Frustration vs Challenge

I’ve been thinking about frustration and challenge in video games. The topic came up on Listen Up a while ago and they seemed to dismiss it, simply saying that developers shouldn’t allow frustration to be a part of the experience. But is that possible? It seems to me like frustration is related to a core concept of game design: challenge.

Some people I know want to be constantly challenged when they’re playing games. If they’re not dying left and right, starting portions over, and learning to master them 100%, they’re unhappy. I, on the other hand, am guilty of spending months where every game I play will be started on the easiest mode offered to me. I go through phases where I just want to complete games because I am interested in their story, I want to be able to check the game off as having been completed, or I just am interested in the play mechanic and want to give it a try. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to play games with multiple modes on the most neutral option offered. Many video games traditionally offer three difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, and Hard. I’ve been trying to stick to Normal, because I want to experience some degree of challenge again, but I also want to make progress so that I can move on to other games without feeling like I wasted money on a game I didn’t get to see any of besides the first two levels and a game over screen.

I’ve been playing Henry Hatsworth, though, and although I haven’t finished it yet (I’ll write more about it specifically when I do), it is a very hard game that does not offer an easy mode. I find myself replaying individual portions over and over again. But while I would say that I am definitely challenged by EA’s game, I am rarely frustrated. Why? It’s not because of some kind of Prince of Persia-esque system in which it prevents death and removes consequence— in fact, there have been many instances in Henry Hatsworth where I find myself staring at the screen that tells me I have one fewer life left than I previously had before I even realized what happened. Dying before finishing a crucial point in a stage can result in you having to replay half of the stage all over again.

I’ve talked to casual gamers about why they play games and what they want. Most of the ones I’ve talked to don’t want challenge, and I think that in general the design of casual games and classic arcade games (the ones that, like casual games, were made for an “expanded audience” because there was no “core audience” at the time) tries to eliminate challenge for as much of the play experience as possible. You play until you are challenged, and by the time you hit the point of actually feeling the challenge vs your skill level you are in too deep, you have died, and you must insert a quarter or enter your initials. The challenge is the way that the structure of the game imposes itself on you to provide a single play session. Otherwise it is transparent because you are transcending it.

So what is the difference between frustration and challenge? I’m talking purely about frustration derived from challenge, in this situation, rather than the kind of frustration that can arise because of a bug or an obvious flaw that the designers could not have intended in any way. Prince of Persia took away consequence in an attempt to make it more accessible, but I would say that I found myself extremely frustrated by the game on a number of occasions. I can call it “broken”, but the game was very purposefully set up the way it was. On the flip side, Henry Hatsworth is one of the most challenging games I’ve played in years, but I am personally not frustrated by it in almost any way.

My suggestion is this: that challenge can lead to frustration, but only in the hands of the individual player. You can’t engineer away frustration without simultaneously eliminating challenge. Frustration comes from outside sources. When I try to analyze, over the years, where frustration has really been coming from, I can think of a number of sources:

• I wasn’t interested in playing the game as a whole, I just wanted the moment-to-moment feeling of the game or to see the plot
• I was disappointed by what I thought I was going to get from the game
• I felt my time could have been better spent doing something else
• I doubted my own ability to surmount the challenges posed to me

That’s not all, either! Every time I sit down to play a game, I bring my current mindset with me. Sometimes that’s happy and curious and ready to be filled with wonder. Sometimes it’s angry and spiteful or depressed and worthless. All of these things can affect my enjoyment of a game, for good or for bad. Gaming is not done in a vacuum, and frustration is the result of the developer’s inability to predict how you will respond to challenge.