Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 9.3
Intrinsic skill required
versus stress in
different tasks
Golf
Cardiac Surgery
Chess
Real-Time Strategy Games
Adventure Games
Action-Adventures
Tic-tac-toe
First-Person Shooters
Stress (the effect of time pressure)
This section presents categories of commonly used challenges you should under-
stand. Because games can set a top-of-the-hierarchy challenge of just about
anything—take on the role of Jason and win the golden fleece, use your zombie
army to drive the werewolves out of your ancestral home, capture a giant squid
from the ocean depths, win a rodeo competition—this topic can't discuss all the
possible top-of-the-hierarchy goals. The discussion here focuses on lower-level chal-
lenges, many of which could be classified as atomic challenges.
These categories may help you to think about the kinds of traditional challenges
you'd like to include in your game, but you're free to design any type of challenge
you can imagine if you can make it workable. Players always appreciate innovative
challenges; a beautiful setting or interesting overall concept only gets you so far.
Gameplay is in the challenges.
This section includes observations from time to time about ways to make a particu-
lar type of challenge easier or harder. Most of these comments concentrate on
making them easier because novice game developers frequently make their games
too hard without realizing it.
