In game design there is a concept known as “fuzziness.” It is used to describe the certainty of any particular piece of information, or the lack there of. A certain result is not fuzzy, and complete randomness isn’t fuzzy either, though it can factor into it. For example, if your opponent drafts a card from a face-up tableau and puts it in their hand, the fact that it is still in their hand 10 turns later after not using it is not fuzzy at all. However, if your opponent shuffles it into their deck and draws a new hand, the fuzziness of whether or not they have it is dependent on their deck size, hand size, and possibly other factors. Many games do away with fuzziness, but I think that is doing a great disservice to the industry.

Where is Fuzziness?

Fuzziness shows up in many situations, not just the card-based example above. The card example is one of the most common, though, since it uses randomization to implement fuzziness. It’s less about knowing what is going on, and more about guessing how likely it is that a certain thing happened. Almost all forms of fuzziness are based in randomization of some sort.

Perhaps the most popular form of fuzziness is player-invoked fuzziness. If a player does something or says they do something, whether or not they did can sometimes be left fuzzy. This is what gives hidden role games their punch. While you can be fairly certain most of the time, narrowing down or removing the fuzziness is often the heart of the game.

Fuzziness can also appear on a more macro-level. If a player is asked “can you defeat this monster on your next turn?” the answer may have some degree of fuzziness. If the monster is at 3 health and they have an action that deals 3 damage, then there is no fuzziness. If they can only deal two but they will draw a card on their turn, and there’s a chance it’ll increase their damage, or maybe just draw more cards, then the answer has some degree of fuzziness.

When it’s Needed

As a designer, I feel it is extremely important to consider where to put fuzziness from the start of the design process. Often its the very first thing I think of, and it might be for you as well. Fuzziness often goes right in the core loop of the game, and for good reason. Hidden role games make them the central mechanic, deckbuilders are named after the concept of having semi-regular access to actions, and role-playing games are famous for their ability to have situations that are easy to succeed at but have some degree of potential failure.

So where to you put fuzziness? The short answer is anywhere you want tension. As you can guess, that’s pretty often. Complete randomness can be exciting, but without a clear idea of the most likely result it players can feel detached from it. Complete certainty leads to puzzle games, where the game is not about attempting and failing, but about thinking and executing.

Here’s a story about a particular game I was working on for years. Shoot the Messenger is a hidden role game where the main ability to prove innocence is to show other players cards. My issue with the game was that I wanted some cards to be better than others, but if I used numbers or ranks of any type, the game was not fuzzy enough. People could do the math, see who has the lowest cards, and immediately out the traitor. In my efforts to increase fuzziness, I discovered a solution: rather than anything indirectly comparable, I made cards that could only be compared if you had them in your hand. That way, players couldn’t publicly discuss the values of cards. You would only be able to discuss them comparatively in imprecise terms. Fuzziness let the game exist.

Even Players Want It

If you ask a player whether they want games to be imprecise or not, most of them will say no. Players like knowing what’s going to happen so they can more easily plan around things, thus giving them a higher chance of winning. But a good game and an easy game are not even related.

The reasons players want precise data is exactly why you shouldn’t give it to them: because it makes the game solvable. There needs to be some way to stop a player from putting everything into a graph and finding out the exact way to properly win. This is harder to ensure for smaller games, since not every game designer is a math wizard, and unless your game becomes a huge hit, it probably won’t matter. But once your game is solved, there’s no going back, and a lot of players will consider the game unplayable.

The other reason players like fuzziness more than they think is because it gives them an out to Analysis Paralysis (AP). If a game seems solvable, a lot of players will attempt to do so. Even with games with near complete randomization, they might try and find out which of the rolls of the dice are most likely to effect the game. But fuzziness helps in more ways than one. Not only does it make the outcome impossible to confidently predict, it also gives the player doing the analysis a stopping point. Once they reach a point where they have something they’re mostly sure will happen, they might feel like going any further would be unwise, since the result might end up different, but they’ll also be content knowing they’ve done enough analysis to get a usable data point.

Conclusion…?

Yes, this is the conclusion, I just thought I would make it fuzzy. If you’re making a game, make sure there’s some form of plausible deniability. Make it so that, at least in some way, players won’t know what’s going on. Everyone will be happier for it.