“Go fetch three parts of a gun for me.”
Is this quest a challenge or just a chore?
The answer is - it depends. Read on for what makes the difference.
What are chores?
The stuff you do to get the the fun part of the game.
To start off with, no one plays games for the chores. Sure there’s plenty of games with grindy bits that are chores, like Minecraft farming and xp gathering, but generally there are layers of problem-solving and mastery involved. Particularly in Minecraft.
If you run around a city to pick up 3 pieces of a gun and then bring them back to the quest-giver to get the gun… that’s a chore. Kill 5 snoose-blarbs can also be a chore if the blarbs are face-roll easy to kill. And if your game has too many tasks like this, then you haven’t made a game you just made a job. (See almost all of Lost Ark.)
FUN comes from interaction with systems, creative problem solving, interesting choices, tension, and challenges. A task that merely only requires the player’s time and none of these other elements is, by my definition, a chore.
As Sid Meier once said, “Games are a series of interesting decisions.”
Today I’m going to focus on challenges, as they’re kind of an umbrella compared to the other things I just mentioned. A challenge is any task the player can fail at, is difficult enough that they might fail at it, and which has consequences for failure.
Types of consequences include,
Wasted Time
Wasted Resources
Makes the Situation Worse (potentially leading to greater failure such as game over.)
And so on.
The failure part is really what’s important. If they can’t fail, it’s not a challenge. Even if failure merely means they spent more resources on achieving the task than desired. Even if the threat of failure existed only in the player’s mind. This includes challenges that are so easy that failure isn’t possible. (I’m looking at you F2P industry.)
Failure has to exist because challenges are secretly about learning, exploration, discovery, and the progression of one’s skills and/or power in the game. Growing to overcome challenges is the essence of what makes games rewarding. Its the part that makes us feel good about ourselves. Its the glory. Its the triumph. Its the true reward.
So, no failure = not a challenge = not a game.
Which can be tough for some game developers. Every failure has a small percent chance to make a player quit the game and a small percentage of those leave bad reviews as well. It’s a paradox because players hate failing yet without failure there’s no game, only inevitable boredom.
The Original Question
“Go fetch three parts of a gun for me.”
Whether this is a chore or a challenge comes down “what’s stopping the player from doing this?”
If the player simply runs around, boops the pickups, and returns… that’s a chore not a challenge.
If I’ve hidden the parts around the city and the player has to look for clues that will lead them to the goal, that’s a challenge. They’ll have to use and improve several mental skills in order to find them all, or they’ll fail.
If the parts are in hard-to-reach places that demand the player successfully platformer their way to them, that’s a challenge.
In a classic MMORPG, the player would likely have to fight patrolling enemies as they gather the parts. If some mobs are stationary and some are patrollers, the player will have to use situational awareness and planning to avoid becoming overwhelmed/killed.
Pretty simple stuff if you’ve played a lot of RPGs, yet I just named a whole host of challenges.
The player’s character must have sufficient power to fight these mobs. (Progression Challenge)
The player must have the skill of execution sufficient to fight these mobs. (Skill challenge)
The player is using their IRL skill of situational awareness to keep an eye out for incoming threats while fighting. (Mental challenge)
The player is using their IRL skill of planning a way through the area to minimize the combat dangers (and work) to themselves. Perhaps using utility or movement abilities of their character to achieve higher efficiency. (Mental challenge)
Some of you may think these are “skills” rather than skills, but having tried to teach a few retirees and young children how to play World of Warcraft, I can tell you that you’re taking your own bad-assitude for granted. These are not givens. Gamers develop them unwittingly as they strive towards their goals of kill-that-orc and steal-that-gem.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on the matter. They’re on top of my head these days because I’m developing content (writing, quest implementation, etc) for a video game.
Grand Theft Gato is effectively an open-world RPG. And despite all the cat-based antics, I’m always trying to keep in mind the basic elements of an engaging RPG when writing its quests (called Tasks cause its in a modern setting.)
Such as avoiding chores and focusing on fun challenges. Which is why the game has a lot of tasks that involve complications such as requiring parkour, avoiding damaging hazards, completing time trials, finding hidden items, stealth segments, and basic combat encounters.