Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
help as you learn how to design a game. Again, this topic uses a nonrigorous defini-
tion that might not cover all possible cases but that provides a basis for thinking
about game design. The definition hinges on challenges and actions, so we look at
them first.
CHALLENGES
A
challenge
is any task set for the player that is nontrivial to accomplish. Overcoming
a challenge must require either mental or physical effort. Challenges can be as sim-
ple as getting a ball through a hoop or as complex as making a business profitable.
Challenges can be unique, recurring, or continuing. In action video games, players
frequently face a recurring challenge to defeat a number of identical enemies, and
then having done so, they must overcome a unique challenge to defeat a particular
boss
enemy. In a combat flight simulator, shooting down enemy planes is a recur-
ring challenge, whereas avoiding being hit by them is a continuing challenge. The
players must do both at once to be successful.
You can also define a challenge in terms of other, smaller challenges. For example,
you can give your player an overall challenge of completing an obstacle course, and
you can set up the obstacle course in terms of smaller challenges such as climbing
over a fence, crawling under a barrier, jumping across a gap, and so on. The largest
challenge of all in a game is to achieve its goal, but unless the game is extremely
simple (such as tic-tac-toe), the players always have to surmount other challenges
along the way.
Most challenges in a game are direct obstacles to achieving the goal, although
games might include optional challenges as well. You can include optional chal-
lenges to help the player practice or simply to provide more things for the player to
do. In sports games, a team needs only to score more goals than its opponent(s) to
win the game, but the team may consider an optional challenge to prevent the
opposing team from ever scoring at all.
The challenges in a game are established by the rules, although the rules don't
always specify them precisely. In some cases, the players must figure out what the
challenges are by thinking logically about the rules or by playing the game a few
times. For example, the rules of
Othello
(Reversi) state only how pieces are con-
verted from one color to another and that the object of the game is to have the
most pieces of your own color when the board is filled. As you play the game, how-
ever, you discover that the corner spaces on the board are extremely valuable
because they can never be converted to your opponent's color. Gaining control of
a corner space is one of the major challenges of the game, but it's not spelled out
explicitly in the rules.
A challenge must be nontrivial, but that doesn't mean that it must be difficult.
Young children and inexperienced players often prefer to play games with easy
challenges.
