RANDOM AND LUCK OF GAME
Does the god throw dice? Luck exists in every place, everywhere in our life, from live to die. When we born, we can’t decide who will be our parents, how wealthy the family is, how tall we will be, handsome or not, etc. It’s definitely unfair that a few people already stand at the finish line, which most people spend their whole life hard working to get to, just because they have a good luck to be born in a good family.
In “Man, Games, and Play”, Roger Caillois talked about how the human society fight toward the unfair arrangement of social status, which the political system gradually switched to election system from System of enfeoffment or hereditary. He also mentioned that in recent centuries, people are addicted to the sudden success bring from the luck-based game, like gamble. These kinds of games are fair for everyone, with same possibility of win a huge price with just using relatively few costs.
It’s true that there are attracted elements in a completely random, the feeling of doing nothing, just throw the dice, and let the result being decided by lady luck. The unknown and unpredicted outcome may suddenly change the situation of the game, and make the loser win, winner lose. Although we may want to experience the excited feeling of luck, when we play games, we also want to win. If the game is too much influenced by luck elements, players may feel annoyed instead.
By randomness, I mean "information that is included in the state of the game and should not be predicted". By design, the process of generating random information should be something that humans can never fathom. Classic examples of random systems are dice rolls, shuffling cards, or random number generators.
Strictly speaking, the roll of a die is not really "random." It simply follows the laws of physics, and if the computer has information about how it was thrown, it can predict the number of throws. And we use dice because humans can't make such predictions. In fact, when dice are incorporated into game design, it is assumed that no one can, or even will, try to predict the outcome of a roll.
Backgammon is a game with long history, which is played by throwing the dice. The rule is very simple, each round each player throw dice, you can choose either move one piece for steps equal to the sum of dices, or move two pieces, each of them for steps shown on one of the dices. And if you get two same dices, the result will be doubled. As the winning condition is depends on how fast you move your pieces, we can see although there are some strategies (how to move the pieces), there are no doubt that the higher number you get from throwing the dice, the easier you may win the game. In this situation, the luck elements have a high power on the game, it almost decides the win or lose. People want to have control and predict about how the game will going on, but in Backgammon, it’s hard to achieve.
Another game also with a long history is Yahtzee. Each player throws five dice, and the total is the highest for the starting player. The others follow the turn-based system of the direction of the clock and throw the dice into the dice cup. After the first roll, the player can choose any number of dice to throw back into the dice cup and roll again. Players can choose to throw any number of dice back into the dice cup and roll again, including the first one, and score after the last roll. Although the game is also based on throwing dices, but after getting the result of dices, players have a huge variety of possible decisions, small number of dices doesn’t mean a bad luck. As they have three chances to rethrow the dice, keeping particular dices as the same, there are more chance to get the result the player wants to get. This game works better than Backgammon as it gives players choice, which allow them to have more power and control on the game.
When we look at how recent games deal with the luck, Las Vegas is a very good example. In this game, each player throws dices for one time each round, and choose which “casino” they are going to put the dices in. At the end of the game, the players who have first and second highest amount of dices in each casino can get the first and second prize in it, and after three rounds, the player with the highest money win the game. The game is balanced by having six casinos with the prize from high to low, but the first prize in the last casino might also be worth to throw a “1”. For example, there are three casinos, which have prizes “5000,5000”, “5000 3000”, and “6000 1000”, in this situation, getting the first prize in the last casino is more valuable than going to other, this makes all situation of dices meaningful, there aren’t a “best choice”. The game also has other mechanics like extra events in casino 1,2,3 and if several players have same amount of dices in one casino, all of them won’t be considered to win the prize. In this situation, luck is still the main element in the game, but player also have things to do to decrease the loss of getting unwanted dice.
We can see as time pass, although luck elements in game are still the main elements when the game are aiming to enforce the unpredicted and random, there are other elements to balance power of luck and give players more choices. We love the feeling of sudden win brings by our good luck, but at the same time we also don’t want to feel hopeless and can do nothing when we have a bad luck.