Matty Erickson 
Randomness has been a part of gaming since the earliest days of simple dice-type games. In modern video games, randomness is often used to mix up outcomes so that the player has to prepare and adapt to various situations that they otherwise wouldn’t encounter.
It’s also used in rewards systems so that the player occasionally wins rarer loot. This can be within the game or, in the case of loot boxes, which have at times come under scrutiny, a paid item drop.
In any case, whether it’s games of pure chance or part skill, randomness has an impact on the strategy, gameplay, and the player’s overall experience.
Randomness In Casino Games
Many of the most popular casino games are pure chance, meaning the player has no direct control over the outcome. They have to pick an outcome, choose a bet size, and see what happens. The rest is up to fate.
This is true in games like roulette, slots, and dice games like craps. These types of games are close to ancient gambling games that may have derived from divination. Randomness is a part of life, and so these games have retained their appeal for many centuries. Other casino games involve a mix of chance and skill, such as blackjack and poker. The player can learn optimal or superior moves to enhance their odds. Chance still comes into it because there are outcomes that can’t be controlled, such as the turn of a card or the roll of a dice in backgammon.
There are also other elements of uncertainty in casino games, such as the concept of incomplete information. For example, in poker, you can never see your opponent’s cards, so you can’t know with 100 percent certainty what they are holding.
In backgammon, you can see the state of the board and each other’s moves at all times, making backgammon a game of complete information, although it still has randomness in the form of dice rolls.
Random Number Generators
Online casinos use random number generators, which act as digital dice or cards. These algorithms generate a seed number from random variables, such as time in seconds. The seed then undergoes a complex formula that generates a longer number that represents the outcome.
If you happen to play casino for real money at Bovada, for example, the roll of the dice, turn of the card, or spin of the roulette wheel are randomized by the algorithm and then visually represented on the screen as the outcome of the given casino game. Independent companies verify this process as fair and accurate.
Video game designers also utilize random number generators in order to vary the outcomes that players experience. For example, in role-playing games (RPGs), the player may occasionally score a critical hit that deals double damage. This is decided by the random number generator, which is acting like a dice roll.
Randomness In Modern Video Games
RPGs actually evolved from table top games like Dungeon and Dragons, in which one or more dice are rolled in order to decide many outcomes, from combat damage to what happened in certain rooms or corridors.
This is still used extensively in modern video games that have RPG elements, although the dice have now become a random number generator. Here are some examples of how randomness is used in RPG-style games and action games with RPG elements:
- Rare monster encounters – How often the player finds a certain monster, character, or wild beast on the map. The randomness means that players will occasionally stumble across tough enemies or will have to actively hunt rare fauna.
- Loot drops – Monsters or enemies often drop loot, but what they drop and how often they drop it is often set by an RNG, likewise with loot chests within the game. The player will usually get common loot and will sometimes earn rare drops for their time, opening the door for item farming.
- Combat – Even in action RPGs, elements of combat are usually randomized. Damage output might have a range or critical hits may happen a certain percentage of the time. This is true of characters and enemies, which makes battles interesting, frustrating, but ultimately rewarding.
- Events – Many RPGs have events, which may in themselves be randomized so that the player rarely encounters the same characters or circumstances as they move around the map. In some games, the player has a dialogue choice, the outcome of which may be at least partially randomized. Any event in a game can contain elements of randomness.
- Game world – More recently, games like No Man’s Sky have taken randomness to another level by allowing whole worlds to be created by random number generators. In effect, no two players experience the exact same game. Other titles take this concept for smaller elements, such as for the weather or for map generation in a rogue-lite game.
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