The Great Unknown: Why We Love Games of Skill & Chance

If there’s one thing that every gamer knows to be true, it’s that randomized outcomes can sometimes throw a wrench into their very best gaming sessions. This might be an FPS player who swears their shot should have hit the target more accurately or a MOBA player who found their latest weapon spawn to be a huge disappointment. 

Regardless of what type of game someone prefers, gamers know the sting of when a randomized outcome doesn’t go their way. But for non-gamers, this might be surprising to hear—after all, if eSports is a legitimate form of competition, what role could randomness play in a game? 

As it happens, randomness plays a huge part in various gaming categories—from procedurally generated levels to advanced NPCs to roulette wheels. Let’s start out with the most obvious category, then move on to more traditional modern video gaming sectors.

Roulette: The Casino Case Study

Unsurprisingly, randomness might actually be a focal part of a game. In the case of casino games, from slots to blackjack to roulette, randomness is half the fun—and an important part of emulating a trip to the brick-and-mortar casino. For example, those who spin the virtual roulette wheel via an online platform have the magic of a random number generator (RNG) to thank.

 This RNG determines where the ball lands on the digital wheel, which then informs how a player’s bet pays out. The game challenges players to forecast where that ball might land, which infuses the game with excitement and tension each round. In other words, it wouldn’t be nearly as fun if each outcome wasn’t random.

Among Us: The Social Mystery

In casino games like roulette, randomness is central to what makes the game fun. The same goes for social games like Among Us, which digitized popular social games like Mafia. In this case, players are dealt a randomized identity which makes them an Imposter or a Crewmate.

Based on this randomized identity, players will navigate through the game with the goal of staying undercover or unveiling which of the Crewmates are actually Imposters. It’s become a hugely popular game because of this mystery, which challenges players to use communication skills to uncover the Imposter.

Hades: The Latest Challenge

Roulette and Among Us both focus on randomness as it relates to excitement and mystery. However, randomness in video gaming is usually associated with the term ‘infinite playability’. Let’s use the example of Hades, a roguelike dungeon crawler. This genre took its name from an early project that introduced gamers to a brand-new concept: procedurally generated levels. 

That means that when players must start a game like Hades over, every level they previously cleared will be newly generated. This randomized level generation means the game can be played many times without getting repetitive. Once again, the focus is on excitement—but also longevity and challenging players in new and exciting ways.

Diablo: The Long-Term Tapestry of Micro & Macro Outcomes

Lastly, let’s focus on one of the more advanced concepts of randomness in video gaming. Here, we’ll use an RPG like the Diablo franchise to paint a picture of how randomness affects the short-term and long-term of games. Josh Bycer of ‘GameDeveloper’ dubs this the micro and macro of randomness.

The micro relates to smaller outcomes. In Diablo, this might relate to the weapon spawns mentioned in the introduction. Depending on what types of weapons players find during one level, it will impact the short-term outcomes of the game. The macro relates to much larger outcomes, such as a level generation in Hades or, in an RPG like Diablo, the map generation. These challenges are designed to have a larger influence on how the game plays out.

By pitting a video game with micro and macro randomizations, the entire tapestry of the video game is malleable every time a player logs in. This is at the core of the term ‘infinite playability’, as shifting variables will present new challenges at every turn.