|
|
|
|
The 400 Project Game Developer Column 2 (April 2002) Parallel Challenges with Mutual Assistance © Copyright 2002 Noah Falstein all rights reserved
Welcome to another game design rule from The 400 Project. This month’s rule has wide application to most game designs:
The Rule:
Provide Parallel Challenges with Mutual Assistance
When presenting the player with a challenge – a monster to kill, a puzzle to solve, a city to capture – provide several such challenges and set it up so accomplishing one challenge makes it a little easier to accomplish the others (that’s the mutual assistance component). It is also effective to set up these parallel challenges on many levels of scale of the game, from the ultimate goal down to the small short-term steps. This eliminates bottlenecks and makes the game accessible to a wider range of players.
The Rule’s Domain:
This is a basic rule of game design, and applies to all games directly.
Rules that it trumps:
There are as yet no rules in our database that this one trumps.
Rules it is trumped by:
This is trumped by “Provide Clear Short-Term Goals”, our rule from last month’s column, in that it is important not to let parallel challenges confuse the player about what must be accomplished. But the two rules can easily co-exist in harmony if the parallel challenges are clear steps necessary for a larger goal. In Small Soldiers: Squad Commander from Dreamworks Interactive, we broke the single goal of freeing an ally into two sub-goals of “free his feet” and “free his hands”, each of which became an entire mission which could be accomplished in either order.
Examples from games:
This rule is used effectively in many classic, successful games. Sid Meier’s Civilization series of games is practically a case study of extensive use of this rule, nested recursively on many levels. On the highest level, the objective is to win the game – but this can be done in the original game by conquering all the other civilizations in the world, or by being the first to send a Starship to Alpha Centauri. If a player focuses on conquest, it still can help to pay attention to building technology that leads to the Starship victory, as this technology provides advantages in conquest as well. And if the player focuses on the Starship victory, limited conquest of neighboring civilizations can provide the resources needed to achieve it. The most recent Civilization adds various parallel diplomatic and cultural avenues to win the game. But deeper down in the game, the rule is applied even more directly. At any point there are challenges of improving individual cities, building the military, accumulating wealth, engaging in diplomacy, and researching new technology. Moreover, success in any of these can make it easier to achieve the others.
Diablo II is another fine example. Unlike many other less successful games, you are never left with a single bottleneck challenge that must be surpassed by the frustration of repeated vain attempts. Completing one of several available quests makes your character incrementally stronger by gaining a new level, or wins better armor or magic, making the other quests slightly easier. Even the apparent bottlenecks of tough boss monsters at the end of each act of the game are really parallel challenges with mutual assistance. You are required to fight the boss to progress forward – but you can always go back and repeat earlier quests, allowing you to face the boss with a higher level, better prepared character. This was effective in making Diablo II into a multi-million unit seller because this structure has made the game accessible to a wide range of skill levels. A very experienced player can zoom through and fight Andariel, the first act-end boss, with a character that has only achieved level 15 and accordingly must be handled masterfully, providing a tough and exciting challenge. A novice player can stay in their “comfort zone”, taking their time to reach Andariel, raising their character to level 20 or higher and gaining new weapons and armor. For them, Andariel will still be an exciting challenge that they’ll vanquish only after a satisfying fight, despite their more modest game playing skills.
Back to 400 Project Column List
|
|
Send mail to
webmaster@theinspiracy.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|