"I feel like fairness itself is a little storied. [and] if you start thinking about the cool games we're making as part of an ideological program, it makes the games a lot less cool" (i.e. the games are ideologically selling the (Cole says "calvinist") idea of fairness, that whoever has the skill and experience will be rewarded by victory)

Mechanical/thematic friction
We both roll a die, but one ends up with
-"You gambled and lost all your money. Go back."
and the other ends up with
-"You quit gambling! Great! Go forward"
But we both rolled the die.

(Ludonarrative Dissonance? lol)

Out of this tension is born The Fun & Fair Design Ethos! Games should delight and instruct. ... so it follows that skill and experience should be rewarded by victory.

[17:06-17:33] "The thing about might vs right that sometimes gets forgotten is in so many dogmatic logics, might is given to the people who are right. It's not like I'm strong so I'm going to pin you down to the ground and make you do whatever I'd like you to do, which is a very modern way of viewing it, it's like, no, God has appointed certain people to be strong, and then they carry a sort of rightness with them."

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025683/Board-Game-Design-Day-King

Fairness is a new concept. For most of human history, cheating was the norm in love and war and games.

Hypothesis: Highly powerful/efficient computation is pleasurable. Not merely computation which produces great results, but also does it efficiently, i.e. with minimal time and effort.

- a certain time constraint which forces me to come up with the most efficient computation, not just the best solution (i.e. not turn-based)

- an excellent model which affords me the mental scaffolding to compute efficiently (as opposed to a model which is unintuitive and feels 'inefficient'* to handle mentally)

- enough time for me to come up with a satisfactorily good computation engage with a system on a conscious level, rather than a reflexive one (i.e. not high-speed action)

*or perhaps it's not about efficiency, but rather 'comfort'? i think efficiency is easier to wrap my head round though. a model which sits comfortably in the head will also be the more efficient model.

Also see Depth in Strategic Games

See SEMI-UNPREDICTABLE MODELS (Pattern)

See Envisioning Randomness

* * *
When presented with a process whose results are important to me (VITAL PROCESS?), it's pleasurable to compute what the results are going to be. If I'm entirely incapable of attempting to compute the result, I'll be frustrated... but if the act of computing is too trivial, the pleasure will go away... and if the act of computing is too expensive, it will become tiresome to compute in its entirety. However, for a suitably vital process, I will still be driven to compute it in its entirety, however tiresome, and burn out afterwards.
* * *

When presented with a process whose results are important to me, I will naturally attempt to compute what the results are going to be, which is why it's necessary that I can't. However, I like partially computing what the results are going to be... hmm. That third bullet point isn't necessary. It's something else.

Envisioning Randomness is a good place to start for me because Randomness in games is normally a process the produces important results. So, maybe I can break this down into some bullet points. What am I looking for?

- a process whose results are important to me
- i can't tell what the results are going to be
- when the results come out, i can understand why they turned up that way

Then again, I've always liked exposed machinery. Seeing what's backstage, getting to explore the guts.

Seeing the process that generates a proc gen level is somewhat similar - just watching it unfold is beautiful. It allows me to envision a 'random' process. I think observing a level be generated would be significantly more pleasurable if I could dance around on it, halting processes at will... That would feel fascinating.

Starseed Pilgrim has randomness that can be envisioned: its seed growth patterns. Though there is a hidden process - how does each individual tile growth step work? - it can be seen as one entire random process, which is visible and tangible. The process in action can only be stopped, not altered otherwise once started, but it feels like something that can be seen and touched.