Why Games Must Be More Than Fair: Random Walks, Long Leads, and Tools to Encourage Close Games

It is natural for a game designer to assume that games that give each player an equal chance of winning will often have tie games and changes in the lead, but this is incorrect. An argument is made for viewing fair games between players of equal skill as unbiased random walks, the result of which is that fair games naturally tend to have few or no tie games and lead reversals, unless they possess mechanisms that specifically encourage close games. The mechanisms of Negative Feedback, Different Speeds, Rise and Decline, Increasing Stakes, Bounded Success, and Alliances are presented with real game examples as ways to avoid blowout games, and the conditions of their success are evaluated in light of the random walk model. Examples from well-known games and potential recombinations of these mechanisms with new genres are discussed.