In the discussion of UFO 50 at the book club, we were talking about how games with elements of chance seem to appear more popular than games with no chance. For example, fighting games versus Mobas.

We talked about how they tend to be more interesting, because a less skilled player can still win due to luck. I also pointed out that you could flip this and say that it’s the same for more skilled players, because they can lose due to being unlucky. It’s fun to see if you can still win even if the odds are stacked against you and it increases the number of people you can play with, since you don’t need to play against people who are exactly evenly skilled as you to have fun.

In this conversation, someone mentioned seeing a study about how rats will let weaker ones win 30% of the time. I went ahead and found the relevant study, which was mentioned in a paper I found:

Panksepp demonstrated weaker rats will invite play with stronger rats only as long as the dominant rat allows the weaker one to win at least 30% of the time. This drive to play creates a game that rewards prosocial behavior.

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Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Series in Affective Science). Oxford University Press.