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Review
This game features a friend who says things that make you feel uncomfortable, or that are otherwise inappropriate.
You can choose to either unfriend them or still be their friend. At each stage it says that the probability of you unfriending them for that specific comment is .1% times the number of times that you've ignored your friend's comment.
If you eventually unfriend them, it will list the cumulative probability that you ever would have unfriended them.
The whole thing is a thought experiment: while minor things can seem too small to end a friendship over, the cumulative weight of many things can be a good reason.
For me, the whole game is centered mechanically around the probability scheme and narratively around the friendship idea. And the probability thing to me isn't as effective as it could be. It does teach the idea of cumulative probability and how even small percentages can grow, but there are three weird things. First, the probability that we'll quit right then has no bearing at all on what we, the players, do. Are we intended to simulate the game and only have a .01% chance of quitting on the first term? It doesn't count what we do and simulate it. It's possible we could be watching someone else's universe where they have a percent chance of quitting, but since we're in control, that percent isn't true.
Second, why does each individual chance of quitting go up linearly?
And third, if we want to demonstrate the snowball effect of independent successive probability choices as an educational lesson, why not fix the probability of 'quitting each turn' and show that even with a low constant probability, the cumulative probability can get large? As it is, it might confuse players into thinking that the large cumulative probability is primarily caused by the increasing individual probability and not by the cumulative effect.
The friendship part is interesting to contemplate and a good thing to ask ourselves. Do we forgive people for their past transgressions? Do we conditionally forgive people as long as they stop doing the thing they shouldn't be doing? How many times do we forgive? So I think leading to that contemplation is the game's highlight.
Comments on this review
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Thanks for these thoughts. This wasn't intended to be rigorous. I had to take some liberties with the narrative to get it to work for myself and keep it short.
I'll try to address the points I can at the end of the short games showcase. The numbers are fudged, yes, but I didn't want exact numbers to be important. I've found people not exposed to the Birthday Paradox find it very interesting indeed.
As to why the individual probability goes up linearly, the narrator is building a case against themselves. If someone has, for instance, made a joke at my expense twice, the second one is going to bug me more. This is different from, say, "should I speak up when someone random is being offensive if it's someone different each time?" or "should I check out that one store today?"
I may have to make the bits you read once you first play through more accessible. They tried to offer the what and the why, and how the numbers worked. But I wanted a numerical descriptor of "oh, this feeling is building, but is it building enough" along with the suggestion that, yes, it is.
That makes a lot of sense! And that's great that the game got people to think about the birthday paradox!
My long section in the review about probabilities was really meant more as a discussion with you than as a public thing, so I'd be happy to remove those three points and replace it with "I disagreed with some of the presentations of the probability."
