Thoughts On Game Design #1 – Easy To Learn And Difficult To Master
“All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth” (Nolan Bushnell, 1971).
The ideas contained in Bushnell’s quote are some of the most discussed in game development, but I’d like to go over them again. It never hurts to make sure that you understand the basics.
A game that is easy to learn is one that a player can pick up and understand relatively quickly and without a great deal of outside assistance. A great example of a game like this is Tetris. The rules of Tetris are very simple, and its controls are equally easy to grasp. You can give Tetris to a child and be confident that they’ll learn how to play it inside of a few minutes.
Another game that is easy to learn is Space Invaders. All that players have to remember is that they need to kill the aliens without being killed. The controls are extremely simple: they can move from side to side and shoot. Once again, you can give Space Invaders to almost anybody, and they will only need a few minutes to understand how it works.
But why does it matter if a game is easy to learn? The answer lies in the psychology of the player. Human beings only have so much time to invest in leisure. If a game doesn’t start to entertain fairly quickly, people will simply move on to another activity. People also like to feel like they are at least partially in control of what happens in a game. If players don’t understand what’s going on (i.e., why they are winning or losing), they will quickly become frustrated and quit. People hate feeling powerless. In contrast, people enjoy feeling powerful. The quicker someone learns how a game works, the quicker they can start feeling powerful.
There are several ways to make a game easy to learn:
- Have simple rules. Games like Tetris, Pong, and Space Invaders have very simple rules, and this makes them very straightforward and easy to learn. In contrast most RPGs tend to have fairly complex rules, which can make them quite daunting to someone who has never played them before.
- Take advantage of familiarity. Racing games and sports games can be easy to learn because they are activities that players are already familiar with. For example, most people who play soccer games already know the rules of soccer. The only things they have to learn are the controls. Likewise, most people who play racing games already know how racing works, all that remains is for them to learn the controls.
- Follow the players’ intuition. During the heyday of the gaming arcade, gun games were very popular. These games were almost always easy to learn because the basic ideas behind the game (e.g., point the gun at the screen and shoot at the bad guys) were all things that seemed natural to the players.
As you can see, there are at least two axes along which a game can be made easier: rules and controls. Rules can be made easier when they are simple, obvious, or similar to the rules of other activities that are already familiar to the player (e.g., the rules of a sport). The controls of a game can be made simpler by matching them more closely to what feels natural for players (e.g., using a gun to aim at enemies on a screen is much easier to learn than learning to use a joystick and buttons).
One thing that not many people are aware of is that there exist versions of the original Street Fighter game that used two buttons (one for punch and one for kick), as opposed to the more familiar six (three different kinds of punch and three different kinds of kick). The trick was that how hard a player pressed the buttons determined what kind of punch or kick came out. As you can imagine, trying to control how hard you pressed a button in the middle of an exciting battle proved to be quite difficult. It is not a coincidence that all subsequent versions of Street Fighter have used the six button configuration – it makes the game much, much easier to learn since the player isn’t struggling with the controls the whole time.
If it’s good for games to be easy to learn, why do we want them to be difficult to master? The answer can be found, once again, in the psychology of the player. If something becomes too easy, it usually becomes quite boring (i.e., unenjoyable). People like winning, but they like it even more when winning actually means something. Think of how it feels to play chess against someone who is much, much worse than you. You might enjoy beating them the first few times, but after that it gets boring. There is no sense of achievement involved, no feeling that you’re doing something awesome – and people like feeling awesome.
A game that ceases to challenge players will become boring, and people do not play boring games for long. This applies to more than just video games. A skilled crossword player will naturally seek out harder crosswords. A gifted chess player will look for stronger opponents. Elite athletes hunger for elite competition.
Mastery involves achieving greater and greater proficiency at something. So how can we make games difficult to master?
- Scale the game’s mechanics. The basic mechanics of Tetris never change. However, as the player reaches higher levels, blocks are dropped at an ever-faster rate. This forces the player to improve, and makes the game difficult to master. You can also increase the number of blocks ahead that a player can see, adding yet another thing to the game that the player must master (planning ahead).
- Include non-essential mechanics that add depth. Street Fighter IV includes a host of mechanics that are not strictly necessary to win (e.g., special moves, Ultra Combos, Super Combos, focus attacks, focus attack dash cancelling, etc.). However, truly mastering the game involves learning all of these things, which is no small task. Indeed, it can take years to learn how all of these things apply to a single character.
- Provide opportunities for players to separate themselves from each other. In Starcraft II, marines are an extremely powerful unit that is highly vulnerable to area-of-effect damage. In order to master Terran in Starcraft II, it is necessary to learn how to overcome this weakness (e.g., by spreading marines out to avoid area-of-effect attacks).
- Reward knowledge and better decision-making. Magic: The Gathering is not the simplest game. But what separate masters from average players is not usually knowledge of the rules. Instead, it is understanding of how all of the various cards interact with each other that sets masters apart from average players. Masters learn how to use their cards to maximum effect, generating card advantage. They also learn how to use cards in combination and how to properly process what can be very complex decision trees. You can give an average player and a master the exact same set of cards, and barring extraordinary luck, the master should win much more often than the average player.
A game that is easy to learn rewards you from the moment you put in the first quarter (assume for a moment, that you’re back in the glory days of the arcade). A game that is difficult to master ensures that your hundredth quarter is worth it too.
The ideas contained in Bushnell’s quote are some of the most discussed in game development, but I’d like to go over them again. It never hurts to make sure that you understand the basics.
A game that is easy to learn is one that a player can pick up and understand relatively quickly and without a great deal of outside assistance. A great example of a game like this is Tetris. The rules of Tetris are very simple, and its controls are equally easy to grasp. You can give Tetris to a child and be confident that they’ll learn how to play it inside of a few minutes.
Another game that is easy to learn is Space Invaders. All that players have to remember is that they need to kill the aliens without being killed. The controls are extremely simple: they can move from side to side and shoot. Once again, you can give Space Invaders to almost anybody, and they will only need a few minutes to understand how it works.
But why does it matter if a game is easy to learn? The answer lies in the psychology of the player. Human beings only have so much time to invest in leisure. If a game doesn’t start to entertain fairly quickly, people will simply move on to another activity. People also like to feel like they are at least partially in control of what happens in a game. If players don’t understand what’s going on (i.e., why they are winning or losing), they will quickly become frustrated and quit. People hate feeling powerless. In contrast, people enjoy feeling powerful. The quicker someone learns how a game works, the quicker they can start feeling powerful.
There are several ways to make a game easy to learn:
- Have simple rules. Games like Tetris, Pong, and Space Invaders have very simple rules, and this makes them very straightforward and easy to learn. In contrast most RPGs tend to have fairly complex rules, which can make them quite daunting to someone who has never played them before.
- Take advantage of familiarity. Racing games and sports games can be easy to learn because they are activities that players are already familiar with. For example, most people who play soccer games already know the rules of soccer. The only things they have to learn are the controls. Likewise, most people who play racing games already know how racing works, all that remains is for them to learn the controls.
- Follow the players’ intuition. During the heyday of the gaming arcade, gun games were very popular. These games were almost always easy to learn because the basic ideas behind the game (e.g., point the gun at the screen and shoot at the bad guys) were all things that seemed natural to the players.
As you can see, there are at least two axes along which a game can be made easier: rules and controls. Rules can be made easier when they are simple, obvious, or similar to the rules of other activities that are already familiar to the player (e.g., the rules of a sport). The controls of a game can be made simpler by matching them more closely to what feels natural for players (e.g., using a gun to aim at enemies on a screen is much easier to learn than learning to use a joystick and buttons).
One thing that not many people are aware of is that there exist versions of the original Street Fighter game that used two buttons (one for punch and one for kick), as opposed to the more familiar six (three different kinds of punch and three different kinds of kick). The trick was that how hard a player pressed the buttons determined what kind of punch or kick came out. As you can imagine, trying to control how hard you pressed a button in the middle of an exciting battle proved to be quite difficult. It is not a coincidence that all subsequent versions of Street Fighter have used the six button configuration – it makes the game much, much easier to learn since the player isn’t struggling with the controls the whole time.
If it’s good for games to be easy to learn, why do we want them to be difficult to master? The answer can be found, once again, in the psychology of the player. If something becomes too easy, it usually becomes quite boring (i.e., unenjoyable). People like winning, but they like it even more when winning actually means something. Think of how it feels to play chess against someone who is much, much worse than you. You might enjoy beating them the first few times, but after that it gets boring. There is no sense of achievement involved, no feeling that you’re doing something awesome – and people like feeling awesome.
A game that ceases to challenge players will become boring, and people do not play boring games for long. This applies to more than just video games. A skilled crossword player will naturally seek out harder crosswords. A gifted chess player will look for stronger opponents. Elite athletes hunger for elite competition.
Mastery involves achieving greater and greater proficiency at something. So how can we make games difficult to master?
- Scale the game’s mechanics. The basic mechanics of Tetris never change. However, as the player reaches higher levels, blocks are dropped at an ever-faster rate. This forces the player to improve, and makes the game difficult to master. You can also increase the number of blocks ahead that a player can see, adding yet another thing to the game that the player must master (planning ahead).
- Include non-essential mechanics that add depth. Street Fighter IV includes a host of mechanics that are not strictly necessary to win (e.g., special moves, Ultra Combos, Super Combos, focus attacks, focus attack dash cancelling, etc.). However, truly mastering the game involves learning all of these things, which is no small task. Indeed, it can take years to learn how all of these things apply to a single character.
- Provide opportunities for players to separate themselves from each other. In Starcraft II, marines are an extremely powerful unit that is highly vulnerable to area-of-effect damage. In order to master Terran in Starcraft II, it is necessary to learn how to overcome this weakness (e.g., by spreading marines out to avoid area-of-effect attacks).
- Reward knowledge and better decision-making. Magic: The Gathering is not the simplest game. But what separate masters from average players is not usually knowledge of the rules. Instead, it is understanding of how all of the various cards interact with each other that sets masters apart from average players. Masters learn how to use their cards to maximum effect, generating card advantage. They also learn how to use cards in combination and how to properly process what can be very complex decision trees. You can give an average player and a master the exact same set of cards, and barring extraordinary luck, the master should win much more often than the average player.
A game that is easy to learn rewards you from the moment you put in the first quarter (assume for a moment, that you’re back in the glory days of the arcade). A game that is difficult to master ensures that your hundredth quarter is worth it too.
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