Rock-Paper-Scissors: an Analysis

It's the simplest game in the world, or at least the simplest competition. It goes by many names across the world. I will analyze it according to the concepts that I have presented earlier.

Number of players: two, competitively.

Symmetry: perfectly symmetrical, balanced.

Timescale: simultaneous.

Information: imperfect, inductive.

Mechanics: two players choose from one of three throws, and simultaneously reveal them with an unambiguous gesture. Each gesture draws against itself, defeats one, and is defeated by the other. Each throw results either in a draw, or in a win for one player and a loss for the other.

Metaphor: varies by culture, local flavor, or player eccentricity, but is commonly explained: rock blunts scissors; scissors cut paper; paper covers rock.

Theme: a full thematic interpretation of this game is beyond the scope of this article. It may be summarized as "Nothing is appropriate for every situation" or "All things have strengths and weaknesses," though more philosophical players may examine it in far greater depth.

Rock-paper-scissors is a very pure example of a certain game archetype, which is why "cyclical" balance of the type that it displays is often called "rock-paper-scissors balance" when employed in other games.

Now, consider this: a game as simple and basic as rock-paper-scissors has all these concepts associated with it. Since RPS represents the bare minimum necessary to be a competitive game, an analysis of this sort (though I wouldn't dare claim that my criteria are definitive, complete, or even any good) represents the bare minimum that a designer needs to understand about his game. Understanding your game's relation to rock-paper-scissors is like an engineer understanding a bicycle's relation to the lever.

Modes of Play

A single game can usually only be played in a handful of ways, but it has many to choose from. Here I intend to enumerate some of the more common considerations.

Number of players: this is not merely a count of the number of people involved. The organization of them can have great impact on the act of play.

• Solitaire: a single player pursues a goal.
  
• Competitive: several players autonomously pursue goals mutually exclusive with those of other players.
  
• Cooperative: several players coordinate to pursue a shared goal.
  
• Team: two or more groups of several players cooperate with each other in competition with the other groups.
  
• Diplomatic: players or groups pursue goals which may be shared or mutually exclusive, and must choose individually whether to cooperate or compete.
• Massive: large numbers of players apply one of the above, and events in several concurrent games are capable of affecting each other indirectly.

Symmetry: the options available to a player from the beginning have a considerable effect on the dynamics of the game. Symmetry is a matter of degree, not of kind.

• Symmetrical: all participants begin under identical or virtually identical conditions.
• Balanced: participants begin with starting conditions which are considered equally likely to win.
• Asymmetric: participants begin with unlike conditions.
• Handicapped: participants' starting conditions are altered to compensate for skill differences between them.
  

Timescale: the limitations placed upon when the players may influence the game state. These are largely subjective, and others have been experimented with, but principally it is a question of the relationship between the player's decision to act and that act affecting the game, to say nothing of the possibility of other players, or the game, responding to the intention rather than the act.

• Real-time: players influence the game state at any time the rules do not forbid it.
• Turn-limited: only one player may influence the game at a given time.
• Asynchronous: players announce their intentions to influence the game at various times, but they are applied simultaneously.
• Simultaneous: players affect the game at the same time.
  

Information: what players know or are capable of knowing about each other and about the state of the game.

• Perfect: players are aware of the entire game state at all times.
• Imperfect: players are aware of only certain parts of the game state, but they know of what they are not aware.
• Paranoid: players are aware that the knowledge of the game state given to them is inaccurate, but they do not know in what way.
• Knowable: players are not aware of the entire game state, but they are capable of discovering any given part.
  
• Unknowable: players are not aware of the entire game state, and parts of it are totally beyond their ability to know.
• Deductive: players can logically conclude the nature of parts of the game state which the game has not explicitly told them.
• Inductive: players must predict unknown parts of the game state without logical certainty.

Metaphor, Mechanics, and Theme

There are many ways to divide a game, and one of them is into a mechanical component, a metaphorical component, and a thematic component. Some games' metaphorical components are basically transparent, and so tenuous that they are essentially to be ignored, but all games have them.

The mechanical component of a game are just the rules, stripped of any context and reduced to their mathematical roots. In the game of chess, the mechanics are the starting layout of the pieces, their respective movement and capture ability, the special cases regarding the possibility of a certain piece's capture, and the way that the players take turns.

It is difficult to even describe chess without using metaphor, as "move" and "capture" are both terms best explained by the metaphor. This is because a game's metaphorical component is the part that relates the rules of the game to the player in terms of concepts they already understand. The opposing sides of a chess game are depicted as warring armies or nations, with each piece given a rank and an appearance roughly relating to its power. This is especially apparent in the pawn and the king: "pawn" denotes expendability and straightforwardness, whereas the word "king" denotes importance, suggesting its role as the ultimate goal of the game. "Capture" is a term drawn from the assertion that the opposite sides are at war, and the limitations on the pieces' movement throughout the board is best understood by thinking of them as men that cannot walk through each other (except the knight - which can "jump" over them - another metaphor).

A game without mechanics would be a daydream, or the sort of things that children play when they aren't playing anything in particular - and even then the players are not free of such things as the basic laws of physics, or their inviolate precepts about the universe. A game without metaphor would be inconceivable, as humans use metaphor to comprehend everything, but my guess is that the closest that exists is a card game, since the original symbolism of the fifty-two card deck has mostly passed from us, or a modern sport.

That leaves the thematic component. A game's theme might best be described as the assertions the game makes about the world. Like the same term applied to literature, it can be nebulous at times, and is most apparent when the metaphor is very strong. Since games are used for learning, a common theme of a game is that strategies successful in the game will also be successful in life - at least in situations that resemble the game's metaphor. In an abstract game such as go, the player is invited to substitute his own metaphor, in a rather distinctively eastern manner.

What is the theme of chess? Since it's unlikely that the player will ever be waging a totally symmetrical war in which both opponents have perfect knowledge of the battle, its metaphor is obviously not the source of its theme. Rather, its themes relate to the strategic choices a chess player may make: an opponent can be manipulated with threats and traps; an advantage is worth at least as much a resource; you must anticipate the results of your actions. Not all games are so richly conceived, but any ancient children's game is certain to contain layers of practical lessons; such games have been used since prehistory to teach real lessons for physical and social survival. The thematic component of a game is, in fact, what allows games to be used to teach.

The modern video game tends to contain a rather generic or all-purpose set of mechanics for presenting either a (frequently cinematic) story, or a series of puzzles and challenges. In the former case, the metaphor is the storyline and the theme are its narrative themes; in the latter, the metaphor is the explanation provided for the functions of all the components (avatar included), and the theme is found in the problem-solving strategies that are most successful (which most likely have to do with heuristics or lateral thinking).

The capacity of a game to contain a theme is what elevates it, in my mind, to the status of art.

Why you are here

My name is Mark Kollasch and I think about games. A lot. Video games are prominent in this, because they're flashy and exciting and that's where the money is, but there are many other kinds of game that I haven't forgotten about. Board games. Social games. Sports. Gambling in all its forms. Little xkcd-esque games that you play in your mind because you can't help yourself. I think about games because I play them, and I play games so that I can think about them afterward.

Lots of people seem to be thinking about games as of late. Some of them are establishing a working vocabulary so that we people who think about games can tell each other about it. Some of them are comparing notes and helping their fellow professionals to improve. Some are just looking for ways to pass the time, whereas with others, there's simply no telling how much they'll accomplish in the end.

It is my intention, through the use of this blog, to join this emerging sphere of discourse. In the future (or, to those of you browsing the archives, the present) you should expect to see my observations, ranging from trivial to comprehensive, on the design of specific games or games in general; my comments on the process of developing and programming video games; and, on occasion, my impressions of certain games from the perspective of a player.

Like so many other things, I will think of writing in this place as an in-development game in its own right. As a student, I expect that the rules will become clearer as I become more familiar with it. However, at least one thing is certain: if you are reading this now, that means I am winning.