The unpredictability of gameplay

Abstract

This book is the result of my academic thought of the last few years, my own ongoing development of a somewhat unusual procedurally generated game and the considerable period of time I previously spent playing a rather unpredictable card game as my primary source of income. It starts from what I first perceived as being merely a linguistic vexation, but which eventually grew into a somewhat broader one, a realization that the vocabulary to adequately and fully experientially describe games which deploy unpredictability in different ways did not yet exist. Or, rather, that the words appropriate to such a vocabulary did exist, but we were using them as synonyms rather than as clearly distinguishing terms. Are games which we say contain randomness, or chance, or luck, really all that similar to one another? And if – as I argue in this work – they are not, how do these factors vary across games and lead to sometimes quite profoundly different experiences? Studying the unpredictability of gameplay means understanding how players negotiate with, and understand, game systems which can be often opaque, and seemingly unfair. It means understanding why some players delight in the play of unpredictability, why other players attempt to constrain or curtail or circumscribe the play of unpredictability and why games ranging from slot machines to grand strategy board games, and from poker to role-playing games, are so compelling. It also means unpicking terms such as ‘games of chance’ into a larger sets of categories or terms, which allow us to discover conceptual and experiential distinctions between them. Most games – both contemporary and historical – contain some element of what I will define in this work as ‘unpredictability’, and understanding unpredictability is consequently crucial for understanding experiences of gameplay as a whole