FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Physical Coordination Challenges
Physical coordination challenges test a player's physical abilities, most commonly hand-eye coordination. One of the earliest coin-op video games, Pong, required only this one skill to win. Physical coordination challenges remain a basic component of arcade gaming and a significant part of most video games to this day. They fall into several subcategories, which the following sections discuss.
The absolute difficulty of a physical coordination challenge most frequently relates to the amount of time pressure the player is under; to make such a challenge easier, simply give the player more time. Each subcategory addresses exceptions when they occur.
Speed challenges test the player's ability to make rapid inputs on the controls, and reaction time challenges test his ability to react quickly to events. Both of these usually appear in combination with other types of challenges, most often other coordination challenges. You can expect to find speed and reaction time challenges in platform games, shooters, and fast puzzle games such as Tetris. From the frenetic button-banging of Konami's 1983 arcade game Track & Field (two buttons controlled an athlete's legs; the player pressed them alternately to make the athlete run) to the modern-day frenzy of the latest Quake game, speed and reaction time challenges perennially please those who have the reflexes for them.
Steering and shooting comprise the majority of tests of accuracy or precision, though you can devise many more. Steering includes navigating characters as well as vehicles. Usually found in action and action-adventure games, sports games, and vehicle simulations, accuracy and precision challenges increasingly feature in roleplaying games, such as the Fable series, which include a combat element. Brain training games, which are intended to sharpen a player's mental and motor skills, often include accuracy and precision challenges to test the player's hand-eye coordination. Because brain training games are not usually aimed at conventional gamers, the challenges are seldom characterized as steering or shooting.
Accuracy challenges need not take place within time limits; in a sport such as archery, athletes may take as long as they want to line up a shot but still face a considerable challenge. To make an accuracy challenge easier or harder, adjust the degree to which the physics engine in the game forgives errors in the inputs. For example, the player of an archery game ordinarily needs to position the joystick or mouse within a particular range of values to hit the bull's-eye; you can make the game easier by widening that range.
INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING OF PHYSICS
Vehicle simulations require more than just an ability to steer a vehicle; they also require an intuitive understanding of the physics of the game world. Players must learn, usually through experience, a car's braking distance, acceleration rate, at what rate it may take a turn without sliding off the road, and so on. Learning and internalizing these features of the game world and the vehicle constitute another challenge. Games such as pool and darts also require the player to develop an intuitive understanding of physics. These appear under physical coordination challenges because the player tends to develop a visceral rather than an intellectual understanding of these aspects of the game world (darts players don't need to know calculus), which finds its expression in successful physical coordination.
You can help the player develop an intuitive understanding of the game's physics. First, make sure the physics remains consistent. The physics engine must be reliable and produce predictable results. Programmers handle the physics engine, but you should also keep this in mind. Second, the simpler the physical model of the world, the easier it will be for the player to develop that intuitive understanding. Sports games often simplify their physics to help the player. For example, many sports games don't implement the physical property of inertia for an athlete running under the player's control because the player wants to be able to turn his player instantaneously and will find it harder to get used to the game if he cannot. Flight simulators, too, model the physics of flight with greater and lesser degrees of accuracy depending on how easy the designer wants to make it for the player to understand how the airplane behaves.
Side-scrolling action games rely heavily on timing challenges, in which the player learns to dodge swinging blades and attack predictable enemies. Rhythm challenges, tests of the player's ability to press the right button at the right time, feature in dance games such as Dance Dance Revolution and other music-based games such as Donkey Konga and Guitar Hero. The popularity of rhythm-based games resulted in a significant aftermarket in specialty input devices such as dance mats and electronic conga drums.
Many fighting games require complex sequences of joystick moves and controller - button presses that, once mastered, allow the player's avatar to perform some especially powerful feat. (See the section "Fighting Games" in Chapter 13, "Action Games.") Executing a combo move requires speed, timing, and a good memory, too: The player has to remember the button sequence and produce it perfectly at just the right time. You can make combination moves easier by shortening them, requiring fewer presses.
