Conflict Challenge Requires the direct opposition of forces,
some of which are under the players control. Does not necessarily
involve combat or violence. Classic activities to overcome conflict
challenges include taking away another players resources and
impeding another players ability to act.
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Conflict Challenges Versus Conflict of Interest The terms have
different meanings. Any game in which players are rivals for
victory contains a conflict of interest. Games such as Monopoly or
Darts contain a conflict of interest but no conflict challenges.
Conflict challenges must include direct opposition of forces, such
as in Checkers.
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Conflict Factors The scale of the action The speed of the
conflict The complexity of winning conditions Conflict challenges
can be broken down into strategy, tactics, logistics, and other
components.
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Strategy Planning: Taking advantage of your situation and
resources. Anticipating your opponents moves. Knowing and
minimizing your weaknesses.
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Strategy A strategic challenge requires the player the
carefully consider the game. This is achieved by considering all
possible actions, and possible outcomes. This is known as
situational analysis. In a game of perfect information, (no element
of chance of hidden information) players use pure strategy to make
their moves, such as in a game of chess.
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Strategy A game of pure strategy, or challenges involving pure
strategy are often avoided by game developers. Relatively few
people possess the systematic reasoning talent required to succeed
in a game of pure strategy. Instead, many hide information and
include elements of chance, calling for the use of applied
strategy. Real-time strategy games often require applied strategy,
making them more accessible to players with less logically
inclined.
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Tactics Tactics involve executing a plan to achieve a specific
goal. Tactics also include responding to unexpected events or
conditions, new information, or bad luck. For example, a poker
player uses tactics to best decide how to play a specific
hand.
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Tactics versus Strategy Tactics do not necessarily include
strategy. Strategy largely involves predicting the outcome of
several different scenarios. A game in which you control troops
entering unknown territory does not allow for the player to plan,
as the player doesnt know where to go or what is coming. However,
keeping soldiers covered, taking advantage of particular skills,
and so on, would be considered tactics.
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Logistics Logistical challenges are often not included in
gameplay, players tend to find them boring. Logistical challenges
include such things as sending in fresh troops in a battle,
bringing them food and supplies, or bringing them fuel. Players
would find themselves less concerned with logistical challenges and
more entertained by combat challenges.
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Logistics However, some logistics are still implemented by
games. Weapon production challenges are one such implementation.
Modern RTS games require the player the produce weapons and
research new weapons, using raw material. Another implementation
would be limited inventory space in role-playing games, forcing
players to choose which items to keep.
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Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces Any game based on
conflict includes the fundamental challenge of survival. A player
may not win without preserving health, units, or possibly time. In
some games, such as tower defense games, the entire premise is
survival. In other games, victory conditions are not so simple, and
the player must reduce enemy forces.
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Survival and Reduction of Enemy Forces To create the challenges
of reducing enemy forces, some conditions must be met. Rules must
be created that determine how enemy units are removed or damaged.
Chess uses capture by replacement, checkers uses capture by
jumping. War games use different models to determine how much
damage a unit has received, or if the unit must be destroyed due to
its health reaching zero.
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Defending Vulnerable Items or Units Some challenges require the
player to defend a specific unit or item, especially such things
cannot control or defend themselves. Chess involves all the players
units effectively defending their king piece. To successfully
defend units, a player must know the capabilities and
vulnerabilities of all their other units, as well as those of the
entity they are trying to protect.
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Stealth Some games occasionally call for a challenge including
stealth. This involves the ability to move undetected to complete a
challenge. The game Thief: The Dark Knight was designed around this
challenge, by having players complete missions by stealth and avoid
being discovered.
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Stealth Issues From a programming standpoint, stealth poses a
considerable problem in the design of artificial intelligence. With
no stealth, opponents have full knowledge of the working
environment, and react appropriately. To include stealth means
including factors in opponents such as general knowledge or
intelligence, attention spans and more.
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Economic Challenges Economy in a game involves including a
system in which resources move either physically or conceptually
from one owner to another owner. This includes much more than
money, anything that can be created, moved, stored, earned,
exchanged, or destroyed could be considered such a resource. Such
resources could even include health points and ammunition.
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Accumulating Resources Accumulating resources is a basic
challenge of many games, and the end-goal or winning condition of
many other games. Monopoly is such a game, where the top- level
challenge is to collect as much money as possible. These type of
challenges encourage the players to understand the mechanisms of
wealth creation and to use them to their advantage.
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Achieving Balance Achieving balance in an economy is slightly
more difficult and more interesting than simply accumulating
resources. Games such as those in The Settlers series involve
collecting resources in a specific manner : wheat goes to the mill
to become flour, which goes to the bakery to become bread, which
feeds miners who dig coal and iron ore, which is used to make iron
ores by the smelter, which produces weapons, etc.
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Caring for Living Things The Sims and Spore describe the
specific economic challenge of caring for living things.
Individuals, or groups of individuals, require the players
attention, and have specific needs. These needs are measured via
numeric terms, and are considered resources, thus qualifying them
as economic challenges.
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Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles Both of these
types of challenges require extrinsic knowledge. This means having
knowledge from outside the domain of the challenge itself.
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Conceptual Reasoning To complete a conceptual reasoning puzzle,
players generally need to use their reasoning power and extrinsic
knowledge of the subject matter to come up with a solution. Simple
games such as trivial pursuit or cranium involve testing the
players knowledge and conceptual reasoning. Mystery and detective
games, such as Law & Order, are completed by solving clues and
ignoring red herrings while using external knowledge of
evidence.
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Lateral Thinking In lateral thinking puzzles, the player is
made aware of the fact that the obvious solution is not possible.
The player is forced to think of alternatives to come up with a
solution. A simple example is a challenge involving getting an item
down from a high place without using a ladder. Without the obvious
solution, the player is forced to consider alternatives such as
stacking a chair on a table and climbing on top of that chair.
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Lateral Thinking Lateral thinking puzzles can also include
using extrinsic knowledge gained in real life in unexpected ways.
However, game developers must ensure not to make solutions too
obscure. Average players will know that wood can float on water,
however they should not be expected to know that cork comes from
the bark of a certain species of Mediterranean oak tree.
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Actions
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User interfaces are the links that connect actions to the game
world. Actions, therefore, refer to events in the game world that
are directly caused by the user interface interpreting input.
Actions are the verbs of the game: I jump I run I punch I buy I
build
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No Hierarchy of Actions There is a hierarchy of challenges,
because in the game world, it makes sense to group the challenges
together as a group of goals the player attempts to achieve For
example, the challenge of defeating the boss monster, cannot be
associated to the action defeat the boss monster. Its not that
simple. Instead, actions are defined in low-level terms, such as
attack using kick, attack using punch, jump, etc. It is up to the
player to use the actions in the proper order and timing to
successfully complete the challenge.
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Actions for Gameplay Most actions available to a player are
given as necessary actions to complete a challenge. In a combat
game, fire weapon is an obvious choice for an action. In a game
where you control an avatar, actions are all avatar-based, thus to
control the game world, the player must do so through the
avatar.
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Actions for Gameplay There will never be a one-to-one mapping
of challenges to actions. Most games include a large amount of
challenges compared to the relatively small amount of actions. The
Rubiks Cube, for example, contains one action: rotate a side of the
cube. Games cannot contain too many actions, it would result in a
cluttered user interface, as well as too many animations, which is
expensive for developers.
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Defining Your Actions When creating a game, developers need to
be careful on choosing what the players actions will be. Ben
Cousins has argued that game designers should spend most of their
effort defining the refining the way that actions overcome atomic
challenges because the player spends most of his time performing
those actions.
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Defining Your Actions The Fundamental of Game Design textbook
encourages developers to write down every action associated with
atomic challenges. Each of these atomic challenges should be
successfully completed through one or a few actions in successive
order. Then, begin considering higher-level challenges, as well as
actions unrelated to gameplay. Once all possible actions have been
determined, the developer may begin working on the user
interface.
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Actions that Serve Other Functions Unstructured play: involves
actions that may be considered fun, but do not solve or complete
any specific challenge, such as sightseeing. In a car game, honking
a horn accomplishes nothing, however is a necessary addition to the
game.
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Actions that Serve Other Functions Actions for creation and
self-expression: involves actions that allow players to create or
customize things, such as their avatars. Many actions in
construction and management games involve creative play actions,
rather than gameplay, however these games often include economic
challenges.
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Actions that Serve Other Functions Actions for socialization:
involves actions used to reach out to a social community, such as
chatting, forming groups, comparing high scores, or taking part in
community activities.
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Actions that Serve Other Functions Actions to participate in
the story: includes actions that actively involve the player in the
narrative of the game. Having the player select conversation
options to create different outcomes or scenarios largely immerses
the player into the game, which is beneficial.
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Actions that Serve Other Functions Actions to control the game
software: involves actions that do not explicitly affect in-game
challenges, such as changing the virtual camera, pausing, saving
the game, adjusting the volume, and choosing a difficulty level.
While changing the difficulty may make challenges easier, the
action does not specifically address the challenge.
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Saving the Game Saving a game takes a snapshot of the game
world and all its particular information at a given instant, to be
reloaded by the player at a later date at the time of their
choosing. When a game includes many customization features, more
data must be saved. Until recently, this limited the customization
of many games, however this is no longer the case.
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Reasons for Saving a Game Allowing the player to leave the game
and return to it later. Letting the player recover from disastrous
mistakes. Encouraging the player to explore alternative
strategies.
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Consequences Immersion If a game is trying to create the
illusion of a different world, the act of saving destroys this
illusion. Being able to repeat the past immediately forces the
player to acknowledge the unreality of the game world.
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Consequences Storytelling Dramatic tension requires that
something be at stake. Constantly being able to quit and restart
from a saved point removes that tension. Actions begin to lose
their meaning, because the consequences of losing are offset
immediately by restarting from a saved point.
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Ways of Saving a Game Passwords Save to a File or Save Slot
Quick-Save Automatic Save and Checkpoints
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Passwords When a game is run a device with no storage (which is
rare), using passwords is an effective method to avoid actual
saving of data. Each level is attached to a unique password, which
is given to the player once they complete the previous level.
Therefore a player who has completed the 10 th level of a game
would be able to return later and begin the 11 th level using the
password given.
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Save to a File or Save Slot Although this is the most common
form of saving a game, it is the most harmful to the games sense of
immersion. It involves the player taking the time to save the game
to a specific slot. Each slot is given a different name, so the
player may follow different scenarios, or there may be more than
one player.
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Quick-Save Fast-moving games often implement quick- save, such
as games where the players avatar remains more or less in frequent
danger (first person shooter). The player is given a single button
that saves the game, immediately. The player is also given a button
to quick- load a game. This is efficient for game immersion, as the
player never needs to see a file screen.
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Automatic Save and Checkpoints Some games save the state of the
game as the player exits. This is the least harmful to game
immersion, however if the player has recently done something
disastrous, they cannot recover from it. More often, games
implement checkpoints, which automatically saves the game once the
player reaches a new one. However, this forces users to save the
game, even if they may not want to.
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To Save or Not To Save Some designers do not wish for their
players to save at all, they believe that if the player can save
and load, they can solve puzzles through trial and error, complete
challenges via luck, etc. This is lazy game design. It restricts
the players freedom in the game without adding any fun. To make
games harder, simply make harder challengers.
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To Save or Not To Save Forcing players to replay an entire
level because they made a mistake near the end wastes their time
and causes frustration and boredom. This is not a player-centric
design, and in fact violates the player-centric principle to not
assume that the player is your opponent. The player should have the
fundamental right to be able to stop playing the game without
losing what he has accomplished.