Obfuscation

The necessity in a game system to make the outcome uncertain to the players

For most of my design principles so far, I've covered well-established terms with standardized definitions. For today's article, however, I wanted to discuss something that I've been unable to find a standardized term for. Through my reading, I have seen a lot of methods discussed that all share a similar overall objective of disguising the ultimate outcome of the system. It’s that objective that I want to discuss more in-depth today. So, for the sake of this article, I've coined a term to describe this common objective. If any of you reading are familiar with a term already in use for this that I was just unaware of, let me know!

Tension in game systems is created by the players be unaware of the outcome of the game. The moment they know how things are going to play out, the game loses almost all of its interest. For example, the game of tic-tac-toe is interesting to a new player when they are first introduced to it, but once they realize the game can only play out in a finite number of ways that they can be easily calculate, it loses all tension. Even a game whose outcome is already predetermined like the card game 'War' (we'll skip the discussion about whether it is or is not a game for today), retains tension due to that already-determined outcome being hidden from the people playing it.

A visualization of all the possible outcomes of a tic-tac-toe game. Each square visualizes the potential outcomes of ‘O’ choosing that space.

When designing a game system then, a designer needs to build in systems to obfuscate the potential outcomes from the player for as long as possible. There are potentially-infinite ways to create this obfuscation, but most methods fall under a number of standardized categories:

Execution

A lot of games have an even smaller number of outcomes than tic-tac-toe, but that doesn’t mean they are “solved” in the same way. A game of Mario, for example, can basically only end with two outcomes: Mario dying or reaching the far side of the level (or reaching a star or moon in a newer iteration like Mario Odyssey). Or in most sports, the score usually ends in only a couple dozen different configurations.

What keeps these outcomes uncertain and interesting then, is the actual physical execution and skill of the player(s). While a game of tic-tac-toe has a discrete number of decisions to reach its outcomes, a sport has a near-infinite number of interactions with the physics of the ball, other players, and the physical execution of strenuous activities. No one knows exactly how the game is going to end, and a lot of joy of the game comes not from which outcome was reached, but how it was reached.

Mario’s controls offer a ton of space for expression through execution. It is not about the binary outcome of “acquire star” vs “die,” but about how the player reaches those outcomes through their execution of the complex controls.

Randomness

A favorite of tactics games (and, of course, gambling), randomness is an easy and cheap way to add uncertainty to the outcome of a game system. Examples of this is the randomness of rolling dice for a skill check in Dungeons and Dragons, or drawing cards from a shuffled deck at the start of a turn of Magic the Gathering.

Randomness is often looked down on a bit in the design community. Admittedly, even I called it "cheap" in the above paragraph. But it is an important and versatile tool when applied correctly. Consideration needs to be taken for how the probabilities feel to the player and where in the game loop the randomness is sitting to create a feeling of variance for the player without stripping a feeling of control.

Hidden Information

This form of obfuscation plays most directly to the “obfuscation” name by literally obscuring information from the player. This category comprises any techniques used to hide parts of the systems from the player for some or all of the play time. A really clear example of this is in card games, where players' hand or the deck may be hidden. For example, the card game Solitaire would be very uninteresting if you knew the entire order of the deck before you started playing.

A less obvious example of hidden information is present in almost every digital game. When a player first launches the game, almost everything inside of it is hidden to them until they start unveiling it as they play. For example, in a game like Mass Effect, the outcome of the story and all possible choices they will make will only become clear as the game unfolds, obscuring the exact outcome of their choices until after they make them.

Competing Decisions

This category could arguably be folded under "Hidden Information," but I think it has enough nuance to warrant its own entry. In a competitive game, the fact that you can't know what your opponent is thinking or planning for their next move can keep the outcome of a game uncertain. Unlike some of the other categories though, this one has some qualifiers:

First, an opponent's decisions only create uncertainty if the game system is of a suitable complexity level. If, like in the tic-tac-toe example earlier, the game is simple enough that players can conceptualize every possible outcome, it doesn't matter what decision the other player is making.

Secondly, the game needs to have some semblance of balance in the different decisions that can be made. If a player only has one clearly-optimal choice, the decision is rendered irrelevant as they are forced to follow the optimal path.

Complexity

Finally, this last form of obfuscation is often paired with others, but plays a critical role. A game system can use the sheer complexity of the different potential outcomes to obfuscate the outcome from players. The outcome of the game may be able to be theoretically calculated, but that calculation would be so staggeringly complex that no lone person could complete it. This is not to say that the game system itself should be so complex that it defies comprehension, but that the total possibility space of future decisions should branch to a complexity level that defies comprehension. The human brain is excellent at looking at massive datasets and filtering down to only the most important data to what it needs to be processing right now. A good game presents simple mechanics that offer complex and nuanced dynamics that produce an interesting dataset to give the players' brains opportunities to do this filtering.

For example, given infinite time or computing power, every possible game outcome of chess could theoretically be calculated, much like is possible with tic-tac-toe now. This would effectively "solve" the game. Then, playing would just be a matter of making choices that lead you down one of the possibility branches that lead to your victory. In fact, chess grand masters can actually "see" a good amount of this possibility tree with years of training and practice. But, even for them, the full breadth of all moves it too much to keep in mind. That's how new chess moves get "discovered." Those possible moves were always there, players has thus-far just been filtering out these moves as not not worth it, not realizing it could lead to a whole branch of possibilities until someone reframed their understanding.

Conclusion

This list of obfuscation categories is far from exhaustive, but hopefully offers broad enough categorization to discuss them while designing. In actual practice, this kind of categorization is far messier as most games use a combination of different systems in all sorts of categories. A game like Civilization VI, for example, obfuscates with the sheer complexity of its systems, with the hidden information of its fog of war, with the competing decisions of the different players, and the randomness of the map's generation.

When designing your own systems, try to layer and combine different forms of obfuscation in this way to create multiplicative considerations as your players try to figure out the outcome. But, be cautious of applying too much obfuscation. While you want players to be unsure of the outcome of the game system, you want them to have enough of a guess to plan their own tactics around. Finding that balance of “just enough” information is more of an art than a science, and can only really be reached through a lot of iteration.