CHAOS ENGINE

More games than ever run on randomness, and it’s transformed the industry. But for better or worse?

- Alex Wiltshire

We’ve all experienced moments in games like this: wandering deep in a dungeon, you encounter an ogre. It’s beaten you nearly to death, but you’ve one hope left. In your pack is an unidentified potion that you picked up in a room a few minutes ago. With no other option, you drink it, because it could save the day if it’s a potion of life. Or it might be a potion of hallucination, which will mean that in your final moments you’ll see the dungeon walls pulse with imagined color, and the ogre apparently turned into a tuft of grass as it finishes you off. Your fate in this game of Brogue is in the hands of randomness.

Here’s another: your veteran assault soldier is standing right next to a sectoid, ready to fire with her shotgun. The game says you have odds of 90 percent to hit, and yet, when you hit Fire Weapon, she misses. Your turn is over, and the sectoid kills her. In this XCOM mission, randomness again rules your fate.

Since their inception, videogames have used randomness to add a dose of unpredictability to the cold sureness of computer logic. Will the enemy do this, or that? Will your final axe blow take down your assailant, or will they get the last hit? Will you get the special item or the booby prize? It can make games interesting and mysterious; it can put your heart in your mouth and make you punch the air with relief. And today, randomness is being used more than ever.