Mind the Skill Gap! STOP Making Our Competitive Games Less Deep!
Episode One: STOP Making Our Competitive Games Less Deep!
Welcome to Mind the Skill Gap! A Technical Series and Toolkit For Developing Competitive Games
The topic of Accessibility (colloquially conflated with Approachability) has become increasingly important and controversial.
Every time game developers promote accessibility our players react in horror. (Core-A Gaming made a well known YouTube video on this topic). Shouldn't growing our playerbase be in the interest of our existing community? How do we fix this disconnect?
That’s where this Series swoops in. The goal of Mind the Skill Gap! is to provide a toolset and universal language for developers and players to navigate the contentious topic of Accessibility.
Most people would generally agree with this statement: "If a game is complex, new players will have a harder time winning AND will be less likely to become seasoned players."
By the end of this episode though, hopefully you will agree that it's more nuanced. You might - even - agree with my perspective that simplicity makes it harder for new players to win and makes our games less likely to retain them.
Now, here is your scalpel. You will need it.
Let’s talk about the tools we actually need to create “Accessibility”
Simpler Competitive Games Are More Competitive And Harder to Win
Before we assume Accessibility (capital A) is a synonym for simpler or less deep games (spoiler: it’s not!), let's study this idea a little closer.
But first, we need to talk about defining our universal language.
In this series, Competitiveness (capital C) refers to how much the outcome of a game depends on the skill of its players. If a better player is likely to win, the more Competitive the game is. Conversely, the less likely the better player will win, the less Competitive it is.
If one player is better, the worse player should have to try to overcome the skill gap. This challenge to the less experienced player is inseparable from the idea of competition.
In order to make a less experienced player more likely to win in a Competitive game, we must make the game less Competitive. Don’t get me wrong. This is horrible. But there are ways we can navigate addressing Approachability without impacting the Competitive integrity.
"Noobs should never win." Competitions are literally about identifying the MOST SKILLED person!
The trend towards making our games less Competitive feels like one of the main reasons (though definitely not the only reason) why messages of accessibility can be loathed by our dedicated fanbases: We're effectively nullifying or erasing the time and financial investment our players put into our games. If playing our game wasn't a waste of time before, it certainly will be if we make their hard earned and little-appreciated skill less valuable.
On that note... Aren't we, the developers, supposed to be the ONE person/group in our players' lives encouraging and supporting their skill development?
Scalpel? Check! New Framework for Understanding the Fundamentals of Competitiveness? Coming right up!
Games that are strictly Competitive should result in the better player winning. For example, "Who can mash a button the most in 10 seconds?" In this simple game, the player with better button mashing Competency (also capital C) should win.
Wait… there's a new word with a Capital letter! It's DEFINITION TIME!!! (We need to come up with a song for this...)
Competency is a measure of players' skill across one or more relevant dimensions of gameplay such as accuracy, reaction speed, judgement or general athletic abilities.
This button mashing game reminds me of blister-inducing Mario Party challenges... fun, right?!
As game designers, our players' button-mashing Competency is completely out of our control. Instead, we will need to carefully employ game design techniques to balance the Competitive aspects of our game to ensure it can still be an enoyable experience for our games' losers.
To mitigate the impact of players' Competency on the outcome of our button mashing game, we can change our Game's Tactical Depth or changing our Game's Conditions.
These three fundamentals determine the likelihood of a given player winning our games.
Now, let’s modifying this game's Depth and Conditions to improve it. Let's change the catalyst to begin button mashing to be player-set rather than be prompted by the game itself.
The new game is: "How fast can you press a button time five times after the other player pushes it once first?"
This modification to the button mashing game added Technical Depth through at least two dimensions of Competency: (1) reacting to the other player and (2) being unpredictable prompting the button mashing. It also changed the game's Conditions because now reacting to your opponent's prompt is a rule of the game.
While this is still a simple example, we demonstrably made the game three times more complex. Two new Competencies are required but, I’d argue, we also made the game more fun AND more accessible to new players.
Hmmmmmmmm…
In the new version of the button mashing game, simply having the skill of being a better button masher than your friend is no longer going to carry you to victory.
Making games more complex games will always provide a greater range or depth of Competency. More or deeper Competency translates to more chances for new players to outplay a more seasoned opponent. It also creates more chances for the more seasoned opponent to make a mistake and lose to a less experienced player.
This rule, logically, always applies.
However, if we blindly make our games as complex as possible, players might be too intimidated to try them. That's another topic for another time, though.
You're well on your way to becoming a competitive game surgeon!
Wrapping up Episode 1.
Allow me to share two ideas that I assume to be true:
Some players will ALWAYS have more skill than others.
Players ENJOY exploring and getting better at things.
Accessibility (as a synonym for simplicity) does not address the first point and, with regards to the second point, simplicity actually limits the potential enjoyment players can have with your game.
Again: Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Accessibility, as we know it (aka simpler games), might not be the cure to bringing new audiences to competitive games after all. Clearly there are other factors at play here.
In the next Episode, we will use one of the most competitive games known to mankind to introduce a technical graph to measure the Competitiveness of our games.
Subscribe to our newsletter to get notified when next week’s Episode goes live!
MTSG Developer Roundtable
That's All for Now… Unless You Sign-Up For The MTSG Developer Roundtable
With each weekly blog post, I invite fellow game developers into a rapidly growing networking group that hosts round table discussions prompted the subject of each episode (initially). If you’re an English-fluent experienced or aspiring game developer, I’d love for you to join the conversation!
Episode 1 Takeaways:
Developers are opting to remove depth and mechanics from their games to achieve “accessibility.” However, I believe this is directionally the opposite of what we should do.
The impact of our players’ relative skill on their winrate can be mitigated through adjusting our Game’s Competency Requirements, its Technical Depth or its Conditions.
It bears repeating: Accessibility is not at odds with depth!
Concepts Introduced:
Competitiveness measures how much influence players’ relative skill has on the outcome. More competitive games mean skill has more influence on the outcome.
Player Competency is the primary driver of the Skill Gap and is measured in dimensions of Competency relevant to the games.
About The Author & Mind the Skill Gap!
Mind the Skill Gap! started out as a fan requested blog post by our community but it quickly turned into 40 pages of detailed notes of examples, charts and definitions.
My name is Chris Kovalik or @CAKOvalik (“CAKO” for short). My background is in Business and the Financial Markets but fate would have it that I am now the Creative Director and Lead Programmer for a fighting game in Pre-Beta. The game is called Vortex Rising and it combines Anime Fighters, Platform Fighters and team-based strategy into wildly expressive and movement-centric gameplay.
Our Discord community recently settled on a "desired experience" that might help give you more context: When you play Vortex Rising, we want you and your friends to feel wild and frenetic momentum. Like rushing downhill or hitting the big drop on a rollercoaster and going faster than you've ever gone before. It's equal parts intense and exhilarating.
If Vortex Rising sounds remotely interesting to you, please sign up for pre-alpha access here! We want as much critical feedback as possible. Not everything will be addressable in the near-term since we are a small team, but at the very least it will help us map out what to work on down the line. On that note… we're looking for talented writers, Unity Developers, Maya Animators and UI Designers so please hit me up if this sounds like a fun project to you! (via my email - chris@vortexrising.com)