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  • Member Blogs
  • Much of Game Design is Managing (and Causing) Frustration

Much of Game Design is Managing (and Causing) Frustration

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There Will Be Games

(Insofar as this is a blog, it rarely contains “completely finished” work.  One of the purposes of a blog–this one, anyway--is to rely on readers observations in order to improve the work.  (Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.)  Sagrilarus asked me to show something on the edges of my understanding rather than something completely finished, and chose this topic.  So here is what I have “so far”.  LP)

You can make a case that “game design is all about frustration.”  I don't agree with that, but examining how frustration works and doesn't work in game design can be quite beneficial for designers.

Frustration can arise when you cannot get what you want.  Yet the very act of playing a game implies that there could be frustration because the game itself, or the players in the game, are trying to prevent you from achieving your goal.  Potential frustration must be part of the game, but what roles do different kinds of frustration play in game design?  Some kinds are much less desirable than others, and as with most game design questions a large part of the answer is "it depends".  It depends on what players expect, it depends on the kinds of players they are, it depends on what kind of game you're designing.

A major purpose in game design throughout history has been to "put the player on the horns of a dilemma", so that the player has to decide what is the better choice.  But what we would have taken, “back when,” as part of the dilemma at the heart of games, the failures, the inability to do what we want, is now seen by many as undesirable frustration.

Inevitably there will be some frustration in a game, but some kinds of frustration come from elements extraneous to the actual play of the game that the game designer cannot always control, while other kinds of frustration come from choices of the designer--limitations in the manipulation of the game (the interface) and choices the designer has made that are not gameplay choices per se but still frustrate players.  These non-competitive frustrations are ones the game designer should eliminate as much as possible.

Let's consider some definitions:
frustration (WordNet 3.0)
   "1. the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals
   2. an act of hindering someone's plans or efforts
   3. a feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized"

Wikipedia: "Frustration is a common emotional response to opposition. Related to anger and disappointment, it arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of individual will."

Wikipedia's definition is particularly interesting because it includes will and opposition.  When people are playing a competitive game they expect opposition.  If they're playing against other people then the source of opposition is obvious.  The game system doesn't oppose a will, people do. If they’re playing against the computer then questions arise about whether there is actually opposition or just a situation or puzzle that needs to be solved.  But harkening back to WorldNet's first definition, a puzzle can thwart a player.

Frustration as a reaction to opposition used to be regarded as normal in games, where you played against opponents.  Now many tabletop games and most single-player video games are more or less puzzles, without an opponent, or without one who can do much to hinder/oppose you.  (As time passes computers become more more able to provide opposition resembling a human's, but anyone who has played a single player video game and then gone online to play will tell you that humans are much more formidable opponents than computers can be.)

Games are entertainment, for most people.  People today are much less likely to accept any kind of frustration as part of their entertainment than they were 40 years ago.  "Instant gratification" and "convenience" and the "Easy Button" have changed expectations.  Many younger people expect to be rewarded just for participating.  And many younger people are likely to quickly quit an activity they find frustrating.

When someone plays a game they may be thwarted by four sets of circumstances:
•    other players (tough decisions, opposition)
•    the game system (tough decisions, maybe opposition,)
•    the game interface
•    other factors the designer(s) can control

Another way to list this would be:
•    Frustration with other players
•    Frustration with the game mechanics
•    Frustration with the interface
•    Frustration with other factors

Frustration and Opposition from other players

The other players in a game are on obvious source of opposition and consequently of potential frustration.  But a game can be designed in a great variety of ways to maximize or minimize that potential.  A cooperative game for example pits all the players against non-player opposition, in effect a single player game with several players cooperating to substitute for one player.  The other players can be frustrating by making plays that you think are substandard but they're not usually opposing you.

A race involves opposition but often there is very little that your opponents can do to hinder you.  Blocking can be employed to limited effect, and of course in games like Mario Kart there's a lot you can do to interfere with other players actions.  It depends.  In traditional Olympic speed skating a participant skates with only one opponent, so barring bad luck there is no way for players to affect their opponents.  The newer short track speed skating style (Apolo Anton Ohno’s style) affords many more chances for one player to hinder or otherwise affect another.  It makes for quite different racing.

In a boardgame like Britannia each player has his own point scoring objectives, and in order to prevent other players from scoring he may have to sacrifice some points he could score.  In other point games you may have very little opportunity to prevent an opponent from scoring points so you concentrate on scoring your own points.  In other games there may be a limited pool of points available and in order for you to gain you have to take from someone else.  In a cutthroat game like Diplomacy the norm is that players will lie, cheat, and steal in order to thwart you and promote their own well-being.  The only way to gain strength is to take it from someone else (it's a zero-sum game).

So there's a spectrum here from games in which players are not supposed to hinder other players (cooperative) through games where there is limited hindrance to games where hindering other players is the major path to success.  A major design question in a multi-sided game is how easy is it to hinder other players, and moreover how easy is it to hinder other players without sacrificing your own efforts to succeed.  Some games are designed to let everyone build up but one person builds up a little faster.  Other games are designed to tear down until one player survives.  Many traditional boardgames are the latter type, think of chess and how as the game goes on players have less and less to work with.  Many of the recently developed Eurostyle board and card games emphasize building up and strictly limit how much you can do to hinder another player.  Much of that hindrance comes from anticipating what another player might want to do and doing it first so that the other cannot, which is quite different from more direct kinds opposition that you might see in wargames.  It is subtle and of more limited impact than direct opposition.

Frustration and Opposition from the Game System

The game system is the mechanics of the game.  In video game terms the section above is about “PvP”, player versus player, and this section is about “PvE”, player versus environment.  The game system is the mechanics of the game and how they fit together.

Players used to accept that the game would sometimes prevent them from doing what they wanted to do.  Nowadays people are much less tolerant of frustration.  They don’t want the game mechanics to put obstacles in their way.

This is quite obvious in the evolution of video games.  We now have many games that aim his gun for a player automatically once the player points in the general direction.  A game that actually keeps track of how much ammo you have has become the exception rather than the norm.  Unlimited ammo is less frustrating.  And of course in a video game it’s immensely easier to hit something with a shot than it is in real life.

An example of a specific boardgame mechanic that used to be quite common but is generally frowned upon now is losing a turn, such as an "opponent loses turn" card.    Gamers today often "hate" to lose a turn, and are less likely to play a game with that possibility.  Why?  40 years ago "lose turn" was regarded as part of the competition of a game, just another way to achieve a goal.  Today many people have grown up with video games where they're constantly active, and strongly dislike not being able to do anything.  In some cases, one of their primary motivations for playing the game is to DO something, and when they lose a turn they cannot do anything. 
Whether you think this way or not--as an older generation person I don't--as a designer you have to take this into account.  If you choose to design a game that includes down time, lost turns, and a need to spend time thinking about what you're going to do, you necessarily limit your market.

Frustration from the game interface and other factors within control of the designer(s)

User Interface.  Every tabletop and video game offers some means of telling the game what you want to do and of enabling the game to tell you what's happening.  This is the broadest definition of "user interface".  This is usually designed by the game designer(s), and a poor interface can ruin the experience for many people.  People tend to take interface for granted in tabletop games but it can make quite a difference.  Players tend to be more aware of interface and interface problems in a video game, perhaps because it’s fundamentally harder to tell a video game what you want to do, compared with a tabletop game.

Fortunately, testing a game with people who have not been involved in the process of creation ought to identify interface problems.  The biggest interface mistake in the video game industry is to only have the people who are involved with the game test it, because they become accustomed to using the less than optimal interface and may not realize how frustrating it will be for other people.  Entire books have been written about game interfaces so to save space I’ll say no more about the interface here.

There are other aspects of a game that can be frustrating to people that the designer can control.

Arithmetic/calculation.  The first of these is the use of calculation in a game where the computer does not automatically take care of the arithmetic, so it’s primarily a tabletop game problem.  My observation is that people, especially young adults, are much less able to do math in their heads then they were 40 years ago.  Even the simple act of adding the results of the roll of several dice can be frustrating to many people.  In the millennial generation the proportion who like math is very small.  Whether this is a generational change or a failure of education, it is one reason why STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is at a crisis for lack of interested students. 
When I first discussed this frustration in a blog there were many comments that game designers should be helping people get better at arithmetic.  If you want to promote arithmetic capability, games are excellent.  I've maintained for decades that playing D&D is beneficial insofar as players must do arithmetic (though rather less in 4th edition than 1st, you'll notice).  But most designers are interested in entertainment, not in helping kids learn to do arithmetic.
Another objection was that "ALL games are math".  My response is that games are all about people, reading people, persuading people, misleading people, and so forth. Puzzles are often about math. (Single-player video games are often interactive puzzles, not games.)

The object of the designer of hobby games is to have people enjoy the games.  If players are easily frustrated by something, it may be necessary to take it out of the game. Arithmetic clearly frustrates most young people.  Ergo, take it out of the game unless it's more important than the frustration it causes.  The general guideline might be: only allow arithmetic in a game when the inclusion is worth more than the frustration it may cause.

Hasbro has recognized this frustration with arithmetic in Monopoly.  There is now a version of Monopoly that uses debit cards with a machine so that players do not have to add and subtract dollars.  And there is a new computer assisted “tower” version of Monopoly with changed rules and a monitored pace (the tower is a computer) that completely avoids the drudgery of arithmetic and dice rolling, while it reduces downtime.

One of the great advantages of computer games is that the computer can do the arithmetic so that players avoid that frustration.

Color Blindness.  Color-blind people (5% of the population) cannot differentiate red and green, or less commonly blue and yellow, and sometimes other color combinations can be difficult.  Sometimes a designer cannot influence the color of manufactured pieces, sometimes he can.  (I recall asking Fantasy Flight Games not to have green pieces on a green map in the second edition of Britannia (2006), to avoid a minor problem of the older editions.  They didn’t use green, but changed the purple pieces to yellow, and made the predominant color of the map yellow.  Oh, well.)  Designers can usually decide the colors used in video games, but they must have this problem in mind.

Number of choices.  Another frustration the designer can control, but which he may choose to include in the game, is the number of plausible choices and the number of decisions a player must confront.

To some game players the whole point of the game is to make the right choice.  Yet there are very popular games that offer very few choices for the appropriate target audience, for example Candyland and Chutes and Ladders where there are no choices at all.  Too few choices can frustrate the strategic gamers while too many choices can frustrate casual gamers.  In other words the number of choices and decisions that make a difference to the outcome must be appropriate for the target audience.  I’ve discussed this at considerable length in “How Many Choices is too Many”, http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisPulsipher/20111025/8731/How_Many_Choices_is_Too_Many.php .


Simple mechanical choices.  Here’s an example of potentially frustrating game mechanics.  In a prototype fantasy skirmish game, two creatures can fight one another.  Each rolls independently to hit.  The result can be that both are hit, one or the other is hit, neither is hit.  The question is, should the rules mandate that if both hit, they block the hits and roll again?  That clearly favors the better hitter (the larger, tougher monsters).  Players said that would be frustrating, for the "little guy" to get a lucky hit and then have it taken away.  So I have left the possibility of mutual destruction in the game.

Here’s another example.  In the game Stratego and its ancestors going back to 1909, stand up pieces are arranged so that a player can see the identity of his pieces but the opponent cannot.  When there is a conflict the identity of the pieces is revealed.  Then the pieces are once again hidden and it’s up to the opponent to keep track by memory of where that piece is located.  If his memory fails then he may make an unnecessary mistake.  I had a Stratego-like fantasy game published in Britain around 1980 (Swords and Wizardry).  Recently I have devised two prototypes using some of the same principles but in much more fluid situations.  In those games once a piece’s identity is revealed it stays visible to both sides so there is no memorization.  In my view a memorization requirement in a game of this type is frustrating to most contemporary players.

Planning ahead.  One of my hybrid Euro-wargame prototypes, Seas of Gold (Italian maritime republics in the age of the Crusades), has been very well received by playtesters (some of whom tend to play Euro-games, but who are generally in their 40s rather than younger).  I played it with some people very knowledgeable about the game market a while ago.  In the game you need to choose six actions, indicated by action cards, in a round, and place the cards face down on a display.  Then each player chooses an event card, and those are executed first.  Sometimes this event can mess up your plans, for example you may be excommunicated and cannot trade to Catholic lands, or a marriage alliance occurs which means you cannot attack a particular player.  Or you may find as the action cards are played that you didn’t anticipate something, and that messes up your plans.  This is frustration, but to me it's "part of the game" when you're playing competitively.  These gents suggested that it won't work that way with Eurostyle players, people don't want to be frustrated: they don't tolerate "dead cards".
This game was designed several years ago.  Now, I have two versions.  In one, players choose their action cards one at a time. The player can adjust his strategy and need not plan well ahead.  The other, more “advanced” game, requires the planning entailed in putting down six action cards per round.

But Free to Play Games Are Intended to Frustrate

Now we come to the strange case of free-to-play (F2P) video games, especially those played over social networks.  The general idea in designing these games is to make it easy for players to "get ahead", but at some point to frustrate them to the point that they will spend real money to overcome the frustration.  One person at GDC (Game Developers Conference) characterized this as designing "pain points" into the game.  People spend their money to alleviate the “pain.”  The frustration may be at slow progress because the player has run out of "energy" or game money or something else that fuels activity.  A player can wait until enough time passes that his energy is renewed, or he can spend real money to renew, and continue to play the game right now.  It’s like a “lose turn” card, but this is frustration at going slowly, versus frustration at not being able to do anything at all.

The makers of free-to-play games that depend on small buys by the players (microtransactions) to make money, must specialize in frustration rather than try to eliminate it!  When players become frustrated with their rate of progress, or frustrated that they don't have THAT cool weapon or THAT cool armor or even THAT cool decoration or fish, then some of them will spend money to end that frustration.

In other words we have something that's exactly the opposite of what we as game designers normally try to do, to avoid frustrating players except within the gameplay of the game, and then only carefully in the 21st century.  This is why some people say that designing free to play games is not designing games, it's designing revenue streams.

There’s a lot of potential in “social networking” games to reproduce something approaching the face-to-face gameplaying experience, a true social experience.  But as long as the “pain points” method of game design works we’re unlikely to see much progress toward truly social video games.

Frustration from Extraneous Factors the Designer(s) Cannot Control
I've not included the word "opposition" in the title of this section because I'm using “opposition” in a way that implies a decision to prevent something from happening.  Extraneous factors do prevent things from happening but there is no decision to do so, it is accidental.  Sometimes it's an accident of where you're playing or when and sometimes it's an accident of poor design of the game.

Extraneous factors can be things like the noisiness and temperature of the room you're playing in, lag in your Internet connection, hacking by people using the online game system, and other things that neither you nor the game designer(s) have any control over.  (I'm assuming that if it's too cold you'll arrange to have the temperature get warmer; but sometimes that's not within your control.)

Unfortunately, there is little or nothing a designer can do to change this kind of frustration.

Low Tolerance of Frustration

The evolution of video games can be described as a movement away from competition (which implies the possibility of frustration) toward entertainment.  Entertainment is not supposed to be frustrating.  Early video games were arcade games, where failure was built in so that players would spend money to play again (and get the high score).  As home video games gradually overwhelmed the arcades, it took designers many years to recognize that quick and frequent failure was no longer necessary.  With the evolution of mobile and casual gaming, and games played over social networks, video games have become time-killers--as Jakob Nielsen says, “killing time is the killer app” for mobile platforms-- and they’ve become entertainment rather than competition.  Players are rewarded frequently and frustrating elements have been removed from many games.  The “death of death”, that is, the removal of failure, has become the norm.  "Games should be fun" has a different meaning for non-competitive gamers than for competitive gamers.  Game designers have recognized this.

This is also related to the general dislike of being thwarted, to the "age of instant gratification" and “age of convenience”.  People want things now and don't see why they should have to wait.  What was once regarded as a convenience is often now regarded as a necessity.  Further, many people want to "do just enough to get by".  (When you make people do things in a game that have nothing to do with their entertainment, then you sometimes have what is derisorily called an "educational game".)

Hard-core gamers often believe this is “dumbing down”, that it’s ruining games.  I don’t see why competition and entertainment cannot coexist, but frequently competition is removed from games because competition requires frustration, opposition to the player’s will.

When people are focused on being active and not on winning and losing (you can't “lose” a one-player video game), it's a different experience entirely.  Players are not so concerned with succeeding, they're concerned with DOING something (and thus passing the time).  Similarly we have a dislike of "down time" in board and card games, even though, for the more cerebrally inclined, that "down time" gives players the opportunity to *think*.    Because so many modern games don't require deep thought, players don't use the time to think the way people would have 40 years ago.   My guess is that intuition (which doesn't take much time) is more often used in all walks of life today; certainly, when a person isn't doing their job, they're more inclined to rely on intuition than logic.
The willingness to directly compete separates the hard core video and board (war)gamers from the casual video gamers and Euro-style boardgamers.

 We see it in Fourth Edition D&D (tabletop), where there is never a case that a character cannot do something in a turn because there are several "at-will" powers to choose from.  This is quite a contrast to First and Second Edition D&D, where spell casters had to decide whether to use a precious spell from his limited supply for the day or do nothing for a turn.  (These are the “Daily Powers” in 4th Edition.)  Between encounters you renew most of your capabilities, including hit points using “healing surges”.  It’s almost impossible to get killed in Fourth Edition D&D, and after you are incapacitated (not killed) it’s very easy for you to come back into the game with a little help from your friends.

Another way to say this would be that the early editions of D&D were much more true to life in the possibility of death and the possibility of having to wait at times, and the new edition is much more like a cartoon, or like World of Warcraft.  It is much more an entertainment (like a movie) than like a game or puzzle.



Game designers have always had to choose whether to aim at a hard core group or more casual players (for example, family gamers).  I believe the hard core group, the ones who like competition and regard frustration as acceptable, is becoming smaller, and the casual group for whom games are more like pure entertainment, who will not accept frustration, is becoming larger, as a percentage of all gamers.  If you want to appeal to something beyond a niche market, you must carefully manage frustration, choosing where and when to allow it, where and when to eliminate it.

There Will Be Games
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