Lucio’s Rambles

Luck in Games

2026-04-06T19:49:06+03:00

So, a few weeks ago, the director of my game design course told me she’d be willing to let me run a small course on game mechanics next semster. Sweet! I’ve complained about the lackluster education this degree gave us about how to actually make games when it comes to rules and mechanics, so this is some attempt to remedy that fact myself. Problem is - I gotta think of a syllabus now.

More than that, I need to now make lectures about mechanics and have them be both understandable, interesting, and useful. I managed to do one of those a while back, but now I need to have… I am unsure on the amount actually. I’m banking on around 6. Still - more than 1. And even that one I feel I’ll need to redo.

I sat down to make the presentations and realized I’m actually unsure of what I want to say, so today (and probably a few more times on this blog), I’ll just be writing a giant list of thoughts about game design, so I can later parse my mess of incoherent babbling and convert it into something useful.

First topic on the agenda: LUCK!

WARNING: The following post will be wildly incoherent and messy, likely reading like I am talking to myself. This is because I am talking to myself.

So, luck. Luck, luck, luck. I wrote some notes before doing this about the topics I’d want to discuss, and what I wrote about luck is:

Luck and Skill
- Luck and Skill are opposed on individual mechanics
- Luck and Skill are orthogonal on the broad perspective of a game
- People love luck but hate to admit it

So let’s go over these first. Typically when people talk about luck and skill there’s the implication that these are opposing forces, right? That if a game is more luck-based it is necessarily less skill-based. And that is true to some extent, right? If we define “skill” as being “how frequently a given person can bring upon a desired set of circumstances, typically via some sort of training”, then luck is diametrically opposed to this, as it creates uncertainty. It makes the given person less likely to bring upon their desired set of circumstances. But I don’t think that’s exactly what people mean when they say ‘skill’.

Well, sort of, I think that people think of skill as a trait a game can have more or less of. Not as a percentage, but as something that two skill-based games can have either more or less of, compared to eachother. Think of Tic-tac-toe and Chess, right? One of these is more “skillful”. But why? Neither has any random elements, they’re both fully open info. So clearly this “skill” isn’t just how often a given player can bring upon a desired set of circumstances, but rather how… difficult? not difficult. Maybe how much there is to learn in a given game to give you an edge over your opponent. In Characteristics of Games they called this the “skill ladder” - a “ladder” of players of a given game, where every “tier” up the ladder has a 60% or more chance to beat people below them. The more steps on this ladder exist, the more “skillful” a game. I think that makes some sense, right, when you play a pvp game your success only matters in respect to who you’re fighting, so if there’s always someone you can get better at, that’s… “more skill.”

So in that sense, they aren’t really opposed to eachother, right? There’s plenty of games with very tall skill ladders that have plenty of luck, like Poker, or any roguelike. If anything I’d argue luck compliments skill in this area, because it forces players to learn more than they’d otherwise want to. If a game is fully deterministic, right, you can just not bother learning certain areas of the game if they’re of very low importance or if you know how to shut them down ahead of time. It makes it so you need to be good at less things overall. If luck forces your hand to situations where using these niche mechanics would be favorable, it lengthens the skill ladder, because there’s more ways to learn and beat other players.

So yeah like, luck and skill seem opposed but aren’t really when we discuss the way people typically think of skill. On the individual mechanic scale they’re opposed, but broadly they’re complimentary. Interesting but weird.

Now the next part that people love luck but hate to admit it… Yeah it’s pretty straightforward. Well, people would be the wrong word, experts would be more accurate. In the hardcore audience of pretty much any game, people fucking HATE random elements, dude. Look at Smash Bros right, there’s a reason tournaments ban items and only play on final destination while when I play with my mates we spam smash balls like it’s no tomorrow. They see the items as adding variance and being able to take away from their displays of skill, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but… even if we move past my disagreements with that base concept, hardcore players tend to forget the reason why luck is present in games, and how it adds to the experience.

….How does it add to the experience actually? I was gonna go on a tangent of how it helps lesser players win more, therefore making more people play the game and enjoy it therefore increasing the game audience, but that feels too specific to multiplayer titles and also assumes the location of luck in very specific places. Might come back to it later.

One thing that I think may be worth discussing would be the separation of luck into three categories (also from characteristics of games):

Random Elements: mechanics which create some unpredictable result during gameplay, like dice or cards
Von-Neumann Games: situations where players create a simultaneous decision, being only able to guess what their opponent will do, like rock paper scissors.
Human Ignorance: situations where the player technically has all the information but it is either unreasonable or unfun to come to the proper conclusion, resulting in a guess, like guessing between the two best moves in a game of chess.

Technically the first category fits into the last category in some sense, like, technically a supercomputer could predict what a die roll would land on and it’s just human ignorance that we can’t predict it, but… uhhhhh what am I even gonna say about these distinctions? Is there anything fundamentally different or interesting to say about them? I am unsure there really is.

I could say that Vonn Neumann games are considered to be more “palable” to the hardcore audience than pure luck games are, because technically you are making a decision (even if it’s completely arbitrary), but what then? What’s useful about this knowledge?

Let’s think. Random elements fully remove control from the player. This can be good. Von Neumann may be more palpable to hardcore players because you can essentially roll a loaded die in your favor, but the “tryhard” way to treat every decision like that would be to plan for and calculate every possible result, which is a headache, and in reality even calculating only two may be more annoying as opposed to knowing with certainty.

The Human Ignorance bit could be interesting, because I could tie it into a point about how all luck is just a form of hidden information. How there doesn’t actually need to be randomness or even anything arbitrary for it to be percieved as luck.

If I make a GIF with three doors that ask the user to pick a door, and then reveals only one of the doors had a key behind it, is it luck? It’s deterministic, repeteable, nothing in it was random, but it still is lucky. Merely because I didn’t know the answer. Because I could figure it out without knowing why I figured it out. The act of making a decision without knowing all the information involves a gamble, and that’s luck.

And that might be what people like- ehhh i’m going into philosophy. This isn’t what I’m doing, I wanna stick to rules.

I don’t know what I’m gonna say about luck. I had some other topics there that I had more bullet points on. Maybe I’ll shelve this and go to something else i have more to write about.

That seems like a good plan.

Euthanizing Denji

2026-03-28T14:56:06+03:00

To those of you who don’t know, four days ago we got the very final installment of Chainsaw Man: Chapter 232. And it’s somewhat controversial.

Chainsaw Man is a very popular manga about a boy who can turn into the titular Chainsaw Man, using this power to take down various monsters and learning about his place in the world. Fairly standard setup, but it’s executed very well, making it an incredibly popular story.

The story’s split into two main parts: Part 1, aka “The Public Safety Saga”, and Part 2, “The Academy Saga.” The first part focuses on Denji’s story working under the Public Safety division, while the second focuses on a new protagonist named Asa, trying to live a normal highschool life while dealing with a devil who took residence in her body.

If these plotlines sound interesting to you, I recommend you go out and read the manga (or watch the very-well animated show!), because I’m going to go into spoiler territory here.

SPOILERS FOR ALL OF CHAINSAW MAN ABOUND.

TURN BACK NOW IF THAT MATTERS TO YOU!

Part 2 of CSM has gotten… mixed reception, to say the least. While the start of part 2 was sincerely excellent and still works as a (mostly) standalone story, there is some point where the story starts going downhill. Depending on who you ask you’ll get different answers for when that was, but around the 3rd or 4th arc, the focus of the narrative shifts.

Initially Asa was our protagonist, a new perspective with a whole character arc to complete and absolutely loathing towards other humans (which I found to be hilarious), but as we continue, Denji is our protagonist once more as she gets kinda tossed and forgotten about. The first two arcs are small-scale and entertaining on their own, while implying greater things yet to come, but from chapter 3 onwards the implication is everything we get. We get implications of what will happen, and how that future payoff may be interesting, but we don’t get quite as much interesting stuff in the then and now. Everything focuses on what will happen later, on this great prophecy, on mysteries, on building up arcs rather than resolving them…

On promising something thrilling later. On promising that juuust around the corner is the big reveal that will tie everything together.

So of course, when the ending arrived, and the payoff didn’t, people lost it. People said that this ending is atrocious, that it spat in the face of everything the fans wanted, but in reality it was just the moment where fans were forced to accept all the dissapointment they’ve already been fed under the promise of later reward.

And honestly? I’m glad it’s over. Hell I wish it ended earlier. Because it’s clear the author fucking hated writing this.

As the story goes along the artstyle (penned by the guy who also wrote the story) gets worse and worse. Panels become indecipherable and action becomes hard to follow. That coincides with characters getting increasingly flatter and relying on their old characterization. Atleast for me, it really felt like Tatsuki Fujimoto (the author) was done with this story many moons ago and just kept going for the paycheck.

I kept following this story even when I was down with it with the sliver of hope that he really did have some greater plan or payoff at the end of the road for us to reach. And now that we’re here, I’m glad this story is over. I’m glad that I can know with certainty that part 2 isn’t worth reading through, rather than wondering whether I need to tell friends to just “power through” the shit in the middle. I’m glad that the author can take a break and start something new.

I still think that the first two arcs of Part 2 are really good and worth reading (the ones with Asa in the protagonist seat), but beyond that?

Denji’s been euthanized, and I couldn’t be happier for him.

The Amazing Digital Circus is Fine

2026-03-21T17:57:09+02:00

So, The Amazing Digital Circus! To those who haven’t heard of it, it’s an ongoing show about six unlucky protagonists being trapped in the titular circus, and they don’t know why. They wake up in bodies that aren’t theirs, barely remembering who they were before, and trying to find how they escape while being entertained/tortured by a sentient AI who sincerely seems to want to make them happy.

If this plot summary seems interesting to you, I’d recommend checking it out, all the episodes are on both netflix and youtube.

Also, because I’m gonna start ripping into it a little.

The latest episode dropped today, and the final episode is set to drop on june, so I feel like at this point I have a fairly strong read on the quality of the show as a whole. And my verdict is: It’s fine.

It’s cute, the animation is very good, the first few episodes are entertaining and fun, the show on its own doesn’t have any glaring issues. However, the reason I am making this post is because when I go online and see other people talking about the show I feel insane. Maybe not insane, actually, that’s a strong word. I feel like I’ve walked into a group of people watching their first ever show.

People are hailing this show as being peak, posting how they are FLOORED at the twists and reveals at the end of every episode, and like - they’re alright? They’re really not that exceptional. There’s plot holes and rushed development moments littered all throughout, which aren’t a cardinal sin but would make the show not be “OHHHH MY GOOOODDDDD”-level warranted. I won’t go into them too much here incase you didn’t watch the show, but like… the latest episode has many moments where someone acts in a way that isn’t quite out of character, but is not at all how they were acting the rest of the episode, because if they kept acting normally the plot would be resolved. Again - not a cardinal sin, but not oscar-worthy writing.

One thing I’ve been told is “lucio, the fans are mostly teens. teens are like this”, which I can dismiss some of the more wild takes I’ve seen (someone saying this show brought “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” to the mainstream. Yknow, one of the most well known pieces of sci-fi literature). On the other hand, I know plenty of adults that treat this show as the second coming. I really don’t get it.

Is it just me? Am I missing something?

Probably.

But I feel like people are really making it out to be more than it is.

The Horrors of Personal Style

2026-03-13T18:47:26+02:00

While I couldn’t go to this year’s GDC, the friend I was planning to go with did. They are very fashionable and great with people, two things I am incredibly jealous of them for; they managed to make connections with a bunch of people in the industry already, including getting someone to pay for their expensive lunch on day 1.

I asked them to teach me their ways, how did they manage to get so many people to know them so quick. They said I should compliment people and then naturally introduce myself to enter the conversation (good plan, however I am terrified of talking to new people, so it’ll take work), and to “dress in a way that makes you easy to recognize or stand out”.

This second part is the part I wanna talk about. Because man oh man do I have negative points in style. The most I know about matching clothes is owning 200 green T-shirts because I have green eyes. Beyond that point it’s up to god whether I look good in the mornings or not.

For years I’ve wanted to get some sort of style going, but I never really got how to do that. I look online for advice, or skim descriptions of books, and they all already assume you have some sense of natural style. “Try new clothes and see which ones fit your asthetic!” How do I know if they fit, if I don’t know what my asthetic is, or what clothes even compliment it? The few times I’ve gone with people to shop, they would usually rip whatever I picked off the shelf from my hands and hand me something else to try out.

And even then, how do I look memorable? I am a tall bearded white guy, I already look “default” in most work-related conferences I go to, so my clothes really need to pull their weight here. What do I wear? In terms of accessories every guy wears a watch and a necklace so those seem like boring options. Do I get a print tee? Are print tees cringe? Is wearing tight shirts too self-absorbed? Where do I START???

I’m probably gonna pester that same stylish friend for tips once GDC ends and they’re not running around meeting everyone in the industry within record time, but until then I’ll just scream at the heavens and wonder what the hell “matching patterns” even means.

Also, on the topic of self-grooming. I have tried waxing my legs today.

Hoooooly shit, it took like an hour and I only waxed half my leg. And it took so much goddamn wax! How do women do this shit???

You Are Not Affiliated With Me!

2026-03-09T22:11:55+02:00

I was just added to a group chat by a friend who I have not talked to in many moons. Good friend, known him from highschool, chill guy, does cosplay. He opened a discord chat for other israelis who are currently trapped at home bc of the war.

I join the server and notice that there’s a game of gartic phone going on, so of course, I join in. Many laughs are had, silly drawings abound.

I immediately notice two of the guys are… edgy. Incredibly liberal usage of the hebrew N-word, “ironic” misogyny jokes, you know the drill.

Except this time, they tried getting me in on it. I was the only other cis guy in the chat and no hint of fruit in my voice, so I figure they figured I’d be a likeminded individual to share in their hatred of women and how shallow they are.

I kept shutting that shit down and commenting on how their views on women were both unrealistic and harmful to themselves.

I don’t want a medal or anything it just SUCKS when people assume “my team” is one I do not subscribe to IN THE SLIGHTEST.

My Flight Got Cancelled

2026-03-06T09:26:29+02:00

I have been planning to go to this year’s GDC for the past 6 or so months.

I talked to an american friend of mine for us to both meet up. We both organized a place to sleep in, some stuff to do, places to see. Planned the GDC schedule. They got me a gift. The stars were aligning for next week to be an incredibly memorable one.

Last week, Israel bombed Iran.

I already knew this was probably spelling doom for me, but I wanted to hold out hope. Partially because it’s better to over-plan than to miss my flight because I assumed it won’t happen, but mostly because I didn’t want something I’ve been fantasizing that much about to go to waste.

As my flight was approaching, I was growing in nervousness. All flights were grounded, but it was announced that outgoing flights would be starting on sunday, the very day I have my flight.

I looked this morning at the flight tracker, and the flight still seemed to be on. I was nervous but happy. Maybe I get to get out of this shit and go have fun.

While I was at the supermarket checkout, buying stuff to give my friend, I got an email saying the airline cancelled my flight.

I finished checking out to not hog the line, got outside, and just

stared at it. for a few minutes.

I didn’t really move. I sent messages, I was active on my phone but I was just

all the energy drained from my body. it still has, I’m typing this so very tired.

Told the friend. They’re bummed out, I’m bummed out. I told them to still go to GDC and do the stuff we planned to do without me, but they mentioned that a lot of other people also cancelled going to GDC due to the trump administration’s ICE bullshit.

I still want to go see them. I was planning to meet my family, see some other friends on the way.

I might start planning to go to the US anyways, just to see people. I might start planning to go to gamescom in august instead.

I don’t know.

either way, this is going to ruin my entire week.

la bomba

2026-02-28T14:57:25+02:00

Hello lads. It’s a saturday morning, I am idly poking away on Instagram, when an alarm clock rings. Not my alarm clock, no no, but rather a giant siren several kilometers from my house, blasting the loudest horn you could imagine, waking up everyone who was trying to use the weekend to catch up on lost sleep.

For you see, dear readers, we have attacked Iran as of this morning. Yes, again. The loud-ass siren didn’t wake us up to warn us we were being attacked, no, the government just wanted us to know that they attacked in Tehran and were very proud of themselves.

Later in the day we were actually attacked by Iran, prompting me to go to my new building’s bomb shelter for the first time, and WOW this is a deluxe shelter if I’ve ever seen one. I’m used to hiding in staircases, small metal rooms with a bed because it was being used as someone’s bedroom, but this time - this was a giant ass shelter. It had a wifi router, it had toilets and showers, it had a worktable, several sofas; this was a fallout shelter if anything. Very comfortable place to sit in while hearing faraway shockwaves rattling the doors of the building.

Other than that? I’m doing pretty good, all things considering.

Actually there is one thing I’m worried about right now - my plane tickets. I am supposed to fly to San Francisco in a about 8 days to go to GDC 2026, and if this bombing run escalates into a proper war, I’m going to miss that, which would suck. I planned this for about 8 months now and am going to meet up with a friend from the US who I planned on bunking with, so I really am hoping this ends up being nothing.

Always bet on nothing, as they say.

Possibly delusional considering I was just in the bomb shelter this morning, but a man can dream.

Anyways i’m doing chill. Spent this morning reading some academic papers and working on my paper for school, tried installing Cookie Clicker and turns out Linux can’t even run the thing (a blessing in disguise really), watered my plants, played some deadlock… life’s chill.

Wimp-Lo Internet Theory

2026-02-16T12:28:03+02:00

I was just now browsing reddit, (specifically a subreddit which copies posts from tumblr, not helping the idea that 90% of the internet is four social media sites linking to eachother,) and I found an incredibly useful term I think others would be interested in:

Wimp-Lo Internet Theory: The internet is full of people who were trained to argue wrong, as a joke.

The idea is, when the reward for a post is engagement, you’re incentivized to make the dumbest possible takes, to encourage the most engagement. Good arguments are hard to counter-argue, so fewer people are likely to engage. Bad or nonsensical arguments are easy and draw in the most engagement.

I don’t have much to add here, it’s a pretty straight-forward definition and it explains a lot about the kind of things you’re bound to see browsing the internet. Like Bikeshedding and Cunningham’s Law state, people love nothing more than to prove they’re smarter when there’s absolutely nothing at stake, and algorithms which boost these kinds of behaviors teach us to repeat them more and more.

I Like Linux

2026-02-11T22:55:00+02:00

About a month ago, I installed Linux Mint on my laptop. This came following a long and agonizing period of constantly debating if, when, and how I should move to Linux, and man oh man I wish I had done that sooner.

Windows 11 being awful is something pretty much everyone online is aware of by now. The constant AI slop being pushed down each of our pores is one thing, but the fact many of the basic features just break is pretty alarming, especially for something as fundamental as an operating system. The siren song of the third operating system on the block has been one I’ve been hearing for quite a long time, but I always had something else holding me back. “It’s not the right time,” “I have school,” “there’s one project I gotta finish,” yada yada. Never the right time, never the right place.

Well, about a month ago, one of my friends asked me to install Linux on their machine. That was enough to finally make me do it.

His laptop came prepackaged with Windows 11 (to the extent that it has a COPILOT BUTTON), and he mentioned how the computer constantly sounded like a jet engine about to take off. “Linux is less heavy on my computer, right? Please for the love of god get this shit off mine.” I did not expect a non-programmer friend of mine to be the first one to make the jump, much less one of the artists who notoriously are bound to Adobe and their demonic whims, but so it was. He got it, told me how convenient it all was, and I went “fuck it, I want some of that too.”

Wow this operating system is nice. Not because it changed my life or anything, but because of all the things I no longer need to think about.

On windows, my laptop fans were on pretty much 24/7. On Linux? I actually thought I broke my fans because they would not turn on, until I found out my computer was running so cool they never needed to. Installing Windows on a new machine is a nightmare of missing drivers and arcane sections of the system configuration.¹ I installed Linux and everything just worked out of the box. I thought Linux was supposed to be the hard one, I was lied to.

I can’t even complain about games all that much. The one thing that holds people back from moving to Linux is compatibility issues with apps that just assume you’re a windows user, but since the release of the Steam Deck this is much less of a problem. To those who don’t know, the Steam Deck is a portable gaming machine that can run games right from your steam library, which made it very appealing to PC users. It also runs Linux, meaning that if you wanted Deck users to buy your game, you needed to make it Linux-compatible. Nearly my entire library runs on Linux now.

It really is this nice. I’m glad I started with Linux Mint, and I’m really glad I finally made the jump. All I need to do now is put mint on my desktop computer, and my transfemmification- I mean, switch to Linux will be complete. Just need to get thigh highs now.

I can attest to this because said artist friend needed to reinstall Windows to use Adobe products, and for the past week he cannot get the trackpad to work. ↩

bird

2026-02-06T14:59:45+02:00

It is friday morning, and there is a bird stuck in my net.

My apartment building has AC units on the outside of every unit, and following what I can only assume to be a constant barrage of various pigeons and doves choosing to make said units their nests, large nets were installed to stop the birds from getting to the AC units. However, as anyone who’s had any passing experience with birds will know, these creatures will stop at nothing to enter spaces they shouldn’t be in.

As of this morning, one of them has managed to infiltrate a hole in my upstairs’ neighbors’ net, and is now stuck on the top of my net.

Somehow, this majestic creature has managed to get its right wing stuck in such a way it cannot pull up nor down to unlodge itself free, as the bottom of the wing, and the very top, have both crossed the net. This creature, upside down, stares at me as I am holding a basket of laundry.

“…I’m sure it’ll figure out how to get out of this mess on its own.”

It is now 13:30, about 5 hours later, and the bird is still stuck in the exact same place. Well, shit, I’m gonna need to do something about this myself.

I go to the upstairs’ neighbors first, and ask them if they can dislodge the bird themselves. They proceed to show me how the net is so large, they can’t even see the poor pigeon hidden behind their AC unit. They suggest I call the city vet hotline, but they’re closed on weekends.

“If I don’t want this bird to die here, I’ll need to do it myself.”

I pick up a broom, and try to move the net so the bird has an easier time escaping. Doesn’t do much.

I get as close as I can to the bird without falling out the window and start trying to dislodge it with my hands. It’s hard, I feel like I’m going to tip over any minute, but after some struggle I manage to remove its right wing. However, majestic a creature as it is, it managed to get its other wing stuck while trying to escape. It’s significantly worse than the first wing was, and I can’t get it out without seriously hurting the bird.

I grab some scissors.

I make a hole near the bird (I do not trust myself to cut the hole its got its wing stuck in), and it rolls over and falls free, right next to my AC unit.

I can’t see the bird anymore.

I sat down to type this post, and decided to go look at the poor thing once more. I can see it now! It’s wobbling next to the net. It’s still alive, but I imagine its wings hurt.

I try to think of how I can get it up and outside, as it’s about two meters from my window to the bottom of the net. I have a broom that’s wide enough at the bottom that I imagine it could comfortably stand on, and I could comfortably raise. The bird stands confused as I poke it several times with the business-end of a broom.

There’s a final project I have open in the other monitor that glares at me as I keep thinking of different ways to rescue the flightless creature.

Any suggestions would be very sincerely appreciated.