Choice or Chance

I designed two games this month, one I considered as a total failure and the other was well received by most of the play-testers. It did not take me much time to figure out why, and I decided to share my experiences below.

Paper Scissor Stone Hopscotch (2 players)

1. Set up the above court on the ground.

2. Two players start from the opposite end, jumping in place together. When they land, they play paper-scissor-stone.

3. The winner of the paper-scissor-stone may jump forward in the next round, the other player jump in place.

4. Both players jump in place when they had a tie in paper-scissor-stone in the previous round.

5. Whoever reaches the marked grid wins the game.

Greedy Pirates (3 players)

1. Each player has two private color dice (each dice has 6 faces and each face has different color)
2. There are 20 treasure tokens in the center and two public color dice.
3. The players start the game by rolling their private dice secretly and do not reveal it to the others.
4. The players start their turn one by one.
5. Each turn, the player starts with rolling the public dice, and then he/she can either take treasures from the center pail, or steal from another player
6. the number of treasure a player can steal / take is determined by how many color matches are there between the public and the private dice. (eg. private dice colors are yellow and black, public dice colors are blue and black, there is one match)
7. If the player decided to steal, then he/she can steal (no. of matches + 1) treasure tokens from any player.
8. If the player decided to take, then he/she can take the same amount of tokens as the number of matches.
9. Other players, can challenge the player-in-action. When challenged, the player-in-action will reveal his/her private dice. If he/she is lying, she will give all the tokens to the challenger. If he/she is not lying, the challenger will return all his/her tokens to the center pail.
10. The game ends when one player own 7 tokens.

Both games seem to highly depend on luck. Paper-scissor-stone and dice-rolling are random. Unless properly trained, no one can predict what’s going to come out in the next round.

However, after several rounds of play-testing, the first game, as expected, was not highly rated by the play-testers. They thought the game is purely luck-based. However, the second game, to my surprise, was “fun to play”. Players believe that they are making meaningful choices, despite the fact that the number of tokens they take or steal is based on a random dice rolling.

So why are the two games got different feedback? I believe being able to make meaningful choices is the key reason why people enjoyed the second game more. In the first game, everything is determined by the result of paper-scissor-stone. There is nothing else a player can do but follow instructions. However in the second game, even though each turn starts with a luck-based dice-rolling, the player is able to assess the situation and make choices, which leads to new opportunities and situations.

Providing meaningful choices is essential, as it makes the players feel they are smarter. In addition, when players are free to make choices, they will not blame the game designer if they lose the game. It is their choice, and they screwed it up because of their own mistakes. This point can be further illustrated using a popular mobile game, Flappy Bird.

Flappy Bird adopts a very simple game model — the player makes choices at any moment and his/her choice affect the state of the bird. In this game, each press is a choice, it determines whether the bird will fly up or not. The player makes choices and suffers the consequences. The game is addictive because every time the player makes a mistake, he/she blames himself/herself.

It’s not the game’s fault and I want to try again.

It is frustrating, but also exciting.

As you can see, providing meaningful choices is important in successful game design. Chances, random opportunities, and luck can make the game juicier, however, what makes a game a game is about choices. Granting the player freedom to make decisions and move forward will allow the player to imagine, to analyze and to form his/her own narratives about the game. It will provide the player more than what you designed for.