Flow theory is pretty basic stuff for
game design. It is helpful to understand
so that you can provide the player with
challenges that will engage them while
they are playing. Last week I made a
video on flow theory where we went over
the basics and learned about flow graphs.
Here's a card if you want to go back and
watch the first video or there's a link
down below. We were investigating getting
the player into a flow state and keeping
them there and at the end we arrived at
this statement. And so in this video
we're going to dig into keeping the
player in the flow state by regulating
the challenge we  present them. This part. So
let's talk about a few common ways to do
this and the first thing and probably
the biggest takeaway from the video is
going to be the tension curve.
Hi, my name is Gigity McD and here on
the channel we talk about the ins and
outs of game design so that you are
equipped to analyze discuss and create
great games. The narrative tension curve
has been around for ages. It is almost
always seen when applied to the plotline
of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It
looks like this and it represents the
tension the audience is feeling as the
movie progresses. Showing a progression
of peaks and valleys as the story
progresses. The reason it looks like this
is because audiences burnout if the
stakes keep rising. If you go from a foot
chase, straight into a car chase, straight
into a chase in fighter jets the
audience doesn't have any chance to rest
and will become bored by the constant
rise in tension.
They burnout essentially. So in
constructing a narrative there needs to
be sections where the audience has a
chance to recover before raising the
tension further in another big action
scene. Flow follows a similar model. If we
want the best feeling gameplay we can't
just make the player encounter harder
and harder enemies, we need to follow a
similar curve to make sure the player
has a chance to recover from the intense
moments before we throw them back into
the hot water. So the progression that
the player should follow through the
challenges in the game should look like
this. It's not a perfect match to the
narrative pacing but it's pretty similar.
I find the world description is the best
If we have a set of worlds the start of
a world should be pretty tame in
comparison to the end of that world but
then when moving to the next world we
should follow a similar pattern. The
start of world two being harder than the
start of world one but being easier than
the finale of world one. And we can adapt
this idea to levels or to sections of a
level etc. These lulls also present good
times to teach the players new skills.
The mobile game two dots does this well.
You start with some easy levels, maybe a
mechanic is introduced, you get a few
levels where the play field is more
tricky,
then you come across a hard level. Then
after the hard level we go back to easy
levels and then repeat the process. The
next thing we're going to be talking
about is dynamic difficulty adjustments
or often shortened to DDA. This is a set
of principles that are designed to push
the player back towards the play state.
They are commonly applied though to help
push the player out of anxiety. They are
applied less to making the game harder
to bring the player up out of boredom.
Usually it involves monitoring the
player's status and making small
adjustments to help them out when they
really need it. A few examples are... in
Doom 2016 when the enemy flashes a
certain color, you can use it glory kill
on them. These glory kills release health
vials to heal the player. If the player
is low on health,
more vials will be released to help get
them out of a state that is near death.
In Crash Bandicoot if the player has
died several times on a section, when
respawning to the continue box they
will be awarded an aku-aku mask. This
functions as a hit point that may help
the player in passing the section if
they are dying to enemies or
environmental hazards. In the boulder
running levels the game may also slow
down the boulder if the player keeps
dying to make it easier and easier.
Another application of DDA of a
different flavor is valves AI director
in the left the Dead games. In left the
dead the game would track how well the
player performed on the last set of
zombies they had to fight. And when the
game needed to spawn more it would try
to spawn dynamically an amount that
would challenge the player but also not
overwhelm them immensely. Finally the
classic example and a good example of
bringing the challenge up for players
that are performing well. Mariokart.
Mariokart will give better items to players
further behind to help them get back
into the race and will give worse items
to players in first making being pack
leader much more intense. These kinds of
applications of DDA mean that the game
can adjust its difficulty on-the-fly as
the player plays the game. This means
that if the level balance that the
developers designed the game with
doesn't fit the current player, well the
game has some cards up its sleeve to try
and keep them in the flow state. There's
an awesome talk by the guys at Witch Beam about how they are layered in a lot
of these kinds of techniques to help
make an engaging experience for the
players of Assault Android Cactus,
regardless of their skill level. Another
commonly used way to help keep players
in the flow state
is centering the game around a leveling
system. So a player that is level 30
should be a good match for a quest that
is level 30.
This puts responsibility for challenge
back on the player and also somewhat
surfaces the underlying difficulty of
the tasks they are undertaking. Are you
the same level as a quest? Well it's
probably a good fit for you. Are you a
few levels ahead? Well you might have
some fun with the narrative and the
systems but the challenge may not be
super imposing. A couple of levels below
a quest perhaps? How hard is too hard for
you? You could go in now and see how you
go or you could do something else until
your level is higher. Are you level 5 and
that quest is level 38 in a level 40
zone? Might not be the best choice. This
allows the player to pick their own
battles to some extent. And we can see
that these techniques are all leaning on
providing the player an experience that
is right for them. And sometimes it can
be as simple as making a game easier
to understand or to perceive. In the first
three Uncharted games, ammo and weapons
would appear as little flashing guns on
the ground but these can be pretty hard
to see when you're trying to take cover
from bullets and you are out of ammo. So
a simple change to add a little column
of light makes finding ammo a little
less tense. Similarly just putting time
into creating a cohesive experience that
is well designed such as good
signposting so the player doesn't get
lost will help keep the player in a flow
state as they won't be running around
trying to find where they're going. And
this is where I might leave it. Go and
have a watch of the GDC talk by Witch 
Beam to see some examples of how these
topics are layered over the top of each
other in one single game. Thanks for
watching and I'll see you for Design Run next Friday.
