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BGonline.org Forums
Many will find this ludicrous...
Posted By: smcrtorchs In Response To: Many will find this ludicrous... (Michael Petch)
Date: Sunday, 9 September 2012, at 10:16 p.m.
"You want the casual human to feel like they are being challenged but at the same time not make them feel that the bot is taking advantage of the situation."
While this is very true for most digital games and described very well in the theory of flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, backgammon is not really tailored for such experiences. To say it very quickly flow is the situation where the challenge provided constantly matches the skill level of the player. Digital games can do it, but board games are most of the time really far from it.
I believe that for backgammon another concept can explain how most people approach it. The concept of game mastery, which is also explained by Raph poster in his book A theory for fun. To make a long story short, game mastery is when a player knows very well a game and he is an expert at it, but he keeps playing it again and again just to show his "master skills" to others and to him self. This gives him satisfaction even if others are not there, as he judges himself as an expert in this game during the process. What happens in backgammon is that the luck of the dice disguises completely the skill level for most of the players and dare I say the casual player. They all believe they know backgammon and none can prove a move is better than their move. It makes sense that they believe it. They have spent some time in determining their strategy and as they cannot see further they believe ti is the best. They were never shown by someone else all the patterns that exist in backgammon and how they make a move best. They never learned how much depth backgammon has.
Therefore casual players face a learning curve only at the beginning with backgammon. When indeed they do not know the game and they will draw their own conclusions. For most of them the process learns quickly. So while what you describe is true for those that are in this short for them process, it is not for the majority who are already to the phase of game mastery. This is why people believe the dice is rigged.
There are good pdf files both for flow and for the book theory of fun for anyone that would like to google them and form his own opinion. I am not sure if the concept of game mastery is explained in the pdf though as the pdf is a short version of the book and it might not be included.
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