Real Games Have Curves: Welcome to the Competence Zone

Let's make a graph. The horizontal axis is player skill. On the far left is no skill - just random button-pushing. On the far right is perfect videogame godhood, always doing exactly the correct thing at the correct time in the correct way. The first time you play a game, you'll probably be somewhere in the middle - farther right if you're a veteran gamer, farther left if you're a novice. As you play the game, and learn its mechanics, you'll trend right as you get better.

The vertical axis is performance level. At the very bottom is complete failure - game over as quickly as possible, not achieving any of the game's goals. Farther up is the passing line, separating failure below from success above. The line itself is a performance level of just barely passing a challenge - surviving the boss fight with one hit point left, clearing the race course just before the clock runs out, and so on. And at the very top of the axis is absolute perfect performance - winning by the largest margin possible.

Now we can chart the performance levels achievable with a particular amount of player skill: the "skill curve" for a given challenge.

Here's a skill curve for a song in Guitar Hero. The player must be fairly skilled to hold the right frets and strum at the right time, but does not have to be perfect in order to pass the song. Failing to hit notes drains a life meter, and when the meter empties, the player fails the song - but hitting notes correctly refills the meter. As long as the player doesn't miss too many notes in a row it's possible to miss a lot of them and still pass the song. This leaves plenty of room to improve - hitting a greater percentage of the notes earns the player a higher score, up to the perfect combo of hitting every single note.

The area between just barely passing and playing perfectly is the "competence zone." A player with skill in this range is competent to pass a challenge, but not necessarily expert in it.

Guitar Hero songs can, of course, be played on different difficulty settings. Above might be the skill curve for a particular song on Medium. Switch to Easy and the curve moves left; switch to Hard and the curve moves right. The higher the difficulty is set, the more complex is the pattern of notes to be hit, and the more skill is required to perform at a given level. The game still allows the player to miss many of the notes and pass the song, so the competence zone is the same size and shape.

Let's compare this to Elite Beat Agents, a rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. Much like Guitar Hero, EBA features a sequence of notes that must be hit to pass a song, with missed notes draining a life meter and hit notes filling it. However, EBA introduces another factor - the life meter constantly drains over time. On low difficulties, the drain rate is slow, and there is not much effect on gameplay. But the life meter drains faster on higher difficulties, drastically reducing the safety net.

Here are skill curves for a song in EBA on the easiest difficulty and the hardest. On the harder difficulty, not only does the curve slide right because the note pattern has become more complex, but the curve also steepens because the player is allowed to miss far fewer notes before failure. The result is that the competence zone is much smaller - the player has to be much closer to perfect in order to simply pass.

It's a bit like moving an archery target farther away and making it smaller at the same time. It's harder to hit, and there is less margin for error. It requires more skill to perform at the same relative level - hit the same distance from the center of the target, or miss the same number of notes - but that level might also no longer be good enough.

Now let's consider Bit.Trip Runner.

Gaijin Games's fourth outing on WiiWare, Bit.Trip Runner has been well received. Like its predecessors, it's a graphically and musically nostalgic rhythm game - but Runner takes the form of a sidescrolling platformer. It's a bit like if Guitar Hero rotated the fretboard ninety degrees and instead of scrolling colored notes at you, disguised them as various hazards and obstacles that must be reacted to appropriately - but these actions still occur in rhythm, and create music.

My two favorite genres happen to be rhythm games and platformers. And if you're anything like me, the trailer alone demands that you purchase the game immediately - especially at its eight dollar price point.

If you are like me, you'll also notice the trailer doesn't show what happens when the player fails to avoid a hazard. That's nothing unusual, of course - marketing material generally shows success rather than failure, to make games look more fun. But because this is a rhythm game, the pacing is vital. If Commander Video (the player character) were to stumble on an obstacle, it would mess up the timing of the level and therefore the song. So the trailer left me rather curious as to how Runner maintains its momentum.

Its solution turns out to be quite simple: hit one obstacle, and Commander Video is immediately sent back to the very beginning of the level. This occurs no matter how much of the level the player has traversed - there are no mid-level checkpoints. Trip over a ledge, and you have to replay the entire level up to that point. It's a bit like if Guitar Hero restarted the song every time the player missed a note.

It's a punishing strategy, and it becomes more punishing the longer the levels get. It's enough to make Bit.Trip Runner qualify as a Bad Good Game. Since any failure to avoid an obstacle means restarting the level, the player's performance must be near-perfect in order to beat a level. In other words, the competence zone is vanishingly small.

By showcasing the frustration that comes with a tiny competence zone, Bit.Trip Runner inadvertently demonstrates how important the competence zone really is - it's the only part of the skill curve in which flow can occur.

I've mentioned flow before - it's a fascinating, broadly useful concept. In games, flow is what happens when the challenge level is perfectly tuned to the player's skill and presents clear goals and clear feedback: the player loses themselves in the challenge and tunes out the rest of the world, and applies their skill to just barely manage to prevail. It's an incredibly satisfying feeling and it enhances learning - it's absolutely the best experience a skill-based game can deliver. Therefore, a well-designed skill-based game should provide as much opportunity for the player to achieve flow as it possibly can - which means it should have as large a competence zone as possible. There should be lots of room between passing and perfect.

Let's compare the experience of two players, one playing a song in Guitar Hero and the other playing a level in Bit.Trip Runner. Both start with skill too low to pass, but they practice and get better. They're both still making mistakes, but they are making fewer of them, and less often. Eventually, our Guitar Hero player is good enough to just barely pass the song. Eureka! Flow is achieved. Meanwhile, our Runner player is still failing, still having an experience interrupted by frustrating level restarts.

The Guitar Hero player now formulates a new goal - to score better on the song, perhaps earning four stars, then five. Each goal is just within reach, and flow is maintained as the player becomes increasingly skilled. The Runner player is still working on the same goal of simply passing the level. Flow has not yet been achieved.

Once skilled enough to achieve a nearly perfect performance, the Runner player finally achieves flow and beats the level. From this point, it's a fairly short journey for both players to become good enough to play flawlessly, after which flow is no longer possible because the challenge level cannot match player skill.

The Guitar Hero player had much, much more opportunity for flow, due to the much larger competence zone. The Runner player had only a small window - assuming they persevered through the long period of frustration and didn't simply quit. By presenting a tiny competence zone, Bit.Trip Runner robs the player of a great deal of potential enjoyment.

So what happens when things are taken in the other direction, and the competence zone is expanded to huge dimensions?

Rock Band 3 might be about to show us.

In addition to its various other enhancements over previous installments (such as having a keyboard controller for piano parts), Rock Band 3 features a new "Pro" mode, which is actually designed to bridge the gap between playing fake plastic instruments and the real thing.

"Drums are fairly straightforward -- strap the three Mad Catz cymbals to your existing Rock Band 2 (or The Beatles: Rock Band) kit and you're good to go. . . . Pro Keyboards are a bit more interesting, taking advantage of the entire two-octave keyboard and having the player actually tapping out real notes. . . . But the real news here is the game's support for a Pro Guitar, a new peripheral distributed by Mad Catz. Based on the Fender Mustang, the guitar features 17 frets and six strings, for a total of -- are you sitting down? -- 102 buttons on the fretboard. The guitar also features six 'strings' for picking out and strumming notes.

In case you don't see where this is going -- like the Pro Keyboard, the guitar charts in this mode will actually have you playing the notes in the song. . . . [A]s a guitarist, it was easy to see that all of the notes were in the right places, from the power chords to the individual notes in the song's blistering solo.

Harmonix understands that these most difficult modes won't be for everyone, but it's an interesting bridge between simply playing a game and holding a real guitar in your hands. Starting at the easiest level, it's likely that most players (especially those who've played Rock Band guitar on expert) will feel at home. Before they know it, the idea is to get them more comfortable with a real six-string axe.

'Our perspective on this is to not necessarily to turn people into virtuoso guitar players,' Sussman says. 'I think the line that we use in the studio is that we want to get you to the point where you can beat out a song at a campfire, and not necessarily jump on stage. But what we've seen in our focus testing is that after an hour of, kind of, trainer development and a couple of songs, people actually come out of that one hour and they have basic guitar chops.'"
—Nick Chester, Pre-E3: Hands-on with the 'disruptive' Rock Band 3

It's too early to say yet whether Rock Band 3 will succeed in its goal. But if it does, Harmonix will accomplish something amazing. They will solve the problem that it takes a long time and a lot of practice before learning an instrument becomes rewarding. They will connect the competence zones of the game and the real instruments. Learning will be a smooth, satisfying ride all the way up.

I've mainly discussed the competence zone in relation to rhythm games. But it applies to any skill-based endeavor. The size of the competence zone is the answer to the question, "How badly and how many times can I screw up before I have failed?" Easy to overlook, but deeply important to enjoyment and learning, it's a significant facet of challenge.

When the Oldies are Not Goodies: The Questionable Legacy of Nostalgia

Once upon a time, people didn't buy videogames. They went to an arcade, and bought playtime in twenty-five cent increments. How much time a quarter bought was completely dependent on the skill of the player. An unskilled player would find their progress barred quickly, and need to supply more quarters. A skilled player could proceed much longer, and was thus rewarded for the time, effort, and money poured into gaining their skill. The public nature of the arcade also rewarded the skilled player with the opportunity to show off in front of others. This provided the unskilled players with something to aspire to and suggested that it would be worthwhile to keep feeding the machines with quarters, so that they too might someday bask in similar glory. So it made a great deal of financial sense for arcade games to feature limited lives with more available for purchase.

Eventually videogames moved from the arcade to the living room. Here it was much harder for a player to compare themselves to other local players, and there was no need to keep the quarters flowing since games were purchased outright. The reasons to limit lives had vanished, and barring the progress of unskilled players now served mainly to disrupt the experience and prevent those players from seeing all the content of the game for which they had already paid. This limited the games' potential audience - why buy a game you can't expect to make it through? Financially, it made no sense whatsoever for games played in the home to feature limited lives.

But that didn't stop them from doing it anyway. From the original Super Mario Brothers on the NES all the way up to New Super Mario Brothers on the Wii, mainstream games have still not completely shaken off the limited lives trend. Why?

The Choice Is Not Yours: Why Prince of Persia Has The Best (And Worst) Ending In Modern Videogames

WARNING: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS EXTREME SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED PRINCE OF PERSIA AND INTEND TO DO SO, DO IT BEFORE READING THIS ESSAY.

The game is called "Prince of Persia." But it's not really about the Prince. (He doesn't even seem to be a prince this time. We call him "the Prince" because he has no name.) Really, the game is about (legitimate princess) Elika.

As the game opens, the Prince is lost in a sandstorm, calling out for Farah. Franchise veterans will recognize the name as that of the love interest from the Sands of Time trilogy - but it is soon revealed that Farah is actually the name of this Prince's donkey, laden with the riches the Prince has recently looted.

It's a nod to the previous games, but it's also a dig at Princess Farah's characterization and gameplay role. She was little more than a pack animal. The Prince, lost in the storm, is trying to reconnect with her, trying to return to that simplicity. Instead, he finds Elika.

Love By Proxy: Relying on Fake Relationships

I have a cold today.

I could feel it coming on yesterday, and it sent me early to bed, but today it is full-blown. I'm not gonna lie - I've always kind of liked being just a little bit sick. Sick enough to guiltlessly stay in bed playing videogames all day (punctuated by naps and plenty of fluids) but not so sick that I can't enjoy it.

I could play Prototype - the game I'm lately live-tweeting. But when I'm sick, I want a game that takes me to a happy place. Prototype may be a hell of a lot of fun, but it is sure not happy. Alex Mercer's New York is a hellhole and his life is horrible. I may have a great time behind the controller, but he's having a terrible one on the screen.

The whole point of escapism is that you escape to a better situation, not a worse one. Prototype is great for blowing off steam, but if I want to bury myself in another existence for a while, to forget about this one and the runny noses that come along with it, I play a game like Star Ocean.

PSA: Don't Buy Sonic Chronicles. Seriously.

I don't usually post anything in the middle of the week. This isn't a normal, full essay. But I had to get it out there. I had to save people who might otherwise have bought this game.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is a terrible, terrible game. Did you notice I didn't link the title to the Amazon page? That's because I don't want you to buy it. I don't even want to risk the possibility of you accidentally buying it. I can only imagine the wrath I would have right now if I had paid any money for it myself. As it is, I ripped it right out of my DS, stuffed it back into the GameFly envelope, and shoved it into the mail slot with as much contempt as I could muster.

Pretending to Rock: Fake, Artificial, and Valuable Achievement

A while back, I discussed my experiences with the dangers of fake achievement and its potential for abuse. I'd become addicted, and regularly played RPGs to feel good about myself - I allowed myself to glow in the praise directed at my characters for their world-saving heroics, when all I'd really done is hit the right buttons enough times. Once I figured this out, and realized it was preventing me from accomplishing anything real, I set about the lengthy task of recovery. Step one was a game accomplishment that required skill rather than patience - collecting all the emblems in Sonic Adventure DX.

The response to this essay was... mixed, to say the least.

There was one comment in particular that raised an interesting question, which I would like to address today.

Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

I've met a lot of Firefly fans. I'm one myself. Apart from enjoying the show, we all have one thing in common: we want there to be more Firefly fans. We want to share the show with others. We want more people to have the experience, to know how great it is, to laugh at the jokes and fall in love with the characters. We want more people to talk with about the show, who will know what we're talking about and share our enthusiasm. We want more people to buy the DVDs, to cast an economic vote of "more like this!" so that maybe Joss's next show won't get screwed over.

It's an inclusive fandom. We want there to be more of us. More Browncoats is better.

Future's Past: Ratchet & Clank and the Problem of Sequels

Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank have come a long way. Seven years after their first outing in late 2002, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time marks the ninth installment of a franchise spanning three platforms. (Tenth and four if you count the oft-forgotten Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile.) They've even got action figures now.

A Crack In Time is easily the best Ratchet & Clank game on the PS3, and will be many fans' favorite of the whole series. It certainly does have several series bests: the best writing, the best humor, the best Clank gameplay, the return of the series's best villain, and the single most fascinating and complex character ever to grace a Ratchet & Clank game.

But to understand A Crack In Time's greatest triumph, what it accomplishes that none of its predecessors do, we have to look back through the evolutionary paths traced by the series.

Why Your Demo Sucks: Design Errors and Cognitive Dissonance

Like the pre-order metagame and the trophy/achievement metagame, demos are part of the less-evolved fringes of game design. Which is odd considering how long we've had demos in one form or another. Shareware has been around since at least the eighties. But not every developer made use of it, and only now with the latest console generation has heightened internet access resulted in widespread freely-available demos for consoles. We are still figuring out how to design games, but we are even more in the dark about how to design demos.

In fact, it's not even entirely clear that we should design demos. Research on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games suggests developers are better off not making demos at all, and should just make trailers instead. It's not clear, however - there are many confounding variables here.

Mirror's Edge: What Went Wrong and Why

Mirror's Edge is a Bad Good Game. The foundation is solid: players take the role of Faith, a genuinely badass woman with a non-exploitative, unconventionally beautiful design whose motivations revolve around survival and protecting her sister. Faith parkours her way around an unnamed city of bright colors and austere beauty, and is trained in a variety of disarm techniques should she encounter armed attackers she can't simply outrun. Sounds good, right?