What do you think you’re playing at!

Like most people I played Snakes and Ladders as a child. I had fun rolling the die, moving my counter, and hoping to land on that extra-long ladder that would send me well into the lead; another thing which made it fun was that my father would grizzle and complain whenever he lost. People often talk about Snakes and Ladders as being a good game for children as it is simple and helps to teach them numeracy skills. It also taught me how to argue about rules, with variations such as having to roll a six or a one to start and having to land exactly on the final square to win. And so, many evenings and weekends of my youth were spent playing this game. It was only later in life that I realised that I hadn’t been playing a game at all and none of the rules that we argued over changed this in the slightest.

Now you might find it weird for me to just declare that Snakes and Ladders isn’t a game but let me show you what I mean by using Candy Land as an example. Candy Land plays very similarly to Snakes and Ladders, the difference is that instead of rolling a die you turn over the top card of a colour coded deck to determine where you move to. Since the order of the cards in the deck it set by the initial shuffle and the order of the players’ turns are also fixed, the ‘game’ plays out automatically and the winner is determined entirely by that initial shuffle. So how does this apply to Snakes and Ladders? Since the player has no control over the number rolled by the die (unless they are a very skilled cheat) what they are doing when they roll is generating a list of random numbers. Now if I came to you and said let’s play Snakes and Ladders, but instead of rolling a die let’s use this pregenerated list of random numbers, very few people would say yes as using it takes away that feeling of the unknown and getting lucky as you roll the die, even though it is in effect the exact same thing.

So what makes this not count as a game then? My reasoning is that because at no point does any player make a decision and no one can do anything to effect the outcome (without cheating), you are not so much playing a game as you are watching some counters move along a predetermined path. However, it takes only a very small addition to the rules to change it back into a game. If you permit the player to choose if they would like to move their piece forwards of backwards before they roll the die we have now introduced decisions, which in turn enables players to change the result of the game.

I find it interesting to apply this kind of logic to casino games. For example in roulette, craps, and Two-up although you are able to choose what you want to bet on, you in no way can alter the outcome of the game, which is how the house manages to make a set margin on these games. However, in a game like blackjack or poker your decisions can affect who wins and who loses, which is why these games are far more commonly played by professional gamblers. The popularity of these games of pure chance just illustrates how much enjoyment people are able to get out of a feeling of ‘beating the odds’ and getting lucky.

I will finish off by saying that although having players make decisions that can affect the outcome of a game is a good thing, if the outcome of those decisions is so obvious that it in effect makes only one option viable (as for example in tic-tac-toe) then the game is just as bad as one with no decisions.