Players keep complaining about the random number generators being “unfair” in games that involve randomness, so game developers have started tweaking the generators to behave according to gambler’s fallacy. Now results that are adverse to the player increase the chance of beneficent future results. Lantz notes that making games systems to conform to common fallacies might not be that good an idea, since games could also be used as great teaching devices on how all sorts of complex systems really work. Of course the reasoning is a bit different when your bottom line depends on players not canceling their subscriptions when they think they are being shafted by unfair game code.
Messing with the random number generator feels unpleasant, both making the game less real and more able to keep the player in a dull trance without unexpected novelty. On the other hand you could say that platform games where the main character can move back and forth in air after jumping and do a double jump off thin air teach the players a wrong model of physics, but these features seem to generally make platform games more fun. So why would one be bad and the other not? One difference is that the physically improbable jumping capabilities give the players more options, while the gambler’s fallacy rng just affects events independent of player actions. Another idea is that probability feels like a more fundamental aspect of a reality than how the laws of physics work.
This other article called Truth in Game Design by Scott Brodie linked from the comments of the first one is also interesting.
Frank Lantz: The Truth in Game Design
Players keep complaining about the random number generators being “unfair” in games that involve randomness, so game developers have started tweaking the generators to behave according to gambler’s fallacy. Now results that are adverse to the player increase the chance of beneficent future results. Lantz notes that making games systems to conform to common fallacies might not be that good an idea, since games could also be used as great teaching devices on how all sorts of complex systems really work. Of course the reasoning is a bit different when your bottom line depends on players not canceling their subscriptions when they think they are being shafted by unfair game code.
Messing with the random number generator feels unpleasant, both making the game less real and more able to keep the player in a dull trance without unexpected novelty. On the other hand you could say that platform games where the main character can move back and forth in air after jumping and do a double jump off thin air teach the players a wrong model of physics, but these features seem to generally make platform games more fun. So why would one be bad and the other not? One difference is that the physically improbable jumping capabilities give the players more options, while the gambler’s fallacy rng just affects events independent of player actions. Another idea is that probability feels like a more fundamental aspect of a reality than how the laws of physics work.
This other article called Truth in Game Design by Scott Brodie linked from the comments of the first one is also interesting.