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

From: gunzler@netcom.com (Mitch Gunzler)

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 05:16:46 +0000

In article <srt.740855350@aerospace.aero.org> srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner) writes:
>Formulas suck.
>
>The single advantage of detailing all the mechanics involved in a game
>is that it allows the min-maxers to calculate exactly what the results
>of their actions will be.  So what?  That lets the min-maxers be
>happy?  That's a very small gain as far as I'm concerned.  Let the
>min-maxers play Chess for all I care.  (Not that they will; their real
>enjoyment comes from "beating" the other players in analyzing the
>rules, not from playing the game itself, or they'd all be off playing
>Chess all the time.)

Well, no.  You can't minimax Chess (usefully, under human constraints).
In fact, I think of Chess as in many ways close to perfect:  No hidden
mechanism, yet good play consists (at my level) of following general
principles and a bit of intuition.  What I HATE about chess is the gross
expertise factor (acquired through study, though not number crunching),
which means that anyone who intends to play chess "well" must devote a
significant portion of their life to it.  In the perfect game experience
would provide significantly dimnishing returns, so that an expert will
often but by no means always defeat a smart novice.  A really rich environmetn,
so that experts still don't know everything, is one way to try to do this.

>Olympia was more interesting and involving that Atlantis.  And I trace
>that directly to the fact that Atlantis isn't a game about a fantasy
>world; its a game about manipulating an abstract set of rules to your
>advantage.
>
>If you want a pure game, in the abstract sense of maximizing some
>success function based upon a set of constraints, then by all means
>publish the formulas.

Well, actually, I think NOMIC is a formula-less, fascinating counter
example to this genral line of thought.  But then, few people actually have
the patience to play it.

Mitch

References

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 21 Jun 1993 12:00:33 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 05:22:30 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 17:09:10 +0000