Tuesday 14 November 2017

Game Design: Week 3

There are two major factors that effect the level of perceived competence a player has in any given game, skill and luck. At any point a decision has been made in a game at least one of these concepts is in play and thus the importance of either of these two cannot be understated.

Skill is the ability to do something well, and that is on point with that is refereed to when skill is mentioned in the context of games. Luck in games refers to any time that chance is a factor in the outcome of any action. These two core concepts are in conflict with each other in determining the result of the game. The goal of a game designer is to find a balance of skill and luck that they feel suits the game, while maintaining a degree of balance on the side.

With games that rely solely on skill the victor will always be the better player, this creates more gratification in victory and recognition of hard work because the player has always earned their victory. Where games that require solely on luck and chance pretty much are just totally random and are pointless, you need a minimum level of choice here, but lets just say mostly luck for now, these games can become very suspenseful as many decisions could have any number of potential unknown outcomes, some tend to claim that luck softens the pain of loss because you can deny your personal failure, but speaking for myself I consider winning through luck cheap and would rather have lost due to my own stupidity.

Ultimately how much a game relies on luck or skill is preference or at least preference of your audience, there are merits to both but the most important thing about a game is whether it is fun or not, that is up for the game designer to find out and tune as they go. The resulting game could have a wildly difference skill/luck balance than what was initially intended because it makes it more fun to play.

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