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[baconman]

^ Those moving spike platforms that "threaten to crush you," but stop before they reach a position where they actually can. Or even touch you at all, unless you run/jump into them.

[Christian223]

It Batman Arkham asylum the enemies let you know when they are going to hit you, at to attack you just have to press one button. You can take lots of enemies like this with no problem, its really fun, and offers no challenge at all, its just fun to jump from enemy to enemy until you have defeated everyone in a rush of combos.

It is a mini game with a clear goal, to defeat the thugs and survive. But also has lots of mini goals, like doing lots of combos, not being hit once, throwing thugs at each other, try to launch a thug into a pit, do one hit takedowns, this added things are not necessary to win, but give a bit more challenge. It has the effect of adding as much difficulty as you want to your own style of play, if you want to achieve certain specific unnecessary but fun things, you need to make a bit more effort, but thats entirely up to you, and it just makes the game more fun, whether you do it or not, you win anyway doing the minimum necessary thing which is extremely easy.

[HyperNexus]

Interesting topic. I'm not sure if I agree on framework proposed but it does provide an interesting way to look at challenge that I hadn't considered before.

The best way for art games and those are trying to get mass appeal is create a system in which the more you put into it the more you get out of it. For example Tetris is such a system. The more you play and the better you get, the more challenge you are offered and the richer your experience becomes. Doing this doesn't discriminate against players who can't meet the initial challenge, it just incentivises them with attainable challenges.

Games don't have to challenge to be worthwhile. They can just be playful and exploratory, like Kyntt. They can teach interesting things or convey life messages. These things have plenty of value too.

This concept was put into so many games for so long and still plagues us today, but why is it there? It made sense for coin-ops because you had to pay money to get more lives, but look at Super Meat Boy. It says "Why have lives? Why punish the player for dying anymore than the natural punishment of the fact that they don't get to progress until they beat the thing that is killing them?

I'm seeing this thrown around a lot as of late, but I think it ignores two important factors: Challenging games are obstacle courses and beating things (levels, individual obstacles, etc.) in sequence can be a challenge in itself. Also, putting more at stake can make a game more exciting.

I think that the use of lives in games provides two things that sort of rub up against each other. Limiting the number of lives provided can be perceived as a challenge. Challenge, especially those that we feel are doable, add to intrinsic motivation. On the flip side it can be perceived as punishment, punishment kills intrinsic motivation. It's all a matter of how these things are perceived by the player. Super Meat Boy is actually a fantastic example of using both well. In the warp zones and negative levels you have limited lives unlike the standard levels. This adds an element of risk(or tension) which elicits different(more conservative?) types of play.

[s0]

I haven't played Super Meat Boy yet (). I was thinking more along the lines of games with lots of checkpoints or regenerating health or whatever.

[X3N]

I think there's a serious distinction between single-player and multi-player challenge. Mechanics vs mental evaluation. I find this game pretty interesting (reposted from somewhere else on the forums):

http://www.epicmafia.com/home

As it's *all* psychology / convincing, with some mechanics but.. the social aspects crush the mechanical parts of it.

[thedaemon]

I just had a million dollar idea. How about a game where you get to be a troll (modern term not green warty beast) and ruin as many people's day as possible?