(@jpmcardle)
That electric shock of in-game excitement you feel when nailing a headshot in Half Life, harassing an opponent early in Starcraft, or finally getting that Tetris you’ve been building towards? Chances are that experience was bourne out of a contentious internal battle over in-game risks versus rewards.
Like every product has a bit of it’s own story embedded in its essence, every one of these examples helps each player internalize a narrative. This narrative effectively bridges the gap between the virtual world and the “real world” (or meatspace, IRL, or whatever you’d like to call it!), and provides built in word of mouth marketing. How many times have you heard a friend excitedly relate their latest video game war story, trying to get you to play?
The balance of risk vs reward is tough to strike, but absolutely crucial for almost any game to be successful. A headshot provides maximum virtual damage for minimum effort, but requires a high degree of skill to achieve. Starcraft strikes a similar balance; if an opponent has the right counters to your plan, you’re likely to be at a huge disadvantage if it fails. If it succeeds, you are likely to have the upper hand tactically and strategically.
These are but two examples, but this element is prevalent in single player games as well, particularly in those that utilize leaderboards or other means of tracking high scores. A game like Ikaruga, whose delicate dance through bullet hell is a constant balance of survival and the technical pursuit of a high score is a perfect example.
In fact, risk vs reward is a core element of almost any game you can think of, transcending video games, board games, and games we played as children on the schoolyard. If you’re creating a game, it’s absolutely integral to the success or failure of your product.
So how do the very best in the industry achieve a compelling balance?
They iterate and test. Constantly.
The stories are myriad. Hideo Kojima’s novel approach of building levels for the Metal Gear series in LEGO and “playing” through them in a turn based manner, (all the while videotaping the whole process as a design artifact) ensured a constant game of cat and mouse between Snake and the veritable army of soldiers charged with stopping him. LEGO might not be the medium you first expect for rapid-prototyping gameplay elements, but it’s modular nature allowed for extremely quick reworkings of levels before they were brought into the virtual world for construction.
Valve Software builds whole sets of levels in a scope similar to an Act in a movie, but doesn’t add art assets until much later in the project. This allows the modelling and texture teams to iterate while the level design is evaluated from a pure gameplay standpoint, without the “distractions” of final game assets. It also allows the quick experimentation with original enemy and gameplay types, which is one of the main differentiators of their product versus their competitors’.
The original Starcraft had a public beta that was originally supposed to last for 1 month. When Blizzard finally launched the beta (a few months later than originally announced), it ran for 9 months instead of just 1. Throughout this beta, almost every unit in the game received tweaks to various attributes, and some were excised entirely. Not many of us are in a position to launch our products 9 months later than expected, but Blizzard’s intensive approach to balancing the risk and reward inherent in the game resulted in the most widely played competitive video game in history, one that was played professionally for over 10 years and kickstarted a nascent competitive gaming industry.
What can we learn from these experts? All of these companies, and many others, undertake immense efforts to ensure the balance of risk versus reward. It’s not something that comes easily to them. Even they don’t get it right at product launch, but it’s often 95% there.
Many of us working to create compelling digital experiences have a lifetime of gaming influencing us, and as more and more clients and products require the inclusion of gameplay, we feel the pressure to include them in our designs.
Some have gone so far as to create idea decks of gameplay elements, as if a list of buzzwords considered individually can make you a compelling product. We all saw how well that approach worked around 2000 or so… why do we think it will work now?
Delivering a truly compelling balance of risk versus reward is not easy. Like much digital design work, it requires constant back and forth, many iterations and a good deal of analysis. It’s messy. It won’t happen overnight. It’s a skill that needs development over time, and often won’t be 100% right, even after launch. Balancing risk vs reward is a marathon, not a sprint.
