exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance.
difficulty in a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it.
something given or received in return or recompense for service, merit, hardship, etc.
a penalty inflicted for an offense, fault, etc.
(Though I think “punishment” could also be phrased as an inverse of “reward” thusly: “something taken or removed in return or recompense for failure or lack of service, merit, etc.“)
Risk and challenge are two different things. They are used differently as tools in game design. Challenge is concerned with what happens before a success/failure check, the difficulty of doing an activity, while risk is concerned with the chance of loss that comes with failure. Rewards and punishments are also two different things, though they both sit on the “consequences” side of the event check, and players tend to try to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. It’s also important to note that avoiding punishment doesn’t prompt the same behavior as seeking a reward; it tends to elicit more conservative actions, while chasing rewards alone can make for some radical or carefree (careless?) behavior.
In many ways, games are a medium of decisions, where player decisions dictate game feedback (or the actions of the other player). Most of what we think of as “choice” in games tends to really be “problem solving”, however. Choices and problems are two different things, as noted here, and in many cases, problems are very easily solved. There tends to be one right answer that maximizes the potential reward (or minimizes the potential punishment) from the decision. Players almost inevitably “min/max” their game choices, then, based on reward and punishment structures. It’s a natural outgrowth of problem solving.
Challenge is usually controlled at least partially by the player. There are a few ways to handle that, from difficulty settings and slider to leveling, from gear acquisition to character customization. Sometimes this involves grind, letting time investment compensate for lack of skill or challenge tolerance, while other times, the player improves their own play skill. Sometimes the two overlap. There’s a wide range of possibilities here, and your game’s approach will be dictated largely by the game format and intended audience.
Whatever the approach, many games, though not all, tend to let the player mediate the level of challenge a bit through their own decisions. I see this as healthy, since it allows players of disparate skill and challenge tolerance (also two different things) to play the same game, and even to change the difficulty during the course of the game at times. Sometimes this change in difficulty is in discrete chunks, sometimes it’s far more of a gradient, but whatever the case, letting the player roam about freely on the challenge scale tends to be a useful thing. It’s arguable that most players don’t want a high degree of challenge, but ultimately, the more control you give the player over the challenge setting, the happier they will tend to be, whatever their preference. That’s the point; the challenge setting is in the hands of the player, at least partially, and you really do need to consider your players.
There’s a bit of purist thought out there that games should be challenging (and maybe eliminating challenge entirely just leads to interactive fiction), and I think that’s at least a good rule of thumb if not an absolute definition. I certainly tend to prefer games that challenge me mentally (and tangentially, that underlines that there are different types of challenge). That said, game designers who want a big cross section of players, say, MMO devs who need a critical mass of players, need to realize that challenge isn’t always the prime reason why people play games. (Just as players need to realize that their opinion isn’t the One True Way, especially if they are sharing game space with other players.)
Beyond that, though, “challenge” is a variable that depends hugely on the player, so trying to make a game equally “challenging” to all players is a fool’s errand without flexibility in what constitutes the challenge. To be sure, you can develop a game (or pieces of a game, like a particular dungeon in an MMO) for a certain audience with a particular invariable challenge setting, but it will naturally have a smaller potential audience as a result. That’s neither good nor bad, just something that should be a conscious choice when designing.
It’s very similar to the argument about “play time”, and how value and entertainment use time as a variable in the evaluation. Not everyone plays at the same pace or for the same reasons.
Risk, on the other hand, tends to be far less flexible. It naturally hinges on the binary state of “success/failure”, but the magnitude of the rewards for success and the punishments for failure tend to be pretty narrowly defined and static. Even “loot tables” from the rewards pinatas we have in many games tend to be fairly narrow, and just variable enough to feel interesting and keep that dopamine coming. Similarly, death penalties tend to be pretty consistent, disconnected from what caused the death. Maybe the “corpse run” is longer if you’re somewhere remote when you fall, but typically, a boss won’t “permakill” you when his mooks would just “normalkill” you or something similarly drastically variable. (Yes, these terms are squishy and a bit nonsensical outside of gaming. Occupational hazard, that.)
These rewards and punishments also tend to ignore the concept of challenge, since there’s no way to properly set challenge equally for all players. Designers can do a simple pass/fail check for whether a feat has been performed, or a boss defeated, and base rewards and punishments on that, but such a check tells us nothing at all about the challenge (which is in the eye of the player) that led up to it. That’s not a bad thing, either, just the nature of the beast.
It seems to me that we don’t have a lot of games that allow players to fiddle with that risk setting, though there are a few significant ones. Puzzle Pirates allows players to make wagers on PvP minigames, thereby defining their own risk in clear, monetary terms. PP and EVE let players set sail with hulls full of valuable goods and try to fly under the radar (or bring along hired muscle or guildmates). Games that let players take loot from other players, say the old Ultima Online or Darkfall, also let players self-define risk by the contents of their packs.
Perhaps risk is more of a “hardcore” game mechanic, then. Does loss aversion keeps high risk out of the mass market? Is it possible to have high risk content in a game with low risk as a default setting, letting players self-select risk tolerance? Yes, players will tend to min/max their gaming, but is risk in itself spicy and enticing enough to get players to play risky content when they could be slumming around on easy street? Is exclusive loot (or other shiny rewards) the only way to get players into risky content? Do strong rewards demand high risk… or just high challenge? Maybe both?
Risk is about what you’re willing to lose for failure. Notably, a prime rule of thumb for EVE is “don’t fly anything you’re not prepared to lose“. Players have control over that risk to a degree with cloning, insurance and such, completely independent of the challenge that comes with their self-directed activities that put their stuff at risk in the first place. You can fly about in lowsec space trying to stay alive, finding perfectly adequate challenges, but introduce the risk factor of ferrying around expensive goods, and motivations and reactions change. The challenging activity in itself hasn’t changed, but the player reaction does, because of the addition of potential loss; that’s risk.
Similarly, rock climbing in the real world can be a very challenging and risky behavior, but someone climbing El Capitan without belay ropes isn’t doing something more difficult (challenging) than someone with proper belay rigging… they are just cranking up their risk. Someone freeclimbing the thing is cranking risk way up. (Friends in rocket boots notwithstanding.)
Is it possible to make good game design elements that put risk control in the hands of the players? Are wagering and open world piracy the only ways to experiment in that direction?
Is it possible to have challenge without risk? I say yes, because challenge is about how the game is played, not about what you can lose. That said, perhaps the coin of the realm is ultimately time anyway, and perhaps that is always at risk, so the two are indeed indelibly intertwined, at least on that level, where we’re risking time in hopes of being entertained.
Just as “choice” is different from “problem”, however, I believe it is important to note the difference between “challenge” and “risk”. Some players actively seek one or the other (or both), while some seek to minimize them. It seems to me that great games let players choose their own settings, and let them change their mind. Perhaps the customer isn’t always right, but if they take their money elsewhere, does it really matter?
Excellent post!
For a player like me there’s a *huge* difference between challenge and risk. I love solving puzzles (provided they’re solvable) but I’m extremely risk-averse.
The problem is, many of the people who enjoy risk conflate the two. It’s risky therefore it’s a challenge! It’s a challenge therefore it has to be risky!
And then of course you have all the variations inherent in the terms themselves.
As an example, back in my tabletop days we had a GM who thought puzzles that only HE could possibly answer were a fair challenge to pose to his players (more like a challenge in not strangling a friend).
How much risk is enough risk? Is it still risk if you get to decide how much you’re risking? (I agree that it is, but I think many game designers wouldn’t.)
Aye, I believe that gamblers in Vegas consider their gaming to be risky, even though they are the *only* ones defining *their own risk* via the wagers they place. That’s one of the things I wanted to underline (but probably got lost in the shuffle, curse these long articles): Putting the control over risk in the hand of the player is neither unprecedented nor bad game design. It’s just… less common in video games.
I find that interesting, since I believe games to be largely about player choice.
It might also be noted that risk is relative. Risking $15 in a wager is significant to me, but barely worth notice to some. Commensurate rewards do, of course, tend to be rather different in magnitude as well.
I like your definitions, and meshes well with my own observations. The one snag is that people talk about “risk vs. reward” in design, and it looks like it really should be about “challenge vs. reward” to use your definitions.
As usual, imprecise terminology muddies the waters.
Challenge : difficulty in a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it.
This doesn’t read much differently to me than
Challenge : Something that is challenging
What makes it difficult? The fact if you don’t do it right, you wont get through, you’ll instead be sent back? But you’ll be trying to classify that as a punishment, as you’ve said before.
But without being sent back, you’ll get through – so what was difficult about that? A tesh paradox!
It’s like your trying to describe consequences as being seperate to challenge and ‘after’ it, and yet without any consequence for some sort of event you could have avoided inside of the game, there is no challenge. You throw the basketball and miss the hoop – your score goes up by one, as much as it would go up by one if the ball happened to go through the hoop. No consequence, no challenge.
Can you invent a game in your head that ‘the challenge’ is to get the ball through the hoop? Yes. Is that actually built into the game? Clearly not – the consequences indicate it is not a challenge in this thing called a game.
As I’ve said, it doesn’t work to define what is a challenge for everyone is by what you, at some level have decided, is a challenge for yourself.
Finally, someone who can see that challenge and risk are not the same thing! Though of course there are extremes.
If something has zero risk, then challenge can be removed just by probability. It would be very hard to roll a die just right to get a 6, but if I can just keep rolling, I’ll get it eventually.
On the other hand, if risk gets to an extreme high, then trivial tasks may become challenging since they’d then require much higher levels of certainty of outcome. Walking: easy. Walking on a narrow path: also easy. Walking on a narrow path with lava on either side: perfection is now required.
There’s a reason I started with dictionary definitions and links to said dictionary. Risk and challenge are different words and different ideas. They function differently. I’m not trying to redefine anything, just clarify terms as Brian notes. Without a clear understanding of terms, there is no useful conversation using said terms… and game design can be muddled as a result.
Callan, you’re still conflating risk with challenge. Challenge is just concerned with completing a task. What happens after completing it (or not) is completely irrelevant to the challenge itself.
What’s stopping the task from being completed? Can you describe that without describing a risk or ‘punishment’?
More to the point is it impossible to describe what stops the task from being completed without refering to risk or ‘punishment’?
Players at the game. Program has been started. What’s in the way of completing the task?
I’m thinking you’ll find it impossible to descibe it without refering to some sort of risk or ‘punishment’. Your saying I’m conflating the two, yet I think you’ll find yourself ‘conflating’ them in trying to describe what is currently stopping the task from being completed.
So what stops the task being completed?
Callan, player failure stops the task from being completed. Challenge is all about the *doing* of the task, and how hard it is, while risk, punishment and reward are about what happens when the task is completed or failed.
To help clear up Callan v. Tesh: anything that is challenging has some risk/outcome associated with it, but that payout does not define the challenge.
Take StarCraft II campaign; the payout for winning a mission is (mostly) the same: advance to the next mission. And the punishment for failing and restarting is the same: time. But missions get harder as the player advances through them, and players can even manually set the difficulty of completing the mission. The risk does not change.
Precisely, motstandet. Thank you.
Callan, I think you’re coming at it differently here by lumping the reward (scoring points in basketball, winning the loot in an RPG) with the challenge of the activity itself. If the player’s goal is to get the reward (say, getting the Ragnaros hammer), not just overcome the challenging *activity* (killing the Ragnaros boss), risk is part of the equation because you’re considering the results as part of the goal or task.
I’m differentiating terms here by noting that challenge is an inherent aspect of an activity, independent of the potential reward or risk of loss. Though there is a temporal and causal relationship, it only functions downstream, not upstream. As motstandet rightly notes, “that payout does not define the challenge”.
I consider that a crucial distinction when considering what players find challenging and why loss aversion makes some game design unappealing, even if (maybe especially if) challenge is desired.
As Ysharros notes, and I’ll echo, it isn’t unheard of for players to appreciate challenge, but avoid risk. That’s because they are different things. When game devs conflate the two, they lose those players who would appreciate the challenge, but not the risk. This is also why I think it’s wise to give control of both to the player, at least in some form; that way players can self-select what they want out of the game. I’m not fond of risk, but I see no reason to ignore it for those who like it.
I’ve read a synopsis of Raph Koster’s “Theory of Fun” as “learning in a safe environment”. Highly challenging (educational) gameplay can exist in a low-risk (safe) environment.
It’s arguable that such is the design ethos behind the most recent Prince of Persia game, where the player only ever loses a little bit of time for failure, but not much more, since Elika saves the prince from any sort of “death” he might suffer. Naturally, the game is derided as being “easy” by veteran gamers, but there are pieces of the game that are just as *challenging* as older Prince titles, if you consider the reflex checks and spatial awareness necessary for the platforming in the game; the actual task of *playing* the thing. The risk of loss is just lower, so it’s seen as a lesser “difficulty” by those who are used to (and expect or desire) greater setbacks for failure.
I think not only some players, but also some designers do not really know or understand the difference between the four terms you mentioned.
But it is crucial. We live in a time where PvP has become strictly divided from the main game in instances or consensual, while Player versus Environment has become very easy, and unfortunately also a bit boring. Little risk, but also little challenge. -> Would not little risk for loss mean that the challenge could be upped, and make for an overall more interesting game?
Many Star Trek Online players have made exactly the distinction that you made:
They liked the “ELITE” difficulty setting, but it also came with a death penalty that “NORMAL” did not have. On the other hand, unfortunately the game has become very easy in many zones/sectors, despite the fact that there is no loss or really noticeably penalty for dying in STO.
Longasc, for my own gaming, I can only note that I prefer low risk, but high challenge (though that can vary a bit by mood). Perhaps that makes me an outlier. Even so, yes, if risk is low, I am more tolerant of higher challenge. I’m all for spending time learning and improving my approach to the game (“good grind”?), but time sinks as punishment for failure to learn (XP loss, long corpse runs, “Do It Again, Stupid” mechanics, QTEs… “bad grind”?) never sit well with me.
Regarding low risk, high challenge:
The contemporary trend goes in the direction to rather tell people a story, literally – Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 for example. But Andrew from Systemic Babble already noted, it comes at a price. I did not play Baldur’s Gate for Ages, but I bet it had more engaging combat than Dragon Age.
Especially the Dragon Age expansion Awakening dies in power creep and does not really feature exciting combat. There is little challenge, and if there would be any, it would be because one managed to be hopelessly undergeared somehow.
It is the story that takes over, and it is really good at that. But I am afraid the “challenging” gameplay got lost, despite more and more systems in Bioware games that reduce or completely remove any punishment to the player. You can get injured in Dragon Age, but you cannot die. The whole party needs to be defeated, then it’s game over.
There are clearly areas where Risk remains constant yet Challenge can vary: many single-player games have difficulty settings, puzzles get tougher, multiplayer matchmaking attempts to match evenly skilled opponents. In all those instances the rewards and punishments do not change while the “skill” required to win does.
And then there are examples where Risk changes yet Challenge remains the same: gambling (which would include item running in EVE, and playing the Auction House in your favorite MMORPG), and off-the-wall strategies. Gambling scenarios do not increase in difficulty as players wager more resources. Here is where higher risk equates to higher reward.
In a game with imperfect information such as an RTS a player may opt to use a riskier strategy that beats soundly the strategy his opponent will probably execute. One strategic choice of build orders and unit composition is not more challenging than the next. The players are simply hedging bets against each other. Ironically the safer route of using the “cookie cutter” or standard strategy may require more skill since opponents are familiar with it, while a less popular strategy could take the enemy by surprise even if the player fumbles a bit. This could also be applied to tactics: sneaking around or flanking carries more risk than simply crashing head-to-head in a melee, yet the challenge of performing a flank is less than that of a full frontal battle.
Risk and Challenge can be decoupled.
Callan, player failure stops the task from being completed. Challenge is all about the *doing* of the task, and how hard it is, while risk, punishment and reward are about what happens when the task is completed or failed.
I think it was pretty clear I was asking for what physical thing in the real world stops the task from just being completed already?
You seem to have dodged the question by describing a non physical thing – ie, player failure. Or certainly I have no idea what physical state your refering to in saying that.
Great article, Tesh.
I agree that games can be challenging without having risk. This, I believe, is what most of them try to achieve and certainly what Blizzard want. In WoW, for instance, they want to challenge players but not for the players to actually risk anything and suffer loss. They want positive reinforcement and never negative experiences.
I think though that there’s another element: the link between risk and reward. Why do people climb rocks without ropes? Why do they eat fugu (blowfish)? Why do they gamble? I’m certainly not a psychologist but there definitely seems to be a mental link between increased reward after increased risk. Maybe it’s a pressure thing, an adrenaline thing, I don’t know. I guess even some could could argue that only true reward can be achieved when you actually have something to lose.
How can people say this? If you call being sent back to the start of the stage a ‘risk’ or ‘punishment’ in a bullet dodging game, what happens if your not sent back on impact with a bullet? Well you can just clasp your fingers behind your head and watch your ship fly to the end without having even pressed a key. How on earth is that a challenge or even a task?
Perhaps I should go code the example and see how many people can say with a straight face it was ‘a challenge’…
Callan, the challenge is in dodging bullets and the actions that it takes to do so. Again, you’re conflating the ends with the means. The challenge is in the means, not the ends.
In your example, Callan, the goal would be to survive to the end. But if we take the same mechanics and apply a different goal–point threshold before the stage is over–we still have that challenge without punishment. It could be very difficult to accumulate the required points (by dodging bullets), and only those with the highest skill would be able to complete the game. In this modified theoretical game, there is no risk in that other than time spent playing.
Tesh, why are you dodging bullets when it makes no difference either way in how the game ends?
Or to put it in a Sirlin sort of way – why dodge the bullets when the game doesn’t care what your doing?
Are you saying your dodging them because the game wants you to? It doesn’t – it doesn’t care either way?
Here – I uploaded my example ‘game’
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/138974-proof-of-bad-concept
motstandet, I’m not sure what you mean – difficult to accumulate points? How is it difficult in your example?
If you only collect points when successfully dodging bullets, isn’t the time where your not collecting points much like a ghost run in wow where your not getting points (a punishment), or wont not dodging mean the game takes longer – ie, you risk a longer game?
Your just lowering the ante until you can pretend it’s not there and thus not a necessary part of challenge.
[…] want risk in your game? Something that can really kick you in the head for failure? Play EVE and try […]
[…] February 8, 2011 by Tesh Hey, someone else gets it. Shamus over at Twenty Sided wrote up a couple of articles that cover pretty much the same terrain I did a while ago. […]
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