You Lose! Good Day, Sir.

While books and film might strive for loftier goals, ultimately they are a method of entertainment. Videogames on the other hand, suffer a divide in nature that no other medium must carry. Videogames share their origins half with the entertainment industry, and half with being “games”. Games, be they played on screen or board or pitch or school ground, are not contained automated activities you can just sit back and relax in front of. They require input, attention and effort from their participants, most require the application of particular skills and strategy, and most strikingly, you can get better at them. You can actually be BAD at them. This inevitably divides the audience and demographics of games beyond mere taste in subject matter and style; some gamers are not as skilled as others, and the challenge of games can act as an insurmountable wall to many while simultaneously an attraction for others.

Because it is an offshoot of general gaming principles, videogame design is very carefully routed in risk and reward, the balance of challenge versus payoff. For most gamers, particularly those who grew up with the medium in the remorseless arcade days while it primarily focused on interaction and challenge, a game will quickly become stale and uninteresting as it becomes less demanding. This effect can be easily seen when cheats are enabled: with god mode (infinite health, ammo, all weapons etc) the player is entertained only briefly before the lack of challenge turns the experience mute and pointless. For a considerable percentage of the core gamer audience, challenge is why they enjoy videogames, and as games begin to feature less technical depth and opportunity for strategy, they aren't engaged and they get bored.

Unfortunately on the other hand, a lot of demographics are instantly reluctant to approach a medium which demands a certain level of skill in order to access and enjoy in the first place. This makes the accessibility of games a vital issue for designers. Outside of those who might be dissuaded from picking up the controller at all, are the gamers who simply get bored or stuck as the experience tightens and demands more and more from them. As budgets increase, the tragedy of 80% of gamers not even seeing the end of most games becomes more striking, and as videogames mature and become a stronger stage for art direction, technical expertise and narrative, it becomes more tragic how those aspects have to be under lock and key forever out of reach of many who might have found enjoyment in them.

Thus comes the argument of games as “an experience” alike films or books, more open and accessible to all audiences. Many gamers already admit they simply struggle through some games for the purposes of experiencing the full story, which could be seen as a strange feature for a form of entertainment to encourage and take pride in. As fellow Irish talky person Dara o'Briain once ribbed on stage, movies and books don't demand players answer a quiz to check they have been paying attention and then snap shut or turn off when they get an answer wrong.

In fact this idea of “losing” at a form of entertainment is mind-boggling to some, but traditional “games” always require fail/lose conditions, because as explained earlier, one of the core rewards you can expect from a game, is the feeling of “winning”. Much of the other addictive and/or positive emotions associated with games, even outside digital/video games, stem from the tension of possible failure, the drive to win and beat the system or the other players, so if you remove fail/lose conditions, much of what makes games so popular and engaging will be lost also.

Learning Curve: The Basics of Difficulty

Designers do have a variety of tools to ease players into an experience, and to compensate for the negative friction created by the obstacles it has to present. In an ideal world, the player must perceive an obstacle, but never quit before they overcome it. To start with;

• Features and mechanics should be introduced in a basic form before being expanded upon so that players can gradually become more proficient at how they work and deal with them being presented within more complex scenarios.
• Similarly, this is what is expected from game difficulty, the experience is easiest at the start and hardest towards the end.
• A game should ideally provide mechanic sets that the average player can understand and use, but with the potential for deeper more technical application when in the hands of more skilled gamers.
• Difficulty modes are an obvious way to tweak the experience for individual players, but interestingly, a good number of people feel uncomfortable choosing “easy” from a list as it's a lot like admitting a small defeat.

These are the classic and traditional methods of managing challenge in games, used extremely well in many titles, but... clearly it isn't enough. Why?

Accessibility versus challenge and player agency versus authorship was the very topic of my Masters course dissertation. And yes Pete, you are reading an edited version of it RIGHT NOW. (sorry) Partly for fun and mostly for padding my word count, I bit into this topic with an unusually casual freedom and rattled out a few outside-the-box pie-in-the-sky solutions. What's that? You want to hear them? Excellent. So let's talk about the ideas I had, as well as some other brave attempts at tackling this inherent issue.

They think it's all over: Hidden and Lasting Consequences

Some games have experimented with the removal of “game over” conditions; merely providing lower echelons of “winning” for less strategic or skilled play, so that the player can feel they have completed the game/experience, but leaving room for other players to desire higher levels of victory and completion. An example is Heavy Rain, which was experimental in many ways, notably avoiding situations where players could actual see a “game over”, which is the one clear and true fail/loss condition of videogames. If they “failed” the provided activity, the story would continue regardless. Occasionally there would be consequences that echoed through the rest of the experience, other times the consequences would merely be emotional, and sometimes there would be no real change to the future flow of the game. However, because the player wasn’t aware how serious the consequence would be, and because the natural inclination is to avoid failure, Heavy Rain still managed to be engaging for gamers.

FPS for Dummies: Teaching Tacit Knowledge

Many games, particularly franchises and “genre games” rely heavily on tacit knowledge; the installed instincts and expected patterns gamers recognize from throughout the medium. A true newcomer would not have any of that knowledge, which makes the introductions themselves too high a point on the curve for entry. Designers need to be aware of where the curve begins, and try to introduce those base knowledge bites without dragging tutorials on too long; something that frustrates the more experienced gamers. Cleverly, games like Gears of War include optional paths with those simpler introductions, so those ready to jump in don’t have to wait, and those who need to get to grips with the formula are given the time to do so.

One possible solution is for consoles and companies to try and provide a handful of simple introductory experiences/titles that act as a “first” FPS, platformer, adventurer etc. There are already games that could be recommended as simpler incarnations of larger genres; perhaps there should be effort on the part of larger systems like the console manufacturers and publishers to actively encourage newcomers towards those products as a gateway to the knowledge needed to enjoy “core” games.

Different Strokes: One man's win is another man's loss

Fable 2 removed game overs, and instead punished players with a loss of exp, and a scar on their character. For more casual gamers, these things weren’t much of concern, so there wasn’t much frustration to dissuade them from continuing to play. For core gamers, such things are felt more deeply, and scars are an attack on their pride within the competitive system of the game. In this way, the punishment can be the same, but felt differently by the two sides of the mediums audience. Bayonetta is actually quite generous with its checkpoints and quite accessible in terms of being completable. However, it puts a lot of value on not being hit and not dying through a rating system which psychologically abuses the slightest of mistakes. Core gamers will want to avoid the low ratings and the black marks awarded with each death (up to a maximum of five) because of personal pride and dedication to overcoming that as a kind of side-challenge, and because the “stone” award is the digital version of slapping a dunce cap on your head and asking you to sit at the front of the class. However, a gamer who didn’t care about ratings or challenge, only experience, could easily finish the title without such feelings of loss.

Auto-Pilot: Pass the controller

In 2008, Nintendo placed a patent on a new concept believed now to have the working title of “Demo Play”. This concept was leaked onto the internet and it’s controversial implications inspired strong responses from all corners of the industry and it’s characteristically vocal fan-base. Essentially Demo Play provides the option to have the game “play itself” using pre-recorded playthroughs from an online database. This would allow casual/low-skill gamers to fast-forward through tougher sections or see the solutions to more complex puzzles, and actually allow non-gamers to reduce the game to a bizarre version of a movie, simply “watching” it beginning to end so they can enjoy the story and world. Stand-alone incarnations of this idea have appeared in the 2008 Alone in the Dark, LA Noire and Super Mario Bros on Wii.

Initially the idea disgusted me, but I think that feeling came from a dark and elitist place. A friend recently started playing Uncharted 3 and loves everything about it.. except the shooting sections. Part of me knows he probably won't finish it because he won't suffer the innumerable and increasingly challenging shooting sections the game demands, and thus he'll never experience the puzzles, platforming, set-pieces and art which he'd probably love. I want him to see those things, so why shouldn't he have a fast-forward button on stand-by when he'd rather pass the controller to someone else? The only problem is the temptation for this feature to become a guilty pleasure of the many rather than the few, and in turn this option gradually erodes the principles of interaction that makes games special; interaction is our bread and butter, and the more we downplay that, the weaker our medium will become.

Difficulty Director: Balance behind the scenes

Try as we might to account for our demographics, all gamers are people and all people are different. For many mid-level gamers, the issue is that they need more time to climb the learning curve, and find themselves left behind as the game continues, unable to progress. Worse than that, some gamers may actually be incapable of completing the later tasks, but were led to believe the game was within their skill-level during the first half. Nintendo are suggesting the answer is to give players access to a “fast-forward” button, but I think there can be subtler ways to soften the experience when it becomes too intense, rather than simply skipping it.

Popular Valve title Left 4 Dead pioneered the use of an “AI Director” which actively monitored the players progress, health, equipment and previous experience in order to organically measure and react to their “stress” level; pacing the level with tension spots and action by controlling the placement of items and weapons, and the spawn points of enemies. The AI Director in L4D is designed to keep the experience constantly engaging and intense, but the concept could be re-purposed so that a constant AI director is employed to keep the experience smooth and achievable, learning from where the player struggles and what enemies they struggle with, what obstacles prove the most frustrating, and react accordingly. Of course, this would need to be optional so that players who want to overcome the “default” challenge had the opportunity to struggle through (something some masochistic gamers find enjoyable for the payoff of eventual success) but for gamers who might walk away before they get past being “stuck”; this would be a very subtle addition. Technically, they wouldn’t even be aware of what changes had been made for their benefit, so crucially they wouldn’t feel patronized or “babied”, which is what traditional difficulty systems sometimes do.

Rated H for Hard: Difficulty Ratings

Most gamers are actually adults, and as mentioned earlier, it’s demoralizing to have to play an “easy” mode. Most games are actually very completable on their lower modes; people getting stuck are doing so because they selected “normal” rather than accepting they might struggle above easy. People don’t like it to be obvious that they are struggling, it’s hard to ask for help in most aspects of life because it relates to personal pride and ability. They might as well have called it "Sissy Wuss" or "Less of a Man" mode. Names like "Rookie" and "Human" don't help. Nor does Ninja Gaiden's "Dog" option. Pulling no punches there, Ninja Team. Still, a possible solution to people getting an inaccurate interpretation of a games difficulty from it’s opening hours is to take a lesson from titles like Guitar Hero. Within Guitar Hero are multiple songs of varying challenge, subjective to the instrument used; because of this, songs are rated for difficulty with each instrument. As commercial products, videogames are already rated for subject matter, but as we’ve already established, videogames have another side, that of “games” requiring skill from the consumer. Perhaps videogames need to come with difficulty ratings also? Games are generally designed with the demographic the maturity rating implies, but it’s a consideration that sometimes steps outside adult material. A game could have soft graphics and child-like subject matter, and be extremely difficult. I mean what the hell Ubisoft, what were you thinking with Rayman Origins? E for Everyone indeed. F for F-sake.

Helping Hand: AI Companions and Advice

Hard as balls grimdark-em-up Demon Souls featured a unique online system which allowed the more experienced gamers to leave behind tips and help for the weaker gamers, similar to using a walkthrough but more organic, personal, intuitive and vitally, real-time. This idea could be expanded to an AI companion, who would act as an aide to players who are struggling. Alike the AI director, the companion would be catered to be present for players who need help, and only as effective as the player requires. For those struggling with a boss or enemies, the companion could help the player work out weak points and tactics, take out some of the threats and act as a distraction. For difficult puzzle sections, they could make suggestions or work out parts of the puzzle themselves to get players started. In platforming, they could perform the area before the player, to show them what timing and moves are needed. Obviously this would not work in all games, but in many it could be the ideal way to guide players and actively help them, and also make them feel supported and connected throughout the experience. Many games with “useful” escort characters already feature this feeling, Uncharted 2 and 3 uses the non-player characters extremely well. as they provide real-time assistance and contribution to the challenges.

Peter Molydeux might suggest a "mentor" system, where more experienced gamers could literally drop into a game to help out the rooks, and thus form lasting emotional connections and learn about trust and how it's ok to ask for help sometimes.

And to end, a poignant quote I think sums up everyone's mentality in life. Thanks for reading.

“ I thought you said you wanted a challenge!”

“Duh! ..A challenge I could do!”

-Bart and Lisa Simpson, from episode 178 of The Simpsons; “The Secret War of Lisa Simpson”.