RangerSheck Offline

Statistics: What are the real odds?

03/08/2008 (read 180x times)

Ive been thinking a lot about statistics lately, and how they can be used in game design. Weve all seen this problem in any game, particularly indie games (including a lot of browser-based game) a problem with randomness. Sometimes a game doesnt appear to leave enough to chance, and it becomes predictable. Other times a game is too random, to the point of frustrating a player when despite skill or a better hand, fate can easily turn against them.

This article will be the first in a series of probably three articles on statistics and randomness. Today Id like to talk about what it means to consider the odds that an event might happen, given multiple attempts at it. For example: if an event has a 25% chance of occurring, you might expect that given 4 attempts at it, youre pretty much guaranteed success. Given a second thought, we know that not to be exactly true. So what are those odds, anyway?

Read the rest at Ranger Sheck's blog.

Tags: PBBG, development, game, design, statistics, probability
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