COMMONLY USED CHALLENGES

Chapter 9

Conflict ChallengeRequires the direct opposition of forces,

some of which are under the player’s control.

Does not necessarily involve combat or violence.

Classic activities to overcome conflict challenges include taking away another player’s resources and impeding another player’s ability to act.

Conflict Challenges Versus Conflict of Interest

The terms have different meanings.Any game in which players are rivals for

victory contains a conflict of interest.Games such as Monopoly or Darts contain a

conflict of interest but no conflict challenges.Conflict challenges must include direct

opposition of forces, such as in Checkers.

Conflict FactorsThe scale of the actionThe speed of the conflictThe complexity of winning conditions

Conflict challenges can be broken down into strategy, tactics, logistics, and other components.

StrategyPlanning:Taking advantage of your situation and

resources.Anticipating your opponents moves.Knowing and minimizing your weaknesses.

StrategyA strategic challenge requires the player the

carefully consider the game.This is achieved by considering all possible

actions, and possible outcomes. This is known as situational analysis.In a game of perfect information, (no

element of chance of hidden information) players use pure strategy to make their moves, such as in a game of chess.

StrategyA game of pure strategy, or challenges

involving pure strategy are often avoided by game developers.

Relatively few people possess the systematic reasoning talent required to succeed in a game of pure strategy.

Instead, many hide information and include elements of chance, calling for the use of applied strategy.

Real-time strategy games often require applied strategy, making them more accessible to players with less logically inclined.

TacticsTactics involve executing a plan to achieve a

specific goal.Tactics also include responding to

unexpected events or conditions, new information, or bad luck.

For example, a poker player uses tactics to best decide how to play a specific hand.

Tactics versus StrategyTactics do not necessarily include strategy.Strategy largely involves predicting the

outcome of several different scenarios.A game in which you control troops entering

unknown territory does not allow for the player to plan, as the player doesn’t know where to go or what is coming.

However, keeping soldiers covered, taking advantage of particular skills, and so on, would be considered tactics.

LogisticsLogistical challenges are often not included

in gameplay, players tend to find them boring.

Logistical challenges include such things as sending in fresh troops in a battle, bringing them food and supplies, or bringing them fuel.

Players would find themselves less concerned with logistical challenges and more entertained by combat challenges.

LogisticsHowever, some logistics are still

implemented by games.Weapon production challenges are one

such implementation. Modern RTS games require the player the produce weapons and research new weapons, using raw material.

Another implementation would be limited inventory space in role-playing games, forcing players to choose which items to keep.

Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces

Any game based on conflict includes the fundamental challenge of survival.

A player may not win without preserving health, units, or possibly time.

In some games, such as tower defense games, the entire premise is survival.

In other games, victory conditions are not so simple, and the player must reduce enemy forces.

Survival and Reductionof Enemy Forces

To create the challenges of reducing enemy forces, some conditions must be met.

Rules must be created that determine how enemy units are removed or damaged.

Chess uses capture by replacement, checkers uses capture by jumping.

War games use different models to determine how much damage a unit has received, or if the unit must be destroyed due to it’s health reaching zero.

Defending VulnerableItems or Units

Some challenges require the player to defend a specific unit or item, especially such things cannot control or defend themselves.

Chess involves all the player’s units effectively defending their king piece.

To successfully defend units, a player must know the capabilities and vulnerabilities of all their other units, as well as those of the entity they are trying to protect.

StealthSome games occasionally call for a

challenge including stealth.This involves the ability to move undetected

to complete a challenge.The game Thief: The Dark Knight was

designed around this challenge, by having players complete missions by stealth and avoid being discovered.

Stealth IssuesFrom a programming standpoint, stealth

poses a considerable problem in the design of artificial intelligence.

With no stealth, opponents have full knowledge of the working environment, and react appropriately.

To include stealth means including factors in opponents such as general knowledge or intelligence, attention spans and more.

Economic ChallengesEconomy in a game involves including a

system in which resources move either physically or conceptually from one owner to another owner.

This includes much more than money, anything that can be created, moved, stored, earned, exchanged, or destroyed could be considered such a resource.

Such resources could even include health points and ammunition.

Accumulating ResourcesAccumulating resources is a basic challenge

of many games, and the end-goal or winning condition of many other games.

Monopoly is such a game, where the top-level challenge is to collect as much money as possible.

These type of challenges encourage the players to understand the mechanisms of wealth creation and to use them to their advantage.

Achieving BalanceAchieving balance in an economy is slightly

more difficult and more interesting than simply accumulating resources.

Games such as those in The Settlers series involve collecting resources in a specific manner : wheat goes to the mill to become flour, which goes to the bakery to become bread, which feeds miners who dig coal and iron ore, which is used to make iron ores by the smelter, which produces weapons, etc.

Caring for Living ThingsThe Sims and Spore describe the specific

economic challenge of caring for living things.

Individuals, or groups of individuals, require the players attention, and have specific needs.

These needs are measured via numeric terms, and are considered resources, thus qualifying them as economic challenges.

Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Both of these types of challenges require extrinsic knowledge.

This means having knowledge from outside the domain of the challenge itself.

Conceptual ReasoningTo complete a conceptual reasoning puzzle,

players generally need to use their reasoning power and extrinsic knowledge of the subject matter to come up with a solution.

Simple games such as trivial pursuit or cranium involve testing the players knowledge and conceptual reasoning.

Mystery and detective games, such as Law & Order, are completed by solving clues and ignoring red herrings while using external knowledge of evidence.

Lateral ThinkingIn lateral thinking puzzles, the player is made

aware of the fact that the obvious solution is not possible.

The player is forced to think of alternatives to come up with a solution.

A simple example is a challenge involving getting an item down from a high place without using a ladder.

Without the obvious solution, the player is forced to consider alternatives such as stacking a chair on a table and climbing on top of that chair.

Lateral ThinkingLateral thinking puzzles can also include

using extrinsic knowledge gained in real life in unexpected ways.

However, game developers must ensure not to make solutions too obscure.

Average players will know that wood can float on water, however they should not be expected to know that cork comes from the bark of a certain species of Mediterranean oak tree.

Actions

ActionsUser interfaces are the links that connect

actions to the game world. Actions, therefore, refer to events in the game world that are directly caused by the user interface interpreting input.

Actions are the verbs of the game:○ I jump○ I run○ I punch○ I buy○ I build

No Hierarchy of ActionsThere is a “hierarchy of challenges”, because in

the game world, it makes sense to group the challenges together as a group of goals the player attempts to achieve

For example, the challenge of “defeating the boss monster”, cannot be associated to the action “defeat the boss monster”. It’s not that simple.

Instead, actions are defined in low-level terms, such as “attack using kick”, “attack using punch”, “jump”, etc. It is up to the player to use the actions in the proper order and timing to successfully complete the challenge.

Actions for GameplayMost actions available to a player are given

as necessary actions to complete a challenge.

In a combat game, fire weapon is an obvious choice for an action.

In a game where you control an avatar, actions are all avatar-based, thus to control the game world, the player must do so through the avatar.

Actions for GameplayThere will never be a one-to-one mapping of

challenges to actions.Most games include a large amount of

challenges compared to the relatively small amount of actions.

The Rubik’s Cube, for example, contains one action: rotate a side of the cube.

Games cannot contain too many actions, it would result in a cluttered user interface, as well as too many animations, which is expensive for developers.

Defining Your ActionsWhen creating a game, developers need to

be careful on choosing what the player’s actions will be.

Ben Cousins has argued that game designers should spend most of their effort defining the refining the way that actions overcome atomic challenges because the player spends most of his time performing those actions.

Defining Your ActionsThe Fundamental of Game Design textbook

encourages developers to write down every action associated with atomic challenges.

Each of these atomic challenges should be successfully completed through one or a few actions in successive order.

Then, begin considering higher-level challenges, as well as actions unrelated to gameplay.

Once all possible actions have been determined, the developer may begin working on the user interface.

Actions that Serve Other Functions

Unstructured play: involves actions that may be considered fun, but do not solve or complete any specific challenge, such as “sightseeing”. In a car game, honking a horn accomplishes nothing, however is a necessary addition to the game.

Actions that Serve Other Functions

Actions for creation and self-expression: involves actions that allow players to create or customize things, such as their avatars. Many actions in construction and management games involve creative play actions, rather than gameplay, however these games often include economic challenges.

Actions that Serve Other Functions

Actions for socialization: involves actions used to reach out to a social community, such as chatting, forming groups, comparing high scores, or taking part in community activities.

Actions that Serve Other Functions

Actions to participate in the story: includes actions that actively involve the player in the narrative of the game. Having the player select conversation options to create different outcomes or scenarios largely immerses the player into the game, which is beneficial.

Actions that Serve Other Functions

Actions to control the game software: involves actions that do not explicitly affect in-game challenges, such as changing the virtual camera, pausing, saving the game, adjusting the volume, and choosing a difficulty level. While changing the difficulty may make challenges easier, the action does not specifically address the challenge.

Saving the GameSaving a game takes a snapshot of the

game world and all its particular information at a given instant, to be reloaded by the player at a later date at the time of their choosing.

When a game includes many customization features, more data must be saved.

Until recently, this limited the customization of many games, however this is no longer the case.

Reasons for Saving a Game

Allowing the player to leave the game and return to it later.

Letting the player recover from disastrous mistakes.

Encouraging the player to explore alternative strategies.

ConsequencesImmersion

○ If a game is trying to create the illusion of a different world, the act of saving destroys this illusion.

○ Being able to repeat the past immediately forces the player to acknowledge the unreality of the game world.

ConsequencesStorytelling

○ Dramatic tension requires that something be at stake.

○ Constantly being able to quit and restart from a saved point removes that tension.

○ Actions begin to lose their meaning, because the consequences of losing are offset immediately by restarting from a saved point.

Ways of Saving a GamePasswordsSave to a File or Save SlotQuick-SaveAutomatic Save and Checkpoints

PasswordsWhen a game is run a device with no storage

(which is rare), using passwords is an effective method to avoid actual saving of data.

Each level is attached to a unique password, which is given to the player once they complete the previous level.

Therefore a player who has completed the 10th level of a game would be able to return later and begin the 11th level using the password given.

Save to a File or Save Slot

Although this is the most common form of saving a game, it is the most harmful to the game’s sense of immersion.

It involves the player taking the time to save the game to a specific slot.

Each slot is given a different name, so the player may follow different scenarios, or there may be more than one player.

Quick-SaveFast-moving games often implement quick-

save, such as games where the player’s avatar remains more or less in frequent danger (first person shooter).

The player is given a single button that saves the game, immediately.

The player is also given a button to quick-load a game.

This is efficient for game immersion, as the player never needs to see a file screen.

Automatic Save and CheckpointsSome games save the state of the game as

the player exits. This is the least harmful to game immersion,

however if the player has recently done something disastrous, they cannot recover from it.

More often, games implement checkpoints, which automatically saves the game once the player reaches a new one.

However, this forces users to save the game, even if they may not want to.

To Save or Not To SaveSome designers do not wish for their players

to save at all, they believe that if the player can save and load, they can solve puzzles through trial and error, complete challenges via luck, etc.

This is lazy game design. It restricts the player’s freedom in the game without adding any fun. To make games harder, simply make harder challengers.

To Save or Not To SaveForcing players to replay an entire level

because they made a mistake near the end wastes their time and causes frustration and boredom.

This is not a player-centric design, and in fact violates the player-centric principle to not assume that the player is your opponent.

The player should have the fundamental right to be able to stop playing the game without losing what he has accomplished.