Examples of
this outcome structure are solitaire, pinball machines,
or a number of di?¬? erent arcade games.
In addition to the player interaction pa erns
described on page 50, the outcome is determined by
the nature of the game objective. A game that de?¬? nes
its objective based on points will most certainly use
those points in the measure of the outcome. A game
that de?¬? nes its objective as capture, like chess, might
not have a scoring system??”rather, chess games are
won or lost based solely on meeting the primary
objective, checkmating the king.
Chess is what we call a ???zero-sum??? game. By this
we mean that if we count a win as +1 and a loss as a
-1, then the sum for any outcome is zero. In chess one
player wins (+1) and one player loses (-1). No ma er
which player wins, the sum is always zero.
But many games are not zero-sum games; a nonzero-
sum game is one in which the overall gains
and losses for the players can be more than or less
than zero. Games such as World of Warcra are not
zero-sum because the overall outcome of this complex,
ongoing game world is never equal to zero.
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