To give credit where credit is due, the inspiration for writing this column comes from Kelly Tessena’s fascinating article My Adventures as a New GM: Cheating. I, too, wrote rules for Solitaire in my youth that were intended to make it if not easier to win, at least harder to lose. I did not include her rather creative “one free shuffle” rule; but I tried many variations to try to get at cards that were out of reach.
The question which Kelly and I might have asked ourselves then may have escaped both of us: if we don’t like the rules, why are we playing the game? I’m sure I could have answered that then, had it been asked. I’m less certain whether the answer I’d have given would have been correct, or at least whether it would have been the whole of the matter. In looking at Kelly’s house rules for solitaire and considering some of my own, it occurs to me that we were both doing something very specific, very technical, which has to be done in game design and also in running games. We were adjusting the challenge level of the game.
The importance of adjusting the challenge level of a game can be easily demonstrated by turning our attention to casino gambling. It is possible to design a game which can’t be won; in that situation, once it was clear that winning was impossible no one would play. There once was a game that sold extremely well that was impossible to win–you’ve seen its descendants, but the original had the numbers one through fifteen on little chits that could slide around between sixteen spaces on a square grid, but couldn’t (without breaking it) be removed. When you purchased it, the numbers fourteen and fifteen were reversed; a substantial prize was offered to the first person who could demonstrate a solution within the rules to get the numbers in order. It sold a lot of copies before someone demonstrated mathematically that there was no solution possible, and even then there were a few people who bought it because they didn’t think that kind of thing could be proved (it can). Yet in the main, people won’t play games they can’t win, and they certainly won’t pay to play them. On the other extreme, if the casino ran games that no one could lose, they might just as well dispense with the games altogether and just give away money–they’re going to go bankrupt, and for the majority of players, the game becomes the price of the money. In designing games for gamblers, the challenge has to be carefully set. One boundary is that the casino has to make more money than it pays out, or it doesn’t stay in business–which inherently means that the majority of players have to lose money the majority of the time. However, the other boundary is that enough players must win enough money often enough to keep them in the game.
I wasn’t playing for money; I was playing for my own entertainment. Like Kelly, I wasn’t winning enough to make me happy. That means that the challenge was too great for my level of ability and what we might call my satisfaction threshold. I wanted to be challenged, certainly; but I didn’t want to be as challenged as the book rules for the game demanded. I adjusted the challenge downward to meet my ability, not so that I would always win, but so that I would win often enough to be happy and still have to make an effort to play intelligently to do so.
It probably should be mentioned, in case it is not obvious, that this is something that only really matters in games which are about challenge, what current roleplaying theory would label gamist play. These are the games in which we are stepping up to the plate and proving ourselves against the odds, against the game, against the opponent, against whatever challenge is presented. Not all people play role playing games for this challenge, and not all games are designed for it. However, when the game does focus on challenge, it is important to get the level of that challenge in the comfort zone of the player.
A player who wants to be challenged doesn’t want to face impossible tasks; he doesn’t want to face tasks that are so near impossible that winning will be the incredibly rare exception. This is to a large degree a very personal issue. Part of it is the skill of the player. I have learned to play solitaire well enough by now that I don’t need those rules. (I learned to play in part by studying the game to figure out what rules would help. Whenever I lost, I would turn over all the hidden cards and examine them until I understood exactly why I lost and what I might have done differently to win. I learned a great deal about probabilities and strategies generally from those studies which have undoubtedly contributed greatly to my game design abilities.) I don’t know what percentage of games I win, but I’m comfortable with it. A better player will accept a greater challenge, because he’s up to it. Another part of it has to do with a personal tolerance for losing. I don’t play casino games because I know they’re designed such that no matter what your skill, the house has the edge. In fact, card counters, who would seem to be an exception to this, actually prove it. Anyone who has the ability to count cards well enough to know when the odds have tipped significantly in his favor who does so is, according to casino rules, cheating, and can be banned from play. The very thought that the game is rigged against me is, in that case, sufficient to dissuade me from it. Some people find that level of challenge more invigorating; they don’t mind losing more often, as long as they can feel like they’re winning against the odds when they do win. Thus we find that there’s a maximum level of challenge which a gamer will accept, which is very individual.
At the same time, a player who wants to be challenged doesn’t want a cake walk. He wants to be challenged. If everything is dropped into his lap, there’s no fun in it. The challenge is our opportunity to prove ourselves, to show that we can overcome the challenge. If there’s nothing to it, there’s neither any fun nor any glory in success. Again, skill plays a part in this. Most of us at one time found Tic-Tac-Toe challenging, but eventually most of us learned to play well enough that it became boring. A toddler is very excited to be able to walk across the room; so is someone recovering from a stroke or serious accident. Most of us don’t find that challenging, and don’t think of success as something of significance when we do it. At the same time, there is again a personal factor related to the margin of victory and our willingness to believe we might have failed. In some role playing games, there are players (often referred to as Munchkins) who build characters that can walk over anything without batting an eye. They find excitement in winning against things that never stood a chance. Personally I would find a game in which I effortlessly defeated a thousand enemies without suffering a scratch dull. I am much more thrilled by the game in which I almost died, but in that last stroke I saved the world and myself with it (oh–but don’t tell the referee that). There is a sense in which a close game suggests a close match in ability and thus much more laudable victory to me; yet I understand how a win by a wide margin can suggest superiority to someone else. Thus setting that minimum challenge is also a very personal matter.
I think everyone has it within them to enjoy a game that is played for the challenge. Those who have been put off by such games usually had a bad experience, which means in this context one in which the challenge was outside their comfort zone, whether too great to be faced or to small to be interesting. Thus in preparing our games we need to attempt to identify how challenging they should be for the group.
Some game designs attempt to address this with mechanical systems to rate the challenge of an opponent, such that it can be matched to the abilities of the characters. This is probably a step in the right direction; but it needs to be adjusted to consider the players. It is not a matter so much of having the right level of challenge for the characters, but of having the right level of challenge for the players who will be using those characters. The characters are, after all, only the tools through which the players meet the challenge, the limits on what solutions are possible within which the players will address the problems. Matching the challenge to the tool is a bit like deciding what sort of music a violinist can play based on the name on his violin. Owning a Stradivarius does not make the player a virtuoso. Playing a powerful character does not mean the player is up to the greatest challenges, or that he wishes to face them. Customizing challenge to the player is a lot trickier, but is ultimately necessary best to ensure that the player will enjoy the game.
Mercifully, most players have a fairly wide range between their minimum and maximum challenge levels. Otherwise it would be extremely difficult to run a game for one player, and unlikely in the extreme that even two would be happy in the same game. Targeting a level of challenge that gives everyone enough of an opportunity to win and enough of a threat of losing to keep them happy doesn’t require advanced math. It does require being aware of the possibility that you might be outside someone’s comfort zone in this regard, and the flexibility to get back within it.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
