[JUNE] Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan

[Liz England]

Our reading this month is Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan

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.

This is a pretty short book - under 100 pages, I think. 

It's also the second book on our list from MIT's Playful Thinking series (the last one was The Art of Failure). If it's as good as that one I'll try putting more books from this series on the voting lists.

[Lisa Brown]

I just finished this up last night, and generally I thought had good content and raised some game design practices that I had not considered (when trying to tackle a game design challenge rather than jumping to what has worked in the past in comparable games, consider the sources of uncertainty in the game, is there too little, too much, need more of a different type, etc.). I did notice that when covering the sources of uncertainty and the pros and cons of each, the author seems to have a bit of a bias on some forms over others (he didn't really seem to have anything but bad things to say about performance uncertainty, for example), but perhaps that's just me. I'm curious if anyone else noticed this tone?

I will say that I thought the structure of the book was a little bizarre, as he leads with a very large chapter of examples of uncertainty in different games before defining the different types/sources. It threw me off a bit because during the analyzing chapter I kept feeling like I had missed something. I kind of felt like I needed to go back to the analysis chapter after reading the one on sources. Either way, the content definitely will make me incorporate some new questions into my toolbox that I use when designing.

NOW COMES THE TANGENT: This book seems to have been written before the mobile boom and talks a lot about social games, which sort of blew my mind when thinking about how quickly mobile blew up, matured, and stagnated in so short a timespan. I was just recently reading about a company who stopped making mobile games because it wasn't sustainable for them, but ended up having to take down their suite of finished games, because apple hardware updates kept breaking them and they did not have the resources to continually update the old games. It made me think of how a lot of that first generation of mobile games is all but vanished, and from an archival/historical view that's a little scary. Same thing with the rapid lifecycle of facebook games. We can talk about their historical significance in the future, but the games themselves as artifacts may be impossible to experience. No real conclusions from this, just marveling at the fast pace of the industry and all good and bad that comes with that.

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[Jon Y]

As I'm building an escape room, I found the section on solver's uncertainty interesting. The typical escape room is a series of one-off puzzles. Poorly designed escape rooms often suffer from the same issues described in the book, where puzzles sometimes end up being frustrating exercises in "reading the game designer's mind". Most escape rooms are forced to rely on the crutch of allowing players to call several times for hints / solutions.

Just out of curiosity, who else here has played an escape room, and do you agree with this assessment?

I thought the author made an interesting distinction between one-off puzzles vs. more emergent puzzles that consist of smaller interacting elements / mechanics like The Incredible Machine or Lemmings. These tend to have more depth and sometimes even allow for sub-optimal solutions, rather than forcing players to find the one and only solution.

Lisa: I too detected bias regarding performative uncertainty, but still, I think his points are well argued and I kind of agree with him :D

[Christian Selbrede]

What a lousy book. I wonder if this is the more representative of the Playful Thinking series. It'd be a shame, since The Art of Failure was such a delight.

Uncertainty seems to me a byproduct of far more significant design decisions. E.g. genre. The author says as much when he writes in Chapter 6, "The uncertainties the genre creates are already tuned." The way he then reasons through the chapter's design examples seem so backward to me that it stretches my imagination past the breaking point to consider a developer failing or succeeding to improve a game based on its uncertainties. I agree with his final statement though: "it will be more useful to read -- and play -- widely. So get out and play."

His thesis is "games require uncertainty to hold our interest, and that the struggle to master uncertainty is central to the appeal of games." But just as in his design examples, this is a very unnatural way to think about games. Now, some games do appeal in the sense that there is a mystery surrounding them (couple of recent examples, The Beginner's Guide and The Witness), but other than that, I don't see it. In fact, I often see quite the opposite. Droves of players swarming on to Twitch streams to watch a game, sometimes for hours on end, before purchasing it. To supplement the streams, they'll also often go to wikis and message boards, sometimes even to the source code itself (something the author mentions himself), to draw out as much of the game's uncertainty as they can before diving in. 

If games do require uncertainty to hold our interest, it must not require that much. After all, even a movie can be enjoyed more than once.

In Chapter 4, the author felt "impelled" to "embark on a tangent that has nothing to do with the central argument of this book, but that I feel is important and meaningful." He briefly discussed Csizkszentmihalyi's Flow. He gives an example of playing a puzzle game. After completing one puzzle, you proceed to the next. The author believes that this is anti-flow, saying that the player "is immediately jarred out of anything like a flow state and forced to grapple with new problems, to think about what he must do next.”

His emphasis on the word "think" is peculiar. For some reason, he believes that flow means an absence of thought. As if it were a mindless trance. But we saw when we read Flow that this is just about as far from the truth as it gets. He even makes this same point again in the analytic complexity section of chapter 5, this time discussing strategy games in which you have to "think deeply".

@Lisa
Not only against performance uncertainty, but analytic complexity as well. He's really got a bone to pick with it. Which is why he says that "Chess is the game of analytic complexity par excellence." As if that was the limit beyond which it should never go. It's disappointing to see him disparage games like Europa Universalis for what he calls "brute force complexity". Seeing as RTS games contain a combination of performance uncertainty and analytic complexity, I really don't think he'd care for them at all. That's probably why they're practically absent from the book, despite incorporating practically every one of his sources of uncertainty.

[JJ Bakken]

Christian your replies echo basically my exact thoughts on this text. My specific pet peeve which is absolutely petty but feels worth mentioning is how the author choose to cite the games he mentioned. He only cited the designer(s) instead of the studio. Perhaps that's proper technique or something, but after just finishing The Art of Failure (where Juul cites the publisher I believe) it felt wrong to me that Costikyan only cited a specific set of people as games are build by a whole team. This is not terribly important but it bothered me.

[Lisa Brown]

I also thought the citing thing was really weird! Regarding the rest, I think I noticed all of these bias problems but just filtered out what I could actually make use of (new questions to ask when thinking about design problems).

I would disagree, however, with using livestreaming as an example to disprove the claim that uncertainty is needed to hold interest. I think the vicarious watching experience still involves uncertainty, because the appeal there is often through experiencing the game through the streamer. Most young YT fans I know (basically a bunch of my little cousins) aren't watching them to vet a game before purchase but are experiencing something else entirely alongside the player. I would liken it to watching a movie, except it is not really like that either.

Jumping back on the escape room question real quick, I don't have a ton of experience with them, but a few I've seen address the issue of getting stuck on a puzzle by having multiple ways to solve the puzzle, or multiple ways to discover clues. It's not full proof but it seems to buy some leeway. I'd rather hear more from people who have more experience with them.

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[Christoffer Lundberg]

There were no real aha moment in the book. But over all I approve of the format. The games and culture chapter feels a little off, but otherwise the analysis feels pretty solid, exploring different examples and structuring it in the sources of information chapter. The last chapter, game design considerations, put all of the knowledge into a useful context, especially the lack of uncertainty part. Some of the uncertainties are pretty known, like randomness, hidden information and ”analysis”, but it was nice to add preformative and player uncertainty. Because normally action games fall flat when you apply “board game values” on them so the other uncertainty adds up nicely.

I just want to add one thing about the quote on p.93 “In general, hidden information increase variety of encounters; in a game with a designed world everything is a surprise when first encountered; in a game with algorithmically generated challenges (such as Poker or a Rouge-like) hidden information ensures that no two sessions are the same.” I agree with it, but its a little far fetched to say that when you have played it once, the game no longer contains any hidden information. Because theres to much information in the game for any player to store all of it (maybe some important parts). So although the informations have been reviled its still partially hidden because of the player's limited memory capacity. Mostly a comment on the note that mario contain no uncertainty except performative. I would also say that mario contains some portions of emergent gameplay which adds uncertainty (especially when you lose yoshi and runs after him in mario world). I just watched this talk about possibility spaces GDC 2015 Meaningful Choice in Game Level Design by Matthias Worch (Unreal 2, Dead Space 2). I'm not sure if possibility spaces are a different kind of uncertainty or just something in between random, hidden information or player uncertainty. Its also in the talk that players wants AIs to be simple, because they become more readable which is a good thing when a lot of different components add up. Its not a “flaw” like the author seems to put it.

Lisa Brown, Bias: yes, he seem to likes analytic games a lot more...

Format: I kinda like the format. First taking the examples, almost as in a investigation. Exploring different games and then summarize the findings in the chapter after. The analyze chapter might have been to long, but when you eventually get to the “sources of uncertainty”-chapter most of the sources are almost self explanatory.

Games grow old very fast: Yes, its a problem. Tbh as a designer I almost feel like the safest way to store games are in paper formate. It might require some time to implement them again, but at least all of the information are there and available. Its kind of a joke, but sadly not as far from the truth as I would like it to be. It not exactly news thats its hard to play old games, like c64 and nes, but there are ways. Its strange that games 3 years old should be hard to play, hopefully some kind of backward compatibility will be invented for android and iphones, and facebook games.

John Y, Escape rooms: I have not tried one but I expect them to play like adventure games. In adventure games I have experienced the “read the designer”-problem. But the experience should be in escape the room in a team environment, with time contains and I really like the idea of the hint system. Also I don't think the solver's uncertainty really are a separate uncertainty. It feels like hidden information or analytic. I really like the idea that puzzles are a frozen state in a possible state machine (its kind of mentioned in the book). Just that the puzzle have a predetermined solution while analytic uncertainty don't necessary have a satisfying solution. Would it be possible to make a system that create interesting puzzle like structures?

Also, would be cool to try escape the room in VR, fits the constrained environment.

Christian Selbrede, Genres and uncertainty: How do you mean that genre are more basic(?) then ex uncertainties. I think of genres as a (loosely defined) collection of common game mechanics. Uncertainty are a byproduct of mechanics. So if I would put them in a hierarchy it would be mechanics – uncertainties – genres.

I would say that uncertainty is kind of a dynamic compared to the MDA framework. Heres a link to the article and a summery by extra credits. Its not crucial for the discussion but if you haven't heard about it might be interesting :)

unfolding uncertainty from external sources like wiki, forums and streams: I think that uncertainty adds a kind challenge to the game. As players we tend to do a lot of things to master games, some more competitive and focused then others. Just because players strive to reduce uncertainty doesn't mean that it totally disappear from the game. For example a game like dota. You can look up information on different builds, reducing the analytic uncertainty, but you will still have performative, hidden information, and player uncertainty left in the game. I guess you had single player games in mind, well I would say that most of them also would have other uncertainties left. I actually played Her story this weekend and I think thats a game which probably wouldn't be very interesting to play when you have seen a playthrough of it. But the games mentioned in the book, like mario, doom, civilization, rough-like, most of them continue to be interesting.

The other things you mentioned are also interesting, but I can come up with any answers right now, I will have to think about it :)

[Christian Selbrede]

My Twitch / wiki example wasn't meant to disprove anything, as I agree that this doesn't completely eliminate uncertainty. I only mention it as an example of player behavior that disregards the uncertainty concept altogether in favor of something else. I had in mind not just those who want to minimize the possibility of purchasing a game they may not enjoy, but competitive meta-gamers as well, who seek out every advantage to boost their odds on the battlefield.

@Christoffer

I read the MDA article, and Greg Costikyan's uncertainty is better classified as an "aesthetic component" in that framework. It even seems to be embedded already within some of these other aesthetic components such as "exploration", "discovery", "narrative", and "competition". If those can be thought of as molecules, perhaps uncertainty could be found among them as one of their atoms. 

As for genre, when creating a game, do we not first consider to which genre it will belong? I know I'll be considering genre long before I ever consider uncertainty in-depth. That's what I mean when saying it's a more significant design decision. For an interesting example, try changing a game's genre mid-development.

On Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at 11:37:33 AM UTC-5, Liz England wrote:

[Harrison G. Pink]

Hooray! A book I actually finished (albeit at the 11th hour) and can contribute to this group!

This book, hmm. I feel very conflicted about it. When I first started, I enjoyed it enough to stop reading until I could find a highlighter, and then start again so i could call out specific bits I wanted to refer back to later, something I hadn't done with a game dev book in a long time. I agree that the opening about culture felt strange in this short book, but it tickled the part of my brain that enjoys the behavioral psychology of play, so I enjoyed it.

However, as the book wore on, I found myself enjoying (and highlighting) the book less and less. Honestly, the fact that he split the game analysis and the explanations of types of uncertainty up (as said above) struck me as super weird, and almost used to pad the book, since most of the information between the two chapters was almost identical (i.e. Super Mario has performative uncertainty. Now in this chapter lets talk about Performative Uncertainty, which I will now use Super Mario as an example.

I agree with Lisa et al that I had no "aha" moments but it did help me appreciate uncertainty in its own right as a game design "knob" to be understood and tweaked along with other elements. I didn't mind his own biases for different types of games, but I did mind his biases about exactly what was a good or bad amount of uncertainty to have in a game. A lot of his arguments seemed really wrong, or didn't feel backed up by anything 

(e.g. "Needless to say, game players are not chimpanzees, and the claim that this (Skinner Box style mobile games) is a source of addiction is absurd" pg. 51 or "Anyone can play Doom; only someone who grew up playing FPSs can master more recent titles, particularly at the higher difficulty settings" pg. 71)

Two things I think we could make an easy argument that are just flat out untrue.

OH ALSO maybe it was just me, but I saw this line and rolled my eyes with incredulity: "Games of performative skill tend also to be "blue" rather than "pink"" pg. 72. This was a totally unnecessary line to add, and a completely gross gendering of game playing preference. The line adds no value, and it really irritated me to read it.

This book spent 90% of it's pages explaining different types of uncertainty, and a whopping 8 pages for the chapter called Design Considerations. I was really hoping for more of a deep dive into how to use these methods in your own games. He touches on it during the explanation of what they are, but again, this book feels very padded out, even at its short length. Disappointing.

I too, was very disappointed by the author's insistence on attributing a game to a single (or pair of) designer(s). In an age where a lot of devs have to fight to get the credit they deserve, the last thing that should be pushed is the auteur mindset.

All in all, a book that started out strong and promising, and didn't really deliver as much as I'd hoped. I learned a few new concepts, and some new terms, which made the book worth reading, but my enjoyment rapidly decreased over the reading.

Thanks for letting me rant!

- Harrison

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[Nick Lalone]

"OH ALSO maybe it was just me, but I saw this line and rolled my eyes with incredulity: "Games of performative skill tend also to be "blue" rather than "pink"" pg. 72. This was a totally unnecessary line to add, and a completely gross gendering of game playing preference. The line adds no value, and it really irritated me to read it."

It isn't a gross gendering, well, at least not really as he is mostly just throwing that out as a wink and a nod to a long-winded discussion on the topic for the past 15-20 years (it's actually more if you include super early discussions of arcade culture). Competition tends to be defined as a masculine trait (read: norm associated with heteronormative boys) which makes things infinitely more difficult should the designers consider this distinction. Quite often it's mostly just ignored because...I mean, what you going to do? There is a gross gendering of computer use in general and so selling entertainment based on that genderizing of a particular activity has been a particularly pernicious issue. 

It is changing, however slowly but as we have seen in recent months, that issue is so completely invisible and normalized that trying to shake it up at the fandom, or even at the design level has resulted in a whole lot of pain and suffering for those who want to talk about it and accelerate the process. 

There was actually a nice discussion of this concept a couple years ago that started with a couple blog posts. One was from I think by David Kanada about the spirit of games and another by Amy Bruckman: https://nextbison.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/a-teachers-view-of-the-olympics/ and some responses from Ian Bogost called, "In defense of competition" 

Overall, it is a topic that has a whole lot of literature behind it so that casual reference is calling to that since it is well established and should need no direct referencing. Costikyan seems to have written this book as a means through which to augment existing, well established discussions about games. I felt like he did his due diligence within his own argumentation but it ends up being a bit of an, "in-group" book. If you take a step back from games and gaming into the a more generalized HCI world, this piece I attached to this email from Justine Cassell is a pretty nice primer on the gendered nature of computer use.

As for attribution, I feel like this isn't an author choice but a styleguide requirement that was carried over from movies since MIT Press uses the Chicago Manual. 

See: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0089.html

I'm not saying that Costikyan isn't at fault here, but he met the requirements of the style guide MIT Press uses. In general, because Game Studies doesn't have a lot of social capital, there has yet to be a meaningful attempt for game citations. The ACM Conference CHIPlay is trying to get to this...sort of. It is also super difficult given the limitations of conference proceedings and these short books so it will always be the first thing cut for space.

In terms of watching on Twitch, the act of viewing games is typically just as powerful as playing. I usually give my students this piece: http://www.visual-art-research.com/2010/03/the-relevance-of-the-beautiful-gadamer-on-art-and-play/ 

and this quote: 

"People watching a game are more than just viewers: part of them participates in the game they are watching. We can see this happen when looking closely at the public that – for instance – is enjoying a football game or a boxing match. Gadamer states that to appreciate a work of art is likewise an active event, an act or a being in-play with the work, an act  that one’s consciousness can surrender to and participate in. Full participation requires immersion, reduces and enhances perception to a point that it cannot be fully anticipated or controlled by the individual consciousness."

I think because of the nature of my job in academia I tend to view reading books like this as a nice way to situate a deeper exploration of other literature. This particular book, in true Costikyan style, has reminded me of other work and work that I have been meaning to get to. 

Nick LaLone
Penn State University

Information Science and Technology
ist.psu.edu

www.nicklalone.com

www.beforegamedesign.com

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[Liz England]

I am a solid month behind on reading so I just finished Uncertainty in Games.

Most of the time reading it I could not get A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster out of my head, and his view on games as patterns and how that mirrors uncertainty in Costikyan's book. For those who haven't read it, Koster basically says that we enjoy games because they are all about flexing our pattern-matching abilities. We play the game, come up with a mental model, and then test that model against the game to keep refining it. Once we have fully mastered a game - fully understood its pattern - it loses its fun. Tic Tac Toe is also used as an example of this.

So the focus on 'uncertainty' in this book felt like it was just a different way of describing essentially the same concept. There were a few deviations, like the uncertainty of when you'll be able to log back onto the game, but fundamentally they felt the same. And I prefer the pattern-matching approach.

I think the twitch/wiki examples fit into the pattern model really well - it's about learning as much of the game's model ahead of time and then testing that understanding in game. (Obviously still doesn't apply to all games equally, as both approaches favor very systemic games).

Like Lisa I did feel the book was written backwards. I would've liked the types of uncertainty followed by examples instead of the other way around. In comparing this one to Art of Failure from the same series I realize that there didn't seem to be much forward thinking - no real discussion of types of uncertainty we haven't explored in games, or stuff people tried and didn't succeed at, new ways of using uncertainty. I think he only barely touches on it with social games.

Overall I thought it was just okay. Not great, definitely not bad. Some new ideas I could extract but others that I disagreed with or various author comments that I thought detracted from the topic.

(And yeah the attributions are weird and off-putting.)