Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
these simultaneously. The complex juggling of competing needs requires regular
attention and frequent action. Furthermore, unlike fighting enemies, the player
can never finish balancing the services; the juggling act never stops.
It's part of your job to design the hierarchy of challenges and decide how many of
them the player will face at once: both vertically up the hierarchy and at the bot-
tom of the hierarchy. The more simultaneous atomic challenges he will face under
time pressure, the more stressful the game will be. The more different levels of
challenge he will have to think about at once—especially if he can't simply achieve
the higher ones by addressing the lower ones in sequence—the more complex and
mentally challenging the game will be.
Skill, Stress, and Absolute Difficulty
Chapter 11, “Game Balancing,” addresses gameplay difficulty in detail, but this
chapter introduces some important concepts because the terms involved come up
in a discussion of different types of gameplay later in this chapter. While these are
not industry standard terms, you should find them useful.
This chapter is concerned with controlling the absolute difficulty of the challenges
that you will present to the player. Two different factors determine the absolute dif-
ficulty of a challenge: intrinsic skill required and stress . Chapter 11 addresses additional
factors that affect the player's perceptions about how easy or hard the game is.
Intrinsic Skill
The intrinsic skill required by a challenge is defined as the level of skill needed to sur-
mount the challenge if you give the player an unlimited amount of time in which to do
it . You can compute the intrinsic skill required for a challenge by taking the condi-
tions of the challenge and leaving out any element of time pressure. How you
measure the skill level of a challenge varies with the type of challenge and can
involve physical tasks, mental tasks, or both. Consider three examples:
An archer aiming at a target requires a certain level of skill to hit the target. It
takes more skill to hit the target if you move the target farther away or make it
smaller. The archer gets an unlimited amount of time to aim. Even if he takes more
time, it does not change the skill required.
Sudoku puzzles printed in the newspaper often include a rating that indicates
whether they are easy or hard to solve. The player may take as long as he wants to
solve the puzzle, so the rating reflects an intrinsic quality of the puzzle—how many
clues the player gets—rather than the effect of a time limit.
A trivia game requires the player to know certain factual knowledge. Some ques-
tions are about familiar facts and some are about obscure facts. The skill level
required by a question doesn't change if you give the player more time to answer.
 
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