Nathan Ragsdale
Joseph Schicke
ENGL 1213 – section 406
September 17, 2014
“Working Title” When I was a young, optimistic child I would believe almost anything I was told. The monsters under the bed? Yep, they were there. The Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, and Easter Bunny? All real. With out much life experience I would just trust anything I heard as true. So when my friend would tell me about his “uncle” who worked for Nintendo and how he got all the new games early, I believed him. It was the days where dialup was the only way to connect to the Internet and the computer was only used for learning games and paint. All that I knew was hear say. I had no idea that I could have searched to find reviews for games before I bought them, before I though to look up strategies for a puzzle I was stuck on, or even how to catch Zapdose, the last legendary Pokémon I needed.
I remember buying a cord for my Gameboy Color that allowed me to trade with friends so that I could obtain a super rare “shiny” Pokémon. That was when I began to get frustrated with what I now know is called RNG. I would drive myself crazy as a child asking myself “how is it that he got a shiny Pokémon when I am playing the same game as him?” pseudo-RNG was the answer, but at the time I couldn’t even have fathomed a complex numbering system/algorithm that takes things like, frame rate, date and time, and battery life, and positioning to determine rather or not I would encounter a rare Pokémon or not. Which, in essence, is why I believe that pseudo-RNG should be done away with in game development in substitute for a more decipherable algorithm that rewards those who strategize instead of the luck of the draw.
RNG is an acronym for Random Number Generator, which is essentially any algorithm used in computing when an outcome needs to be as random as possible. But it can never truly be random. There will always be a reason the program came up with the result it did, that is called the algorithm, or the “set of rules” that the program follows to spit out a seemingly random answer. A true RNG system is that of which man and computer cannot reason with. Even though it still is based on something. So, while a true RNG system can exists, it requires a substantial amount of money to develop and requires an expensive contraption. Simply put, the contraption bases its numbers on the amount of decay of the radioactive materials inside it, and spits out an answer that is so random, we as humans cannot theorize what it will be. It is only used in things like winners of deciding lottery and premium bonds. So not only is it an expensive option, it is also dangerous, which is why things like video games use algorithms, or pseudo-RNG.