Games as Information Theory Systems - Ch 16

First  information schema: information as a measure of uncertainty

Games involve communication among players and interaction among system elements
Weaver and Littlejohn:

meaning is irrelevant to information: information has nothing to do with the content or the message

information measures uncertainty: in information theory, information doesn’t measure the amount of stuff in a message, it measure uncertainty

-information is a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message

Games are context which let players make meaningful decisions.

player in a game is selecting from a space of possibilities like selecting meaning options
information in a communication system is analogous to space of possibilities.

Probability:
games and information theory = information is a measure of uncertainty
cultural information in games

Noise: when signal transmission is not pure, an interference in the system
increases the amount of information and uncertainty in a game.
not necessarily a negative element, can be the fun element in a game
a function of lusory attitude. state of mind that players get into while in a magic circle

Redundancy:
even if some data is lost in the information systems, message is successfully delivered because redundant information fills the missing data.

Successful signal processing requires balancing noise and redundancy
enough uncertainty to let sufficient amount of information go through,
but not too much information so the uncertainty stays