This post is not about designing slot machines. Sorry, but I don’t know anything about that.

I’m referring to a certain game mechanic. It’s not too common, and I would argue that it’s flawed, so it should be even less common than it is!

The basic idea is that the player does something that has a randomly determined result. The “input” in this case is free; there’s no consequence for it. All the player has to do is spend time, and they can keep going until they get the best result.

The problem is that there’s no strategy involved, no skills that get tested. The only thing that’s tested is the player’s willingness to spend time to get the best result. Therefore, players will often feel an obligation to sit there and keep trying until they get the best result.

Examples

The example that started me thinking about this idea was a game called Soul Nomad and the World Eaters. I’ll summarize the relevant game mechanics; You have a number of soldiers and other army units, but before battle you must organize them into squads. Each squad is associated with a room. There are different room types, with different effects. Not only that, rooms are often generated with varying numbers of spaces for units. Players who really get into the strategy of the game will often plan out exactly what rooms they wish to have.

The problem is that you can’t just pick and choose your rooms, you have to “generate” them. Your setup has a number of available rooms, some of are available to be locked (these numbers increase as you go along in the game). When you generate rooms, all the unlocked spaces are filled with new rooms. If you have locks available, you may lock some of the new rooms; then you may generate again.

The point is, if you’re looking for a specific room, you can sit in front of the television and keep generating rooms until one comes up. This can take hours if you want one of the really special rooms.

Another example can be found in Legends of Zork. In this game you visit various locations, each of which is associated with a range of levels. You can adjust the level of the location up and down before exploring it, within the given range of levels.

However, besides the main locations, there are randomly generated sub-locations. Each one also has an associated range of levels—But you cannot adjust the location at will. You must move back to the main location, then back to the sub-location; this procedure will choose another level randomly from the range of sub-location levels. This can be quite frustrating if you want to adventure at a specific level within the sub-location. It’s strange enough that I’ve felt it might be worthwhile to write a script to let your browser go back and forth until it gets the level you want. (More on that in another blog post.)

Counter-Examples

Kingdom of Loathing has a mechanic where, at certain points in your quest, you have to adventure in a certain location until you get a specific outcome. In this case, the outcomes are randomly chosen, so you have to keep adventuring until you get the one you want. However, there are several things that set this apart from the “true slot machines” I described above.

1. There is a cost to the randomness, in the sense of “spending adventures” (these are like energy points, stamina; you get a certain amount each day). Therefore, the player has to judge how far they want to push their luck before trying something else.
2. There are no degrees of success. You don’t ever have to wonder if it’s worth it to keep going; either you have the objective, or you don’t.
3. It really doesn’t take too long to find the outcome you want.
4. Randomness in this case is limited enough that the players can appreciate the uncertainty it adds to the game.

So if you’ve put a slot machine design in your game, perhaps you should think about what it adds to the experience…