Fairness, and unfairness in computer games.

State of Decay; I just cleared a hundred metres of zombies. I ran them all over with my car. I’m hovering over this strange ‘Cleo’-device. What’s suddenly growling behind me? A zombie. Did I miss it? Maybe.

Same game; I’m helping out some fellow survivors. Due to a glitch my car gets stuck under the house. I run to the next car. Suddenly there’s a horde of zombies (including some feral) waiting for me who weren’t there a minute ago.

Is the game messing with me? I’m starting to think it is!

Fairness: Outgame.

Here I wish to talk about fairness in computer (video) games.

What is fair? Nazis spawning behind you after you cleared the field in Return to castle Wolfenstein? Some silly toadstool telling you that the princess is in another castle? Or a massive ordeal to get through without any savepoints like Battletoads.

Fairness in games begins and ends with the people making those games. This means that their logic and reasoning is in play here. So; Alex Kidd in high tech-world for the SEGA Master System.

I mentioned this game before on this blog. I think.

To get past a guard-post, during this game, you have the opportunity to craft your own fake passport. There’s a book dealer who sells books on ‘how to craft your own passport’. There’s a shop selling printing presses. I believe there’s even a shop selling paper and ink.

Does this all work? No, of course not. The guard recognizes that your passport is a fake and kills you on the spot.

In fact you have to pray at a temple 100 times to make a ghost shaman appear who gives you a true passport.

Where is this shaman mentioned? Nowhere!

Never throughout the game is the shaman mentioned; let alone the praying 100 times.

So any player would come by the temple; pray a few times –for his/her own sanctitude and move on.

This was the first time in my life when I realized that, sometimes, games were stacked against me!

Just think about it, go to the past with me –hold my hand: me, a young boy, incapable of getting past this guard. So I called the SEGA-GAME-helpline (there was no real internet back then – I’m that old), 50c per call.

The (nice) guy on the other end of the phone told me the answer instantly. He didn’t even have to take time to look it up (which told me how many frustrated ten-year-old-boys called before me – and (nowadays) how little videogames there were out there, back then).

So by paying an extra fifty cents over the cost of the game I was ‘allowed’ to continue my game.

Is this fair? I think not!

Fairness: A distinction.

So, reading the previous, there’s a distinction to be made here. 1. Honesty ‘Ingame’. And, 2. Honesty ‘Outgame’.

I think it’s clear from my above example that number 2. Does occur. There’s no way I would’ve figured out ‘praying a hundred times without the ‘lifeline’ (0,50 cents a beat).

But continue this train of thought to the present.

I mean; is it fair for EAGAMES to charge players extra amounts of money to play a game? I mean they used to call it upgrades, extra content, now they call it microtransactions. I all boils down to the same thing: coercing players to give money to get better at a game.

Is this fair? I think not.

Just like my little Alex Kidd in High-Tech world-example. Gamers should be allowed to play the games they bought without interference from ‘either’ call-in-help (obviously), bad ports,

A welcome hello to Silent Hill: Homecoming, which is unplayable without outside help.

A ‘bad port’ is nothing short that a ‘console game’-producer releasing a game to PC without

checking whether the game that works on a PS3 might actually work on a PC. Negligence.

or, ‘Buy-up’ upgrades. A game should remain a game. But that’s not how economy works.

Nowadays we, the world, are playing against each other. And we all want to beat our opponent.

In Asia this, apparently, works rather fairly. Occasionally a guy gets killed because he sold a (virtual) magnificent sword a (virtual) friend lend to him (look it up).

But, apparently, in western games this fairness isn’t allowed. Here the game is stacked so that those with the most money to spend get better at the game. (Notice here how I used the word ‘get’ instead of ‘are’). No more skill involved. Is this fair? I think not.

Fairness: Ingame.

Having argued that some games suffer from a ‘lack of fairness’ due to outgame influences I also wish to highlight some ingame issues I stumbled upon during my playtime.

Sometimes, there are just games that are too hard to beat either because the programmers were some sadistic b*stards (hello again: Battletoads), because the programming itself isn’t flawless (hello: Lucius III). Or, and this is the point I wish to focus upon, because the programming allows ‘unfairness’.

In any game of Tetris the pieces you get to work with are generated by chance. Tetris is basically a
gambling game with some slight amount of skill involved. Like poker you can have all the skills of reading signs, calculating chance and counting cards; yet, in the end, a big portion of you actually winning a hand relies on the chance of getting dealt good cards.

Tetris is the same; do you stack up high waiting for that one long piece (appropriately named: hero) or do you play it safe and keep your stack low?

If a game is based on chance, I argue that any apparent unfairness should be regarded as unintentional. If you gamble you should be able to take a hit every once in a while.

Take They are billions per example. Now this is a game that is hard to beat.

The reason for this is rather clear from the start. The game deals with zombies. And each zombie is (programmed) set to attack any nearby human (settlement). This works like an infection. So if one zombie spots you, so does the nearest to them, and the nearest and so on. In short: on false move and you suddenly got a horde against you. This is fair.

For those who wonder: Yes, I have a thing for zombie games.

But, fairness, becomes questionable when you look at ‘survivor mode’ within the game. In this mode the computer generates a map, drops your town hall somewhere in the middle and places a finite amount of zombies around it.

The object of the game: if the town hall falls the game is over.

So strange situations occur in which you find your town hall strangely placed (e.g. close to a zombie den. Or placed in the wide open even though there is a beautiful sheltered –more defendable- spot close by). Now, I argue, a schism becomes apparent between this ‘computer generated chance’ and narrative.

In the blocks of Tetris or the cards of poker there is no underlying narrative to influence the chance. They are billions, a game set in a world where humans have to fight zombies, nobody, in their right mind, would place their town hall in the middle of an open field. It’s not lot logical from a preservation/human perspective.
The cards are dealt the way they are. But in

The computer generating the map obviously doesn’t understand human preservation logic, it’ll just drop the town hall anywhere. But any human would look at the landscape (chance) and place the town hall accordingly (narrative).

So, I argue that if a game has a narrative at its base an overreliance on chance based dynamics cause the game to become: less fair.

Similarly; that’s why I hate respawned enemies in any First Person Shooter. If I just cleared a section I don’t want to find sudden respawned enemies there if I can’t justify how they could’ve come there from a narrative perspective.

Usually just a door the enemies could’ve come through would be enough to create the (narrative) illusion.

Fairness: skill.

Games are about skill! Not everybody should be allowed to finish them. That’s why there are levels ranging from easy to hard.

Battletoads is an extremely difficult game to finish. There are only so many lives you can gather on the way and then there are a million obstacles blocking you towards the finale.

One could, rightfully, say that Battletoads was deliberately made too hard by the programmers.

On the other hand one might realize that game makers at the time were exploring the capabilities of the players . What were they capable of? It’s an honest question.

Except for those speed runners. Those people are unfathomable.

Fairness, I argue, implies a game based on skill without trying to influence the skill by means of either outside ([micro] transactions) or inside (narrative destroying chance) elements.

And I haven’t even mentioned the auto-saves which makes a lot of games way too easy to beat.

There has to be a balance.

Luckily a lot of games strike this balance just right. But ever so often –after you got your behind beaten in a playthrough- you should ask yourself: 'Did I lose fair and square?'. ‘Was this fair?’