开发者谈传统游戏难度设计的缺陷和设计思维转变

原作者：Alex Vu 译者：Vivian Xue

游戏难度设计是人们深入讨论已久的话题。许多替代传统的在游戏开头提供难度选择的方法都被提出、分析和应用。然而，尽管它们从一定程度上弥补了传统方式的缺陷，它们本身仍存在诸多问题。因此，我想提出另一种替代方式——它算不上一种技术应用层面的解决方案，而是一种不同的难度设计理念。

我想要强调一点，这种理念已经被成功地运用到了许多游戏设计中，之后我将提到，但就目前的应用程度来看，它尚未成为难度设计的核心理念，而在我看来这是它应得的地位。我想这是由于我们缺乏一套相对清晰且深思熟虑的难度设计思路。

但首先，请让我试着简短地总结一些对传统的难度模式设计及其替代方法的常见批评。

难度模式存在的问题

试想一下你刚进入了一款全新的游戏，你的面前立即出现了若干选项，要求你选择一个适合你的难度模式。说白了，他们在让你做出这个重要的决定前，并没有为你提供充分的信息。这就是我们的游戏一贯以来处理难度问题的方式，并且直到现在，这种方式在游戏中仍然很常见。

以下是对这种方式的一些常见的批评：

1. 让玩家在游戏一开始就做这样的决定并不是一个好主意。在游戏还没开始前选择难度模式相当于基于少量的信息（游戏邦注比如，一段短介绍）做一个重大承诺。一旦玩家做了选择，他们大概从头到尾都要忍受这个难度。

2. 即使允许玩家中途改变难度，这种设计，从它本身来看，仍然不是一个非常好的主意。首先，通过菜单来选择难度对人们来说绝对不是一个有趣的选择。他们不用进行任何权衡。他们不用分析每一种选择带来的风险和奖励。并且通常来说，在这种情况下玩家无法很好地衡量短期上手简单和后期更大的乐趣，因为他们对游戏了解甚少。

3. 这种方式使通过解锁更高级、更优良的道具来增强和辅助游戏的过程丧失了意义。它与游戏设计者预期的游戏体验相背离。最重要的是，玩家们在选择难度高低时，他们会感觉自己的能力被下了定论。

动态难度调节（Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment）

动态难度调节的设想与Flow State理论挂钩。Flow State指的是玩家完全沉浸在游戏中，而游戏难度也恰到好处的状态。此时任何难度上调都会导致玩家失落，破坏这种沉浸度。而如果难度下降，玩家很快会感到无聊，可想而知沉浸度也会下降。因此，正如设计师安德鲁·格拉斯纳（Andrew Glassner）在他的著作《互动叙事》（Interactive Storytelling）中所述，游戏“不应该要求玩家选择难度，而应该基于玩家在处理不同任务时能力的变化来调整自身的困难度，使其与玩家的能力相匹配。”或者说，一款游戏应同时具备一个玩家表现评估系统和一个动态难度调节系统，以适应玩家不断变化的特征。关于动态难度调节的更多技术细节，详见罗宾·休尼克（Robin Hunicke）2005年发表的论文《游戏中的动态难度调节案例》（The Case for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Games）。

然而，尽管Flow State理论确实有其优势，这种动态难度调节的方式还是存在一些缺陷：

1. 一些玩家在发现了动态难度调节系统后，会对它产生厌恶感。特别是当这种系统无法关闭时，玩家们会感到自己没有得到一个成年人应得的尊重，像是无法独立解决困难和提高自己而得到了游戏的“照顾”。

2. 玩家可以并且可能会通过故意降低自己的水平来利用这个系统。通常情况下，为了避免被玩家察觉，动态难度调节系统会中断一段时间，因此一旦适应了玩家伪装的水平，它无法迅速恢复过来。

3. 这种系统阻碍了玩家学习和进步。一旦玩家水平上升，系统会将难度调整至与他们相当的水平，这阻碍了玩家获得积极的反馈。如果玩家无法看到他们在游戏中表现的提升，他们将无法获知他们的策略改变是否有效。

4. 这种系统可能会使游戏过程中出现荒唐的状况。比如在赛车游戏中，玩家会发现自己的对手为了适应自己似乎在毫无理由地加速或减速。

5. 这一系统并不适用于所有形式的游戏。在数值型的游戏中，这种系统能够很好地发挥作用。然而如果游戏是象征性的，预设的元素一目了然，通常只有几种通关方式时，这种系统就无用武之地了。

关于动态难度调整存在许多有趣且微妙的处理方式，但鉴于它们超出了本小节的讨论范围，我不会在此进行介绍。尽管我认为通过巧妙的算法和应用，这个系统将更具功能性且足够高深莫测，但我在此仅讨论它的基本原理。

游戏中的有机难度（Organic Difficulty）

命名这种难度设计方法的术语有很多，但在本文中我选择“有机难度”这个词。这种方法在过去的十多年来被反复讨论。

有机难度基本思想是，游戏不要求玩家通过界面指令选择或调整他们喜欢的难度，也不会根据玩家的水平自动调节难度，而是允许玩家通过特定的方式与游戏互动来改变它的难易程度。这些方式的形式有：工具、方法、策略、输入序列或输入方式等，这通常需要某种权衡。

这种方式在一定数量的游戏中得到了应用，包括Software的《黑暗之魂》（Dark Souls），你可以看看YouTube频道Extra Credit对它的分析。

在《合金装备 5》中，玩家完成每一个任务后，游戏都会根据侵入痕迹、杀伤性、命中率、通关时间、附加任务完成情况、使用的工具等一系列标准对玩家打分。玩家在某些情况下会被扣分，比如被敌方发现、引起敌方警觉、受到攻击。不过还有一些隐藏性的因素会对分数造成影响。玩家可以进行屠杀，向每个目标投射手榴弹，或者呼叫直升机对敌方基地进行全面空袭，而且只需要按动几个按钮就可以获得这些工具。只要能完成任务，他们得到最糟糕结果是也只是C评级，分数会掉一点罢了。

另一个应用例子是《幽浮:内部敌人》（XCOM: Enemy Within）。这款游戏中有一种叫做“cheesy”的稳赢战术，玩家通过在一个单位上使用Mimetic Skin技能实现隐身探路，从而协助狙击手在地图上把敌人一个个干掉，而且敌人几乎没有反击之力。它几乎是一种万能的战术，唯一的风险是侦查单位不能受到侧面攻击，否则它将立刻丧失隐形能力。这种策略唯一的毛病就是超级无聊：你的狙击手每个回合内只要一个劲地射击，并且每个回合内也只需要射击几次，连重新装弹都不需要。这种策略最适合新手，或者那些状态不佳想要摆脱劣势的玩家。还有另一个极端，有些玩家了解了游戏和AI外星人单位的运作特点后，会利用这些特点操纵敌人，使敌人按照他们期待的方式表现，从而使用最少的盔甲近距离击败他们。（例如，当敌人只攻击你的坦克时，你的士兵根本不需要带盔甲）。

以上的案例似乎为我们点出了难度设计方面的几个要点：

1. 难度设计不仅要围绕游戏的机制，还要考虑这些机制的美学特征和优雅性。

2. 游戏惩罚不一定总要显而易见，只要能让玩家察觉到他们偏离了游戏的预期。拿物理疼痛打个比方，伤害身体本身的不是疼痛，而是伤口。疼痛只是一种信号，让你感知到发生了不好的事情，而你不应该让它再次发生。但是记住，最终决定权在你手里。

3. 把玩家分成“软核，不怎么会打游戏”和“硬核，追求挑战性”可能不是个好主意。这种想法本身是很荒谬的，因为玩家的能力是会浮动，甚至是在一个单人游戏中。一些玩家的上手速度超越了游戏教程的节奏；一些玩家出于某些原因一段时间没能玩游戏，而当他们再次返回游戏时会有点生疏。

4. 游戏不应该去判断一个玩家的水平并尝试去适应他们的水平，而应该评估玩家与游戏的互动，我们可以使用一种介于有效性（Effectiveness）和美学性（Aesthetics of Play，或者我把它称为Ludoaesthetics）的区间来进行评估。

有效性-美学性区间（The Effectiveness-Ludoaesthetics Spectrum (ELS)）

在有效性-美学性区间中，困难度只存在于最低的技术层次中。这个区间的两端代表了每个玩家在一定条件下在游戏的某一时刻所追求的东西。在这个区间中，游戏设计依据的是玩家的互动、方法和策略，每一种都有各自的有效性和美学。这些不仅仅是由游戏机制或者玩家的水平决定的，更多的是由玩家对它们的体验和感知来决定的。

有效性指的是玩家能多有效地通过提供的道具和他们设想出的战略在游戏中进步和实现目标。影响有效性的主要因素是这些道具的使用起来有多容易，以及它们对于玩家实现目标能产生多大的帮助。处于这一端的玩家的首要目标是寻找实现目标最有效的方式（当然还有简单的玩法）。

美学性（Ludoaesthetics）指的是上述道具和策略所具备的可感知的美学吸引力。追求这个极端的玩家不一定要找到实现预期目标的最有效方式。他们倾向于通过非常规的玩法挖掘游戏额外的“内在优点”，这些优点包括：

1. 外表的吸引力：包括物品本身或者使用物品时产生的视觉和听觉吸引力。这物品可以是玩家在游戏中接触到的任何实体，比如一个外形设计良好的人物，一件丑陋但是视效和音效都令人满意的武器等等。

2. 证明实力的机会：也就是吹嘘自己的权利。我想这一点无需解释了。总有一部分玩家通过不断寻求更大的挑战来向世界证明自己的能力。为了提高挑战的难度，他们可能会选择那种把自己逼上绝路的打法。

3. 更大的满足感：对于追求更大的满足感的玩家来说，仅仅完成游戏指定的目标是远远不够的。那些战胜过巨大困难的人对此必定有所体会。

4. 叙事幻想：玩家为了保持与剧情的一致、或者为叙事增添深度和强度，可能会在游戏里做一些没有效率的事情。从本质上来看，他们是在通过牺牲游戏玩法的最优性来满足他们的叙事幻想。

为美学而设计

游戏美学设计的核心不在于通过加大挑战的难度来适应玩家技巧的提升(尽管这并不是说这种方法没有任何优点)。实际上，它的目的是鼓励玩家在游戏中追求美学，并更多地向区间的右方倾斜。

下面是一些设计建议：

1. 增强深度

深度指的是玩家通过使用游戏提供的资源道具在其中做出有趣选择的空间。关于深度与复杂度详细的解释和比较，Extra Credits在Depth vs Complexity一集中进行了专门探讨。

从本质上看，复杂度是一个游戏组成要素的数量，而深度则是这些元素之间的“互动”程度。游戏美学的本质是偏离常规。因此，这些元素之间互动的次数越多，玩家操控每个元素的方式越多，就越可能产生美感。

(可参考另一篇Alex Vu的文章：Design for Theorycrafting)

深度是游戏美学的先决条件。没有巨大的深度，游戏美学就没有存在和施展的空间。

2. 创造鼓励玩家追求美学的模式

增加深度不只是添加更多的元素，然后把它们藏在游戏里，等待玩家去挖掘。你得留下面包屑，提示玩家还存在更大的空间，并鼓励他们去探索。那么要怎样增加深度？又要如何与玩家沟通？

下面的这张概念图展示了电子游戏中的一组典型的挑战。

如图，每一个挑战都可以用一个“失败窗口”和“成功窗口”来表示。这些窗口可以是空间的、时间的、象征性的、战略性的，或者是它们的组合。玩家通过某种方式穿过这个空间，黑线代表了他们的互动策略：从哪里穿越，在哪里转向，玩家通过避开失败窗口完成一系列挑战。

例如，假设在3D平台游戏中，玩家面前是一个凹坑，对面的右侧是一个狭窄的平台。在这种情况下，我们可以假设失败窗口包括了导致玩家跌落到坑里的任何行为，而成功窗口包括越过凹坑安全降落在平台上的行为。

现在，让我们重新来看刚才的概念图，但这一次我们做了一些有意的调整。

正如你所看到的，失败窗口和成功窗口的大小没变，但是成功窗口的位置改变了，它们从某种程度上对齐了 (但没有到非常明显的程度)。你可以观察到，成功窗口内嵌套了另一个更窄的窗口，玩家穿越这个窗口所需的互动是最少的，此时玩家可以在不受干扰的情况下 “轻松”地通过这些挑战。这扇窗户是美学产生的地方。

当然，它有很多缺陷：在实际的游戏设计中很难实现这样的窗口。并且要想通过这些狭窄的窗口，玩家必须在游戏中保持极度精准和机智。你可以把这个畅通的窗口想象成挑战的一个“弱点”，一旦受到攻击挑战会立即失败。但是玩家要找到这样一个弱点、并精准地给它最后一击可能需要大量的试错，这个过程可能会极其乏味和困难。

3. 以《间谍大师》（Master Spy）为例

快速通关是美学在游戏中的一种常见表现。大部分游戏不是为了快速通关而设计的，这不是它们的首要预期目标；大多数玩家也不会全程高速打游戏，因为他们不想错过任何东西。因此快速通关一直是人们挑战自我的行为，他们希望从喜爱的游戏中获得更大的快感。

然而，也有一些例外。在克里斯·特鲁伊特（Kris truitt）的游戏《间谍大师》的关卡中，你可以发现上文提到的畅通无阻的窗子。

在这个游戏中，你扮演间谍大师的角色，企图渗透到守卫极度森严的建筑物、宫殿和堡垒里，沿途布满了大量不同的敌人、障碍和机关。你唯一的道具是隐形斗篷，可以帮助你在快速移动过程中躲过某些敌人的视线。

在上面的例子中，你的目标是获取起点右边的墙壁另一侧的钥匙卡，然后安全地从起点上方的白色门逃走。虽然斗篷可以帮你躲过警卫的视线，但它对狗无效，即使你披着斗篷，狗也能闻到你的气味，一旦你落地，它们就会以惊人的速度冲向并攻击你。

因此在这个关卡内你要做的是，首先使用隐形斗篷躲避第一个警卫的视线，然后脱下斗篷，反正它对狗来说也没用。在第一条狗扑上你之前向右移动继续往上跳，取得钥匙卡并躲避第二条和第三条狗的袭击。然后再穿上隐形斗篷躲避三个移动的警卫，最后向左跳到出口。

然而，在上面的动图(由一位叫“Obidobi”的玩家提供)中你可以看到，当玩家到达有三个警卫的平台时，警卫转向了另一边，远离玩家运动，玩家由此无需披上斗篷而导致移动速度减半。而就在玩家到达出口之前，警卫们刚好接触到墙准备向左转。这是一个小小的成功之窗，但玩家必须在游戏一开始就马上完成这一系列动作，否则他们将失败。这个关卡的设计使玩家能够不浪费时间并且干脆利落地完成它。

这样玩会更难吗？这种设计是绝对必要的吗？并不是。但设计师在制作这个关卡时期待看到人们快速地通关并且优化他们花在每一个关卡里的时间。因此，在《间谍大师》的关卡设计使那些希望快速通关的人很容易找到那扇畅通无阻的窗子。玩家在寻找过程中获得了极大的满足感。

4. 确保实用性

通常，我们很容易因为在设计上过度追求逻辑而忘了平衡性，而后者才是设计的真谛。

在这种情况下，设计师们需要注意确保他们为玩家提供的任何道具都至少具有某种实用性，哪怕它们很小众或者使用起来极其困难。什么功能和意义都没有的道具是不具备美学性的。比方说你设计一个RPG，你的一个玩家在其中费尽心思地塑造一个非常规的角色，因为他看到了这样的角色的一些未来潜力，但是当他完成了角色塑造后，游戏的meta变了，并且这种角色的优势也不存在了。这样一来，你所增加的深度、和你本想通过鼓励玩家另辟蹊径来实现的美学性全都被浪费了。所以，永远记住要确保你在游戏中添加的所有东西具有实用性。

结语

与其说有机困难和有效性-美学性区间的设想是解决整个难度设计问题的另一种方式，而且也未必是，不如说它们代表了一种设计思维的转变，即游戏不应该寻找越来越复杂的方式满足不同水平的玩家的需求，而应该让玩家在任何时刻通过道具互动来设定自己的难度，且不会破坏沉浸感或带来额外的羞耻感。让玩家以单一的难度进行游戏，或者通过调整难度来适应他们是不够的。在我看来，最好的方式是让玩家按照自己喜好自由控制难度，只要确保这个过程与游戏本身是一体的。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

The problem of difficulty in games has been debated to great depths for a long time. Various alternatives to the traditional approach with different difficulty modes at the beginning of a particular game have been proposed, analyzed and implemented. And yet, as much as they patch up the errors of the traditional approach, within them arise numerous inherent problems and difficulties. As such, I

would like to propose another alternative–not so much a mechanical solution that requires implementation, but rather a different approach to difficulty design.

One thing I’d like to stress is that, this has been applied in various games quite successfully before, and I’ll mention them later on, but not to the extent to which it can deservedly become a central design philosophy, in my opinion. This I presume is due to a lack of a rather clear and deliberate approach to difficulty design.

But first, let me attempt to briefly summarize a few popular criticisms of the traditional difficulty modes approach and its alternative.

Problems with Difficulty Modes

Picture yourself coming into a brand new game, only to be asked to choose a difficulty mode that’s suitable for yourself, and presented with a number of different menu options. And frankly, they don’t do that good of a job at giving you sufficient information to make such an important decision. This is how many games in our history have done difficulty, and it continues to be fairly prevalent among modern games.

Here are its common criticisms:

Asking the player to make such a decision right at the beginning is not exactly a good idea. To select a difficulty mode before the game even starts is to make a major commitment based on very little information available (e.g. a short description). Once the player has selected a difficulty, they are probably going to live with it for the entire playthrough.

Even if the game allows the player to change the difficulty mode later on, it is, in itself, still not a very good idea. For one, explicitly selecting a difficulty mode in a menu-based manner is certainly not an interesting choice that games strive to offer their players. They do not have to weigh anything against anything. They do not have to analyze the risks and rewards coming as a result of each option. And generally speaking, players are not going to be good at weighting short-term convenience against long-term enjoyment. They just do not know the game enough.

Such approach would defeat the entire point of progression through unlocking higher and better tools to enhance and assist with gameplay. It would go against the intended gameplay experience from the game designer. And most importantly, it would make the player feel judged for not choosing a higher difficulty.

There have been several solutions to negate these issues, of which Mark Brown has gone into depths in one of his videos. However, not one of them was able to solve them all and still maintain immersion.

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

The idea of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (or DDA) hinges on the theory of the player’s Flow State, in which the player is completely immersed, and the game’s difficulty feels just right. Any more difficulty will cause frustration and break immersion. Any less difficulty and the player will quickly find boredom, and you guessed it, lose immersion. Therefore, as designer Andrew Glassner put it in his book Interactive Storytelling, games “should not ask players to select a difficulty level. Games should adapt themselves during gameplay to offer the player a consistent degree of challenge based on his changing abilities at different tasks.” Or in other words, games should be implemented with a performance evaluation system as well as a dynamic difficulty adjustment system in order to adjust itself to accommodate the infinitely different and ever-changing characteristics of players. More on the technical details of DDA can be found in Robin Hunicke’s 2005 paper The Case for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Games.

However, while the Flow State theory admittedly has its merits, the DDA approach doesn’t go without its numerous downsides:

Some players, when they find out about DDA, hate it. Especially when DDA cannot be turned off, the player ends up feeling patronized, and not respected by the game as an adult, capable of taking on challenges and improving him/herself.

Players can, and will, learn to exploit DDA by pretending to be worse at playing than they actually are. And oftentimes, a DDA system will require some sort of break time in order to avoid revealing itself to the player, thus not able to quickly adapt itself to the player’s ostensible skill level.

DDA inhibits the player’s ability to learn and improve. As soon as the player improves, the difficulty ramps up to match their skill level, thus eliminating the possibility of positive results. If the player cannot see some sort of feedback from the game regarding their performance, they cannot know whether any changes in their approach to gameplay were effective.

DDA may create absurdities. One of the popular example of DDA going awry is the rubber-band effect in racing games, where opponents speed up and slow down seemingly for no reason in order to adapt to the player’s performance.

DDA is incompatible with some forms of challenge. If the challenge in question is numerically-based, then DDA can work easily. However, when the challenge is symbolical, with pre-designed elements that are nakedly visible to the player, often having only one or a few intended solutions, then DDA cannot work.

There are many interesting and nuanced approaches to DDA that I won’t mention since that’s beyond the scope of this segment. While I imagine there are going to be a lot of way to make DDA functional and sufficiently inscrutable through clever algorithms and implementation, I am rather discussing the fundamentals.

Organic Difficulty in Games

There seems to be a number of different terms to address this approach, but just for this article I’m going to use the term “Organic Difficulty.” This is something that has been tossed around in the last decade or so.

The basic idea of Organic Difficulty is that the game does not ask the players to select or adjust their preferred difficulty via GUI-based commands, nor does it automatically adapt itself to match with the player’s performance and progress. But rather, the game allows the player to interact with it in certain ways to make it easier, or harder, for themselves. These take the form of tools, approaches, strategies, input sequences or methods, etc. which should often come with some sort of trade-off.

This is something that has been implemented in a number of games including From Software’s Dark Souls, which Extra Credits has dedicated an entire episode to, and which everyone should take a look.

In Metal Gear Solid V, for every mission the player has completed, there’s a score rating system which provides a rough overview of the player’s performance based on a number of factors such as stealth, lethality, accuracy, completion speed, whether the player has completed any mission tasks, and what tools they used. While the player does get minus points for mistakes such as getting detected, raising enemy alert, taking hits, etc. some other factors are not as clear-cut as to how they constitute minus points aside from narrative reasons. The player can always go on a lethal rampage, tossing grenades at everybody in sight, or calling a support helicopter to airstrike the entire enemy base. The player is provided the tools to do exactly all of those, and they’re always just a few buttons away, and the worst they get is a C rank, provided they completed the mission, and a slight dip in their earnings.

Another example of this can be found XCOM: Enemy Within. There’s a “cheesy” tactic in the game that can almost ensure victory, which is to have a unit with the Mimetic Skin ability to safely spot the enemies, thus enabling a squadsight-sniper from across the entire map to pick them off one-by-one safely without any real repercussion. This strategy is extremely effective in virtually every mechanical aspect of combat, with the only risk being that the spotter must not be flanked for they would instantly lose invisibility. The actual problem with this strategy is that it’s incredibly boring: your snipers just simply shoot every turn, and you can only take a few shots every turn, not to mention reloading. This strategy is best suited for beginners and people who have made mistakes and want to get out of the downward spiral. While on the other end of the spectrum, there are players who understand how the game and the AI of every alien unit in the game work, so they are more confident about moving up close and personal with enemies with minimal armor. Because for them, it’s not about defending against the enemies, but about manipulating, “nudging” the enemies into behaving the way these players want them to (e.g. nobody needs armor when enemies are only going to attack the tank; nobody needs to take good cover when enemies are too scared to move to flank in front of an Opportunist-overwatch unit; etc.)

The above examples seem to imply a few important points regarding difficulty:

Difficulty should not only be designed around the mechanics of a game. It should also take into account the aesthetics or elegance of those very mechanics.

Punishment does not always have to be tangible or significant, as long as it is enough to indicate to players that they are straying off the intended experience. A good analogy would be physical pain. The pain itself is not what’s causing harm to your body. The physical wound is. Pain is merely a bodily signal to let you know that what’s happening right now is pretty bad and you probably shouldn’t let what just happened happen again. But remember, the choice is ultimately yours!

It may not be a good idea to put people on the linear graph of “gaming skill” where some people are simply “softcore, not-so-good at video games” and some other are “hardcore and always challenge-seeking.” The idea alone is absurd, because players on such a graph would move up and down constantly, even during a single playthrough. Some people pick things up faster than a game can predict with its tutorials’ pacing. Some people due to real life reasons have to abandon the game for some time, and they lose a bit of their touch when they come back to it.

Instead of judging the player’s skill and trying to accommodate every possibility, games should be judging player interactions instead, using a spectrum between Effectiveness and Aesthetics of Play (or what I shall humbly name Ludoaesthetics).

The Effectiveness-Ludoaesthetics Spectrum (ELS)

On the Effectiveness-Ludoaesthetics Spectrum (ELS), difficulty exists only at the lowest technical level. Each end of the ELS represents what each player wants at a certain point in the game with certain conditions. On this spectrum, games are designed with the player’s interactions, approaches and strategies in mind, each with its own degree of effectiveness and ludoaesthetics. These are not solely defined by mechanics or the player’s skill level, but rather the way in which they are experienced and perceived by the player.

Effectiveness refers to how well the player can progress and achieve their goals in a game using the set of tools they’re given and the strategies they’re allowed to formulate. How easy those tools are to use, and how good they are at helping the player progress towards the game’s intended goals, primarily constitute Effectiveness. Players who aim towards and stay on this end primarily look for the most effective ways to achieve the intended goals of the game (which of course include playing the game the easy way).

Ludoaesthetics refers to the perceivable aesthetic appeals of the aforementioned set of tools and strategies given to the players. Players who aim towards this end do not necessarily look for the most effective ways to achieve the intended goals. But rather they tend to look for the added intrinsic benefits derived from unconventional play. These benefits include:

Superficial Attractiveness: Visual and auditory appeal of using the subject matter or the subject matter itself. It can be represented by any entity the player can recognize in the game such as a character with great visual design, a badass-looking weapon with satisfying visual and sound effects, etc.

Competitiveness: a.k.a. bragging rights. This is rather self-explanatory. There is always that portion of players who keep seeking greater and greater challenges to prove themselves to the world. They may even go as far as handicapping themselves with arbitrary limitations to heighten the challenge.

Greater sense of satisfaction derived from greater challenges that may go beyond the goals intended by the game. People who have been through heights of overwhelming odds know about, and may expect, the immense amount of satisfaction that comes with them.

Narrative Fantasy: Players may look for things that may not be effective or productive in terms of gameplay because they would align with the narrative better (in games that understandably contain some degree of ludonarrative dissonance), or they would add an extra layer of depth and intensity to the narrative and thereby enhancing it. Essentially, they’re sacrificing gameplay optimality to elevate their narrative fantasy.

Design for Ludoaesthetics

The point of designing for ludoaesthetics is NOT to create increasingly harder challenges in order to accommodate the player’s increasing skills (though that is not to say such approach has no merits whatsoever). But rather, it is actually to encourage players to strive for aesthetics in their gameplay and to lean more towards the right side of the spectrum.

Here are a few suggestions on how to go about it.

Creating more depth

Depth refers to the amount of space the player is allowed to make interesting choices using the set of tools they’re given by a game. For a more detailed explanation of what Depth is in comparison to Complexity, you can take a look at Extra Credits’ episode on Depth vs. Complexity.

Essentially, Complexity is the amount of constituent elements that make up a game, and Depth is the degree of interactivity between those elements. The very nature of ludoaesthetics has to do with the deviation from the default, intended approach (a.k.a. Playing “by-the-book.”) Therefore, the more those elements “talk” to one another, the better chance it is for ludoaesthetics to emerge, because then the player will be able to find more different ways to control or manipulate each element.

[Also read: Design for Theorycrafting]

Depth is pretty much the prerequisite for ludoaesthetics even as a concept to exist. Without a lot of depth, the window of opportunities for ludoaesthetics get significantly lower or completely non-existent.

Creating patterns suggesting the possibility of gameplay aesthetics

Adding more depth is not only about simply adding more stuff in a game and making them as obscure as they possibly can be. It is also about leaving breadcrumbs to suggest that there is more than meets the eye, therefore encouraging players to explore further possibilities. What kind of depth to even add? And how does one go about communicating it?

Below is a conceptual representation of a set of challenges typically found in video games.

Each challenge is represented by a window of failure and a window of success. These windows can be spatial, temporal, symbolic, strategic, or a combination of all. They are the spaces in which the player enters by behaving in a certain expected way. Secondly, the black line represents the player’s interactive maneuvers: where to get across and which direction to turn to next, in order to overcome the set of challenges without stumbling into the windows of failure.

For example, say we have a situation in a 3D platformer game where the player is facing a pit, and across the pit leaning towards the right side there is a narrow platform. In such a scenario, we can assume that the window of failure includes any and all sets of behaviors that lead the player plummeting down the pit, and the window of success includes those that lead the player to landing on the platform across the pit safely.

Now consider the same representation of challenge above, but this time with a slight deliberate arrangement.

As you can see, the sizes of the windows of failure and the windows of success stay exactly the same, but the positions of the windows of success have been altered so that they align somewhat (but not exactly aligned to the point of being too obvious). You can see that nested within the windows of success is a narrower window where the amount of the player’s maneuvers stays extremely minimal. Stepping into this window offers the opportunity for a non-disrupted gameplay flow, where a deliberate and guided set of behaviors will let the player “breeze” through the challenges seemingly almost with ease. This window is where ludoaesthetics occur.

Of course, the downsides of it are aplenty: it can be extremely difficult to realize such a window exists in a real scenario. And in order to stay inside such a narrow window, the player has to be extremely precise and/or smart in their gameplay. You can think of this window of non-disrupted flow as an intended “weak point” of the challenge, where a single and concentrated attack will break the whole thing apart in one fell swoop. But the process of identifying such a weak point, and delivering the finishing blow with great accuracy may require a lot of trials and errors, and can be extremely tedious and/or difficult.

An Example from Master Spy

A common manifestation of ludoaesthetics comes in the form of speedrunning. Finishing with speed is, for the majority of games, not the primary intended goal. Games are rarely ever designed to be speedrun, and most players do not have to finish any games at high speed in order to not miss anything. So speedrunning has always been a sort of arbitrary self-imposed challenge by those who seek greater sense of enjoyment from their favorite games.

However, there are a few exceptions. And you can find the above mentioned window of non-disrupted flow in levels like this one from Master Spy by Kris Truitt.

In this game you play the role of the Master Spy, to infiltrate ridiculously well-guarded buildings, palaces and fortresses with a huge number of different enemies, hazards and contraptions standing in your way. And you are given no tools whatsoever but an invisibility cloak that can help you sneak past the eyesight of certain enemies while halving your movement speed.

In the example above, your goal is to retrieve the keycard on the other side of the wall slightly to the right of your starting point, and then to escape through the white door right above your starting point safely. And while your cloak can get you past the eyesight of the guards, it is of no use whatsoever against the dogs, who can smell you even when you’re cloaked and will sprint forwards to attack you at horrendous speed as soon as you’re on the same ground as them.

So what you have to do as a sequence of actions in this level is first to cloak yourself, then drop down from the first ledge past the the first guard, then quickly decloak to regain speed as the cloak is useless against the incoming dogs. Then before the first dog reaches you, move forward to the right, then quickly jump up. Keep jumping to retrieve the keycard while avoiding the second and third dog. Cloak up, then get on the ledge with the three moving guards. Finally, jump to the left to reach your destination.

However, as you can see from the footage above (courtesy of a speedrunner nicknamed Obidobi), as soon as the player reaches the ledge with the three moving guards on the right, the guards turn to the other side and begin moving away from where the player is, effectively freeing the player from having to cloak and having their movement speed halved. And then right before the player reaches for the white door, the guard on the far right is about to touch the wall and thereby turning back to the left. This is such a tiny window of success that should the player not have begun moving right after they started the level and stayed uncloaked at the end, they would have failed. The level is designed in such a way that it can be completely solved without wasting any moment and action.

Is it significantly more difficult to play this way? Yes. Was this arrangement absolutely necessary? Not really. But the designer made the level with the expectation that people are going to speedrun the game and will be looking to optimize their timing with each level. Thus, the levels in Master Spy are designed so that should the player start looking to speedrun the game, they will easily recognize that sweet, sweet window of non-disrupted flow. It is an immensely satisfying experience to discover it.

Ensure Usability

As usual, it is easy to get too extremely logical about design and forget all about the equilibrium, which is almost always what design is about.

In this case, it is important that designers must ensure that whatever tools they’re making for their players to achieve ludoaesthetics, MUST have at least some sort of usability, even if it’s incredibly niche or extremely difficult to pull off. Things that serve nothing and mean nothing are NOT aesthetic. Say you have an RPG, and one of your players goes out of their way in order to build an unconventional character because they see some sort of future potential from this build, only to find out later that when they’re finished with the build, the meta of the game has changed and the window of opportunity for such a build has long passed. This means that the entire amount of depth you added, and the ludoaesthetics you might have intended by allowing that player to go in such away, is utterly useless and entirely wasted. So always remember to ensure usability for everything you add in your game.

Conclusion

Organic Difficulty and the ELS are not only, and not necessarily, an alternative solution to the whole difficulty problem. But rather, they represent an entire paradigm shift away from the idea that games should find more and more complex ways to serve players with different skill levels, and towards a design philosophy where players are given integrated tools within the context of games to set their own difficulty at any point without breaking immersion and perhaps the extra baggage of shame. It is not enough to have your players stay at the same level of difficulty throughout the game, or dynamically adjust the difficulty on the fly to suit them. It is best, in my opinion, to let your players cook to their palate. Just make sure that the process of cooking and the game itself are one and the same.（source：gamasutra.com ）