Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
People usually feel that if all players start in the same state, they all have an equal
chance of winning. This assumes that the definition of fairness ignores the differ-
ences in the players' skill levels. Occasionally, people agree that a highly skilled
player must take a
handicap
—that is, they impose a disadvantage on a skilled player
to give the less-skilled players a better chance of winning. Amateur golf is the best-
known example: Poor players are allotted a certain number of strokes per match
that do not count against their score. On the other hand, professional golf, in
which prize money is at stake, does not use this system and is purely symmetric.
In an
asymmetric
game, different players may play by different rules and try to
achieve different victory conditions. Many games that represent real-world situa-
tions (for example, war games based on historical events) are asymmetric. If you
play a war game about World War II, one side is the Axis and one is the Allied
powers. The two sides necessarily begin at different locations on the map, with
different numbers of troops and different kinds of weapons. As a result, it is often
necessary for the two sides to have different objectives to make the game fair.
In asymmetric games, it is much more difficult to determine in advance whether
players of equal skill have an equal chance of winning. As a result, people often
adjust the rules of asymmetric games to suit their own notions of fairness.
Figure 1.3
shows an asymmetric medieval board game called Fox and Geese. One player
moves the fox (F) and the other moves the geese (G).
FIGURE 1.3
Fox and Geese: an
asymmetric medieval
board game
The players take turns each moving one piece. The objective for the fox is to jump
over the geese and remove them from the board, while the objective for the geese is
to push the fox into a corner so that it cannot move. The geese cannot jump over
the fox. Several variants of this game exist because people have adjusted the rules
to align it closer to their sense of fairness. Some versions have two foxes; other ver-
sions have smaller numbers of geese; in some, the geese may not move on the
diagonal lines, and so on.
