Badly designed games

There is one incredibly popular incredibly badly designed game out there.

I’m sure you’re talking about I mean World of Warcraft. But I’m not.

I’m talking about Soccer.

I really personally despise soccer on almost every level, but one of them is a level I think is almost objective. I think soccer is an incredibly badly designed game.

(and no, I did not watch the UEFA game last night, but I cackled with glee to see the result this morning. Some team from the North 1 : Sports fans ZERO)

Ok, here’re the things that are wrong with Soccer.

1. Scoring probability every drive is ridiculously low

I’m going to go through this with Thomas (who was in Russia last night) to get my numbers straight – these are all pretty big approximations. But I’m thinking you probably have about one “drive” every minute in soccer, so that’s 90 drives a game for both teams. The average number of goals per game (and this is where I could do with Tom’s help) I’m going to take as 3.

So, in soccer, the scoring percentage per drive (SPPD) is (very roughly) 3.3%

Or: one goal makes an absolutely massive different, and is very unlikely. So luck plays a huge part, because it only takes one piece of luck to give you a huge advantage. Or one lapse of concentration for the defense, or, yes, one incredible play.

I fully understand that this is what people love about soccer – the incredibly feeling of tension when the ball is near the goal. But it’s meaningless, like winning the lottery.

I’m guessing a lot of people won’t see my point with this SPPD thing, so I’ll just state it: it is my hypothesis that the further SPPD is from 50% (in either direction) the more luck plays a factor and the less skill plays a factor in a game.

2. The players lie all the time, and it makes a difference to the result

I don’t like lying. I don’t like seeing people lie. But beyond all that I sure as hell don’t want to see THE RESULT OF A SPORTS MATCH decided by how good someone is at lying.

When soccer players fake injuries (dive) they are lying, and a large amount of the time they get a payoff for it. Soccer is a game which is impossible to officiate properly. And so subjective calls give advantages.

This is then massively compounded by SPPD. Because soccer is so random there is only one way to give a team an actual advantage – give them an almost certain chance of scoring. Penalty scoring percentage is I believe around 80%.

So when an offical thinks he saw someone fowl in the penalty zone – ie mess up one drive for Team A – he then gives Team A a reward equivalent to twenty four drives. Twenty four. It’s ridiculous.

3. Penalty shoot-outs

I don’t need to write about this really, no one likes them. But I love the irony of taking a game which is far too random in nature already because the SPPD is so low, and then making the result depend on a completely different game which is too random because the SPPD is so high.

Share this gibberish!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Badly designed games”

1. celtic tarot:

   § February 18th, 2010 at 9:41 am

   You guys constantly have such excellent posts to read on your website. I enjoy returning to discover new subject matter since I now have your web-site bookmarked. Thanks so much.

Leave a Reply