Pure Challenges

Pure challenges are the archetypal form of gameplay challenges. They are not often found in the wild in this form, but they form the basis for most, if not all, actual gameplay challenges. We first discuss the possible forms that pure challenges can take, and then we discuss how these can be applied to real gameplay situations. Challenges come in many shapes and forms. Even within a genre, a good game presents a range of challenge types. The narrower the genre definition is, the narrower the range is, but this is usually not a problem. Game players who buy within genres tend to know what to expect. In fact, unless it is particularly well done and appropriate, they generally reject new forms of challenge as inappropriate to the genre in question. An example is the inclusion of a fast-action, reflex-based arcade sequence in a traditional adventure game such as Escape from Monkey Island (see Figure 7.1). Handled properly, this can enhance the gameplay, giving a welcome break from the usual action. Handled badly, it can break the player's suspension of disbelief and effectively ruin the game.

Figure 7.1 Escape from Monkey Island.

A more concrete example of this phenomenon is found in Valve's Half-Life (see Figure 7.2), an excellent game that has rightly won many awards for its original and innovative gameplay and story line. (However, I also need to point out that the story line is excellent only when compared to other games within the same genre; it wouldn't be a best-selling novel or a blockbuster movie.) For the most part, playing Half-Life is a joy. In the first two thirds of the game, the sense of immersion and of actually being there as Gordon Freeman is unparalleled. You can imagine yourself squeezing through the confining corridors of the Black Mesa Research Laboratory out in the middle of the desert, avoiding the unwanted attentions of both vicious aliens out for blood and hostile government troops sent in to clean up the transdimensional mess. Then, as the story reaches the first climax point, you are catapulted into the alien dimension to take the battle into their territory.

Figure 7.2 Half-Life.

In the alien dimension, things take a turn for the worse—at least, in terms of gameplay. Although it's not a game breaker by any means, the story line experiences a significant lull here. Initially, Gordon is required to jump from platform to platform in a sub-Mario platform game style. This abrupt change in the gameplay is a showstopper as far as the suspension of disbelief, which the designers had worked so hard to cultivate, is concerned. And as if that didn't deal enough of a blow, the subsequent levels are practically straight out of the original Quake, culminating in a showdown with the big, bad, end-of-game boss. Now, we don't mean to be unduly harsh on an otherwise excellent game, but the last third of the game is a real letdown in gameplay terms. All of the innovative and exciting features of the Black Mesa levels were replaced with a standard first-person jump'n'shooter. Even with the benefit of the intriguing and imaginative end sequence, the damage is done by this point: The suspension of disbelief is shattered and the player is left feeling somehow cheated. The inclusion of the platform-based level followed by the standard first-person fare is a classic nonsequitur that affects the enjoyment of the game.

Many types of challenges can be included in a game. In the majority of cases, these challenges are purely mental. In a few games, there is some degree of physical challenge, but this is usually understated—a simple test of reflexes or hand-eye coordination. In any case, they are localized to the hands and wrists.

NOTE
A high-profile exception is the recent spate of Japanese dancing games, such as Dance Dance Revolution (see Figure 7.3), which provide the player with a pressure-sensitive mat. The mat allows the player to dance in time to the music and dancers onscreen—an interesting gameplay innovation, but one that is hardly likely to amount to anything other than an amusing diversion.

Figure 7.3 Dance Dance Revolution.

A game can contain many challenges of each different type. To save us the insanity of trying to analyze the challenge content of a whole slew of games and concluding that they all have all the challenge types, it will serve our purpose to define two classes of challenge: implicit and explicit.

An explicit challenge is an intentional challenge specifically designed by the game designer. An example is the exact timing required to dodge the swinging pendulums in Quake III Arena (see Figure 7.4). This kind of challenge tends to be more immediate and intense than an implicit challenge.

Figure 7.4 Quake III Arena.

An implicit challenge is one that is not specifically designed in; in other words, it is an emergent feature of the game design. An example of an implicit challenge is figuring out the most efficient way to distribute items among your group in a traditional computer role-playing game (CRPG) such as Black Isle's Baldur's Gate. Implicit challenges tend to be more drawn out and less focused than explicit challenges.

Having stated that the challenges present in games are mostly mental, let us take a closer look at the many forms these challenges can take. It's important to note that the following sections describe pure archetypal challenges; that is, they can be categorized as a simple challenge type, such as logic-based or reaction time-based. Not all challenges can be categorized so easily: The "challenge space" is not populated by a set of discrete points representing the archetypal pure challenge types, but instead is a smoothly varying continuum. Challenges can be hybridized (for example, a logic-based puzzle requiring a fast reaction time) and rarely—if at all—appear in their pure form.

Logic and Inference Challenges

Logic and inference challenges test the ability of the player to assimilate information and use that information to decide upon the best course of action.

Logic is primarily used when the player is presented with perfect information, as in chess. In classical game theory, there are two broad classes of game: those of perfect information, with the complete state of play known to each player at all times, and those of imperfect information, with each player knowing only a fraction of the state of play (and not necessarily the same fraction for each player). For example, chess is a game of perfect information because the player is at all times aware of the state of the board and the position of all the pieces—both his own and his opponent's. Theoretically, given enough time and processing power, it is possible to analyze the game of chess to produce a perfect strategy. A perfect strategy is one that yields the maximum benefit to the player at all times. In the case of chess, this means that a user of that strategy would never lose. Of course, with the number of possible permutations of the chessboard and the move sequences, it would be beyond any human to blindly commit that strategy to memory, just as it is currently beyond any computer to calculate it.

When played in its puzzle mode, Chu Chu Rocket (see Figure 7.5), by Sega, is an example of a game of perfect information. The player is given a clearly defined win condition, a known playing field, and a known set of pieces to lay on that playing field. Hence, the player has perfect information. Knowing the rules governing the cat and mouse movement allows the player to predict (a pattern-recognition challenge) the paths of the cat and the mice and to place the playing pieces accordingly. Then the game is started and the results can be seen. If the win condition is not met, the player can replay the level.

Figure 7.5 Chu Chu Rocket.

In games of imperfect information, logic is not sufficient. Logic cannot fully operate given an incomplete knowledge of the state of play. In these cases, the gaps in that knowledge must be filled using inference. In this context, inference is the ability to surmise, or guess, the incomplete knowledge based on extrapolation of the existing facts.

Microsoft Hearts (see Figure 7.6) is an example of a game of imperfect information. Initially, you do not know the contents of the hands of the other players, but a skilled player can work them out to a reasonable degree of certainty by using the information revealed by which cards are passed and what tricks are laid during the course of the game.

Figure 7.6 Microsoft Hearts.

Bridge is another classic example of a game of imperfect information. A player does not know the contents of his partner's or his opponents' hands. He must use his knowledge of the game to calculate the best estimate during the course of the game. The classic real-time strategy game staple, the "fog of war" shown in Figure 7.7, is a way of graphically representing imperfect information of a battlefield. The player can see only enemy units that are within the line of sight of any of his units. When an enemy unit goes into the fog of war (usually represented by a grayed-out area as the terrain was last seen, or a black area where the terrain has never been seen), the player can estimate where his enemies are and, based on his knowledge of the battlefield, attempt to draw conclusions about their intentions and plan his counterattack against them.

Figure 7.7 The fog of war (right side of screen) in Warcraft II.

Games of imperfect knowledge are much more common than games of perfect knowledge. This is because one of the key elements of gameplay is challenging the player to hypothesize about the game worlds, forming her own internal picture. The degree to which this picture matches the real thing depends very much on the logic and inference skills of the player. It is much harder to design a good game without the element of mystery. Only a few designers can achieve this with any degree of success. Mystery can be viewed as the easy way out. There is no better way to hook a player than to get her involved in a compelling mystery story. Human curiosity is a very strong attractor, and any game that successfully taps into this provides a strong gameplay element. Half-Life did this extremely well, putting the player in the role of a new scientist trying to escape after a hideous cross-dimensional experimental error at his first day of work.

One problem with games of perfect information is that, because of the difficulty of designing an engaging playing experience without hiding anything from the player, they tend to be very simple. Usually, they are implemented as computer board games or simple arcade games. Archon (see Figure 7.8) is an excellent example of a computerized board game that was popular in the 1980s.

Figure 7.8 Archon.

In Archon (and its sequels), the whole board was visible on the screen, and both players had full knowledge of the game state. In many ways, Archon was a computer-age successor to chess, combining elements of board-game strategy and arcade action in a single game.

Lateral-Thinking Challenges

In some ways, lateral-thinking challenges are an extension of inference challenges. Certainly, they draw on the same core skills, but taken to the extreme. A lateral-thinking challenge tasks the player to draw on her previous experience and knowledge and combine them in a new and unexpected way.

This knowledge can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic means that the knowledge was gained from within the game world—for example, figuring out a new combination of runes to cast a previously unknown spell, as was the case with the "flux cage" in FTL's Dungeon Master (see Figure 7.9). If the player figured out the meaning of the runes, it was possible to figure out roughly what purpose the unknown spell had, and the player needed to do that to win the game. No knowledge gained outside the game would have helped to figure out that particular problem (unless the player looked up the answer in a game magazine or on the Internet, but that's cheating).

Figure 7.9 Dungeon Master.

The converse of intrinsic knowledge is extrinsic knowledge. This means knowledge that was gained outside the game world, perhaps in real life. For example, a player could use his knowledge that wood floats to retrieve a key attached to a wooden block just beyond his reach at the bottom of a narrow container by filling the container with water. Or, for an example from a published role-playing game written many years ago by Dave Morris (co-author of Game Architecture and Design by New Riders Publishing, 2004), the player could use her knowledge that repeated rapid heating and cooling of a metal object causes it to become brittle. This was the required technique to break through a metal door, otherwise impervious to both weapons and magic. Of course, the player wasn't dropped into this situation unprepared. There were clues to guide the player toward this solution.

Half-Life made great use of extrinsic knowledge-based lateral-thinking problems. In one particularly memorable sequence, the player had to figure out that the giant tentacled monster was sensitive to sound and then could use that as a detection mechanism, necessitating extreme stealth or noisy diversionary tactics in its presence. Not only that, but the player also had to make the mental connection between the oxygen and fuel pipes running throughout the level and the ominous rocket poised directly over the seemingly invincible tentacle. There are many other such puzzles in Half-Life, but these are particularly notable (and ingenious) examples.

Memory Challenges

Memory challenges tax the player's memory of recent (and sometimes not so recent) game events. They are also purely intrinsic. That is to say, they rely specifically on the player's memory of events that have happened in the context of the game and do not rely on, for example, the player's memory of what he had for dinner a week ago. Probably the best-known and most obvious example of a game based around a memory challenge is Milton Bradley's Simon (see Figure 7.10), a simplified electronic version of the classic children's game Simon Says. This game was very popular back in the 1980s. It had four buttons, colored red, yellow, green, and blue. When the player started a game, the computer flashed the buttons in a random sequence, although usually the game started with a single flash. After each sequence, the player had to repeat the sequence. If successful, the computer repeated the sequence again, adding one flash each time. The game was lost if the player made a mistake remembering the sequence. Many games—in particular, adventure games, role-playing games, and first-person shooters—make use of this particular memory-based challenge.

Figure 7.10 Simon.

Nowadays, memory-based challenges are commonly seen in children's software, and even then they are usually hybridized with other types of challenge.

In fact, at the most basic level, it could be said that memory challenges are present in virtually every game; for example, remembering the layout of the complex tunnels onboard the Borg cube in Raven's Voyager: Elite Force is an example of an implicit memory challenge.

Intelligence-Based Challenges

Intelligence-based challenges rely purely on the intelligence quotient of the player. This is extremely difficult to quantify and define, and, as far as we can tell, intelligencebased challenges do not exist "in the wild" in their pure form—at least, not in games.

In fact, the only place where this form of challenge exists in pure form is in official intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, such as those administered by Mensa, the organization for extremely intelligent people.

An example of an intelligence-based challenge, similar to those used by Mensa, is, given a sequence of similar shapes, to predict the next shape in the sequence from a choice of answers.

Intelligence-based challenges are included here as an archetype because they often form part of other challenges. Usually a more intelligent player will do better when playing a game using the more cerebral challenges.

Knowledge-Based Challenges

Knowledge-based challenges rely on the knowledge of the player. As we have already touched upon, there are two types of knowledge to consider: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic challenges rely on knowledge from within the game world. Extrinsic challenges rely on knowledge external to the game world.

In the case of knowledge-based challenges, the ultimate real-world example is Trivial Pursuit (see Figure 7.11). This board game, which most people are familiar with, relies on general knowledge to win. A player's progress is determined by his answers to a set of questions in various categories, the vast majority of which are simple and straightforward — provided that the player knows the answer. Of course, in some cases the player can attempt to answer questions that he isn't sure of by listening for the clue in the question—crossing over into the territory of a lateral-thinking challenge. Clearly, this is an example of a game relying on extrinsic knowledge-based challenges to provide the gameplay. Trivial Pursuit has also been released in computer versions for various platforms since its debut in the mid-1980s.

Figure 7.11 Trivial Pursuit Millennium Edition.

More recently, You Don't Know Jack (see Figure 7.12) tests general (hence, extrinsic) knowledge in a quiz game format. However, this is an example that does not use knowledge-based challenges in their pure form. Instead, the questions are mostly phrased as a humorous lateral thinking problem and are set to a time limit so that players can—in most cases—figure out the answer with some (admittedly rapid) careful thought. In a lot of cases, knowledge-based challenges are inextricably linked with lateral thinking–based challenges. Except in certain rarified environments such as quiz games, knowledge-based challenges rarely appear in their archetypal form.

Figure 7.12 You Don't Know Jack.

Intrinsic knowledge–based challenges are found in practically all games. However, explicit, intrinsic knowledge–based challenges are more often found in role-playing or adventure games. Here, a good knowledge of the game world and the background story and characters is essential to progress in the game. In real terms, this means that if you were to start a new game of, for example, Warren Spector's Deus Ex by loading a saved game provided by someone else, and it started you halfway through the game, you would have a much harder time trying to progress through the game than you would if you had started from the beginning.

Pattern-Recognition Challenges

According to the theorists, the impressive abilities demonstrated by the human brain mainly stem from one basic ability: pattern recognition. In essence, our brain is a generalized pattern-recognition machine; our brain implicitly forms archetypes of objects and events and compares new experiences with these archetypes to recognize which category they fall under. For example, there are many different shapes and forms for tables, but somehow we always implicitly recognize a table when we see one, even if we have never seen that particular table.

According to some theories on learning, all types of learning are a form of pattern recognition and classification. When learning to speak, we are required to recognize and classify the sounds we hear as babies. In fact, to deal with everyday life, we are constantly recognizing patterns in events and using these to classify what is happening so that we can act according to past similar experiences. You know not to walk into a road without looking because you recognize the archetypal road, the archetypal event of walking across a road, and the possibility of the archetypal car or truck colliding with you and smearing you along several hundred yards of archetypal highway.

In this particular case, the human brain's ability to recognize patterns is sometimes overeager (for the technically minded, it uses a greedy algorithm) and can recognize patterns where there (arguably) are none. The name for this phenomenon is pareidolia, a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. Human history is littered with examples of this: the constellations of stars in the night sky, the man in the moon, the whole field of astrology, and the articles that appear regularly in the National Enquirer proudly displaying the face of Jesus in a sesame seed bun. In fact, the Rorschach test, first published by Herman Rorschach in 1921, relies on the brain's overactive capacity for pattern recognition to attempt psychometric evaluation of the patient.

You can see this effect for yourself: Stare up at the clouds and see what they resemble (as an imaginative game designer, you should have no problem with this). For a slightly less subjective test, stare at the static on a television set for a minute or two, and you should begin to see imaginary structures pinwheeling about the screen. This is the brain attempting to find patterns where there are none.

A Google search on "nature versus nurture" and "pareidolia" will turn up lots of useful links on these subjects.

Figure 7.13 is a collection of common optical illusions. These illusions work primarily because of the way the brain's pattern recognition ability works. The top-left image is merely a set of straight lines with right angles, but we perceive it as an octagon with a square in the center. The top-right image could be taken from a Pac-Man conference, but we also see a phantom white triangle. The bottom-left image conjures up ghostly gray spots at the intersections. The bottom-right image appears to spin in different directions as you focus on the black dot in the center and move the page toward you.

Figure 7.13 Pattern recognition: There is no spoon!

In some fairly unique games, the brain's ability to recognize patterns can be tuned into, to enhance the ability of the player. An example of this is Tetris. Tetris can be played consciously, examining each block as it falls and actively deciding where to stack the block for best effect. However, the best players don't seem to play like this, especially at the later levels, where blocks fall too fast to be able to make any conscious decision where to put them. Instead, these players seem to tune into the game at an almost subconscious level and enter what we call the "Tetris trance," a Zen-like state in which the players seem to lose all track of time and don't concentrate on the specifics of the game board. Instead the players defocus and appear to process the entire playing area as a whole, without considering the individual elements. In fact, if these players were in the Star Wars universe, the Force would be strong in them.

In reality, however, it appears that these players are tapping into their brain's subconscious pattern-recognition ability to improve their game. Tetris is not the only game in which this occurs. Pretty much any game that uses pattern-recognition challenges as the primary gameplay mechanism can be played in such a way, although we certainly believe that it helps if those games have a clear and simple presentation. Maybe that is because the area of the brain dealing with pattern recognition is quite primal and, to process information quickly at that level, needs the information to be presented clearly so that minimal preprocessing is required. Of course, this is pure speculation on our part, but it is no coincidence that many of the older games that are now considered classics are those that can be played in this fashion. The one thing that all of these games have in common (apart from their reliance on pattern-recognition challenges) is their simple presentation. Classic games such as Robotron, Defender, and Sinistar all exhibit this feature.

So, if the brain's primary cognitive function is to recognize patterns, what does this mean in terms of gameplay? Pattern-recognition challenges can make or break a game, depending on how they are used. If in an entirely deterministic game one or more of the players can determine the pattern of play, this allows them to make 100% accurate predictions about game world events before they actually occur. Although they should be commended on their acumen, this does not make the game fun for the other players. This could rapidly degenerate to the situation in which it is almost as if the predicting player is a god of the game world and the other players are mere pawns, with no free will of their own.

NOTE
Note that the opposing players can be either humans with limited play options or a computer opponent that has been programmed to respond in certain ways to specific inputs. We heard a story once about a game with an adaptive computer opponent; the opponent's skill level depended on the perceived level of skill of the player. Soon players discovered that the easiest way to progress past difficult levels in the game was to deliberately do badly in the levels immediately preceding the difficult level, whereupon the computer immediately eased up on the player, making the difficult level slightly easier. Although this is an ingenious and valid approach, it is probably not what the designer intended, even from emergent behavior. No battle in the field has ever been won by the enemy commander sympathizing with his opponents' lack of ability and "going easy on them." Note that in the context of gameplay, adaptive difficulty is a useful tool. Just don't make it so recognizable to the player that she can exploit it to progress in the game. This is one pattern that you do not want the player to recognize.

Plenty of basic pattern-recognition games exist. A simple example that combines pattern-recognition challenges with reflex/reaction time-based challenges is the card game Snap. In this game, the players take turns laying a card from their hands face up on the discard pile, making sure that it is unseen by any player until the last possible moment. When the card is turned face up, the players check to see if it matches the card underneath (and by match, we mean it is of the same face value). That's the pattern-recognition challenge. If there is a match, the first player to shout "Snap!" wins all the cards in the discard pile. That's the reflex/reaction time challenge. If any players run out of cards, they are out of the game. The winner is the last player remaining with any cards in his hand.

In the early days of computer games, patterns were a lot more prevalent (or, at least, more obvious) in games than they are today. There could be any number of reasons for this. Maybe patterns were the most efficient way to code for an interesting game, given the limited processing power of the target platform. Another option is that the patterns are always there in games, but in the older games they stood out in stark relief against the simplicity of the gameplay. Games such as Space Invaders and Galaxians made heavy use of patterns. In many cases, playing effectively was simply a matter of memorizing the patterns and reacting accordingly. This play method persisted through most of the shoot 'em-ups that were produced until recently. However, even Iridion 3D released on the Game Boy Advance is a shoot 'em-up that defines attack wave patterns that can be learned and dealt with accordingly. This is a very transparent use of patterns and temporal pattern recognition, and it would be considered a bit simplistic and naive for unmodified use in a game design today. However, it is certainly a useful starting point for the inclusion of pattern-recognition challenges in your own game designs.

Slightly more advanced use of pattern recognition is evident in many games that involved exploration. For example, in Doom, secret doorways could be found by searching for an area of wall that looked slightly different from the norm. Also, games such as the previously mentioned Dungeon Master relied on pattern-recognition challenges for the player to decipher the complex systems of runes governing spells and spell casting.

Platform games, such as the Mario series of games, often rely on pattern-recognition challenges quite heavily. Not only are the levels carefully scripted to be a repeatable (hence, learnable) experience, but the end-of-level bosses also tend to behave according to a certain pattern. Thus, in Super Mario Advance, you can defeat one of the end-of-level baddies by carefully counting how many flaming spit wads she ejects and then attacking in the interim. In this case, the pattern-recognition challenge is used to make the game more manageable. It is difficult enough to manipulate the player avatar on the platforms (an example of coordination, spatial awareness, and reflex/reaction time challenges), but trying to handle unpredictable enemies on top of this would detract from the gameplay. This is an example in which two distinct challenge types work together synergistically to improve the gameplay potential. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Moral Challenges

A moral challenge is a high-level challenge that can operate at several levels. Without delving too deeply into the field of metaethics, we can define these levels as universal, cultural, tribal, and personal. These levels are ordered from the all-encompassing to the specific. Each successive level affects a smaller moral area than the previous one. Usually, the lower levels have precedence, but that is not always the case.

Let us assume that there are no absolutes in morality. This implies that it is fundamentally incorrect to say that there is a definite right or wrong answer to a moral challenge; so much depends on context, emotional state, and past experience that an answer that might be correct for one individual would be totally wrong for another. An example: It is wrong to steal. But is it wrong to steal food if the only alternative is to starve? The answer to this depends on the individual.

But how does this example apply to games? In many games, the player is asked to make such choices. Raven's Voyager: Elite Force presents such a moral challenge early in the game: Should you save your teammate from the Borg and go against the captain's orders, jeopardizing the success of the mission?

We examine examples of the various forms that moral challenges can take in more detail. Before we can do this, however, we need to further define our various levels of moral challenge. Note that this is subjective: Exactly what defines the differences among universal, cultural, and tribal designations depends on context and the personal views of the observer. In the case of game design, it means that our definitions directly depend on the scope of the game. For example, a game set in America (with no mention of the rest of the world) would treat the whole of America as the universe. From here, the divisions of cultural and tribal entities would depend entirely on the game designers. They are under no compulsion to stick to reality—after all, it is their game.

A universal moral challenge is invariant no matter what the context is. By this, we mean that the correct moral outcome is independent of the entity making the choice. It would not matter if you were a human or a Zlerg from the planet Zlumpf—the correct choice would be the same. Universal moral challenges are concerned with the good of the universe as a whole. In the real world, they are most likely only a theoretical construct — a null container or superset for all the lower moral levels. They are extremely difficult to define and, as such, are a fairly rare form of challenge. In the limited context of a computer game, however, the cultural and universal morality levels are usually one and the same. (Often you will get a cultural moral challenge masquerading as a universal challenge; this is usually due to the game designer's inability to look outside her own backyard. This used to be a staple error in old sci-fi movies. Whenever the world was under threat, you'd see only America invaded—it was as if the rest of the world simply didn't exist.)

One of the main difficulties in defining a universal moral challenge is to define the limits. Do you say that the population of the world defines the moral universe, or is there life elsewhere in the universe governed by these morals? These are difficult metaphysical questions to answer, and the fact that games are set in a simulated universe does not make it any easier. Moral challenges are unusual in that they explicitly rely on the players' real-world experiences to provide their gameplay value. Hence, our views on the world directly affect our playing experience. For our purposes, we define the universal challenge as pertaining to all living beings in existence, within the confines of the game's simulated universe. With this definition in mind, we can infer that universal moral challenges are, at best, likely to be overly grandiose and, at worst, clichéd. As an example, imagine that the player is given a choice to go back in time to just before the birth of the universe and prevent it from happening. To simplify the choice, let's assume that the player's avatar is given amnesty from the effects of his choice: He would still exist and be able to live a (paradoxically) normal life, whatever the outcome. Given sufficient reasons for and against this would be a difficult moral choice to make. Should the player destroy all existence before it even comes into being, or should he allow things to happen as normal? (Obviously, you'd need a pretty good set of reasons for and against to make this into a difficult choice, but let's assume that the game designer has done a good job of setting that up for us.)

At a lower level than the universal challenge is the cultural challenge. Here we define a culture as a loosely affiliated collection of individuals all living by roughly the same standards; they do not necessarily have to be affiliated in any way other than their living standards and general lifestyle. For example, the Western world could be loosely viewed as a culture. If we wanted to take it down to a slightly finer grain, we could consider America as a culture. We could go further still and define Native American culture, Southern culture, Californian culture, and others.

Consequently, our definition of a cultural moral challenge is one that deals with the good of that culture as a whole. An example of dealing with the consequences of a moral challenge at the cultural level was provided in the 1988 film Alien Nation, directed by Graham Baker. In the opening scenes of this film, America (specifically, Los Angeles) is faced by a request for asylum from an escaped race of aliens genetically bred for slavery. The moral choice is whether to welcome the aliens into society, risking the dilution or destruction of human culture, or to turn the aliens away.

Fortunately for us, the smaller the scale of the moral choice is, the easier it is to define and give examples. Tribal moral choices are much smaller in scope. Note that the use of the word tribal is not intended to imply tribes in the full sense of the word; we use it here to mean any group of closely affiliated individuals. In a sense, a family unit can be considered a tribe, as can a role-playing adventure group and an American football team. Tribal moral choices are those that affect the well-being of the tribe. An example is the classic clichéd group decision in which all the group members have to decide which of them is going to have to perform some difficult — and, quite often, fatal - task to save the others. In fictional works, drawing lots usually solves this particular situation: a nonideal solution that avoids the difficult moral choice by abdicating the decision to the whims of chance.

Easiest of all to define, and perhaps the most familiar, is the personal moral choice. This is a moral choice made by an individual that has a direct outcome on that individual's own well-being and state of mind. There are no repercussions other than at the personal level for the player making the choice.

For example, in Will Wright's The Sims, the characters can earn money in a number of ways. A character can get a job and earn money the hard way, or he can become a professional widow: marry other characters and then kill them for the inheritance. The onus of this moral choice is really on the individual player. There are no lasting repercussions in the game world for murdering your husband or wife, and so (apart from the individual morals of the player) these are both equally valid methods of making money. This also depends on the player's level of involvement. It could be rendered more effective if there were unavoidable consequences within the game world. (The ghost of the dead Sim does not count; it can be removed by selling the tombstone.)

Moral dilemmas do not have to reside fully within one level. In fact, dynamically altering the priorities of these levels to force the player to decide between solving a moral dilemma within each fork in a different level can often lead to interesting and challenging gameplay. For example, we could posit a moral choice around the validity of the statement "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

So now we need some examples of real games that use moral dilemmas—but there is a problem. Until now, games have not sufficiently explored this area. Dealing with moral dilemmas has not traditionally been an area in which games excel. Morality in games has barely been considered at any level above simple "black and white" (no pun intended) playground morality. One reason for this is the difficulty of involving the player in difficult emotional situations; the willing suspension of disbelief required for the player to actively participate and believe in difficult emotional decisions is greater than that required for simpler choices. Hence, games that have employed moral decisions as a gameplay factor have relied on the simple "this is good, that is bad" approach. More recently, a game that has attempted (to some success) to deal with moral decisions in a more adult fashion is Lionhead's Black and White. Despite the title, the game attempts to deal with a moral spectrum. The player takes on the role of a god tending to the needs of her people. Aiding in the quest is a familiar, taking the form of a giant creature that can be trained to follow orders. The player is free to become any kind of god that she wants: from sickeningly good to terribly evil and anywhere in between. The nature of the god is reflected in the creature and the appearance of the land. How well this works in practice is open to discussion. So far, players have tended to gravitate directly toward total evil or total goodness. Although it cannot be strictly classed as a weakness or flaw, the cartoonlike nature of the game does undermine the seriousness of the moral decisions involved. This could be a good thing, of course — after all, you don't necessarily want your player to be racked by guilt for days after performing a questionable act. That would be going too far (if, indeed, it was possible).

Spatial-Awareness Challenges

Spatial-awareness challenges are usually implicit. Only a handful of games have relied on explicit spatial-awareness challenges, and, in most cases, they were 2D games, such as Tron (the light-cycles game) and Snakes. A 3D version on the Sinclair Spectrum (Sinclair Timex in the United States) was entitled Knot in 3D (shown in Figure 7.14) and was a 3D extension of the classic Tron-based game. A recent update of Tron is shown in Figure 7.15. Spatial-awareness challenges are a specialized hybrid of a memory challenge and an inference challenge.

Figure 7.14 Knot in 3D.

Figure 7.15 glTron.

Games that rely on spatial awareness are usually 3D games. The challenge of representing a 3D world on a 2D surface, and the challenge to the player to make sense of that representation form the bulk of the spatial awareness problem. In many cases, the player receives aid in the form of a computer-generated map, but in other cases, such as Quake III, the player is left to his own devices to find his way around the world.

The types of games that usually rely heavily on spatial-awareness challenges are flight simulators, space-flying games, and 3D combat games (particularly Quake III and Unreal Tournament). To a lesser extent, 2D games that involve large playing areas, such as Age of Kings, also use spatial-awareness challenges.

Coordination Challenges

Pretty much any game uses coordination challenges. Coordination challenges basically test the ability of the player to perform many simultaneous actions. They are almost always found in combination with reflex/reaction time challenges and are usually tightly coupled with them.

In its pure form, a coordination challenge is not dependent on any time constraints, but it isn't often found in the pure form. An example of a game (and there are many) that uses the coordination challenge to good effect (in combination with reflex/reaction time challenges) is Super Mario. Here, the player is expected to finely time jumps across wide chasms while avoiding circling enemies, requiring a plethora of accurately timed button presses from the player.

Shooting games of various sorts pose a challenge of accuracy: lining up a shot at a target, when the player or the target or both might be moving. Steering also requires accuracy. Flight simulators that properly model the behavior of aircraft, or racing simulators that accurately model the behavior of racing cars, require a high degree of precision. Airplanes, in particular, usually respond rather slowly to their controls. A player expecting an instant response will tend to overcompensate, pushing farther and farther forward on the joystick when the plane's nose doesn't drop right away, and then yanking it back in panic when it finally drops much farther than he intended in the first place.

Some games are forgiving about precision, allowing the player to be sloppy; others demand a delicate touch. Back before racing cars had airfoils to help hold them on the pavement, they flipped over very easily and required a much higher degree of skill from their drivers to keep them on the road. Papyrus Design Group accurately modeled this challenge in the game Grand Prix Legends.

Timing is the ability to overcome an obstacle by coordinating player moves with something else that is happening onscreen. Many video games present a weakness in an opponent's defenses for a limited period of time that, with practice, a player can learn to anticipate. Ducking under a constantly rotating hazard, for example, involves timing. Running and jumping across a chasm by pressing the Jump button at the last second is also an example of timing. It's related to reaction time, but instead of trying to do something as fast as possible, the player is trying to do something at exactly the right moment.

Many fighting games require complex sequences of joystick moves and button presses that, once mastered, will allow a "special move"—a particularly devastating attack, for example. These take a long time to learn and require very good motor coordination to achieve consistently. This sort of challenge is best suited to a player who can tolerate a high degree of frustration, or to a game that gives ample reward for this kind of persistence. Games that rely heavily on such techniques are difficult to balance. It is difficult to balance games that are based purely on physical dexterity. What one player might find easy, a different player might find impossible.

Reflex/Reaction Time Challenges

Reflex/reaction time challenges test the timing abilities of the player. The simplest example of a reaction time challenge (which we previously mentioned) is the children's card game Snap.

However, reflex/reaction time challenges are usually not used in isolation in games and are often found in combination with coordination challenges. The types of games that most commonly exhibit this type of challenge are platform games, fast shoot 'em-ups, first-person shooters, and pure arcade games such as Tetris and Centipede. This type of challenge is a factor of most action games. Only turn-based games, adventures, and role-playing games tend not to rely on reflex/reaction time challenges.

In an action game, the speed at which you operate the controls often maps directly to the speed at which your avatar reacts. This is not always exactly true because your avatar might be displayed by animations that require a certain length of time to execute, but in general, the faster a player can move and the better his reaction time is, the greater advantage he has. Good speed and reaction time are particularly valuable in fighting games.

Physical Challenges

Physical challenges are extremely rare in games. The input methods available for computer games do not lend themselves to physical activity—at least, not without the purchase of specialized hardware.

Games such as Samba De Amigo and Dance Dance Revolution provide custom controller hardware, such as a special dance pad that enables the player to control the game by dancing on the pad. Others, such as Konami's Hypersport, don't use specialized hardware, relying on a standard joystick and, consequently, focusing the physical challenge to the hand and lower arm of the player.

Physical challenges are not often found in their pure form, and because of the expense and difficulty of including them in games, they are not often found at all.

Applied Challenges