Worshipping the Random Number Generator God

I admit it. I've been too guilty of that lately.

I have long been a computer game addict. I can admit that now. Computer gaming, at its simplest, boils down to worship of a random number generator god.

Facebook games simplified the logic for me. Whether it was sitting in the desert, searching for metals, and clicking the button over and over again until I got Mithril Ore; or whether I sounded the horn for a mouse hunt, and hoped to get a gold mouse; or whether I was playing scramble and played through board after board trying to set a new personal best or find a new longest word; or whether I was playing Wordscraper/Scrabble and the luck of the tiles got me; Facebook games are gaming at their simplest--rolling dice.

Many non-internet games I used to play were of like mind. I can't tell you how many levels of Angband I went through just trying to find Ringil; I think the odds of finding it on level 100 were less than 0.1%. Even the complex games are likewise--you get an Age of Empires game going where you spawn surrounded by two other empires, few resources, and an indefensible position, while the third AI has plenty of space to expand and resources to destroy you with. In Madden, you hit the guy hard enough then hope that the computer gave you a RNG high enough to force a fumble; or on offense, break a tackle. In Spore, your nest gets built right beside the giant eyeball creature. Granted, you can't actually lose that game.

And what about those games, the ones you can't lose? It's like a RNG game where you're guaranteed to roll a six every time. Think the Sims. About the only RNG aspect of the game would be finding the right job in the newspaper quickly. Once you have that, you do all the right moves and victory is essentially guaranteed; that is, at whatever you call victory in the game. Just click the mouse enough times in the right places, and satisfaction is yours.

So my question is, why are we worshipping a RNG god? Are we really that obsessed with being lucky? Is the stress of the world so great that we're all reduced to playing some giant game of Russian Roulette?

Sigh.