PBM formulae From: bruno@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Bruno Wolff III) Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1993 20:57:43 +0000 This article contains comments relating to some of the PBM formulae discussion going on. First off we should start by agreeing on what the rules and formulae for a game are. When I think of a game, I think of it being defined by its rules. I don't really see a good alternative definition to the rules of a game being other than that which defines the game. Formulae are just specific rules given in a mathematical notation. What some other people are calling rules should be called published rules or rules included in the rulebook. These are the information provided formally (as opposed to that obtained from experience or other players) to players of the game. They may include some, all, or none of that actual rules to the game. They may also include false information about the game (this is actually fairly common with video games). In the past most games people played provided the full rules of the game to the players. This was necessary since most games were designed to be played without a moderator. Now that computers are relatively cheap, there are a lot of games where a computer is being used to moderate a game. This makes it easy to have games where the players don't know all of the rules to the game they are playing. The question we have been discussing is "Can hiding some rules to a game make a game better in general?". My position is that in the majority of cases hidden rules do not help a game. Reasons I prefer to know all of the rules to a game include: I can learn to play a game well in less real time if I know what the rules are before playing the game, than if I have to play the game multiple times to learn what the rules are. Also learning to play well through experience is generally a lot more frustrating than learning by study. I can better judge whether or not a game is worth playing if I know what all of the rules are. I don't believe that it ever hurts a well designed game to reveal the rules. People who don't want to know the rules can ignore them. Experienced players are going to know the rules anyway, so trying to hide them isn't going to work in the long run. If knowing the rules allows people to take advantage of things they shouldn't, I consider the game to have a flawed design. Relating to this a point has been made that new players who can't make use of the formulae of a game are at a disadvantage with respect to those who can. My feeling is that is not an inequity that needs to be corrected. These players will just be forced to learn the game through experience and advice from other people. If this isn't good enough for them, then perhaps they should be playing other games or with other people who have similar ability. While having games model aspects of reality can provide an interesting setting, I think there is a problem with telling people that they should play the game like real life and try to enforce this by not telling the players the rules. even though the game is different from real life. If you want people to do things like they would in real life this should be encouraged through the design of the game, not through hiding rules. Games of discovery will have more replay value if instead of trying to discover what the rules of a game are, you try to discover things while playing a particular instance of a game. The game may use random initial setup, for instance, to keep the game interesting over a number of plays. Discovering a hidden rule can only happen once, so that games relying on the discovery of hidden rules for fun will have a limited replay value. Referenced By Up