Logic Challenges: A Man's Best Friend

My final challenge type sounds like a cop out at first. If you buy into Jesse Schell's idea that a game is really just a complex puzzle with lots of moving pieces, this challenge type is obvious. Not only that, you could also argue that all the other challenge types fall under this category, and its a catchall for any types that have evaded my most ingenious taxonomy.

These criticisms are all true, but let me defend myself before we dive in: Though this challenge is arguably a parent to the other challenge types, I am attempting to highlight a particular slice of the challenge that is meaningful in modern game design analysis and discussion. It's nature as a super challenge is why I saved it for last, but in certain genres it is overwhelmingly present and distinct from the other three types of challenge.

Can you guess what it is from that set up? Probably not.

The last challenge type is the Logic Challenge! What's a logic challenge? I'm glad you asked!

A Logic Challenge is any challenge that requires the manipulation of a set of axioms and principles to find a valid solution.

This challenge is fairly self explanatory. A logic challenge can be thought of as either a proof, or more importantly and equivalently, a math problem. As I noted above, the astute reader will shout that all other challenges are logical challenges. Spatial challenges require a solution to a more real time representation of "If a train leaves Albuquerque at 1,000 miles per hour and another train leaves kalamazoo at 5,000 miles per hour when and where will they meet if both trains can tunnel through moutain ranges and fly over the ocean?". It's true, but for my purposes logic puzzles are meaningfully distinct in that they involve the willful manipulation of numbers and rules.

My example for this will draw on the Shin Megami Tensei series, a hardcore RPG series that's almost older and certainly deeper and absolutely more intense than any other RPG series I've heard of. The first, and most prominent application of this challenge in the SMT series, is simply that it's a traditional turn based RPG.

All RPGs (at least, the old school ones before action got involved...not including Zelda 2), are about statistics. Characters have their resources (challenge type number 3!), but they also have an attack, defense, speed, and whatever other stats the developers included. Playing an RPG is tackling the interplay between the stats of your characters, and the stats of the opponent. If I have an attack rating of 70, and the dragon I'm about to take on has a defense rating of 5000, I need to crunch the numbers (as trivial as they are in this example) to realize that I am far too weak to take on the dragon. Obviously in most RPGs, these calculations are much greyer (for one thing, you usually don't know your opponent's defense rating), which is half the fun (I think), but that's beside the point.

The real meat of a logical challenge is manipulating rules. Number crunching is a (complicated) extension of this point, but rule manipulation is demonstrated beautifully in SMT. In several of the Shin Megami Tensei games, each character has an elemental affinity, and along side that, there are several elemental spells and attacks. By attacking a character with an attack that belongs to the opposite elemental affinity, the effects of your attack are greatly modified.

This is really what logic challenges are all about: It's a question of, this rule states that if I use this command (say a fire spell), against you (you're an ice demon), my chances of success are greatly increased (because I deal double damage). As I stated before, it's not hard to argue that this is true for all challenges, but this is a significant distinction, particularly in the case of RPGs.

I suppose a big application of this challenge for me is essentially arbitrary laws that modify a more intuitive rule set. Another great example of this is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. In FFTA, there are rules governing battles, like "no Swords", which change over a set interval (oh look, a timing challenge!) which you can plan around. This is sort of where the lines get blurred on challenge types, but that's okay.

In my experience, logical challenges add a lot of richness to gameplay for advanced players but increase the barrier to entry for beginners substantially. As a result, I think it's fair to say that the more rules you enforce on the player, the higher the difficulty. Though I think it's worth also mentioning that the effect of the rules is important too. If SMT's elemental system offered modest gains in damage (like Final Fantasy games), but nothing crucial to victory, then nobody feels put off by not understanding the systems in place.

Fundamental Challenges Part 3: Resoure Challenges

Now we come to my favorite type of challenge. This type of challenge may be the most fundamental challenge type for games of all mediums, because this challenge type defines the win/lose conditions. I call it the Resource Challenge. In modern game design (starting around the last console generation) resource challenges have exploded. They add nice constraints on the player which encourage resourcefulness and exploration of the game's mechanics. But even traditional games involve resources in the number of "chances" (or less formally "lives") players have to not lose. The number of lives in Mario, the number of cards in your hand in Rummy, etc. But before I can define a Resource Challenge, I need to define a Resource. dictionary.com defines a resource as:

A source of supply, support, esp. one that can be readily drawn upon when needed.

This is a suitable definition, which we will extend for Resource Challenges:

A Resource Challenge is any challenge which involves maintaining the quantity of a resource within predefined tolerances.

Let's talk first about the most important resource in video games: Life. I would describe Life as the primary resource, and the reason that this particular challenge type is so vital to gaming. Whether this resource is plentiful (like the giant lifebar in Mischief Makers) or practically non-existent (Like in any old school Mario game, where getting touched while small kills you), Most games have an inherent life mechanic, expressing your leeway in performing the game's tasks. This resource forces the player to attempt to play as skillfully as possible, because the game will end if they do not manage their most important resource. I would argue that games without life (such as Wario Land 3) demand no skillful execution, and in general are puzzle games, but that's a separate blog post.

There are of course other prominent resources in use today. RPGs have Mana, which the player must maintain if he wishes to use more effective abilities in battle, and Gold, which players must keep stockpiled in order to power up their characters. Strategy games, such as Starcraft quite literally have resources to manage. For a period of time, fighting games were getting crazy with resources, Guilty Gear had the guard bar which filled as you blocked attacks and would give your opponent unscaled damage in their combos. Marvel Versus Capcom 2 had life as well as red life, which was life you could regain by switching out your characters.

All of these resources force certain behaviors on the players. In Guilty Gear, to take an example I'm intimately familiar with, the Guard Bar exists to promote players to go on the defensive.

Now what factors into the difficulty of a resource challenge? There are two main avenues for difficulty, and a third sort of obscure one that I'll cover here. The first metric for difficulty is the number of resources that need to be managed. Most RPGs give you two resources to manage: Hit points and magic points. This is pretty common practice even outside of RPGs, personally I think 3 resources is a nicer number, but that's a separate blog post. More than 3 resources, however, and things start to get fairly difficulty

The second metric is the quantity of the resources. In this case I've always found that scarcer the resource, the more difficult the game is. This is pretty intuitive, the less of a resource you have the more difficult and important your decisions become. In old school platformers, for example, your resource was your life, and you really only had enough life to take one hit. As a result those games were extremely difficult. Compare that with modern shooters where not only do you have plentiful life, but it also regenerates and tops itself off. Life in modern shooters is not a rare resource at all, which may be part of why modern games feel so much easier than older ones.

The third, and more obscure metric only comes in to play when there are multiple resources. The resource's (word I'm going to get from Tommy), or the similarities between each resource, factors in hugely to how hard it is to manage the resources. Funnily, this metric is difficult at either extreme, rather than being a perfect scale. If there are many resources and they function on different scales, and are valuable in different situations, then players have to weigh and balance their "objective" worth in a given situation at a substantial mental calculation cost.

The opposite of the spectrum is the Demon's Souls method. In Demon's Souls, all actions are dependent on the number of souls you've collected. Items you buy from the shop are paid for in Demon's Souls, spells you learn are acquired using Demon's Souls and the only way to level up your character is with Demon's Souls. It forces the same decision making process as above, but in reverse. Which choices are important enough that you should spend your limited resource on, rather than determining which resource is more important in the situation.

The primary application of this challenge is to direct players and to modify their play styles. The applications of it are fascinating to study.

Fundamental Challenges Part 2: Spatial Challenges

The next challenge type in our survey of fundamental game elements brings us to the Spatial Challenge. The Spatial Challenge is a fundamental component of almost all games, and is particularly important to video games due to their inherent narrative elements. Almost all video games feature a (engrossing at best, superficial at worst) storyline with characters, which implies entities, which imply space. Beyond that, even more traditional games almost always include space. The only one I can think of off the top of my head that doesn't include space is The Prisoner's Dilemma. The importance can't be understated, so without further ado:

A Spatial Challenge is a challenge involving manipulation of positional relationships between the player (or his avatar, minions, etc.) and other agents or obstacles within the game space.

What do I mean by that? Let's use Chess as an example. Chess is primarily a game of spatial relationships. Each piece owns a single point on the board (the spot its sitting on), but also controls all the spaces it can attack. The bishop for example, applies pressure on diagonals. If a pawn is diagonally aligned with a bishop, it's being threatened by the bishop through their spatial relationship. If a queen is sitting right behind the pawn however, the spatial relationship between the queen and the pawn protect it from its relationship to the bishop. Chess is an extreme example but it really highlights the complexities of spatial relationships, especially when you factor in all the pieces on the board.

Chess, however, does not cover all aspects of Spatial Challenges. I would argue there is a second component at play in spatial challenges that is particularly absent from Chess: Orientation. Chess has no real orientation factor (besides Pawn's forced forward procession), but for a First Person Shooter, orientation is critical. First Person Shooters present their players with a two level spatial challenge. Not only must you position your body/gun to be at a coordinate where it can fire on the enemy, but you must also orient your body/gun to score a head shot.

Maybe a stronger example of orientation being a factor of spatial relationships is Tetris. The spatial relationships between pieces in Tetris are defined by their orientation. The pieces need to be oriented to fit in snugly with the current set up of pieces. The magic of Tetris is how the spatial relationships of pieces are completely redefined each time the next piece is rotated.

Spatial Challenges (both involving orientation and not)exist in almost all games. Poker, for example is a game with a surprisingly important spatial component in via the dealer button. In Poker, the players farthest from the dealer button have the most information about other players (the dealer button determines turn order). They can play riskier hands because of this spatial advantage. Puzzle games, likewise, almost always involve a spatial component. From Tetris to Gunpey to Polarium.

An interesting note of Spatial Challenges is that they often dictate the Timing Challenges of a game. In Super Mario Bros. for example, the timing of Mario jumping to land on a Goomba is completely dependent on the spatial relationship between Mario and the Goomba. The Active Window in this case is a function of Mario's jump height (spatial), and the Warning Window is defined by the Goomba's distance from Mario (spatial). If a platform is a long jump away, the player must press jump right before the end of the platform he's running on. The Warning Window is essentially the distance of the platform up until the range where a jump will be successful, which begins the Action Window.

While I don't think this challenge type is as practically useful as the others (it's so essential that any game is almost guaranteed to already have one), it is helpful to have in hand. Stick around for the next post where we start getting into one of the more lacking challenges in modern game design.

Fundamental Challenges Part 1: Timing Challenges

The goal of developing a theory for any art form is to analyze that form and break it down into it's most basic parts. Music Theorists have spent centuries categorizing chords, musical forms, and time signatures. Game Theorists have argued about rational play, and have spent years analyzing the intuitively simplistic but mathematically intensive Prisoner's Dilemma, deriving increasingly complex strategies and situations from the basic game. Game Design by comparison has no established fundamental elements, besides wide sweeping ideas like "The graphics" and "the gameplay".

So far, Game Design books have aimed to deliver a "big picture" look at game design. Jesse Schell does delve into mechanics such as space or chance in The Art of Game Design, but doesn't really dig into any one topic that deeply. Chris Crawford, in The Art of Computer Game Design, almost exclusively looks at the bigger picture of video games as an art form. He focuses on prototyping a perspective of games and discussing how to approach game design. Besides his taxonomy of genres (which is understandably quite out of date), he barely tackles concrete fundamentals. Schell and Crawford are both looking at the big picture, rather than really attempting to investigate the most basic of game "units". I wish to remedy this, by adding my contribution to the study of Game Design as an art and science.

Schell writes that in essence all games are puzzles, or challenges if you will. Here I shall propose a taxonomy of challenge types found within all games (with examples from video games). I actually conceived this taxonomy a couple of years ago, and have been using it to deconstruct games ever since. With this tool in mind, a game designer can easily analyze a game's structure to better understand and augment it. Furthermore this taxonomy make it easy to see why a game is or is not difficult, addressing another need of game designers. I have plenty to say about all of these challenges, so I'm going to split them up into 4 different posts, one for each challenge type. Stick around to see them.

The first type of Challenge is the Timing Challenge. Timing Challenges are challenges where the player must perform a specified action within a limited period of time. Because this challenge involves Time, we can split it up into two sequential parts:

1. The Warning Window: The Warning Window is the amount of time between the player being told he will have to perform an action and the time when the Action Window starts.
2. The Action Window: The Action Window is the period of time, during which the player must perform the specified action. The size of the Action Window is the final word in the difficulty of a timing challenge. The smaller the window, the harder the challenge.

To further complicate matters, we have to consider both of these windows in terms of Actual Time and Relative Time. What are Relative and Actual Time? Here I'm defining "relative time" as time as expressed within the game's event system. In Final Fantasy Tactics (or any turn based game, really), time only passes in "Turns", and the metric that actions are judged to be "fast" or "slow" by is turns. The actual length of a turn for the player time is essentially infinite. The player can take as much or as little time as he wishes. From my observations, relative time often correlates with strategic difficulty (as in, decision making)of a game. Games with small windows of relative time are often more strategically intensive then games with long windows.

Actual time relates to the real world perception of time. As a window's duration decreases in Actual Time, the technical skill(as in reflexes and dexterity) required to complete the challenge increases. In a sense, for a window to be small in Actual Time, Relative Time must be expressed in a way that relates it to Actual Time. A great example of this is any fighting game, where time is measured in "frames". Frames are the individual animation frames of the characters performing actions. Modern fighting games (and all modern games really) run at 60frames/second, and this has become the standard unit for measuring time in fighting games. Because the game's Relative Time is a function of Actual Time, the game's technical skill requirements are heightened.

Now for an actual application of this challenge type: in fighting games, players must react to their opponent's moves and time their own button presses to land within very small Action Windows, with very small preceding Warning Windows. When I say small, I'm referring to both Actual and Relative Time, because Relative Time in this game is a function of Actual Time and the Actual time is often below a 3rd of a second (about 20 frames for those of you paying attention). Because fighting games are so rapid in both Actual and Relative Time, they require strategic as well as technical skill.

Final Fantasy Tactics also has very small Active and Warning Windows. But unlike fighting games, it features essentially infinite Actual Time to perform its actions, despite very tight windows in Relative Time. In this case a Relative Time unit is a turn, rather than a frame. Often, the player has 5 turns of information to plan with, which feels like eternity to the hyperactive fighting game player. But when things suddenly go wrong, you have an extremely limited number of turns (maybe two) to react and remedy a situation. The Action Window is quick, despite the Actual Time approaching infinity.

Try applying these tools to other games you know, Max Payne is an interesting exercise because it plays with Actual and Relative Times as the central gameplay mechanic. Music games arguably have massive Warning Windows, because notes almost always fall on the beats of the song. With this tool, I think you'll begin to look at games in a new way.

Why Realism

"This is awesome, it's so realistic"

"That's so stupid, why would anyone actually do that in real life?"

I'll start this off with a simple declaration: I believe the pursuit of realism in video games is as stupid as it is constant. I play games to get away from the rules of reality, to live by a clear, well defined rule set. I also enjoy the fantastic. Conversely, many seem to seek realism endlessly. They judge games almost exclusively on how realistic they are. It's as if they don't know they are playing video games. Reducing the nuance of performing a navy seal operation, driving an Italian sports car, or playing a professional sport down to a level controllable with a controller is ludicrous, even with the complex controllers we have today. Most gamers focus on specific "realistic" mechanics rather than the experience as a whole. It's a fairly idiotic mind set.

Despite my views, realism is a cherished quality. I've long wondered why. I first pegged a gamer's desire to do what he cannot in real life as the culprit. For gamers like myself, that means exploring the impossible. For gamers who enjoy realism, that usually means exploring what is unsafe, unpractical, or unfeasible for them in the real world. Being a navy seal is a full career (and a dangerous one), driving an Italian sports car would put you back more than a few pieces of quiche, and you need to be born with talent before you can train for years before you can become a pro athlete.

I believe this desire is part of it. But tonight I got to thinking that there's another, much better reason that people strive for realism: Consistency.

I don't believe gamers are after realism because it's particularly impressive. I believe they pursue a set of rules consistent with their model of the world. Consistency is something humans seek constantly. The search for consistency has birthed religion, social norms, government, just about everything. I'm arguing that it also factors into game appreciation. Logically, most games are not accurate representations of anything, at least not directly. For example, most games involving Samurai (except Busido Blade) give players life bars allowing them plenty of cuts from katanas before they finally die. In Way of the Samurai, this is a gameplay precaution to protect fun, but it makes no sense with the rules of the "Real World". Despite this, the game delivers an experience consistent with real samurai. The player must always be conscious of when and where they draw their weapons and speak politely and respectfully in company, much like actual samurai did in "real life".

Similarly, updated stats keep sports games in sync with the real world. Each update factors in how players have performed over the year to create a sense that players are in control of real players. Gran Turismo spends almost too much time seeking that real world consistency that players love. Polyphony Digital meticulously tunes their games, delays them constantly, and frequently making trips to race tracks to double check their numbers.

Why do I think consistency is the real culprit? Super Mario Bros. The Super Mario universe is far from realistic, but one thing commented again and again by game journalists is that the Super Mario universe holds a mysteriously cohesive consistency in its world. In Super Mario Bros 3, for example, if Mario eats the "Super Leaf" he grows a racoon tail and ears. These new appendages mean Mario can fly. It's a ridiculous chain of logic, but in a context of flying turtles, fire flowers, and mushroom people, the Super Leaf feels like a crucial part a complete system. Somehow, Miyamoto was able to create a world that is instantly sensical and consistent to everyone who plays it. Maybe that's why it's the best selling game series of all time. Consistency.

I suppose the lesson is to always aim for consistent worlds. Make mechanics that are reflective of what the characters will be doing in the storyline, and what they'd be doing otherwise. Make sure the logic of the world and your game blend. Things can be random in the context of our world, but make sure they aren't random in yours. People notice, though maybe they don't think they do.

Talking about HUDs: What Bioshock did wrong

As recipient of more than one Game of the Year award, one looks at Bioshock as a pinnacle of modern gaming. The visuals are engrossing, the world is hyper interactive, the combat is engaging while allowing creative thinking, and it has a great storyline. It breaks my heart then, that Ken Levine and his team at Irrational completely botched the climatic scene, the confrontation with Andrew Ryan, by violently ripping me out of the experience.

What did they do? They screwed up the HUD. It disappeared.

HUDs are funny things. Though I'd never heard the term until I played StarSiege, HUDs have been around since pong. They are a useful and (if well designed) unobtrusive way of giving the player pertinent information about the current game session. In olden days they showed the player's score, coins in Mario games, ammo in shooting games, and the ultimate resource: life. But HUDs give players one more, often overlooked piece of information. A piece of information whose importance increases as the depth of the story does.

The HUD tells the player he's playing a game.

When the HUD is active, any seasoned gamer is on their toes, looking for threats. The game is active, and is feeding them the information they need. Anything that goes wrong is their fault. This reaction is the primary importance of HUDs. They force the player to remain connected and focused, even if they have no actual control over the situation.

Let me start with a simple thought experiment and then I'll return to Bioshock's folly. Think of any game you want that has narrative scenes broken up by gameplay scenes. My example is Shinobi, which shows a cinematic at the start and end of every level, with gameplay filling the gaps between. It doesn't matter if it's an action game or an RPG. Imagine you're in an intense battle in this game, in Shinobi you'd be teleporting around and killing enemies. You're glancing at your life to see how the battle's going, you look at your magic meter (scrolls in Shinobi) to see if you can do any special attacks, you're keeping track of any modifiers the game's engine supports (Such as the number of enemies you've killed in rapid succession in Shinobi).

Suddenly the screen goes white. Your HUD is still there, but you can't see anything else. What runs through your head?

If you're a normal gamer, you're going to start freaking out. Why is the screen white? Did I die? Is this some enemy's special attack? Did my game crash?

All from a simple white screen! Imagine the same situation, but this time your HUD disappears. I believe you'll find that after an initial moment of panic, you quickly realize this is a cinematic and relax. This is exactly the reaction we must avoid when telling stories with games. Once the game reverts to a movie, the player checks out of his character, and returns to reality.

Without spoiling too much, in the climatic scene in Bioshock, the main character is stripped of control of his body. While a nice enough plot point, this scene is delivered HUD free. When I watched it, I didn't feel what the character felt. He was powerless, I was not. I had been completely removed from the game's world. Imagine if the scene had kept its HUD. I would've hammered away at the buttons on my controller, trying to see if any buttons would work. I'd slam the joysticks around trying move my body. I would have been wildly thrashing (much as the character would be) in the only way I knew. Both the protagonist and I would be panicking at our lack of control.

There are other examples, but this seems most prominent. HUDs let players know that they are playing a game. It's a deciding and often overlooked aspect of games that separates them from movies and books. We as game designers must embrace HUDs and use them as traps to ensnare our players.

Frustration: Why Tetsuya Nomura deserves more credit than he gets

Frustration in gaming is a pretty controversial topic. As I discussed in my first post, one side thinks games are too hard, that frustration and "work" should be eliminated from gaming. The other side, possibly filled with hard core gamers, thinks everyone else should grit their teeth and deal with it. It's a hard question, particularly in light of artful game design, with two uncompromising sides and a variety of designers trying to appease them. But one in particular stands out.

If I had to guess, I'd peg Tetsuya Nomura as one of the most openly ridiculed and despised designers in the game industry. Despite his reputation for flamboyant, over dramatic character designs, Mr. Nomura has some ideas for preventing frustration that ought to be revolutionary.

Where does frustration come from? Generally it's a result of failing and not comprehending why or even worse: not knowing how to fix it. In an RPG for example, a player can encounter a set of enemies with just plain better stats, they can't be beat no matter what. The player may use different strategies, failing repeatedly and inexplicably. In action games, players often come across a boss whose attack patterns are too indecipherable for the player to figure out, or who may be quicker than the player's reaction time can account for. Players inevitably get stuck in these spots. They strive to keep playing, but until they progress, they are frustrated.

Avoiding frustration is a crucial concern for games seeking artistic merit. When a player is faced with a frustrating problem the natural reaction is to solve it, inevitably leading to abstraction. By abstracting the player reduces the game to its basic rules and suddenly our player's identity has moved away from the characters and world in the game, and back to his own at the end of the Player Identity Scale.

Nintendo's current plan to avoid this situation is to implement the Super Guide feature in all of their future games. The goal is to make sure there are no sticking spots; to make sure the player's flow through the game is constant. But the Super Guide comes at the cost of making the player essentially beg for help. While the Super Guide is innovative, Mr. Nomura devised a much more elegant and less insulting solution in last year's The World Ends With You.

In TWEWY, the player is handed almost complete control over the relative difficulty of the game. Any time outside battle, they can impose restrictions on their health, the amount of auto-pilot their in game partner uses, and the strength and number of the enemies they face. In exchange for upping the challenge, the player is rewarded with better items, more money, and more experience; but if the going gets too tough the difficulty can always reduced. This presents the player with an easily accessible and game justified method of setting the difficulty to match their skill level.

With this mechanism in hand, TWEWY is always a smooth yet challenging ride. If a battle surprises you, lower the enemy's attack power. If things are too easy, take a hit in life and get some better loot. The player stays engaged because the game retains its fun.

Is this applicable to other genres? Easily. In New Super Mario Bros for example, players could be given control over power-ups, number of enemies, or character jump height. The levels would need to be designed to accommodate modifications, and a simple reward structure for playing the game as difficultly as possible would need to be designed (Maybe a star coin just for beating the level on the hardest difficulty?), but these are minor details for most designers. In flight simulators like Ace Combat, players could change the number of missiles they carry, the level of the AI, or the speed of their air craft in exchange for further credits at the end of a mission. With just a little thought and planning, any game could be altered to handle customized difficulty.

By implementing methods for players to customize the difficulty of their games, immersion breaking frustration is avoided; and with just a little bit of clever thinking, the justification for the customized difficulty can bring the player even further into your world. Getting the player to strive for higher and higher challenges is a great way to get them connected to the protagonist.

It should be noted that there are times when you want your player to be frustrated. If forced to realize that the only solution to a problem is an element of the story, a player will pull an Apollo 13 and orbit around their own identity and sling shot back with even more velocity into the game world. Such an experience is the current height of game design. Until it becomes the standard affair, Nomura's ideas deserve to spread like wildfire.

Learning to use the Power Button

A popular opinion has begun floating around the net, making its way into the brains of gamers who like to think more than they like to play. These gamers enjoy games the same way you and I do, for the most part. The difference is that these gamers have a hard time meeting all of the challenges popular games present them, the same challenges that you and I fail everyday. But there's a difference between this gamer and us. When this gamer fails, he gnashes his teeth and begins to construct why this and that is a poor design choice in his head. This player needs some explanation for why he can't succeed. He grinds away and finally pulls through, but his ideas are settled, this is no longer fun, and it certainly hasn't been. These gamers are everywhere, writing and talking, and now they've begun to discuss the challenges presented in games as though they are slavery.

This slavery manifests itself in a couple of different ways. The argument I am most concerned with complains that game designers are forcing us poor gamers to complete various unnecessary challenges, many of which resemble work, for measly rewards. These gamers feel that games are monarchs, who command them to complete absurd and arbitrary challenges on a whim. These poor gamers are tragic victims really, victims of plastic discs.

This argument strikes me as alarming. To me, bemoaning a game for supplying you with challenges is to yell at a chef for giving you food, to kick a dog for fetching a ball. You can't knock a game for giving you a challenge. Even beyond that, to call these challenges "work" shows a staggering lack of perspective. Why are games work? The argument reads: because they are a set of goals that are difficult for you to complete, are menial, and are accomplished for no significant material gain. Much like every hobby known to man!

Why do people play music? The act of playing music is one of the most easily equatable activities to playing games that I know of, and any musician will tell you: in order to play music with any skill at all, one has to practice. Besides dreams of becoming a professional, is there any reason at all to play music well? Or by extension, practice? No practical reasons, but there are too many amateurs with fine musical abilities for it to be "too much work".

Any hobby or activity you can name becomes work if you look at it though the right(wrong?) lens, because all activities involve challenges that a person must work to overcome. But does that mean that all activities are work? Maybe it does! Maybe that isn't such a bad thing. In the words of George Santayana, quoted in Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: "Work and play...become equivalent to servitude and freedom". Did you catch that? The only difference between work and play is that one is at the behest of your boss and/or your stomach.

So if work and play are nearly indistinguishable, this becomes a matter of freedom! Are we free when we play games? Is there any way to escape the commands of our ruthless dictator? I think there's one, if I remember right. Something on the front of every game console. You use it turn the game on, and I believe you can (At any time you choose) press it again to turn the game off. Our savior: The Power Button.

That's all there is to it! At any time you can liberate yourself from a game, because of the most important characteristic of games:

A game, of any type, is a voluntary withdrawal from the rules and goals of the world, in favor of the more simplistic rules and goals of the game.

This feature alone makes the argument about games as work ridiculous. Games may resemble work, but not only is that not a concern(Some studies have found that people are actually at their happiest when at work), but it's also clearly false. If at any point the player has lost interest in a game, or doesn't want to complete the challenges laid before them in it, they can turn it off, and play another game. Or maybe switch to a whole new activity! You can't do that with your job.