Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)

From: bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu (Bruno Wolff III)

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1993 21:04:16 +0000

From article <srt.741025650@aerospace.aero.org>, by srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner):
] rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:
]>Ah, no.  In real life, the leader will be fairly sure what the outcome
]>will be, under a given set of circumstances (e.g. if he knows his own
]>troops well, knows what the opposition is like, and knows the conditions
]>he will be fighting under).  The uncertainty in real life generally
]>comes from things like not knowing the capability of one's enemy, or
]>what he is going to do next.
]
] Nonsense.  If this were all that real life involved, sports (for
] example) would be utterly predictable.  The fact is, even knowing
] exactly the composition of a team, having watched them for an entire
] regular season, it is still difficult to accurately predict what the
] outcome of a playoff game will be.  The best handicappers in the world
] (the Las Vegas sports lines) add a 10% vigorish to sports betting for
] precisely this reason.

This happens because in order to know the results of a sport events you
have to know a lot more than how good or healty the players are. Instead
models of this kind of event usually have random outputs for parts of the
game. For instance play X may have a 50% chance of making a basket from
9 meters away. To know in a particular case whether this player will or
won't make a shot is not something we will ever be able to do.

]
] There aren't any "formulas" in real life, and there shouldn't be in
] games.  The only reason that (world simulation) games as we know them
] have the resolution methods explicit is because previous to the advent
] of the computer, there wasn't any reasonable way to implement an
] impartial third-person judge.  And in fact, where it has been
] economically reasonable to do so (i.e., in military training games),
] third-party judges have always been used, and the participants have
] not been provided with the "formulas".
]
] Giving the participants resolution formulas doesn't model anything in
] the real world nor anything that is particularly interesting to the
] majority of game players.

There are formulae in real life, its just that they often aren't practical
to use.
A lot of poor game designs have been done in the past that way. We are playing
the GAME not the real world. There are lots of historical games that give
roughly historical results when played historically, but give totally
unrealistic results when played ahistorically.
Publishing the full rules (including formulae) provide two good results.
You don't lose games because you aren't taking advantage of things that
would not be obvious to do based on real world experience. And the author
gets to find out if his rules are screwed up, when he sees people taking
advantage of them in ways he didn't intend. So that the game can be improved.
]
]>Making the formulas unavailable produces the result that even the
]>most well informed commander will have only vague guesses to base his
]>decisions on, and unless one has a lot of experience in the game...
]
] What you're saying is that in a game that doesn't give you exact
] formulas, you have to have experience to be expert.  Or you can try to
] learn at the foot of someone who has that experience.  Sounds just
] like real life to me.  These types of games aren't meant to be math
] puzzles; they're meant to be experience-exploration-development
] puzzles.

Publishing formulae allow you to get good at the game without replaying the
game a zillion times to find stuff out. Publishing formulae does not prevent
experience-exploration-development. Exploration and development should not
depend on hidden rules. Experience can be gained by studying the rules
rather than just playing the game. This can save time and will generate
elevate the level of game play.
]
] I've only heard two reasonable arguments for formulas so far.  The
] first is that they prevent people from suffering a catastrophic loss
] because they misunderstood the game documentation.  The second is that
] having hidden game mechanisms favors people with experience in the
] game and may make the game unplayable for newbies.
]

Don't forget seeing the formulae before playing the game can help you avoid
turkey games.

] In both cases, publishing the game formula is a easy but bad
] solution.  In the first case, the documentation should be improved.
] In the second case, other mechanisms should exist for protecting the
] newbie player (or players shouldn't be allowed to join mid-stream).
]
] 				-- Scott T.
]

References

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Fri, 25 Jun 1993 16:27:30 +0000