SLOP2875: Is It Me or Is It the Game?

You died to the boss again. Either you are too slow or the boss is too big, and arguing will not settle it. This course finds out by simulation, in one two-minute game, Close Quarters: build the instrument, simulate the players, read the distribution, defend one number. Nobody plays until week ten.

01 · the dial

Start with “is it me”

Take one simulated player and make them slower, 50 ms at a time. Each row below is 51 runs at that reaction time, and a filled dot is a run that beat the game. Your reaction time is the dial. If the game answered it evenly, the rows would shrink evenly. They do not.

50 ms38

100 ms12

150 ms2

200 ms0

250 ms0

300 ms0

Nobody played any of these. Week 5 is about why even steps are not even.

02 · the specimen

What you will do, and who it is for

Twelve weeks measuring one small game.

Specimen: Close Quarters, a two-minute survival run with seven upgrade cards and two bosses. It is live, and linked here on purpose.
Its rules: Eight hundred lines of TypeScript, and those you may read now.
You open it: Week ten. You are asked not to before then.
You leave with: One number: a change to one constant in that game, and a ten-minute case for it that three sceptical classmates could check.
It is for: People who make or mod games and are tired of balance arguments nobody can lose.
You need: To read and edit TypeScript.
You do not need: Statistics beyond a median, or to be good at the game.

03 · the semester

The semester, week by week

Tuesday is the claim, Thursday is the measurement.

Week	Lecture, Tuesday	Tutorial, Thursday	Due, and what to read
123 February 2027	A complaint about balance is a predictionslides	Three predictions	Read Mark J. Nelson, Game Metrics Without Players: Strategies for Understanding Game Artifacts
22 March 2027	A game that needs a screen cannot be measuredslides	One headless run
39 March 2027	A perfect player describes nobodyslides	A player with reaction time	Read Aaron Isaksen, Exploring Game Space Using Survival Analysis
416 March 2027	One run tells you nothingslides	How many runs
523 March 2027	Even steps, uneven difficultyslides	Step one number
630 March 2027	A dead option looks like a live oneslides	Take one away	Read Alexander Jaffe, Evaluating Competitive Game Balance with Restricted Play
Teaching break
720 April 2027	A gate everyone passes asks no questionslides	Size a gate	Assignment 1: One constant, six values due 23 April 2027, 20%
827 April 2027	The lazy strategy must loseslides	Break the game
94 May 2027	A metric that cannot fail is noiseslides	Find the ceiling	Assignment 2: Nothing broke due 7 May 2027, 25%Read Stefan Freyr Gudmundsson, Human-Like Playtesting with Deep Learning
1011 May 2027	Playing finds what simulation never askedslides	Play it	You play the game for the first time.
1118 May 2027	Every boss is easy for somebodyslides	Three kinds of player	Read Shaghayegh Roohi, Predicting Game Difficulty and Churn Without Players
1225 May 2027	A change is finished when it can be checkedslides	Defence rehearsal	Tutorial quizzes due 27 May 2027, 20%Final: Defend a number due 28 May 2027, 35%