Davide Bisso
Game Design BS (Full Sail)
Probability in games
Most games of today have several elements of probability
incorporated into their base mechanics. We’ve all heard about or played World
of Warcraft, Texas Hold’em and the classic Pac Man right? Although, completely
different in genres and motives, each one of these games has their unique
probabilistic mechanics or “random events” integrated throughout its gameplay.
Some, without a doubt more advanced than others but nonetheless still using the
same laws of probability.
Lets take Pac Man for example. When you first start playing
this game, you’ll most likely feel as if the ghosts are on a relentless pursuit
to get you. You franticly eat away at the dots trying to completely avoid each
colored wraith, but as you progress you find this to become more difficult. This
may leave you wondering, does the game have a patter or is the chase at random?
Thanks to probability we’ve figured out that the ghosts aren’t actually
programmed to chase you. If they were,
the game would be impossible. Instead, each one has different patterns: Only
the red ghost (Blinky) is programmed to go after you. The pink and blue ones
(Pinky and Inky) only want to position themselves at a specific place relative
to you, and the orange one (Clyde) just moves around randomly.
This leaves us
with a basic understanding for how probability works with many of the golden
age games (1970-1980) but personally, I feel that there’s much more to
probability in games than the above example. Lets take a look at card games and
rolling dice for the next portion. Typically you’ll find these two utensils
mixed into Casino games like Hold’em, slots, craps and so on. Your main
priority when playing these games is to be wary of the “gamblers fallacy” but
in order to understand this fallacy you must have knowledge of independent and
related events. So what are independent
and related events?
Independent
Events: The chance of
each event occurring does not depend in any way on what happened in the other
event. For example, rolling a six-sided die (event #1) and then rolling it
again (event #2) are independent events. The first and second rolls are not
related in any way. The number you rolled in event #1 has absolutely zero
influence on event #2.
Related
Events: the chance of
each event happening is related in some way to the other event. For example,
drawing a card from a poker deck (event #1) and then drawing a second card from
the same deck (event #2). The chance of drawing a King on event #2 is affected
by event #1—if you drew a King on event #1, then there’s a smaller chance of
getting one in event #2 because there are less Kings remaining in the deck.
As you can see we
have a pattern. “The Gamblers Fallacy” is nothing but someone confusing
independent and related events. DON’T FALL FOR THE TRAPS!
Now, because not
all game designer work with cards and dice, we must also take the time to
figure out how probability works with digital games. In digital games, random
numbers generators aren’t necessarily random. They use a “seed number” which is
a number used to initialize a pseudorandom number generator. This PRNG is an
algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers that approximates the properties
of random numbers. This can get pretty complex, especially when working with
big games, as you will start to notice patterns (patters lead to
boredom, which = people quitting your game).
What we conclude
from this article is that probability has many key factors in board, card and
digital games. As games and technology rapidly evolve, we must use our
knowledge to create new immersive games.
Thank you for
reading.
Reference:
Omey,
E. “A simple game to derive probability”. EBSCOHOST.com. N/A. 9/23/2013.http://web.ebscohost.com.oclc.fullsail.edu:81/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=a43c2f53-37a5-4f4b-9eab-a29a4b76da5f%40sessionmgr10&hid=18
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