Gameplay - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 256

sub-missions make up missions; and missions make up the ultimate goal: complet-
ing the game.

Figure 9.1 illustrates this idea. It displays the hierarchy of challenges for a (very)
small action-adventure game. The entire game consists of three missions or game
levels; each level consists of three sub-missions, the last of which pits the player
against a level boss. Each sub-mission consists of three atomic challenges, of which
the final one (in bold text) completes the sub-mission. The gray boxes indicate the
challenges the player faces simultaneously at one particular moment in the middle
of level 2. At the atomic level, you find him trying to solve a puzzle; doing so will
help him to—or allow him to proceed to—destroy the critical object, all of which
contributes to succeeding in the Destroy Object sub-mission, which itself makes up
a part of winning level 2. Ultimately, he hopes to win the entire game.

NOTE Game designer
Ben Cousins proposed
this notion of a hier-
archy but in a slightly
different form. For
more information on
Cousins's original
scheme, see the
sidebar “Cousins's
Hierarchy” later in
this chapter.

To design your game, you create this hierarchy and decide what challenges the
player will face. During play, the player focuses most of her attention on the atomic
challenges immediately facing her, but the other, higher-level challenges will
always be in the back of her mind. Her awareness of the higher-level challenges
creates anticipation that plays an important role both in entertaining her and in
guiding her to victory. The remainder of this section discusses how the hierarchy
affects the player's experience and what that means for game design.

Informing the Player about Challenges
Video games normally tell the player directly about some challenges, called explicit
challenges , and leave her to discover others on her own, which are called implicit
challenges . In general, games give the player explicit instructions about the topmost
and bottommost levels of the hierarchy but leave it to her to figure out how to
approach the intermediate levels. The topmost level includes the victory condition
for the entire game, and games tend to present their overall victory condition
explicitly. They may also state an explicit victory condition for each level.
Normally, the game's tutorial levels teach the player explicitly how to meet the
atomic challenges. (For more on tutorial levels, see the discussion on that topic in
Chapter 12, “General Principles of Level Design.”) Unless you provide completely
self-explanatory gameplay and controls , you should always include one or more
tutorial levels in your game or an explanation of the controls and how to use them
to meet atomic challenges.

TIP Make the victory
condition and the
atomic challenges
explicit. Be sure the
player always has
some overarching goal
in mind toward which
she works. Never leave
her without a reason
for continuing to play.

You should always tell the player about the victor y condition or she won't k now
what she's trying to accomplish. You don't have to tell the complete truth, how-
ever. In storytelling games, you usually want to keep the outcome a surprise. Many
stories start by telling the player one thing, but plot twists along the way deepen
and complicate matters. She may change or meet a goal only to find it replaced by
another, more important goal. Detective stories, in particular, are famous for this.
(Don't do it more than three or four times in any one story, though, or the player
will start to become irritated about being repeatedly lied to. Detectives are also