Fundaments of Game Design Ch 7 & 8 Elements of twitch skill & Chance and Skill - Balancing Richard Gesick

Twitch Mechanics twitch mechanics require fast thinking, dexterity, and reaction speed. games that use them at their core are called “twitch games.” Many early arcade games were almost entirely tests of this kind of skill. Shooting games also fall into this category

Challenging the player Players play games because they present challenges. Gradually, by responding to a challenge again and again, players become better, ultimately achieving mastery. If a game presents too many twitch challenges too quickly, the player can be overwhelmed and frustrated. If the challenges are too easy to overcome, the player quickly becomes bored.

Tuning Finding the balance so the player feels challenged at the peak of his ability easy except that every player’s ability level is different, so any level of challenge is going to be too hard for some players and too easy for others designers also have to allow for the game to become progressively more difficult

Tuning Options Difficulty levels- twitch skill can scale easily: the requirements of how fast a player must react in a pure speed challenge can be modified; the window of opportunity for a timing challenge can be widened or narrowed; a precision challenge can be made more forgiving or can be assisted by some form of automatic aiming; the number of things to avoid in an avoidance challenge can be modified a strict time limit for a timed challenge can be changed to ease or increase the time pressure.

DYNAMIC DIFFICULTY ADJUSTMENT If the player is doing too well, the difficulty can increase until the player is sufficiently challenged. If the player is losing frequently, the game can ease up a bit so that the player is not frustrated.

DIFFICULTY CURVES video games that have a sequence of levels, simply start off easy and become progressively more difficult as time goes on. This continues until the player is finally overwhelmed. Many classic arcade games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders do this, as do puzzle games like Tetris

PLAYTESTING find new play testers on a continual basis and constantly monitor their first reactions to the difficulty of the game Designers understand their own games too well to discern the new player experience on their own. Testers who have experience with a game are great for finding bugs, but their skill level has likely increased to the point where they can no longer objectively test for difficulty

Twitch decision making Most twitch decisions have an obvious correct action that the player should take The challenge comes from executing that action quickly and accurately

Types of Twitch mechanics Pure speed- perform a routine task in a minimum amount of time or perform a repetitive task as many times as possible within a set time Limit Timing - require the player to press the right button at the right time Precision - do something accurately, e.g. FPS Avoidance – think side scrolling games Time Pressure – makes any task more difficult

Balancing Chance and Skill ch8 Some games are all chance and have no skill-based player decisions Some games are all skill Many games fall somewhere in between. Settlers of Catan has many skill-based gameplay elements but random die rolls, a deck of shuffled cards, and a random board setup. Backgammon and Poker both have strong skill and luck elements

Balance How does a game designer include the correct mix of skill and chance in a game? When is it appropriate to shift a game toward one extreme or the other?

Target Audience Designing a game for six-year-olds leads to very different results than a game meant for college-age males. Different players have different levels of tolerance for chance and skill. Balancing luck and skill is a critical task, and to do this it is necessary to understand the target audience

Children playing a game to have fun hope to win and want to have a chance of beating anyone they’re playing with may not yet possess the mental skills necessary to make strategic decisions

Gamers competitive gamers tend to prefer games with more elements of skill. It provides them with a chance to go one on one with another player, matching brain against brain, reflexes against reflexes, strategy against strategy Social gamers play for primarily social reasons, don’t care so much about intense strategy professionally played game tend to have extremely strong skill components

Family games Designing a game that can appeal to all ages is challenging family games tend to have certain traits: Short playing time, so as not to outlive the attention span of youngsters Relatively simple rules, so they can be taught to children Some elements of luck, to allow children and social players to have a chance of winning against the more competitive players Some elements of skill with interesting decisions, to keep the adults entertained and engaged

Playtesting for balance Some common warning signals: The players are bored. Too much luck in the game, or frequency of interesting decisions is too low. Convert some random elements to player decisions, or else shorten the length of the game. The players are bored on all but their turn. Find a way for players to engage with other players through gameplay. Your game isn’t as immersive as it could be or make player turns short enough that no one has to wait long for her turn. The players never become engaged, or seem confused about what to do. the game is too complicated, or there are too many decisions, or there is too much information for the players to process. Remove some decisions, either by automating them or making them random, and perhaps reducing the complexity of the rules in general. One player beats all of the other players by a wide margin. If your players have varying levels of skill, this suggests a game that has too many skill elements. Add some randomness to the game or add a negative feedback loop, some mechanics that make it easier for players who are behind to catch up

Exchanging luck and skill adding or removing random elements and adding or removing player decisions that affect the state of the game Adding randomness (die rolls, shuffled cards) increases the amount of luck in the game. Random elements can either be removed by automating them Decisions can be added by replacing automatic rules Information that is concealed from the players involves chance

Which category all games are dominated by chance, twitch skill, or strategic skill. Games may have elements of two or even all three of these, but one always has the strongest influence on the game’s outcome. Poker, billiards, roulette, chess, go, candyland, monopoly, guitar hero,