In contact with digital gaming, players experience randomness on multiple levels – less in terms of gaming mechanics than in connection with other uncertainty-based functionalities. Greg Costikyan (2013) claims this to be a prevalent mechanism used to keep players interested and involved. Uncertainty is by no means limited to the option of a specific object appearing or event occurring in the game; it is also connected to developing narrative tension. We may grow uncertain of our own skills during the game, while remaining unaware of how other players might behave. Games with an uncertainty focus have become observably more popular over recent years. While most related studies explore the ethical aspects of using so-called “loot box” mechanisms – boxes containing random spoils used as prizes (Nielsen & Grabarczyk, 2019; Xiao et al., 2022) – it is notable that randomness may serve as a foundation for gambling content as well as aforesaid experimentation with the uncertainty formula in digital gaming, and the pleasure it produces. Moving beyond an examination of capabilities of procedurally generated gaming environments, designers have begun introducing interesting mechanisms on a narrative building level. Such experiences are strongly based on algorithmic operations that become something closely akin to a dispositive, a structural force for participating individuals. Adopting Michel Foucault’s theory as her point of departure, Karen Barad perceives dispositives as material-discursive practices responsible for meanings arising from relationships. Owing to such practices, phenomena acquire separate properties and boundaries explorable by other beings. Once considered in a gaming moment context, gaming randomness-associated mechanisms ultimately define everything that happens in the game, as well as our required player responses. A moment undetermined just a short while ago becomes determined as well as unique. Interestingly, the approach reflects all the main tendencies in algorithmic culture, as algorithm perception through the lens of objective randomised destiny begins to prevail. Omnipresent content standardisation notwithstanding, uncertainty associated with how algorithms operate gives rise to a sense of an individual and intimate user experience. It is that corelation of standardisation and individuality that I intend to present in my lecture.
Barad, K. M. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Costikyan, G. 2013. Uncertainty in Games. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Nielsen, R., Grabarczyk, P. 2019. “Are Loot Boxes Gambling? Random Reward Mechanisms in Video Games”, DiGRA ’18 – Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message, DiGRA, July, 2018, http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/are-lootboxes-gambling-random-reward-mechanisms-in-video-games/
