On a roll? Here’s where chance meets skill in gaming

You need only think of cards, dominos or dice to see that humans have long enjoyed a bit of randomness. At the other end of the spectrum, games like chess, which has a history that can be traced back at least 1,500 years, are comprised of pure skill. When it comes to modern video gaming, most AAA titles are heavily weighted towards skill. Yet you might be surprised to learn just how many elements of these skill-based games harbor an underlying randomness.

Roulette – a game of pure chance

What makes a game pure chance? The answer to this question is simple enough. If the outcome of the game does not depend at all on the actions and strategies of the players, then you’re looking at a game of chance.

Roulette is a good example of a game of chance. In roulette, each number has a 37/1 chance of hitting, or 38/1 on an American roulette table. Understanding the roulette board layout and numbers makes the game easier to navigate, but the odds cannot be influenced, no matter the betting pattern.

For casino fans, this is one of the reasons roulette is so appealing. It is one of the purest games of chance out there.

Chess – a game of pure skill

On the other end of the spectrum are games of pure skill. This means the game is void of any element of chance – no dice rolls, wheel spins, card draws, or any other means by which to randomize outcomes.

Chess is one of the great games of pure skill. In chess, both players have all the information needed to understand the state of play. All outcomes depend on the moves made by the players, and so whoever plays the best game – making the least mistakes and forcing their opponents to make more mistakes – wins the game.

Of course, you could argue that everything in life has an element of chance. An opponent could, for example, drop or misplace a piece by accident and gift a lucky win. But in terms of the parameters of the game itself, chess is one of pure skill.

Where skill meets chance – RNG in video games

There are video games out there that are, technically speaking, pure games of skill. For example, in most fighting games, the player who performs best wins and there may be no random elements. However, randomized elements are more common than you think.

Video games, just like the online versions of the aforementioned casino games like slots, rely on random number generators (RNGs) to come up with randomized outcomes – the digital equivalent of rolling a dice or shuffling a deck of cards.

RNGs can be set to give outcomes a certain percentage of the time, controlling, for example, the frequency that rare items will appear in loot boxes.

So, how exactly are RNGs used in video games? Here are just a few examples:

• Loot boxes – Whether paid for with microtransactions or found in game, the contents of loot boxes is very often randomized. Whether you get rare items is down to chance.

• RPGs – RPGs and dungeon scrollers use so many random variables that it can be hard to keep up. These include critical hit rates, whether monsters spawn in a certain area, how often traps are triggered, and more. This can throw up surprises even for over-levelled characters.

• Behavior of NPCs – The way non-playable characters and how they move, talk, and even whether they spawn, can depend both on your own actions as a player and according to randomization.

• Events and weather patterns – With games becoming more intricate, the uses for RNGs are becoming more extensive. Events ranging from natural disasters in sim games to weather conditions in Skyrim are randomly determined.

• In skill based games – Even in skill based games, tiny elements of randomness creep in to the actual gameplay. For example, in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, the spread of bullets is partially determined by RNGs.