You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, nor can you define what it is or what it means without feeling a little stupid. Once ruled by gods, then by reason and today by administrations of Lottery and strings of ones and zeros, the lucky it carries with us almost as much as the rest of the ethereal things that in one way or another mark our day to day.
The luckywhether or not you believe in it when calling it by its name or classifying it as chanceis part of our lives from the time we get up to the time we go to bed, from the coffee you spill in the morning to the Christmas lottery jackpot that it’s up to your cousin from the village. The video gameOf course, they were not going to be less.
what is luck
If that’s okay with you, we’re going to feel a little stupid. Let’s try define luck with something that goes beyond vomiting what it puts in the RAE: “chain of events, considered fortuitous or casual”. What is luck and why do we give importance to something that, whether you like it or not, happens or doesn’t happen.
Although from a philosophical point of view we could throw rivers of ink on its existence, meaning and role in our lives, when trying to ground the idea of luck in play the definition is usually much more concise and satisfactory: it is opposite of skill.
Whether it be with prehistoric games based on carved bones, with board games in which train wagons are placed on a board, or with video games that put our hand-eye relationship to the test, luck is always there unless the ability has completely gobbled it up.
In other words, the more likely you are to win against someone who doesn’t know the game, more skill and less luck. If my chances of flipping a coin are 50%, luck rules the game. If I have to know how to move the pieces around the board and the opponent hasn’t touched a pawn in his life, my chances can grow to over 90%.
It is said of chess that, due to its complexity, it is the only game without luck, but even there it would be necessary to nitpick to justify its disappearance. In the end, not everything depends on the game, it also depends on the player. Especially from the opponent and his memory, ability or ability to anticipate his movements. fortuitous and random events that, despite the ability, are beyond our control.
Why do we play with luck?
With the rise of competitive gaming, luck in video games has been put in the crosshairs of those who don’t want to put your skill in the hands of fortune. Do you hear the fights for the blue shell of Mario Kart? Well, add prizes of several zeros to finish heating the atmosphere.
However, as in almost everything ludic, luck is a fundamental part of why we like video games. Even for those who still think that skill marks each of their steps in a virtual world, luck is what separates them from playing an eternal and boring game of chess.
- Ego: Surely that sounds like “If I win, I win because of my ability, and if I lose, I have had bad luck.”. Luck can give you or take away a victory, but it also serves as an excuse for an ego boost capable of avoiding frustration.
- More players: If all games were based solely on skill without regard to luck, the number of players who could continue to join the game as beginners would be fewer and fewer, and the chance of finding someone to play with would eventually disappear. .
- Motivation: The phrase “this time is the good one” is another of the emotional pushes that invites us to continue playing despite the fact that our ability is less than required. Enjoy a lucky break that accommodates a victory, for example with that boss not making the attack that always kills you.
- Variety: Finally, there is the possibility of experiencing a different situation. Fortuitous or casual, remember? If everything goes as planned, the game ends up being more of a puzzle than an exciting experience.
The false algorithm of luck
Despite the good reasons that lead designers to include a luck component in their games, the idea remains double-edged weapon that every second invites us to rethink what we know about it and how we execute it.
We start from the assumption that, as we stated at the beginning, luck is not something that can be easily measured, and that even in those games where skill prevails, there is always something of that ethereal fortune in the air. How do you transfer that coincidence to something as precise as mathematics?
The key is that you can’t do it. What was once the will of the gods is now part of a programmer’s code, and no, it’s not completely random. You must cause the generation of a number that serves as an excuse to simulate that luck that marks a dice.
Although the function is already automated in certain languages, in others it requires initializing that generation by grabbing another number that serves as the base for the formula, which is usually done starting from a specific value such as the millisecond of the current time.
If we had a way to ensure that the base number being used is always the same, the calculations would always give us the same number.”random”. In other words, it is neither luck nor random, but looks a lot like him.
The enormous challenge of simulating luck
With the solution of how to generate luck in the hands of the designer, the next challenge is to make it more fun than frustrating. Play, even if it’s not exactly to honor his name, bring luck.
The curious thing about luck in a video game is that too lucky seems unreal, and very little luck causes a similar feeling. Imagine that you are facing an XCOM shot where luck dictates that you have a 90% chance of hitting the next shot.
If we accept luck, the chances of that shot missing are there and, although unlikely, you’ll miss it three times in a row as well. Think about what you would do next if that happened.
Video game designers soon learned that offering a 33% chance is not the same as making luck smile on you one in three times. It is the reason why the concept was introduced pity timer. Something like a pity counter.
In order to avoid the frustration of opening 40 Hearthstone packs without getting anything good, the 40 you open will have a X% chance of dropping a legendary card, but if you haven’t received any after 40, the game automatically change your luck to force the appearance.
The idea is very close to Skinner’s positive reinforcement that we mentioned years ago when talking about the psychology behind loot boxes. Faced with random stimuli that produce a response, the brain secretes dopamine in all attempts, so the confidence in obtaining that luck is as powerful as luck itself.
manipulation of luck
With the explosion of mobile gaming and free-to-play models of games like Candy Crushbegan to spread like wildfire the theory of a luck manipulation of the game which, as we have just seen, is not particularly far-fetched either.
The situation caused several creators of games with luck by flag from that moment such as Peggle and Puzzle Quest, came out to throw numbers and statements that tried to clarify the situation and deny the accusations. Those of the latter were especially funny:
“I can assure you that artificial intelligence does not cheat or know which gems are going to drop. I wrote the AI myself, so I’m 100% sure about it.
Put another way: a) I’m a programmer, so I’m basically lazy.
b) Writing an AI that does tricks, anticipates events, and performs multiple evaluations is a lot more work than creating an AI that simply evaluates what’s there.
c) If I wanted to make the game more difficult I would have done it the VAGU way and just given them more life points.”
The theory of manipulation is there, of course, but even in games of Nintendoin which luck is paramount -because of what we mentioned about variety, fun and making sure that the whole family can play together without skill preventing it-, there is a logic behind it.
This is how the director and producer of Mario Kart by ensuring that, although the big N wanted the experience to be the same for everyone until the end, the best player is the one who will continue to have the best chance of winning.
In other words, that luck is there, although sometimes we like it more than others, and it is so necessary and satisfactory in today’s video games as it was thousands of years ago between bone-sculpted dice.
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