Smartphone Games

I've made no bones about my love of my smartphone.  A big part of that is being able to take up empty time with games.  But there two are major problems that I have regarding many of the games.  To cover up the first, they skew the game with the second.



Let's face it, for the most part you are playing these games on your own.  But when you are playing some of the games of old, playing alone isn't an option so the wonderful developers have built games with computer opponents.  They tend to call these artificial intelligence.  The problem I have with calling them that is the size of the apps.  I get that these games aren't overly complex but to call something artificial intelligence means that it thinks and reasons.  These are really based on a bunch of if/then/else statements.  So lets call them what they are, computer opponents.  And a big part of the difficulty levels in these games are the purposeful bad decisions that are built into the logic.


But a majority of these games, like the two I mentioned, require dice which means that there is some chance involved with the game beyond the intelligent decision making, whether that is actual intelligence or complex logic as I propose.  And the problem that I have seen over and over again is that these dice rolls aren't anything like normal rolls.  In both of the games that I mentioned rolling doubles give significant advantages.  When you are playing the higher levels of these games it seems that the computer players roll many more doubles then you do.  In fact, it appears to me that they roll many more doubles then what would normally happen.  I actually removed the Backgammon game I had because this style of cheating was so awful.  It was to a point that I could almost predict what was going to be rolled by the computer player.  This particular company set up their game so that you can enter dice rolls in.  Really?  Who is going to carry a pair of dice just so that they can play a fair game?  Rather then spending the extra time to code that in, why not spend it making a better dice rolling engine?  And regarding the Monopoly game, it is very similar.  The orange spaces have been proven to be the most popular spaces for being landed on in several studies, and it isn't by a small percentage either.  But not in this game.  If you have the orange, the computer will most likely miss it while you land on every one of theirs.  I have noticed that this one tries to make sure that your winning percentage is right around 50% when playing the most difficult level.  I'm not claiming to be the best player but I am pretty good.  And I can definitely take it when I lose, provided the winner didn't cheat.


And that's the problem, it is really easy to tell when you have no chance to win in either of these games!  I've tried several different Backgammon games but they all come with the same result.  And there is only one offering for Monopoly.  Hey devs, how about spending some time to develop a good dice engine?  I don't mind giving up a little more space in memory if it means that I will have a fair game.