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I'm a huge fan of the N64 kart-racer Diddy Kong Racing. Actually, the N64 had a lot of great racing games. Many people are most familiar with Mario Kart 64, but I much preferred F-Zero X, WaveRace, and even the rarely praised ExciteBike 64.
All of these games shared a similar story for me, and I'll bet that I'm not entirely alone in my experience. Excited to get into this new game, I'd start playing it the day I picked it up. I'd play it a lot -- as all of these were all very tight and challenging games. Somewhere between a few hours and a few weeks after picking it up, depending on lifestyle, I'd get some friends over and play it multiplayer.
There are certainly those social groups that form around these games, playing routinely every night, or once per week, or some such pattern. For those groups, these titles likely lived long, healthy lives -- a long, head-to-head story of competition between rivals.
For most of us, though, the pattern tends to not come together that way. Often, it looks a bit more like this: you'd bring home the game, excitedly play it for awhile, eventually get a friend over to play...
...and you're squarely better than them, to the point where this otherwise great game effectively sucks now. You're so far ahead that you never even interact. It's not fun for either of you, and you'll very likely not play again.
I refer to this as a problem of "skill deficits" -- a difference in two competitors' levels of ability. Very few games can survive this, if any, and it's arguable that those who do aren't worth playing. It's also, in a practical world, somewhat unavoidable. People are going to achieve different levels of skills in games. It's even arguable that the larger the possible ranges of skill-levels possible, the more credit the game deserves. This is what we generally refer to as "depth" in gameplay.
So, while skill deficits are not avoidable, they are manageable. The question is, how are we managing them? Are developers really aware of this problem, and if so, why are some developers making design calls that exacerbate it? Worst of all -- could we be making destructive design calls that damage our games, winning a pyrrhic victory on the war against skill deficits?
Analyzing the Problem
Skill deficits are a problem, but they aren't necessarily a problem of any particular game. In other words, I don't hold the skill deficit problem against F-Zero. In fact, it's important that players of vastly greater skill are able to win by large margins. This expresses the dynamism and depth of the system which most of us agree are important qualities for games to have. Games, it's largely agreed, are systems heavily dependent on learning. If learning is possible, then it naturally follows that bad players turn into good, leaving those who have played less behind.
So skill deficits are a problem that we can't necessarily blame the game itself for. I'll get into who we can blame later, but for now, it's worth having a solid understanding of why skill deficits are actually a problem.
The situation I described above, wherein players end up not playing a great game due to skill deficits is not the problem, but rather a symptom of the problem. The real problem is that the contest element of games -- the "let's see who is going to win" aspect -- is not present.
This contest element is crucial, because it presents the players with a non-pre-determined outcome in which their choices (input) have influence. Surely we can all agree that player input should matter in a game, but if the outcome is predetermined -- as is essentially the case in a vastly outmatched contest -- then your input essentially does not matter.
On paper, that seems like it should be problematic. In reality, it's also known to be problematic. Who wants to play against someone that they truly know they won't win against? For that matter, who really wants to play against someone that they truly know they won't lose against?
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F2P models also currently tend to promote non-cooperative play, because they usually sell advantage (again because this requires the least skill/effort to design), and what is the point of buying advantage if you can't use it? So there are a number of current trends that are undermining the good game play of yesteryear.
do you have any material about cooperative play mechanisms ? You say it involves more design work but I'd really like to know what kind of additionnal effort it requires in order to estimate if it worth (in term of gameplay quality) doing.
Keith: again I am a bit surprised that with 12 years more technology, our game designs are becoming simpler not more complex. Again this seems to be due to changes in business models since companies don't know how to sell large scale competitive games without using either a subscription ( a poor option) or pay to win (an even worse option).
Cheers!
"We're allowing our competitive games to be damaged unnecessarily because of this silliness. Instead of using handicaps, we're injecting randomness, or worse, modifying the rules of our games to make them fundamentally "looser" so that skill matters less. Handicaps allow a single game to accomplish both."
"People house-rule and alter those sets of rules all the time, and handicaps can be thought of as a house-ruling."
"What's interesting about this is that your handicap level acts as a sort of RPG-like metagame ladder for you to climb."
"If we're going to embrace handicaps, we're going to have to take the endeavor seriously. Coming up with handicaps is a serious game design job."
I totally agree that handicapping can allow players of different skill levels to compete with equal chances. Sometimes I let my little cousins tickle me when it's my turn driving :)
In racing, there's a very old way of handicapping: to use different cars. The better driver can choose a less powerful, heavier or less grippy car. It's better than a time gap, because it lets drivers start together.
And yes, playing the meta game of improving your handicap is lots of fun.
The analogy is Poker. A game where even I can beat a Pro on any given night if I just keep getting the cards. But in the long run the Pros would crush me.
That is how I see Mario Kart.
Also there are handicaps to some degree in a Mario Kart. Certain vehicles/accessories/drivers seem worse than others on any given track. Maybe this isn't true for a total expert master. But I am decent at the game and I know some cars make me much worse.
It's also more likely to survive a tightly balanced game where changing the handicap variable makes it trivial, as in the shoulder ram situation. Another good example in this case is Marvel vs. Capcom 3, where the handicap (which can only lower your character's health, not raise it) makes your character die in 1 combo instead of 2, removing most of the exciting last-second comeback factor from the game.
Personally, I think it really depends on what kind of game you are trying to make and, more importantly, how you want your audience to respond. As the article pointed out, games with handicaps eliminate the certainty of a win and make for a "light at the end of the tunnel" outlook, even for players of much lower skill levels. But, as the article also points out, this means that a player who does everything right still has a chance of losing, despite his or her perfect execution. Assuming the role of the better player in the latter situation, I would find this extremely frustrating.
It also seems like handicaps would be most important and effective in situations where you are determined to play with certain individuals in a localized setting (ie I've decided to play with my friends, at my house, despite their skill levels). For matches against random opponents online, it seems like skill deficits would be solved via match-making (though it's entirely possible that my knowledge of match-making systems is incorrect or incomplete).
One statement in this article that caught my attention was on the last page, regarding Smash Bros. handicap system:
"I generally mitigate this by simply vowing not to take advantage of this new power, but it's clear that Smash Bros. with handicaps is nowhere near tournament-ready."
Is a tournament a setting in which you would really want to have handicaps? Aren't tournaments presented as a way of determining and demonstrating skill level? If so, wouldn't you want the players who are better to rise to the top and win? Again, I think handicaps would be more appropriate for scenarios in which you don't want large skill deficits to get in the way of having fun with your friends (or any other competitors). I think by entering a tournament, however, you are subjecting yourself to an environment in which there are highly varying levels of skill and the best are expected (and encouraged) to win.
1. Psychology / bluffing
2. Self balancing mechanics
In a way I think these 2 options are much much better than all of handicapping, rubber banding and randomness.
The beauty of poker is that new players can't just compete because of randomness, but they can compete due to their innate ability to bluff or try to read other players, and guess when their friends are lying.
Self balancing mechanics are a bit like rubber banding but much more sensible and acceptable in their approach. Natural fair mechanics which make the player less powerful the more he wins. A good example of this is in counter-strike - once you've shot someone, your position is revealed and you are much more likely to die. Similarly as you fire multiple bullets, your accuracy decreases, so shooting the 1st person is easy, but continuing to shoot the 2nd and 3rd - you are much more likely to die. Have you ever seen a player switch to their pistol after killing 2-3 people? That is a beautiful piece of self balancing at work. :)
http://hci.usask.ca/uploads/201-p2355-bateman.pdf
Some tidbits I can think of from golf:
Have a cutoff point for handicapping players where they no longer get any benefit. Above that point, everyone plays competitively on the same level, regardless of your skill. It keeps things interesting at high levels of play. For golf, this happens when you can play every course at par (a "scratch" player).
Official tournament play should probably not have handicaps. Casual play normally benefits from handicaps.
You need to be careful how handicaps are set, because if players catch on they'll abuse the system (playing badly to establish a high handicap which they use to win a single competition with an unfair advantage). That's even more frustrating than being beaten by someone who "got lucky" with injected randomness.
Probably because I am an avid fighting game fan.
As a matter of fact I am aware of the problem but I think this applies only to casual party games.
there are a lot of competitive games that actually strives to be E-Sports, and as E-Sports they can't possibly accept to falsify the outcome of a challenge.
Quite frankly, if someone purposely buys a competitive game and gets beaten through random luck or rubberbanding, wouldn't he feel cheated by the game?
I think in the end that this is a problem but is more like a problem of old...
Today we do play online, we can always find our match. The real focus should be in ranking systems that carefully sorts players in a way to match every player with a set of opponents comparable to his level.
Randomness and rubberbanding works great for certain type of games, more akin to party games and casual gaming.
But most competitive games and the players who plays them aim for an honest challenge of skill.
This isn't about serious tournaments, where obviously you want the best player to win, and you wouldn't put rules that benefit some players. It's about casual matches.
Online matching is ok. But what if two Greeks want to play in Greek? It's hard to match players where the pool is so small. That's when you need handicaps.
A competitive game is supposed to be what it is; all about skills. The purpose is to learn and master. If you are better than your friends, then you have something to teach. If your friends are less experienced than you are, they have something to learn. If they cannot enjoy losing 50 times in a row, then they don't understand what is fun about competitive games. Competitive players don't care about winning or losing, they just play to improve their skills. If you cannot enjoy winning all the time against your friends, then imagine how it feels like to be the best player in the world; it's sucks, but it's necessary. Everyone has a function or a role to play; that's just life.
Usually in FPS games, players tend to play cooperatively with their less experienced friends instead of playing against them, but in fighting games, choices are limited.
And as Simone Tanzi said, it's crucial for competitive games to have a proper Online ranking system. One that is at least similar to the one that was featured in Halo 2 (Matchmaking) or better. When such system doesn't exist, the greater players will have to do the job for the whole team, that becomes work and that's not fun. It's especially true in games with handicaps (character classes such as in Battlefield Bad Company 2).
In general, handicaps would just change the nature of the game and prevent less experienced players to learn their lessons and correct their patterns. If someone wants to play a casual game, then he should just play a casual game and there is nothing wrong with that.