Problems with Challenges in Games
Nearly all games have some aspect of challenge in them. While other media might be challenging, like complex music or writing, challenge is truly the domain of games. We do challenge better than any other media. Usually this challenge is used to provide a barrier to progression (You can’t fight Bowser before you beat World 1–1). Primarily, this challenge serves to communicate that the player’s input is meaningful to the game. Thus, challenge opposes the player’s desire for progress. This creates a problem where challenge actively stops the rest of the game.
One method to avoid this problem is to lower the difficulty of challenge. However, if the challenge is too easy, then the interactive with the game doesn’t feel meaningful anymore. Some games choose to have a low difficulty, but present the game such that the player believes that it is difficult. Usually this is done through audio-visual feedback or through dynamic difficulty adjustment where the game makes it easier if the player is losing.
This type of challenge tends to feel fake though, and I’m not convinced that overcoming fake challenge is going to transform people’s lives in any meaningful way. Necessarily, the player’s actions aren’t as significant, but the game tries to convince the player that they are and I think that players feel this illusion of challenge. Another idea is to make challenge easier over time so that even a novice player will eventually be able to beat any challenge. This maintains some level of meaningful depth of challenge but it is still noticeably deceiving.
Perhaps the simplest way to solve this problem is to allow the player to choose their difficulty. Obviously many games allow the player to choose from a selection of difficulty options, but that means that each difficulty option is another game entirely with different rules. A much more dynamic approach is to invite the player to make the game more challenging for themselves. I think that a classic example of this phenomena is speedrunning, where players challenge themselves to overcome a challenge in as fast a time as possible.
Giving the player the agency to choose their own difficulty solves the problem by actually increasing the meaningfulness of the player’s interaction with the game. I also believe that these types of challenges are much more fulfilling to overcome as they are already meaningful to the player as the player is the one who manifested them. I don’t see many games use this technique with great intention or conviction. Some games include high scores and such that allow the player to try gaining a higher score, but that tends to be very shallow. Many puzzle games accomplish this with optional puzzles, puzzles that don’t impact progress but that the player may choose to tackle anyway. In the realm of action games, I don’t see this technique used to its highest potential. I believe that if games better utilized the humanity of the player to make decisions for themselves, and gave them invitations to challenge rather than force challenge onto them, the challenge of games would become much more personally meaningful.
