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Comment by DoofusOfDeath | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if performing this kind of analysis, or even knowing its conclusions, makes a game less fun.

I enjoy games for several different reasons:

- The mental challenge of trying to win, and develop winning strategies in general. Knowing a perfect strategy, or knowing that some games are genuinely unwinnable, would diminish this. E.g. "Plague, Inc."

- Immersion in a compelling, fictitious, narrative, epic story. This pleasure is probably unaffected. E.g. the "Civilization" franchise or "Endless Space 2".

- The excitement of uncertainty. This could actually be increased by knowing that some random seeds make a game unwinnable, especially if one can't know that at the beginning of the game. E.g. "FTL".

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It depends on the actual numbers for a given game. If it's possible to prove that 0.001% of games are unwinnable, I don't think that's going to diminish anyone's enjoyment of a game.

At 1% unwinnability, I think that almost nobody would notice the existence of unwinnable games merely by playing, but having the knowledge of the exact percentage of unwinnable games might start to diminish enjoyment.

Solitaire, where 20% of games are provably unwinnable from the start, absolutely suffers from this effect, because even when a player loses a winnable game they will be tempted to blame the game rather than themselves, fostering resentment.

If a game was provably unwinnable 80% of the time, then that would be either a damning indictment of its design or an indication that the value of that game is to be found in some aspect other than winning.

I suspect it also depends on how blatantly unwinnable the game is. Imagine you started up a game of Civilization, where you started on a single hex surrounded by impenetrable mountains. That may have a very low odds of happening, but if it does, you'd probably be fairly upset at the game.

An important consideration in that case though is that you'll have unambiguously discovered the "unwinnable" condition within the first two seconds of the game; with no emotional investment in that seed, it'll result more in a curious shrug rather than resentment.

(I say "unwinnable" because it is possible to win that game; in Civ 6 you would just need to build a military district on the far side of the mountain and then you could begin spawning units there, at which point you're now in actually in a very secure defensive position!)

Honestly, given how masochistically some gamers chase max-difficulty wins, I wouldn't be surprised if a game in which only 1% of seeds were winnable would be appealing to some.

But it would definitely diminish many gamers' enjoyment, as you say.

Dark Souls is an example where some players just aren't interested in the difficulty (even though the game is winnable), and some players relish it. Perhaps "win % for the median player" and other populations are more practically useful lenses for the discussion of general enjoyment.

I don't think many people would enjoy that at all.

The appeal of games like Dark Souls (and Slay the Spire!) at high difficulties arises from the knowledge that you _will_ win if you are clever and observant enough.

It's the learning process that keeps players coming back to these games, not the Game Over screen.

I think another factor not mentioned by my sibling comments is what the player wants out of the game.

The things I enjoy in a game very much align with yours, but I have several close friends who find solving the optimisation problem a game represents to be the most rewarding part of the gameplay experience.

'Min-maxing' stats and deeply understanding and exploiting game logic are all very enjoyable parts of the game to them. Immersion and storytelling are often secondary to those puzzles.

To players with those interests and goals, uncertainty is a puzzle to solve and the ultimate goal of the mental challenge may very well be to find the perfect strategy.

They're just taking it up an abstraction level.

Some people enjoy breaking a game wide open, whether through degenerate strategies, hacking, careful character design, or something else. That's where they get their fun.

Once they do that, they might be done with the game, but it was probably the best way to maximise their fun (most of us eventually move on from a game for various reasons anyway).

>I'm curious if performing this kind of analysis, or even knowing its conclusions, makes a game less fun.

I don't know about that, but I think that the analysis can be (for some people) more interesting/fun than the game.

I definitely think it can make the games less fun. A few years ago, I wanted to get into modding Skyrim so I watched the tutorial videos from Bethesda. Watching the designers make maps showed that much less care than I thought actually goes into designing them. For example, if two pre-made dungeon tiles didn't fit together, they'd just put some rocks over the seams, and they had a lot of dungeon rooms already created and they'd just paste together in a different order to make a new dungeon. It shattered the illusion that the environment was handcrafted, and I couldn't stop seeing the shortcuts designers took once I knew how they were made. I stopped playing shortly after, and will wait until ES:VI is heavily discounted before I buy it.

Well, for that phenomena the opposite could happen just as well. Exploring and picking apart a game to find out that it actually is handcrafted and made with care and precision with some unique techniques used to mask the possible issues would likely result in a higher appreciation for the technical aspects of the game. Now, would that make a person love a game they'd otherwise dislike? (For plot, mechanics or other reasons) No, they'd still dislike it but they'd certainly admire the craftsmanship.

For the case presented in the article, I'd actually feel much less compelled to play StS if I knew there were genuinely unwinnable seeds. It takes away the player's agency to a higher degree than it should and having a run where nothing you do will get you a win means you can't learn from your mistakes or enjoy a win - two of the main purposes. As for having fun with a run, well, being on a doomed ride isn't that fun either, at least compared to a regular StS run.

> For example, if two pre-made dungeon tiles didn't fit together, they'd just put some rocks over the seams, and they had a lot of dungeon rooms already created and they'd just paste together in a different order to make a new dungeon.

Interestingly, this is also common in typical U.S. house construction. Moulding, caulk, and paint cover a multitude of sins.

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