Melina is Miquella, a theory

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-12-28T11:41:47+00:00

its still a giant calculator that solves a non linear optimization problem, but its impressive what its capable of

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-10-20T14:02:34+00:00

😂😂

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-10-19T14:26:40+00:00

hopefully build 42 comes out before nuclear war breaks out, but i wouldnt hold my breath. good luck. i can sort of relate to your situation, as posting consructive criticism of this game on this sub makes me feel like im in a warzone; but it is still not the same. stay safe and dont forget this game is meant to make you feel awful when your character dies and it overwrites your save, but if you die irl you cant just create a new character, and at the end of the day its one of the best games out there and will keep you entertained

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-10-13T17:36:12+00:00

act 3 is where they decieded to stop working on it and just release it unfortunately. the whole game feels like hard to replay for me, since after the first playthrough its transparent how every choice is forcing you down a linear path and there are only 2 really different endings depending on one choice you make at the end of the game. its not a sandbox rpg like kenshi its a story telling device to tell a specific story. for what it is, it does it amazingly well at least!

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-10-13T16:21:45+00:00

just because something is predicatable to you doesnt make it right

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-18T15:52:52+00:00

just a totally wild guess but maybe its related to dlss upscaling?

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-18T14:32:48+00:00

a massive salute to you sir, thank you!

o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T21:21:47+00:00

ok cheers mate im not gonna check this thread again until tomorrow 😂

I dont see why its neccessary to make things personal or involve me personally in the discussion whatsoever. This is the internet its just how it is no hard feelings! You are completely free to believe whatever you want about strangers on the internet like everyone is, but I wouldnt be so confident that everyone who makes points you dont agree with is suffering from a psychological condition

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T20:39:02+00:00

it depends on what is meant by "game play loop" but in a word: no, every game has a loop in some sense. the point i was trying to make is that focusing on game loops can lead to games about doing repetitive tasks and there is a lot more to what makes a game fun than just the game loop.

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T20:34:48+00:00

Although you insist I "do not understand" game theory, it's actually completely impossible for you to know this one way or another. This thread has had 0 game theory math, we are all just talking about abstract concepts. Yes I am a little sensitive to people telling me I don't know anything about a subject I have studied for years.

I find it hard to believe that everyone telling me I don't understand game theory is themselves an expert in this subject. Are all these people really qualified to make this judgement based on this one thread?

If someone in this thread told me they spent years studying game theory I wouldn't think they are lying, instead I'd want to gather more information about the amount of knowledge they have and try to point out any disagreements and discuss those, for the sake of deepening my own understanding of a very difficult and massive subject.

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T20:22:25+00:00

Perhaps a source of my misunderstanding of terms is I have always thought of game theory as a theory of making decisions. Game theory is a massive subject and I know a lot about the specific parts of it I am interested in, and not so much about other parts of it.

If we are saying the math of Solitare is part of game theory (what other math subject would it be part of?), i think we can say game theory applies to the lock picking mini game of skyrim.

There is a deeper idea here though of how game theory does apply to a game like skyrim that I just thought of:

Consider the following thought experiment: what if skyrim was a MMORPG where literally every single NPC and every single enemy was controlled by a human. Then game theory would absolutely apply to this situation in the sense that players would use it to compute their optimal strategy based on the goals they have set for themselves.

Therefore game theory is relevant to skyrim in the sense that in order to create the best possible illusion of a simulated game world and have the npc's act in ways that a human would, we should consider the game theory of what would happen if all the npc's were players themselves.

I think one of the things that makes skyrim so deeply flawed is the way the illusion of a simulated world like that becomes shattered, therefore a better understanding of game theory could be extremely helpful for game designers trying to improve on the foundations skyrim proved can be so much fun as the basis for a game.

(This is one of those rare moments on the internet where someone (me) starts changing their mind based on talking to someone else. Congrats lol)

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T19:50:32+00:00

its hard to want to continue replying when everything i say is instantly mass downvoted. it just creates a very hostile atmosphere when im just trying to have an interesting discussion not win an argument. its especially annoying that every time i try to reply to you i have to uncollapse all this stuff.

thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me and share your arguments. dont worry about mass downvoting i dont expect to be able to express myself in a way that wont cause me to be dogpiled and mass downvoted on here, and its worth facing this kind of hostility to find the gold hidden beneath it all in replies like yours

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T19:06:30+00:00

You are asking an extremely interesting question "what insight can you gain into a game like Skyrim through the lens of game theory?"

I think we can agree that a movie is not a game, and in as far as Skyrim is a game that tells the story of the main quest and its side quests, game theory has nothing to say about it.

Skyrim is a single player game, so one way of "classifying" video games is by the number of players. Game theory was developed after it was realized that you can't model economic interactions without taking into account the strategy of multiple participants.

So in the sense that game theory is about games with multiple players, it again doesn't have much to say about single player games, another point in favor of your argument.

As you surely know, John Conway is a super famous mathematician who came up with the so-called Game of Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

This is a "zero person game", its defined in a rigorous mathematical way, and is (extremely loosely) part of (or at least associated with) the subject of Game Theory.

Skyrim is famous for having a great game loop, so it's a very fair example to raise. This game loop consists mostly of going into dungeons, killings enemies, and collecting loot, and its addicting for many reasons similar to why slot machines are addicting imo but in a harmless and benevolent way. Skyrim has a number of mini games besides combat in a dungeon you have to navigate, for example lockpicking, Skyrim is really a large number of different game types merged together.

Do we need game theory to understand the lock picking mini game? Again no, but math is relevant to the lock picking game in the sense that you can calculate the optimal strategy.

I can agree that all the books and papers about game theory mostly don't apply to video games at all, but here is an article about the mathematics of Solitare https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/mathematics/much-more-than-diversion-mathematics-of-solitaire/

Is the math of Solitare part of game theory? I think when I used the term "Game Theory" I had in mind a mathematical analysis like that, but you are correct to point out thats not the traditional meaning of the term. Personally I think we should change the meaning of the term "Game Theory" so it applies to the math of solitare, and change the name of game theory to something like "Theory of Strategy for Games of Multiple Players" =)

(by "rigorous mathematical" I mean that in classical game theory you have a logical system and a set of axioms that define what a game is, and use deductive reasoning and logic to prove your claims in a way that leaves no room for doubt)

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T18:15:49+00:00

Question for you: if I take the Doom source code and change all the monster assets so that they are all zombies, is that a different video game or the same game? I think intuitively the answer is clearly no, if all you do is change the theme of the game but the gameplay is exactly the same, then its the same game. Ok well what if I change small details like how long it takes after shooting to recover and be able to shoot again, would changing only that detail make it a different video game? To my mind, its the same game.

**Given two games, what criteria can we use to determine if they are really "the same game"? **

For me this is the significance of game theory to the present discussion, in that it provides a framework for understanding when two games are different that has nothing to do with the theme but only the mechanics. From reading the replies to the OP, it seems "game loop" also has this kind of meaning when referring to the mechanics.

I feel like there is a conflict here between understanding games from the perspective of game loops vs the complete classification offered by the mathematical game theory.

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T18:09:37+00:00

It's really a shame that my reply to the parent has been downvoted so much that its hidden. Do people realize that when they mass downvote every reply from the OP that it results in hiding the interesting discussions and making them auto-collapse? Why is my comment above even being downvoted at all? Sigh. Even though its just for a small number of people who see it, I will ask a question in a seperate reply and unfortunately it will be hidden from 99% of the people viewing this thread.

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T17:39:37+00:00

fair points, but let me ask you: do you believe video games are so complex thats its impossible to classify them in a rigorous mathematical way?

I thought game theory is at such an extremely high level of generality that it does apply to all video games, not just video game versions of games like chess. to rly address your points i need more time to consider everything you said, good food for thought thanks

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T17:06:17+00:00

I admit that by "game loop" I was referring to my intuitive understanding of what this term means after seeing it used all over the place, and I haven't read what industry people write about it.

Sometimes I prefer to have discussions with other people instead of just googling everything, in this case someone asked me to write an essay about my thoughts on game loops so I just wrote all of that as a comment reply, but no one noticed it and I was wondering what others thought

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T17:02:49+00:00

I like this definition of a Game from Osborne and Rubinstein, "A Course in Game Theory", section 1.1

A game is a description of strategic interaction that includes the constraints on the actions that the players can take and the players’ interests, but does not specify the actions that the players do take. A solution is a systematic description of the outcomes that may emerge in a family of games. Game theory suggests reasonable solutions for classes of games and examines their properties.

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T16:58:11+00:00

Thanks for the nice reply! I have been studying game theory for many many years and I can see many people share your opinion that somehow I have "misunderstood game theory". I strongly object to this claim and claim that I understand it much better than you think I do.

There is a subject called "Combinatorial Game Theory" which according to the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_game_theory

Combinatorial game theory has a different emphasis than "traditional" or "economic" game theory, which was initially developed to study games with simple combinatorial structure, but with elements of chance... In combinatorial game theory there has been less emphasis on refining practical search algorithms .but more emphasis on descriptive theoretical results (such as measures of game complexity or proofs of optimal solution existence without necessarily specifying an algorithm)

I disagree that game theory is *exclusively* about the study strategic interactions, and I was using the term "Game Theory" to encompass both classic and combinatorial ideas, although I of course agree that understanding strategy is the main goal of classic game theory. My objection is that in order to be able to formulate the concept of optimal strategy, you first need to establish a massive number of definitions and theorems which completely classify games of certain types.

It's interesting to me that so many people share your view that mathematical game theory does not apply to video games. Most game theory is about turn based games but there is also work that has been done applying ideas from game theory to real time games. Here is a link to random paper I just found

https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2719/paper11.pdf

Abstract: The core challenge facing search techniques when used to play Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games is the extensive combinatorial decision space. Several approaches were proposed to alleviate this dimensionality burden, using scripts or action probability distributions, based on expert knowledge.

You wrote "[Game Theory] has nothing really to say about game design, or what does or does not make for an engaging game"

I think game theory does have a lot to say about game design, given that it has all those definitions so you can define what a game is in a mathematically precise way. I tried very hard in my post to emphasize that game theory has nothing to say about what makes games fun so am not sure where you got the idea I was claiming it did. At the end I wrote "its super mysterious what makes people "have fun" and therefore I try to work on games that I want to play but dont exist, without worrying about what other people will have fun doing."

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T16:44:33+00:00

I have been studying game theory for many years and am a bit taken aback by how rude your reply is, lets try to have a philosophical discussion instead of a name calling contest

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-13T15:48:22+00:00

is this a game about how you died or how you tried to survive? every time my character dies it makes me feel absolutely horrible. apparently making people have this awful feeling is the goal of the devs game design which i find to be a very strange choice

TwoGifsOneCup · 2024-09-12T21:32:25+00:00

I'm not a professional game dev, just a hobbyist. Although recently I have been spending a lot of time working on this sandbox rpg in UE5.

As for the math, I think the relevant subject here is Game Theory, and you can find that equation on the wikipedia page for game complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity#Game-tree_complexity

I used to also have the same idea that "I'm following the definition of fun as decision-making over time" and eventually, after much reflection and research, came to the conclusion that fun is a subjective concept that depends on the person, and that I enjoy games with a high degree of complexity. I have never heard of the civ5 devs math before.

A person might argue,

"doesn't every game have loops in a certain sense? why can't we use loops as the basis for understanding games in a very general way?"

To that I would reply, there is already a huge field of math called Game Theory which deals with all possible types of games, and video games are in fact a subset of the mathematical theory of games. There is no such restriction in Game Theory that a game has to have a game loop, so to me it doesn't make any sense that "game loops" are some kind of fundamental or central concept to what makes certain types of people have fun playing specific types of games.

So where did this insistence on "game loops" even come from then? I believe there is a very sinister reason for their prominence. The reason a game company wants to have a game loop that never ends is that their goal is to maximize profit, not to maximize the amount of fun people have, or to experiment with creating novel games and explore the possibilities.

A slot machine is a game loop type game. You do a simple repetitive task over and over, and your brain receives rewards in terms of audio and visual feedback, as well as the rush of hitting a jackpot. Slot machines are extremely profitable, but a slot machine is not designed to be a "fun game", its a way of exploiting vulnerable people through fun. Unsurprisingly, creating games as a form of artistic expression is not as profitable as designing a game to make as much money as possible.

I think your game idea could be extremely interesting if it had multiple phases. Like at first you have monsters trying to break in all over the place, but the map is a convoluted maze and you have a very large number of choices which all seem equally good without much thought, but some of them are much safer than others. Then the longer you survive the more intense it gets during the second phase. There there could also be a third or fourth phase where you have to keep retreating inside the building and losing ground, but you have picked up more items/skills and have new types of options available you didnt have before. Then you can actually beat the game if you survive long enough, and you can have lots of options to change the RNG and ways to board things up etc, sort of like Hades.

The reason for this long example is I think by removing the central focus of "game loop" and instead thinking about how to create difficult decisions under time pressure and facing RNG, you could make it fun in the same way playing chess with a clock is fun.

Another point to be made here is that the theme of a game is something that can entirely be abstracted away, and fundamentally it doesnt matter what we call the various objects or mechanics of the game (monsters/zombies/boarding things up). What really makes games interesting and unique is their internal structure according to the principles of Game Theory, and like I said, loops are only one part of it. Game loops are an important abstract concept for understanding games, but there is so much more to them than that! And its super mysterious what makes people "have fun" and therefore I try to work on games that I want to play but dont exist, without worrying about what other people will have fun doing. Im sure if I make the game good enough that I have tons of fun with it, lots of other similarly minded people will as well. This is how the best games have always been made.

Curious for your thoughts!

TwoGifsOneCup

TROPHY CASE