser
Contemporary video games are way more on rails and experientially constrained
than players know. Basically anything implemented with fair odds will be
perceived as unfair to the player. Real life is unfair and players play games
to escape to a fantasy world where all that heroic luck you're used to seeing
in fiction now applies to them.

------
fro0116
> The designers of free-to-play games, by using an intermittent variable to
> dole out small prizes, found that they could keep players engaged—and
> spending—for longer.

I'm really glad the article also touches on the loot-box phenomenon. I think
it's by far the worst thing to ever happen to game design.

It's exploitative in the same way that gambling in general is exploitative,
but isn't bound by the tight legal restrictions that prevent gambling
companies from targeting children who might be most vulnerable to these
exploitative tactics and more likely to fall into a vicious cycle of addiction
early in life, which can have dramatic, literally life-changing consequences.

That said, I can't really deny either that at least part of this trend is
self-inflicted on the part of the gaming community at large. Gamers have all
but collectively rejected the subscription model where we pay for the games we
play on a recurring basis. For games like MMOs that require ongoing funding to
develop new content in order for the community around it to thrive, what other
funding models outside of the freemium model do designers really have?

The DLC/expansion pack model also worked adequately for some time, and still
does for games that involve mostly episodic experiences, but not so much for
games that have living worlds and require ongoing development of new content
and incur ongoing infrastructure costs. It also comes with similar problems as
the model of paying for software upgrades, because developer incentives and
users' needs can become misaligned. Oftentimes in this model, bug fixes and
quality of life improvements get sidelined in favor of more content/features,
and the community becomes fractured across expansion packs, undermining the
natural network effects that these kinds of games inherently tend to create.

It's also really difficult to fault freemium games for using exploitative
tactics that target players who do end up paying to pay more, when the
distribution of people who actually pay for things in these games is often so
wildly unevenly distributed that the top percentage of paying players often
account for a disproportionate percentage of overall revenue, while the vast
majority of overall player-base pay absolutely nothing, and those who do so
often wear it as badge of pride, no less.

I've always wanted to build a game myself, but I could never figure out how to
align my own need for ongoing revenue to support the development of a game
that I might love and end up wanting to keep working on indefinitely, with
that of a gaming community that has soundly rejected any funding model that
makes it possible to achieve that without resorting to tactics I'd rather not
stoop to.

~~~
deogeo
> That said, I can't really deny either that at least part of this trend is
> self-inflicted on the part of the gaming community at large. Gamers have all
> but collectively rejected the subscription model where we pay for the games
> we play on a recurring basis. For games like MMOs that require ongoing
> funding to develop new content in order for the community around it to
> thrive, what other funding models outside of the freemium model do designers
> really have?

World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online all
still successfully use the subscription model (with varying levels of free
trials).

But publishers wanted more money - from people unwilling to pay subscriptions,
and from people that would spend at a cash shop in addition to a subscription,
so freemium models get added. It hardly seems fair to blame the entire gaming
community for the existence of these people, and the profit-maximizing game
publishers.

> It's also really difficult to fault freemium games for using exploitative
> tactics that target players who do end up paying to pay more

I don't find it difficult to fault exploitative behavior just because it's
_profitable_.

~~~
fro0116
> World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online all
> still successfully use the subscription model (with varying levels of free
> trials).

The most recently released game in that list is Final Fantasy XIV, which was
released in 2010, almost a decade ago, and the rest are about a decade older
than that. A _lot_ more MMOs since then have tried the subscription model and
failed. It may have worked in a few rare cases in the past, and some of those
might still live on today through sheer inertia, but I think it's reasonable
to claim that subscription is generally no longer considered a viable model
for new MMOs.

I'm not saying some publishers won't find ways to extract more money from
players by adding freemium features on top of subscription games if they
could. Of course some would, greed knows no bounds. But I am saying that they
can't afford to charge a subscription fee to begin with, if they want their
game to become successful in today's climate, even if they intend to use that
as their only source of funding, forgoing freemium features entirely.

> I don't find it difficult to fault exploitative behavior just because it's
> profitable.

I think I made it pretty clear I find those practices despicable too. But if
your only option is the freemium model, you don't really have much of a choice
but to discriminate based on who's willing to pay and how much. That's
literally the only way the model can work, by definition.

~~~
deogeo
The games are old, but they're _still live_. So it could just as well mean
that the subscription MMO market is viable but saturated, so they're expanding
into non-subscription. There's nowhere near enough evidence to go right for
the players-won't-pay explanation, when there are _literally millions_ of
subscription-paying players.

I'd argue that the drawn out deaths of those MMOs shows how creatively
bankrupt the MMO market is - people aren't leaving for new MMOs, they're
staying with old ones till they get bored, because there's nothing better out
there.

~~~
fro0116
That's one way to see it, and it's certainly not unreasonable to see it that
way.

But looking at it another perspective, you can also argue that making MMOs
with persistent worlds that can only be supported by subscription has become
so risky of an investment that nobody is willing to experiment with
drastically new paradigms/mechanics because historically an overwhelming
majority of those who tried have failed, which could be what led to the
creatively bankrupt landscape we have today.

It's impossible to know which perspective is more accurate because it's
clearly a chicken-or-egg situation. But one thing that we can observe today is
that practically (or maybe actually?) nobody even tries to make MMOs with
subscriptions anymore, and new MMOs today end up defaulting to freemium (and
all the morally bankrupt behavior that the model leads to), whatever the
reason for that might be, and I think that's a shame.

------
foxhop
In the newer Mario Cart games, a person in last place has like an 80% chance
to get a bullet bill power up which helps them catch up.

~~~
shawnz
Mario Kart is notorious for "rubber banding" techniques that make it easier if
you are bad at the game. Other examples:

\- Enemies move at a speed proportional to how far behind you are. Hacking the
game and putting yourself way ahead causes enemies to drive inhumanly fast.
See: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JV-
kMYLYCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JV-kMYLYCo)

\- Only the person in last place can get blue shells from item blocks.

------
foxhop
I wonder if we as tech creators can utilize these techniques to actually do
good for the person, their life, and humanity as a whole, instead of begging
for their attention in the virtual/simulated, could we help them with their
real life goals?

~~~
empath75
People have been talking about gamifying productivity stuff for years now —
Duolingo is one example.

~~~
_jal
And the vast majority of times I've seen attempts at that, it ends up being
some combination of distracting, condescending, and irrelevant to what I was
trying to do.

I'm sure it can be done well, it just isn't.

~~~
kakarot
Well that just isn't true at all. Educational games span as wide a gamut in
quality as any genre. You just need to know where to look. Sites like
[https://explorabl.es/](https://explorabl.es/) provide rich educational
material in interactive form.

Is there a _particular_ case you find lacking? What are you trying to learn?

~~~
_jal
I think we're considering very different categories, and I probably should
have been more specific, sorry. I was thinking about "gamification" in
products whose primary focus is not education - in the worst form of what I'm
talking about, it substitutes for help or documentation.

~~~
kakarot
After my comment I gave it some thought and figured that's what you meant in
the context of Duolingo, which is a great example of this. I've tried in vain
to convince others they're wasting their time (it could be spent more
efficiently) but they feel like they're "winning" something so it's futile.

Gamification is usually meant for creating addictive behaviors but I think
some of it was in earnest effort. I can see how the idea of "Nobody ever wants
to learn, let's try to make learning a game" makes sense from above, but it's
hard to actually implement correctly. And at some point, some new manager with
ideas about gamification for profit's sake inevitably joins the company.

------
kkarakk
Meanwhile my destiny 2 spawn rates make it feel like bungie has tuned the game
for maximum "you won't ever get to experience the cool thing that all the
streamers say you need" ;)

------
linsomniac
At first I thought this story was about Nethack.

~~~
asztal
My first thought was about NetHack. That game is ruthless, and has no qualms
about letting the RNG screw you over. If you make 3 attempts at something with
a 1 in 3 probability of success, you'd better be prepared for that 29.6%
chance of failure.

And don't even talk to me about breaking mirrors...

~~~
billfruit
Another with a similar RNG, but some what more opaque, since it takes some
learning to understand how to affect the odds is Darkest Dungeon.

------
PorterDuff
I rather like the appearance of luck.

Off by one on video slots. Penny slots where you win 70 times on 100
simultaneous bets. 'Skill' at dice throwing in craps. Winning a free drink
when you look like you are fixin' to leave.

Building addictive products looks hard but rewarding.

------
azhenley
Something similar that I applied to the games I made: adjust bounding boxes to
always favor the player. If it is a platform that they can fall off, make the
bounding box bigger. If it’s an enemy bullet, make it smaller.

------
danielecook
If you ever played mario party it always seemed as though those in the lead
would have worse luck on rolls. I think they were trying to keep the game
competitive.

~~~
cableshaft
Hard to tell for sure.

I remember getting infuriated with the recent Super Mario Party because so
often it would have a player (who might be in 1st or 2nd place) collect a
star, and then choose the next star spawn point close enough away that the
player was able to reach the next star point _while completing the same turn_
, being able to buy 2 stars in a single turn! What the hell?

If I were the designer I'd make sure to pick a next star position far away
from the previous point on the board, or at least make sure it couldn't be
reached that very same turn by the same player. That just seemed lazy.

------
HHC-Hunter
For anyone who plays video games, any form of randomization is often a bad
thing

~~~
CM30
Depends on the game.

In competitive multiplayer games, then sure, randomness is almost always
disliked, and any form of luck mechanics are usually loathed by the fanbase.
See for example how unpopular tripping was in Smash Bros Brawl, or how items
tend not to be enabled in tournament play.

On the other hand, less competitive multiplayer games and single players can
have randomness work well. Few complain about randomly generated levels in
single player games (at least on a 'this is unpredictable' level, roguelikes
are basically entirely random, many sandbox games have random systems of
events that could happen at any time and party games tend to be heavily based
on random mechanics overall.

~~~
gameswithgo
PUBG and Fortnite are the most popular competitive games ever? and randomness
is paramount in both.

~~~
kakarot
Let's be more specific. The concept in both games is securing equipment which
can aid you. Randomness only applies to your drop line and loot dispersal.

After you get your gear, randomness is no longer in play other than the
circles of death. A shot to a player's head should _always_ connect. There's
no element of randomness when engaging with another player.

If there was a noticeable random element of accuracy in your weapons, the
community would drop PUBG in a hot second. Fortnite's scene isn't nearly as
competitive so it's possible there is more leeway for random combat, but in
PUBG dependable combat is a MUST.

~~~
jimmaswell
Hip fire bullet spread isn't random?

~~~
kakarot
Bullet spread is present in every modern FPS, with most weapons and not just
in hip fire mode.

Bullet spread as a stratagem isn't random because the idea is that you can
choose: Quick, reactionary hip fire or slow, focused aiming? One guarantees a
hit at the expense of speed, the other guarantees speed at the expensive of
maybe not hitting. But no one using hip fire will be angry that their gun
might have missed, because the system is predictable, non-random and non-
changing. However, if we were talking about a system where sometimes your
aiming is precise and sometimes it isn't, with no clear rules, then your
strategy begins to _depend_ on randomness instead of _interfacing_ with it.

That's why randomness isn't "paramount" to the combat of PUBG. This is why the
game is successful. Bugs nonwithstanding, once a player secures loot they can
form predictable, actionable strategies that do not depend on RNG. If this
wasn't the case, and randomness bled into combat itself, nobody would play the
game.

------
kumarharsh
I misread the title as "How Designer Engineers Luck Into Video Games", and
immediately thought why would they be talking about being lucky when the every
month some report comes out that makes it sound like the whole industry is
burning. Haha.

This actual topic was far more interesting, and that Twitter thread link
posted by CM30 is gold.

