No, in this post you will not find the algorithm of entertainment, the theorem of thrills or the postulate of pleasure. But you will find details on how one unlikely game may, accidentally, calculate fun.
The game is Danteās Inferno, EAās enjoyable and lurid re-imagining of the classic poem. The application of a possible mathematical formula for fun will be available in late April, when the gameās owners can download an expansion pack called The Trials Of St. Lucia.
https://lastchance.cc/dantes-inferno-review-big-ideas-small-problems-5465376%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Players can create and modify battle sequences in the new expansion, generating up to 150 waves of locked-room battle challenges full of enemies and traps for one or two players to fight through. The game will score these challenges using a semi-secret algorithm. If the score isnāt high enough, the levels the player creates wonāt be allowed onto EAās servers for other gamers to download.
https://lastchance.cc/dantes-inferno-trials-of-st-lucia-preview-mod-of-war-5494764%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
On our Kotaku podcast yesterday, Danteās Inferno producer Hans ten Cate explained just what the game will actually be calculating:
āWe have the notion that, as you put more things in your challenge [level], whether itās more enemies or you tune their difficulty, there is a point value youāll see in the corner of your screen. It goes up a tick every time you make your trial either a little longer or a little harder. And that point value will be the points the players earn if they beat your challenge. So youāre basically setting the conditions of the game.ā
When this feature had first been explained to me, a couple of weeks ago, I was told that sequences that players create that have fewer than 500 points wonāt be uploaded. So much for rendering a version of Hell in which very little happens, a sort of poetic treatise on the Hellish despair of dull life. It seems that would not score me the 500 points to share.
What to make of this formula, though?
āIād like to think, as you said, that this algorithm weāre using underneath actually computes the fun,ā ten Cate told me, ābecause if we actually nailed that, a mathematical formula that derives what fun is, Iād want to patent that.ā
Sadly, weāll have to still stick with human beings to determine what is fun. Or will we? The possibly Nobel-prize winning fun-determining Trials of St. Lucia will be out in late April. And if that thing can prevent things that are not fun from being shared online, well, EA, congratulations!
