Games which ask you to organise chaos

On Peggle, here:

It just seems pretty random to me, where is the skill?

― ledge, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 22:56 Bookmark

Well, it is pretty random. But it's not completely random, you can get better with practice. And it's not really clear where your skill stops and the randomness starts - you can be pretty good and still have it go painfully wrong (or be pretty bad and have it go amazingly right), and for some reason that makes it stupidly addictive. I think this is a very specific category of games, there's one on the iphone too called sneezies, where you're basically setting up initial conditions and hoping for a good outcome from a semi-chaotic system. I think a lot of solitaire card games are like this too, except then it's the initial conditions which are randomly fixed, and the game lies in trying to engineer a good outcome. In all of them, the challenge comes from the urge to figure out how much of the result was due to the random aspect and how much was due to your input (so that you can then refine that input). And I think the addictiveness lies in the fact that actually, it's impossible to completely work out where the dividing line is, but you CAN feel like you're getting closer and closer to it. So you carry on wanting one more go.

― JimD, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 23:10 Bookmark

I think pinball tables sit in this category too. Pachinko, bagatelle, even ten pin bowling maybe? And I'm sure there must be more examples.

Course, you could argue that thousands of games include aspects of this - big gunfights in GTA games?

http://www.donkeystream.com/Screenshots/dh/01542.jpg

pretty much all the tetris-style falling block games?

Yeah, I thought about those just now while playing hexic on facebook, but...I dunno, they feel fundamentally different somehow. The range of randomness in the inputs is pretty limited, compared to bouncing balls or a shuffled pack of cards. So the balance tips far enough in favour of skill to change the nature of play. In a tetris-alike, I usually know when I've fucked up, and when I've been fucked over. In the games I'm thinking of, that distinction is maybe less clear.

(Although maybe that distinction only comes with familiarity. When I was new to tetris, did it feel more random? When I had less coping strategies, I presumably had more "oh come on, there was nothing I could do to stop that!" moments. So maybe the games I'm trying to categorise are ones where that uncertainty never fades, even with lots of practice?)

When I think of organised chaos I tend to think of Dwarf Fortress...but maybe that is in a large part down to the bewildering interface. Still genius though.

Chaos is the key word here - peggle and pinball are technically chaotic, and tetris isn't. [inasmuch as a computer system can ever be chaotic, obviously peggle or computer pinball does not have the same level of unpredictability as real life pinball.]

But with pinball - and tennis, football, whatever - one can learn to get enough control to overcome the chaos. I just don't get that feeling with peggle, the control over input is too limited and the possible outputs are too innumerable and unpredicatable.

katamari

Messing with the Man level on Vice City

mission, rather

I always felt this way about Football Manager-- you can't learn the numbers, or how they work, or when they're important-- the best you can do is try and fail as little as possible within that giant swirling maelstrom of numbers.

the randomness in gta is one of its finer points for me

There are so many variables changing around you in the game that gun fights are never identical and so it seemingly recreates the unexpectedness of life.

um arent all games attempts to impose order on randomness. i really dont get this thread

this seems like games where a very small number of inputs can impose order, and even then they must be very finely tuned/timed. but shit can still go horribly, horribly wrong. which is why they are addictive

um arent all games attempts to impose order on randomness. i really dont get this thread

Knowing what was coming next was key to becoming successful with a lot of the older games, bubble bobble for instance. i knew when i was going to get speed up and rapid fire if i'd played through the levels correctly.

i guess just agreeing with you a bit there.

i was thinking of katamari, but does it even randomize the object placement? it's been awhile but i thought you could just learn the level layouts.

tetris/dr. mario/etc. may only have a certain amount of randomness as far as which piece comes next, but the longer you play the greater the chance is that you'll have weird formations of blocks piling up, and that you won't have as much control or familiarity with the situation.

oh i was just thinking 'chaos' within the world of the game, like how in katamari the purpose is to collect things that have been scattered all around and bring them into one place ... i wasn't thinking literal chaos/randomness

i seem to remember a mode on 64 teris?? where it would start you off with a randomly almost-full well. assuming that piece generation was still semi-random (think it was), it seems to fit what JimD is talking about.

okay i suppose something like chess doesnt fit this where instead of reacting to a random element yr intial conditions are tested against the (presumably) non-random actions of yr opponenet

im thinking tho that its actually a lot more rare to have games with little or no random element than games that do - its a pretty simple mechanic for giving games depth

yeah, i'd say go and chess do not fit in this thread

i guess there's randomness seeded from random, and then there's randomness seeded from previous player outcomes. and then there's scripted randomness.

thats a good way to put it - some of my trouble w/this comes from the fact that randomness isnt a perfect synonym for chaos