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Conflict Case Studies
As these examples illustrate, more than one form of conflict can exist within the scope of a single game design. Next we take a detailed look at three different games, focusing on the ways each one configures competition and cooperation between players. All three games are arcade games from the 1980s: Centipede, Joust, and Gauntlet. Each game weaves its own surprisingly complex fabric of player conflict.
Centipede
Our first example is the arcade game Centipede, in which the player uses a trackball controller and fire button to move a character at the bottom of the screen and shoot at objects coming down from the top. Centipede might seem at first glance to have a simple and straightforward structure of conflict. But in fact, the formal system provides many ways for players to struggle and pursue goals.
As a single-player experience, you compete against the program.The game compiles an ongoing "score" based on your performance, and the presumed goal of the game is to achieve the highest score.
There are many ways that you might pursue goals related to the high score goal of the game. You might have a general idea of what constitutes a "good score," which you try to achieve. Or you might try to surpass your previous game's score, or attain a new personal best score.
You might set other goals besides those involving your score. For example, you might try to play for a certain · amount of time, get to a certain level in the game, or destroy every enemy of a particular type that appears. Several of these goals might co-exist with each other and with the score-oriented goals.
Centipede can be played as a two-player game. Both players alternate play, switching places when the current player loses a life. If you compete against another player in this way, the quantifiable outcome of the game (your score) has new meaning. It is no longer only an indicator of your personal success but becomes a way to compare your performance to that of the other player. Two-player Centipede is a zero-sum competition, where one player wins and the other player loses. In this sense, the actual game scores are important only insofar as they are used to determine the winner. The numeric scores of the players are translated into binary win/lose values.
Aspects of the single-player competition can be combined with aspects of the two-player competition. You might have lost to your opponent, but you might also have gotten your best score ever, in which case you won in your own self- competition, even while losing to the other player in the zero-sum conflict of the two-player game.
The fact that players can enter their initials into a high score list creates a different kind of competition: you compete against previous players, whom you probably have never met. This competition is more indirect: you compare your score with their scores, and if you are one of the top eight players, you get to enter your initials into the game for other players to see, bumping off the player at the bottom of the list. However, you might later be bumped off as well. Here, your numeric score is translated into a scaled rank: either your score wasn't high enough to put you on the list, or you entered the list at a specific rank.
There are other competition scenarios as well. For example, you might play as a single player and set the goal of making it onto the high score list. In this case, you turn the game into a system of competition with a binary win/loss condition: either you make it onto the high score list or you don't.
You might have an ongoing rivalry with a friend about who can achieve the higher score on Centipede. The two of you are not good enough to get on the high score list, but you can still keep track of your relative scores. Your score in this scenario is translated into a rank between you and your friend, a rank that changes as one of you bests the other's higher score.
Joust
Who knew so many different forms of conflict were lurking under the surface of a simple arcade game? Our next example adds even more. In Joust, two players maneuver bird-mounted knights, attacking enemies controlled by the program. Both players can play the game simultaneously, instead of alternat-· ing turns. This structure opens up whole new forms of competition.
Joust can be a single-player game. Individual players receive a score and there is a list of player high scores, including separate rankings for daily high scores and "all time" high scores. Most of the forms of competition in · Centipede also occur in Joust.
Two players could compete to see who gains the higher score over the course of a game. Because players do not alternate turns but compete simultaneously, the scores of · both players are visible at all times, heightening the drama of this form of competition.
The simultaneous two-player structure opens other possibilities for conflict. Two Joust players can attack each other if they wish. One way to play the game is as a fighting game, where players directly attack each other, killing their opponent with a successful attack. The goal of the competition in this case is to kill your opponent more times than you are killed. Playing the game in this way turns Joust into a zero-sum game. Numerical scores do not matter, only who is left alive at the end.
Joust
It is also possible for two players to refrain from attacking each other and instead work together to defeat the com-puter-generated enemies, strategically coordinating their actions. In this case, the two players compete together against the computer. They might set a goal of reaching the highest level or for playing as long as possible.
Even if players cooperate, they might still compete in other ways. For example, two players coordinating their actions against the computer might compete to get the higher score.
Often, these different kinds of competition overlap. The game design of Joust makes it easy for a player to kill another player: if they collide, the one that is in a higher position destroys the other one. Even cooperating players sometimes accidentally kill each other, an event that usually affects the competitive flow of the game. After an accidental killing, one player might become resentful and aggressive and the game might transition into the "fighting game" version of Joust. Or the accidental killer might let his opponent kill him one time, just to balance things out. The game might also just continue as usual.
Competitive tensions persist throughout the game. Because both players are operating on the screen at the same time, there may be competition about where and how they should play, even if they are not actively trying to kill each other. For example, two players might both wish to occupy a certain section of the screen or attack a specific group of enemy characters. An accidental player-killing (or the threat of one) can enter the game as a result, opening up additional competitive complexities.
Gauntlet
In Joust, the two-player simultaneous structure adds new layers to the possibilities of game conflict. In Gauntlet, our third arcade game example, up to four players can play at once. The players take fixed roles (Warrior, Valkerie, Thief, or Wizard) as members of a team. Together the team explores the game spaces, fights computer-generated enemies, and gathers resources that boost their abilities to let them explore further.
Like Joust and Centipede, Gauntlet can be played by a single player. Gauntlet players also receive a score; if the score is high enough, players record high scores and player · initials. All of the single-player and high score list forms of competition apply to Gauntlet as well.
Unlike Joust, Gauntlet players can only attack computer-generated opponents—their attacks do not affect the other players. As a result, Gauntlet lacks the "fighting game" as a possible form of conflict. Instead, the players consistently work together, usually with the goal of seeing how many levels of the game they can explore.
Because Gauntlet players receive a score, players might also compete to see who has the highest score at the end of the game. As with Joust, the scores are displayed throughout the game, allowing players to constantly check their relative scores.
Whenever players clear a level of the game, the game pauses to display the relative points of each player and their overall performance in the game, showing, for example, which player received the most treasure in the last level. These moments highlight score-based and stat-based competition between players, encouraging them to compare their performances against each other and invent competition around the many kinds of statistics in the game.
Gauntlet
During the actual play of a game, another form of competition takes place over in-game resources. As players progress in the game, a number representing their health is slowly reduced. When a character touches an enemy, health is lowered even more. However, there are many "food" items scattered throughout the game that raise a character's health. Players sometimes compete directly for food, trying to be first to reach the item. Players might also discuss who among them needs the food most and let that player acquire the item. The same is true for other special objects in the game, such as keys and magic potions. These forms of resource-based competition are heightened by the statistic comparisons between levels: at these moments, players take stock of how resources have been distributed among the group and can accuse each other of being "unfair" or "greedy."
A final form of competition unique to Gauntlet involves players spending money on a game. In many arcade games, prestige comes from being able to play for a long time on a single quarter. But unlike Joust and Centipede, Gauntlet lets players extend their current game via cash additions. Players can put quarters into the game during play to add to their characters' health or to resurrect their characters after they have died. This means that as long as players want to continue spending money, they can keep on playing, exploring more game levels. The escalating difficulty of the game ensures that players will need to spend more and more money as they play. This can turn Gauntlet into a completely different kind of conflict, one in which players compete to demonstrate their tolerance for putting money into the game, a form of conspicuous consumption much like high-stakes gambling. Conversely, players might compete to see who can play the longest before having to spend more money to continue, because skillful players will avoid being killed. In this case, spending less money for the same amount of time would be the goal.
There are obviously many, many more models of competition in games. However, even within these three similar examples there is a wealth of ways that conflict can manifest. The point of these examples is to demonstrate how the design of a game leads to forms of conflict. In each case, formal decisions about the game's structure directly shape the nature of conflict emerging from the game. For each game, the following kinds of questions determine the essential formal structures:
How many players can play?
Do they play simultaneously or do they alternate playing the game?
Is there a high score list?
Are players given constant feedback about their relative scores?
Does the game pause to allow players to directly compare their scores and other game statistics?
Are there computer-generated opponents and obstacles that players face together or do the players serve as opponents for each other?
Does the structure of the game allow players to have direct conflict with each other?
Are there resources for which players can compete?
Can players spend money to continue the game or enhance their play?
The forms of conflict we observed follow directly from the way that each game answers these design questions. Take Gauntlet: if players were allowed to damage each other through attacks, the game would lose its enforced cooperative spirit, and inter-player fighting might become common. If players could not continue their game by paying another quarter, competition for in-game resources would be much fiercer, as players would vie against each other to stay alive until the game ended. What is surprising in all three examples is just how rich and multilayered conflict can be in a game. This richness comes from the fact that players can derive and construct their own forms of conflict in a game. Some of the goals we outlined are explicitly defined by the game rules. Others are emergent forms of competition that arise from the player's active engagement with and manipulation of the game structure. Back in Defining Games, in discussing whether or not Sim City was a game, we concluded that it was a borderline case. Although Sim City does not formally define goals with quantitative outcomes, it does provide a space within which players form their own goals and arrive at their own outcomes. As the investigation of Centipede, Joust, and Gauntlet demonstrates, in many ways all games can function like Sim City, with players inventing their own goals and layering these goals on top of those defined directly by the rules of a game.
A game's space of possibility is a space of possible conflict. Part of playing a game involves selecting game goals as a means of navigating and exploring forms and degrees of conflict. What is the best form of conflict to provide your players? As with other aspects of games, there is no single formula that will work best for all players in all contexts. However, providing a rich space of possibility that supports a range of conflict increases the potential variety of players and the ways that they might find your game meaningful.
