Why Must Games Be Fair?
Chess is inherently unfair and way more fun than a lot of games, especially the linear, hand-holding, pretty light and splashy water stuff being made by AAA companies at the moment.
I think that "fair" is a word that is thrown around pretty loosely. People tend to think of things as unfair if they seem exceedingly difficult or unbalanced against them, whereas a game being too easy (for whatever reason) would probably be categorized as poorly made rather than specifically unfair.
My opinion is that games need to be fair to the extent that a player can understand and influence the aspects of a game that relate to their success. We've all played games in which our shots often miss despite having a high probability-to-hit, or in which the computer routinely strings together a statistically improbable number of successes at something or another. A case in point is Magic: Duel of the Plainswalkers, in which the computer seems to be extremely lucky at drawing cards, and the player often unlucky, no matter how his or her deck is structured. It's not fun to lose over and over again when there's little that you can do to change the odds in your favor.
Players tend to be more forgiving of extreme difficulty in optional encounters and plot elements which might otherwise be considered unfair. In FF7, you can't stop Aeris from dying, regardless of whether or not you develop her a lot. So while a player might lose a pillar of their party, and all the time spent improving her, because it's a critical story element most people move past it without much mention of unfairness. Similarly, Ruby and Emerald weapons are meant to be incredibly challenging as an optional goal, and players can specifically prepare their characters or adjust their tactics to rise to the challenge of an overpowered enemy.
My opinion is that games need to be fair to the extent that a player can understand and influence the aspects of a game that relate to their success. We've all played games in which our shots often miss despite having a high probability-to-hit, or in which the computer routinely strings together a statistically improbable number of successes at something or another. A case in point is Magic: Duel of the Plainswalkers, in which the computer seems to be extremely lucky at drawing cards, and the player often unlucky, no matter how his or her deck is structured. It's not fun to lose over and over again when there's little that you can do to change the odds in your favor.
Players tend to be more forgiving of extreme difficulty in optional encounters and plot elements which might otherwise be considered unfair. In FF7, you can't stop Aeris from dying, regardless of whether or not you develop her a lot. So while a player might lose a pillar of their party, and all the time spent improving her, because it's a critical story element most people move past it without much mention of unfairness. Similarly, Ruby and Emerald weapons are meant to be incredibly challenging as an optional goal, and players can specifically prepare their characters or adjust their tactics to rise to the challenge of an overpowered enemy.
What basic aspect do games possess which cause us to expect them to be fair?
One possibility is the belief that the rules were formed by consensus and the corollary that the agreement to play entails an agreement to play by the rules. That might be too rational, but diving into cognitive explanations seems to me to be somewhat premature, even though it might explain why people gamble even though the probabilities of losing games of chance are greater than the probabilities of winning. People keep playing as long as the possibility of winning exists. Removing fairness removes that possibility and people stop playing to the extent they are aware that the game is rigged.
One possibility is the belief that the rules were formed by consensus and the corollary that the agreement to play entails an agreement to play by the rules. That might be too rational, but diving into cognitive explanations seems to me to be somewhat premature, even though it might explain why people gamble even though the probabilities of losing games of chance are greater than the probabilities of winning. People keep playing as long as the possibility of winning exists. Removing fairness removes that possibility and people stop playing to the extent they are aware that the game is rigged.
Quote:Original post by LessBread
What basic aspect do games possess which cause us to expect them to be fair?
One possibility is the belief that the rules were formed by consensus and the corollary that the agreement to play entails an agreement to play by the rules. That might be too rational, but diving into cognitive explanations seems to me to be somewhat premature, even though it might explain why people gamble even though the probabilities of losing games of chance are greater than the probabilities of winning. People keep playing as long as the possibility of winning exists. Removing fairness removes that possibility and people stop playing to the extent they are aware that the game is rigged.
Maybe people expect games to be fair because losing through no fault of your own, with no remedy in improving skills or planning more carefully, isn't fun. Real life has a mundanity to it compared with video games, and many elements beyond one's control which may be perceived as unfair. But a video game allows for unrealistic fantasies to be enjoyed; losing excessively for arbitrary reasons detracts from that fantasy and makes the game resemble unpleasant conditions of real life more closely. Gambling may be a special case, perhaps because the reward of winning is so great that it fundamentally would alter real life to be significantly more fantasy-like. But video games generally don't have a real life reward-- they're purely for entertainment.
I don't want to get superpowers in a game just to have them be rendered irrelevant to an opaque probability engine any more than I want to cede aspects of my autonomy to my boss at work in real life. The major difference is that the game can be designed to be satisfying, while my real life is not so easily manipulated.
Quote:Original post by LessBreadThis is a good observation. I work in a casino, chiefly on a dice table, and watching craps players win and lose money with a variety of strategies and attitudes is very edifying. Yesterday some guy threw his last seventeen dollars' worth of chips into a lady's face after accusing her of delaying the roll long enough for the dice to "cool off". Other players might lose a few thousand dollars, then buy back in just so they have enough to tip the dealers before they go home broke. Very few quit while they're ahead, because the added gambling power of their profits allows them to make bigger, more thrilling wagers, and why would you leave when it's getting better? But when that seven rolls and all their bets get wiped out, they're dejected.
people gamble even though the probabilities of losing games of chance are greater than the probabilities of winning. People keep playing as long as the possibility of winning exists.
Dwarf Fortress has a (larval) roguelike mode where you occupy the world as a single adventurer, and you always have the opportunity to retire him. You just cede control, make him an NPC and start a new game with someone else. I've never done it, myself, since declaring victory on my own terms seems a lot like surrendering. So instead I just gear up and head for the nearest enemy city and see what kind of damage I can do before they bring me down.
So can a game be presented as unfair and offer players the chance to take their high score and go home? Many modern gameshows center around this dilemma: Take the $200, or curtain number two? Go on the the next question and double your money, or walk away with what you have? Deal or no deal?
Maybe I have a career as a badass mercenary, making stacks of money and killing people and driving a tank and filling contracts all over the place. I've built my reputation up in an industry where few people live for more than a couple jobs. Even with all my elite training and assets and satellite support, all it'll take is one lucky headshot to end my streak. Better performance leads to better jobs leads to fatter paychecks leads to more risks. Will my intel be wrong? Will my third-party extraction ditch me? Will a competitor set me up? Which job is the last job?
And what does the "Game Over" screen look like? Do you get a little epilogue like in Pirates!, telling you where you retired and how many Bentleys you drove? Do you get to call up that character on your next play through and ask for advice and favors? Does the awesome company he built remain in the game world, competing with your next avatar for jobs? If the player makes the safe move and quits an unfair game before his inevitable defeat, can that be made to feel like anything other than quitting?
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef CarnageQuote:Original post by LessBreadThis is a good observation. I work in a casino, chiefly on a dice table, and watching craps players win and lose money with a variety of strategies and attitudes is very edifying. Yesterday some guy threw his last seventeen dollars' worth of chips into a lady's face after accusing her of delaying the roll long enough for the dice to "cool off". Other players might lose a few thousand dollars, then buy back in just so they have enough to tip the dealers before they go home broke. Very few quit while they're ahead, because the added gambling power of their profits allows them to make bigger, more thrilling wagers, and why would you leave when it's getting better? But when that seven rolls and all their bets get wiped out, they're dejected.
people gamble even though the probabilities of losing games of chance are greater than the probabilities of winning. People keep playing as long as the possibility of winning exists.
I was thinking of craps when I wrote that. Doesn't that just beat all? [grin]
Sid Meier gave a short lecture on this.
In the first civilization, combat worked off a ratio system. If you had a strength of 1 going against an opponent of strength 4, you'd have a 1 in 4 chance to do damage.
This seems fair right? It works both ways after all. And players were perfectly happy when they occasionally won a 1v4 battle (after all, the player is super amazing, and his divine karma and green friendly way of life resulted in the 1v4 victory). However, when players lost a battle in which they were the 4, and the computer was the 1, they'd write Sid all sorts of nasty letters and tell him they had proof the game was cheating, loading the dice and plotting against them.
Obviously this doesn't make sense, but yet thousands of players felt this way. Its because the player's sense of 'fair' was that they were the bigger number, and they were suppose to win.
So, Sid made a rule where if the ratio got too high, you'd automatically win. He then asked players if they would be ok losing a 2v1 from time to time. They responded with yes, that would be fair. The problem is, when they lost a 20 v 10 battle, they'd again write Sid nasty letters claiming the PC was cheating.
What Sid concluded was that the idea of fair came from perception and not just rules. The ratio system didn't 'feel' right, so he was forced to begin to include rules for raw strength differences. This gave his users the perception that the game was treating them fairly, which they didn't have when the ratio system was in place.
Unfortunately, this doesn't give any concrete rules for creating fairness in games. But, its certainly worth keeping in mind as you make your game.
In the first civilization, combat worked off a ratio system. If you had a strength of 1 going against an opponent of strength 4, you'd have a 1 in 4 chance to do damage.
This seems fair right? It works both ways after all. And players were perfectly happy when they occasionally won a 1v4 battle (after all, the player is super amazing, and his divine karma and green friendly way of life resulted in the 1v4 victory). However, when players lost a battle in which they were the 4, and the computer was the 1, they'd write Sid all sorts of nasty letters and tell him they had proof the game was cheating, loading the dice and plotting against them.
Obviously this doesn't make sense, but yet thousands of players felt this way. Its because the player's sense of 'fair' was that they were the bigger number, and they were suppose to win.
So, Sid made a rule where if the ratio got too high, you'd automatically win. He then asked players if they would be ok losing a 2v1 from time to time. They responded with yes, that would be fair. The problem is, when they lost a 20 v 10 battle, they'd again write Sid nasty letters claiming the PC was cheating.
What Sid concluded was that the idea of fair came from perception and not just rules. The ratio system didn't 'feel' right, so he was forced to begin to include rules for raw strength differences. This gave his users the perception that the game was treating them fairly, which they didn't have when the ratio system was in place.
Unfortunately, this doesn't give any concrete rules for creating fairness in games. But, its certainly worth keeping in mind as you make your game.
Quote:Original post by mrchrismnh
Chess is inherently unfair and way more fun than a lot of games, especially the linear, hand-holding, pretty light and splashy water stuff being made by AAA companies at the moment.
What exactly is 'unfair' about chess? Each player starts with the same number of pieces, bound by the same rules, and move in the same way. One player gets the advantage of moving first and defining the initial battle, the opposing player gets the advantage of reacting to the first move and changing their method of attack based on the opening move.
Each player has the exact same game data set open to them, and nothing is hidden.
Where exactly is the 'unfair' bit of the game?
Within the context of perfect game, without the 40 move rule, that is having 40 consecutive moves without pawn move or capture, chess ends with the white player winning.
There are no fair games except for those that end in a draw, within the context of perfect play, like tic-tac-toe or checkers. Stalemate condition is not consider fair because the game is unresolved.
There are no fair games except for those that end in a draw, within the context of perfect play, like tic-tac-toe or checkers. Stalemate condition is not consider fair because the game is unresolved.
I'm trying to work out how a single player game could be 'unfair' in any other respect than simply being impossible to beat? If a game is difficult, it's difficult - that includes if the odds are massively stacked against you. In any case though, this is a player versus the game scenario and the concept of 'fair' doesn't really come into it unless you're overly worried about things like giving CPU controlled characters a marked advantage in aspects such as health or ability to deal damage (but even so, why must one try to create a level playing field with non-player characters?)
In a player versus player environment, well things are then very different. Unless it's a core emphasis of the game, giving one player a distinct advantage over any other player is usually on obvious case of bad game design, since in reality you'd almost always want to maintain a relatively level playing field.
In a player versus player environment, well things are then very different. Unless it's a core emphasis of the game, giving one player a distinct advantage over any other player is usually on obvious case of bad game design, since in reality you'd almost always want to maintain a relatively level playing field.
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