Chapter 138: Perfect Deception

Ultimately, Sovereign wasn't a particularly complicated game.

Even after adding new mechanics such as random events, cards, vehicles, its underlying gameplay remained fundamentally simple. As a result, development turned out to be surprisingly straightforward, especially now that GAMENOVA had two new additions to the team.

After only half a month, the game's demo was already fully functional. All that remained was for Game Freak to finish producing the art assets.

However, when everyone sat down in front of the fully playable demo, they found themselves at a loss.

Simply put… it wasn't fun.

That was the conclusion Ethan, Sam, Will, and Sid reached after playing thousands of multiplayer matches together.

"All of these mechanics are really interesting."

Sam was the first to speak.

"The card system, in particular, is absolutely brilliant."

From his perspective, the addition of cards transformed the game from a contest of pure luck into something with genuine strategic depth.

Which cards to buy. When to use them. These all became fascinating new gameplay elements. Together, they gave the game a level of depth that the board game version could never achieve.

"The stock market and inflation systems are excellent too. Those are things the board game Monopoly simply can't do."

"And because the computer handles all the tedious calculations that traditional Monopoly requires, the numbers can grow to absurd levels without slowing down the pace of gameplay..."

Will and Sid focused more on the game's numerical balance and underlying logic.

The four of them enthusiastically listed one advantage after another. Yet the core problem remained unsolved. It wasn't fun.

But why?

Every individual mechanic was incredibly enjoyable. Whether visually or mechanically, each component felt great. But the moment they judged the experience of an entire match as a whole, the quality dropped dramatically.

One frustrating situation after another constantly emerged. The player who was ahead never quite got the satisfaction they expected.

Meanwhile, the player who fell behind remained trapped in an endless cycle of being beaten down.

As a result, even the winner wasn't completely satisfied, and the loser had an absolutely miserable experience.

Of course, saying it wasn't fun at all might have been an exaggeration. If they released it in its current state, backed by GAMENOVA's reputation, it would undoubtedly become another blockbuster.

But in the eyes of the four developers, it was nowhere near perfect. Nor was it worthy of GAMENOVA's standards.

Ethan frowned as he watched the dice spinning across the screen. A realization slowly formed in his mind.

"The problem is randomness."

It was an eternal dark cloud hanging over the entire video game industry, a purely mathematical problem.

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One completely unaffected by advances in software or hardware. Even decades later, countless games would still fail to find a perfect solution.

The others looked towards Ethan, as expressions of realization gradually appeared on their faces.

"Now that you mention it... you're right."

Sam recalled the previous few games. Whether it was the dice or the random cards, the outcomes rarely left anyone satisfied.

Ethan remained silent for a long moment.

To implement mechanics such as dice rolls and random events, they had built a random number generator module into the game.

This wasn't the first time he'd done something like this.

Random numbers had already been used extensively in Fire Emblem to calculate hit rates and critical hit chances. Even earlier than that, the random item drops in 1942 had relied on the same kind of system.

Random number generation was about as basic as it gets in computer science. Even Sam, the worst programmer of the four, could easily implement it.

That system had worked perfectly well in all of their previous games, but this time was different. Now they were making a game whose core gameplay revolved around randomness itself, so its weaknesses had been completely exposed.

"It's too chaotic."

"It doesn't produce results the way we actually want."

As an experienced designer, Sid immediately understood the real problem.

"Extremely unlucky outcomes can create terrible experiences for the players who end up drawing the short straw."

People naturally remembered the moments that broke away from the norm. Even if only one game out of ten turned out horribly, that single terrible experience would remain unforgettable.

Objective fairness across a large sample size was not the same as fairness as perceived by the player. Not to mention the Matthew Effect, where the strong kept getting stronger while the weak only fell further behind.

"But..."

"Isn't randomness supposed to be random?"

Sam considered what everyone had said, looking puzzled. From his perspective, the current chaotic and unpredictable behavior actually proved that the random number generator they had built was working perfectly.

"No, Sam."

"True randomness is the least random thing in the world."

Ethan's frown gradually relaxed. Now that they had identified the root of the problem, the issue was already ninety percent solved.

"Huh? Why?"

"Because what matters is that players believe it's random, not that it's objectively random."

Will picked up the conversation, explaining it to Sam. After listening for a while, he had already figured out what was going on.

"Sam, imagine we have a lottery box with one hundred balls inside, and only one of them is the winning ball."

"In that case, what's the probability of winning?"

"One percent?"

It was such a simple math problem that Sam answered without even thinking.

"Exactly."

"In an ideal situation, we'd expect to win at least once after drawing one hundred times."

"Oh! I get it now!"

Will's example was vivid enough that Sam immediately understood.

That's right, true randomness was actually counterintuitive. If your luck happened to be bad, it was entirely possible to go all one hundred draws without winning even once.

Random outcomes were discrete, but people didn't experience the world as isolated moments. That was why something as objectively fair as randomness could actually feel profoundly unfair to players.

"Markov chains."

Ethan quietly uttered the words before rubbing his temples helplessly.

Mathematics...

At the end of the day, everything in video games ultimately came down to math.

The Markov chain model could be considered the foundation of countless random algorithms used in modern games. Even machine learning relied heavily upon it.

On a simpler level, the behavior of NPCs in games could itself be viewed as a basic Markov chain. Each state transition depended only on the current state.

"Will, let's handle this project together."

"Let's design a PRD algorithm."

"PRD?"

"Yeah."

"Pseudo-Random Distribution."

"Didn't you say your next game would try simulating human life and society? This will be incredibly useful."

Ethan couldn't help but smile. If they succeeded, they wouldn't just solve the problem in front of them. They would create a system that could influence game design for decades to come.

Game balance designers only became truly valuable when they could bring random outcomes under control. Only controlled randomness could create an experience that felt natural enough and, most importantly, fair to the players.

It was the most ingenious deception ever born from mathematics. A deception that made players willingly accept the illusion and happily play by its rules.

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