Email: On Malstrom’s Law and Randomisation

Hi Master Malstrom,

I just read your post and I think your definition of Malstrom’s law is very solid. It certainly adds a new dimension to the trend of “big games with poor gameplay”. Maybe it would be worth emphasising that the length of a “session” is as important for some games as the length of the game itself. There’s nothing wrong with an intense concentration game having 100 levels if those levels are five-ten minutes long, after all.

But going back to your point about randomisation, I’m very curious about this but I think the reason why many developers avoid random elements is that it’s difficult to maintain a consistent quality experience, especially in arcade-style games where the positioning of objects, enemies and items matters a lot to the experience. But if developers could somehow come up with a random level generator that maintains the consistent quality, it would give players much greater variety than they’re currently used to.

For example, there is on the internet a fanmade random level generator for the classic Doom games called SLIGE. Apparently the SLIGE-created maps are so convincingly good that modders used to submit them to the modding community as their own work before the community cracked down on it. Imagine if all games were equipped with such a tool! It would certainly add to the variety of the player’s experience.

So my question to you is, if you were setting out to create a random level generator for your favourite games, what basic rules would you put in place to make sure that every experience was consistently good?

Look at games like Civilization and Minecraft which have strong randomization. They offer a consistent gameplay experience, despite the randomization, because the randomization occurs only at the start of the game. From that time forward, the gameplay depends on how the players build and the effects from the choices they did earlier.

Randomization tends to fail when it provides the end gameplay. Randomized Mario levels wouldn’t work because Mario levels are the end of the gameplay. But what if Mario was randomized in his abilities at the start of every level? You might be small Mario, big Mario, Tanooki Mario, or whatever. That randomization works because it doesn’t define the end gameplay.

The ‘randomized games’ aren’t entirely random. They’re only random at the beginning.

Or to put it another way, if video games were a play, the randomization isn’t in the PLOT but in the STAGE. The stage randomizes, but the plot remains the same (while incorporating the differences of the stage).

Imagine a Chrono Trigger sequel where the age you start in is randomized. What if you start in the future? Or the past? But the key word there is ‘start’.