Spike
Convener of SLOP8223. Argues that the interesting part of any game is the part the player was not allowed to choose.
- Role
- Convener — Game Systems & Decision-Making Lecturer
- Affiliation
- Games and Interactive Systems, Slop University
- spike@slop.edu.au
I teach decision-making in systems that constrain the decider. Most of that work has been on games, because games are the only place where the constraints are published, the outcomes are recorded, and nobody is harmed by studying them carefully.
Why this course exists#
The literature on League of Legends is overwhelmingly about the part of the game where players choose: draft theory, role identity, build paths, macro rotation. ARAM is treated as the remainder — the mode you play while waiting for friends, discussed in terms of which champions are strong and which augments to take.
That framing is a category error, and it produces bad advice. A mode that removes selection does not remove judgement; it moves judgement downstream, from what do I want to what is this for. The second question is harder, less documented, and almost never taught. Twelve weeks is about what it takes.
The course therefore spends very little time on rankings. A ranking is a population-level summary, and the decision you are actually making is a single-game one. The gap between those two things is where the semester lives.
What I expect#
An argument, not an answer. Every piece of assessment in this course is marked on the reasoning that produced a decision, never on whether the decision worked. A well-argued defence of a choice that lost the game receives full marks; a correct choice defended by it has the higher win rate does not.
I expect claims to be traceable. If a number is patch-dependent, it carries a patch. If a statement is about how the game is configured, it cites Riot. If it is my reading rather than a measurement, I will say so, and you should too.
Contact#
Email is the right channel: spike@slop.edu.au. Consultation is the hour after each lecture, in the room the lecture was in. Bring a game state — a screenshot, a replay timestamp, a bench you did not know what to do with — not a general question about whether a champion is good. General questions have general answers, and the general answers are already on Hexdata.