Re:How Designers Engineer Luck into Video Games
by xg15 on Friday January 13, 2017 @05:22AM
(#13389783)
> Sid Meier (Civilization) gave a great GDC keynote in 2010 where he describes his multi-decade struggle to convey to users ideas like "Stuff that only has a 10% chance of happening still happens sometimes."
Slightly OT, but I found the argument most convincing that the "improbable=impossible" way of thinking sometimes produces logically inconsistent or plain impossible results.
The classic wheel of fortune is an example: You're playing wheel of fortune with three other persons. The wheel is evenly split into four quarters, with each of the quarters having the name of one person written on it. (So one of the four quarters is "your" quarter) The wheel is spun and the person whose quarter ends up on top gets the reward.
How gif is your chance to win? 1 / 4. How big is your chance not to win? 3 / 4. So it's unlikely that you will be the winner. However, the wheel is fair, the probability of winning is the same for each player. So it's unlikely for anyone to be the winner. At the same time, it's physically impossible for the wheel not to produce a winner.
If you think of unlikely events as "practically never occuring", this is a logical contradiction. Only if you accept that unlikely events do happen, the contradiction can be resolved.
Slightly OT, but I found the argument most convincing that the "improbable=impossible" way of thinking sometimes produces logically inconsistent or plain impossible results.
The classic wheel of fortune is an example: You're playing wheel of fortune with three other persons. The wheel is evenly split into four quarters, with each of the quarters having the name of one person written on it. (So one of the four quarters is "your" quarter) The wheel is spun and the person whose quarter ends up on top gets the reward.
How gif is your chance to win? 1 / 4. How big is your chance not to win? 3 / 4. So it's unlikely that you will be the winner. However, the wheel is fair, the probability of winning is the same for each player. So it's unlikely for anyone to be the winner. At the same time, it's physically impossible for the wheel not to produce a winner.
If you think of unlikely events as "practically never occuring", this is a logical contradiction. Only if you accept that unlikely events do happen, the contradiction can be resolved.