Challenge, Play and Challenging play

If character is what connects you to a game then challenge is what keeps you there.

In digital games there needs to be a fine line between a game which is too easy to play and a game which is too hard. This line must also be on an upward climb as the player’s ability level and skills in the game will increase the more he or she plays. Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist studying play, created the flow diagram to illustrate this balance, show below…

Csikszentmihalyi explains that the flow is most abundant in games which are goal oriented and with clear rules.
Once the ‘flow’ is entered Salen and Zimmerman (2004) write that a number of this happen to the player such as ‘Concentration on the task at hand’, ‘The Paradox of Control’, ‘The Loss of Self-Consciousness’ and ‘The Transformation of Time’ (2004: 89).

Of course with successful games, the player’s skills must be tested and pushed for the player to remain interested. With this in mind several game companies are attempting to find new ways to keep adept players involved in the game without their getting bored. A paper was written recently by Julian Togelias et al at the University of Essex proposing a race track using evolutionary algorithms which would evolve and expand to the player’s skill level.

For instance the tracks below evolved from a straight track to the player’s ability level. Track (a) on the left, for a beginner and track (b) on the right for a more skilled player.

(Adapted from Togelius et al [online] 2006).

This type of game which evolves to the player’s skill level was also adapted by the creators of Left 4 Dead who created an AI ‘Director’ for their game. The AI logs each players amount of ‘supplies’ their points and current representative health state and the AI will add enemies and supplies and even alter the music to challenge the player so that each playthrough is different and the player is never bored. In the second game ‘Left 4 Dead 2’ the AI was upgraded so that as well as enemies and supplies being adapted to the players performance level to include the adaption of the lighting level, the walls and even the weather.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Chet Falizek, one of the writers:

Shack: Can you talk more about the changes to the dynamic systems in Left 4 Dead 2?

Chet Faliszek: So, the AI director, there are some really noticeable ones. We're giving it control over the weather now. Now you go from [a sunny day] to holy crap man, I can't see anyone around me. It's like the Blood Harvest cornfield, right.

Dynamic pathing changes--so in the next map in this campaign, they go through an above-ground cemetery, a haunted old cemetery with crypts above ground, and it actually changes the path every time you play. And also how spawning the creatures, and the pacing of the game.

One of the things we look at with people playing online, are people playing the game-- the stacking in the corner.. that sucks!

Shack: Absolutely.

Chet Faliszek: It sucks that there are people that don't play it that way, and they get yelled at.

Shack: Oh, I know. I'm always the guy--there are the three guys in the corner, and then I'm the guy standing over there, and they say, "Come onnn!"

Chet Faliszek: The way you want to play it, the fun way, is the best way to play it, too. So to do that, there are just a lot of subtle changes to make, in how the director handles what it's going to spawn, and how it thinks about attacking the survivors (Breckon and Faylor [online] 2009).

This AI adaptive play may become much more commonplace in the future. So the old system of levels ending with boss may become obsolete and the future may be a game whose structure and system is entirely different from one player to the next. Imagine a game where a beginner plays a game where the path is varied but not impossible and they reach a 8ft foot boss at the end with just the right ammunition to defeat them after a few difficult attempts and then a skilled player plays the same sequence and the path is more complex with more puzzles and the boss is twice the size, faster and smarter an embodiment of the games AI system.

This brings us on to…

Play:

Although the definitions of play are the contents of another blog for another time it’s worth noting that Play, like the term ‘games’ is one of the hardest to define. However with regards to dramatic elements ‘play’ is best described as the freedom of movement within a rigid structure, that structure being the rules of the game. In Dramatic Elements there are two types of game…

Games of Emergence

Which are games which may have a simple set of rules but may create complex play, forming a large ‘game tree’. Fullerton (2008) states “In fact, in many cases, very simple rule sets, when set in motion, can beget unpredictable results” (2008: 57).

Games of Progression

These are games which by and large have more narrative to them and which the game designer creates a direct sequence of challenges for the player. An example of this type of game is Activision’s Prototype.

These blogs I hope have detailed some of the many facets of dramatic elements.

I'll end with this quote...

"Although the media palette of game design has grown to rival film and television, it is clear that the emotional impact of games still has not achieved the depths it is capable of and that will make it recognised as an important dramatic art form" (Fullerton and Zimmerman, 2008:106).