Randomness in Game Design
You know that moment – when you’ve carefully constructed your engine, built up your forces, prepared to strike that final blow and catapult yourself towards victory. You confidently roll the dice… and they all come up 1’s. No! How is this possible?!? It’s not fair! In a blind rage, you flip the table, scattering meeples and tokens hither and thither as you storm out of the room cursing game designers everywhere.
Ok, so maybe your experience wasn’t quite so dramatic, but we’ve probably all had moments in a game where randomness strikes and ruins our best laid plans. And we’ve probably also had other moments of randomness that were more positive – rolling a pair of sixes when we needed them the most. Top-decking just the card we need to turn the tide in our favor. These moments are fun, exciting, and keep us coming back to our favorite games.
So when is randomness good and when is it bad? Let’s talk about randomness in game design and how to use it for good…or evil (bwahahahahahaha!). Ok, actually just for good.
What does randomness do for a design? Well....
Randomness allows less-skilled players to win sometimes.
Chess is a game in which nothing is random. Pieces simply move the way they move. And chess is a great board game, right? One of the all-time greats, in fact, and still very popular today. However, it’s basically impossible for a novice chess player to beat an experienced player, in part due to chess’s total lack of randomness.
Compare chess to a game that is completely random, like “war” (or “battle”) in which cards are flipped over from two half-decks and the highest card wins. There is no skill at all in this game, and the victory probability is 50%. I don’t find this game very fun – but when my kids were five years old, they loved it! And, most importantly for this topic, they won (somehow seemingly more than half the time…).
Even in a game like Magic: the Gathering that rewards strategic decision-making, randomness plays a role. Sometimes even the best player will simply not draw their mana, and their opponent will win. While it can be frustrating when it happens to you, this feature – not bug – helps broaden Magic’s appeal and, I’d argue, is part of what makes it such a great game.
Having random elements in a game allows the less-skilled player to win sometimes. Maybe they don’t win half the time, but the chance is there, and this is a huge motivation for novice players that will keep them coming back to your game.
Randomness creates exciting moments
Drawing the perfect card, rolling the perfect dice number, spinning the wheel and getting what you need – these moments are exhilarating, creating an emotional thrill that certain gamers crave. And they are all made possible by randomness. Predictability can be nice if you want to have total control over things – but it can also be boring.
Think about a game like Risk (whether you love or hate it, this game has been hugely successful), and imagine what it would be like without dice rolling. Let’s say that armies simply removed one piece each until one army was gone, meaning the bigger army would win every single combat. Would this game still be strategic? I would argue: yes. Would this game still be fun? I would argue: no. Without dice-rolling, and with every combat pre-determined, this game would be drained of its exciting unpredictability. I believe it would not have been nearly as successful as it has been, selling millions of copies and spawning multiple spin-off editions.
There are many “Eurogames” devoid of randomness, and that’s fine. There is a place for games like this. But just because a game contains random elements does not make it bad. In fact, those random elements might be what’s giving those games the emotional appeal that hooks players and keeps them coming back for more.
Randomness makes each game different
When everything in a game has a predetermined outcome, there is often a clear best strategy to follow. It might not be obvious right away, but skilled players will eventually work out what offers the best chances of victory. Excelling in a game like this often becomes a process of learning as much as possible about the most effective strategies. There can still be a lot of depth to the process, especially in responding to the other players and what they’re doing, but often there is a “correct” move and an “incorrect” move.
Again, Chess is a great example of this principle. The best players have memorized hundreds or even thousands of opening moves, strategies, and counter-strategies, and the high-level game is all about maximizing incremental advantages and seeing many moves ahead. This is great for some, but maybe not the most appealing process for every gamer.
By contrast, even something as simple as the process of randomizing the placement of starting tiles in Catan creates a wide variety of outcomes that makes each game feel different and fresh, crucial for replayability.
Randomness can simulate the real world
Let’s talk about reality. Not the kind you see on “reality” TV, but the kind we live everyday. A lot of smart people will tell you that the only things humans can really control, fully, are our own actions, or even our own thoughts. The world has a lot of randomness, but gives us the opportunity to mitigate the effects of randomness through our own thoughts and actions, and thereby determine the course of our life. I think that games should imitate this dynamic. In other words, the rules should include randomness where it would exist in the real world, and then give players control over the thematic aspects they’d have control over in real life.
For instance, if I’m designing a fishing game, what would be random and what would players control? Well, I think players should control where they send their boats and how they move, while catching fish should involve some element of randomness, or probability. (In fact, this is the approach I took for fishing in Cinque Terre). This feels realistic to me. Imagine the inverse – a fishing game in which fish were guaranteed to be caught at certain times and places, but boats moved randomly. That wouldn’t make as much sense, or intuitively feel as much like fishing.
When you’re deciding where to include random elements, consider your theme, and where randomness would occur in real life – and where a player would have control or choice.
Next time you’re playing a game, consider where and why the randomness occurs, and what it does for gameplay. I know that a lot of gamers consider randomness to be some sort of evil, but I’d posit that for many games, it’s at least a necessary evil that keeps things fresh and engaging – as long as it doesn’t feel too arbitrary. Finding that balance is what great game design is all about.
Until next time, may you randomly experience something that brings you joy.