How uncertainty in games--from Super Mario Bros. to
Rock/Paper/Scissors--engages players and shapes play experiences.
In life, uncertainty surrounds us. Things that we thought were good for
us turn out to be bad for us (and vice versa); people we thought we knew
well behave in mysterious ways; the stock market takes a nosedive.
Thanks to an inexplicable optimism, most of the time we are fairly
cheerful about it all. But we do devote much effort to managing and
ameliorating uncertainty. Is it any wonder, then, asks Greg Costikyan,
that we have taken this aspect of our lives and transformed it
culturally, making a series of elaborate constructs that subject us to
uncertainty but in a fictive and nonthreatening way? That is: we create
games.
In this concise and entertaining book, Costikyan, an award-winning game
designer, argues that games require uncertainty to hold our interest,
and that the struggle to master uncertainty is central to their appeal.
Game designers, he suggests, can harness the idea of uncertainty to
guide their work.
Costikyan explores the many sources of uncertainty in many sorts of
games--from Super Mario Bros. and Dungeons & Dragons to
Rock/Paper/Scissors, from Monopoly to CityVille, from FPS
Deathmatch play to Chess. He describes types of uncertainty,
including performative uncertainty, analytic complexity, and narrative
anticipation. And he suggests ways that game designers who want to craft
novel game experiences can use an understanding of game uncertainty in
its many forms to improve their designs.
