Before I get into the meat of this post, I’m going to take a minute to respond to Craig’s response. I think he’s right that “barely beatable” is definitely the wrong phrase to describe what I’m trying to get across. Generally, the idea I was going for is that agency is the reason for keeping difficulty balanced. Furthermore, as I commented on Craig’s blog, I was thinking “of difficulty as a “pure” involvement in the game, meaning this is the only place where a user is experiencing agency,” and that the main point was that “a game that exists purely to draw you in through difficulty should always present you with situations that prove that you are necessary to get through the situation, aka the “barely passable” scenario.” So, even though “barely passable” may be a bad phrase (or give the prong impression) I think the general theory holds, which is good since I’m going to be building off of that in this post.

So I’ve talked about agency and addictiveness, and agency and difficulty (which were related) and now I’m going to talk about agency on multiple levels, which I consider to by the end all be all rule of how to make a game addictive.

When game developers (or interactive storytellers or IF guys) talk about agency, we’re usually talking about permanent affects on the game world, but as I’ve pointed out in my previous posts, agency is only the illusion of manipulating an environment: a feeling that what you’re doing matters. It exists on multiple levels in games, and (in my opinion) it’s what makes games addictive (and replayable). So long as I feel I’m making a difference in some way, either when a story moves forward, when a character responds to my actions in a relevant way, when I find my way through a difficult area, or when I see the affects in any myriad of other ways, I am drawn into the game. These are all levels of agency, and games become “good” and “addictive” when the agency exists on multiple levels, or when we are able to manipulate things in a way we have never experienced before.

First let’s take a look at using multiple levels of agency creating an addictive environment, and for this let’s take a look at a game that has been given awards fore being the “most addictive” of the year: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. This game does the multiple levels of agency thing really, really well. First, through their “leveled list” concept, they’re able to ramp up difficulty throughout the game as you level. If you reach a level of difficulty that you’re happy with, you just don’t level, and so that agency of making a difference in the world through difficulty remains intact. On top of this, there are many compelling stories and quests in Oblivion that progress as you complete tasks. You see the affect on the world there as well. On top of THAT, the world is completely open for your perusal, and is affected (in many ways) by what you do in it. You’re able to travel wherever you want, attack whoever you want, drop items wherever you want and generally control the pace of everything in the world. When you combine all of these levels of agency, you see affects in multiple areas simultaneously, which makes the game addictive. Use only one, and things become a bit less interesting (though not necessarily bad).

In the second concept, games that offer an interesting feature or method of manipulating your environment in ways that you have seen before makes them interesting. Obvious examples are things like bullet time, portaling (pre-made or user created), and the now ubiquitous head shot. Another, not so obvious, example is the ability to take cover in Gears of War. This not only creates a way for you to manipulate the environment, but creates a level of difficulty against you since the AI can do it as well. However, the problem with relying on features to create your levels of agency is that they are (relatively) easy to copy, and other companies will copy them. Eventually, if enough companies do this, these features become part of the genre, and are a required addition to anything from the same genre. Their absence is considered robbing the users of an expected manipulation they’ve been allowed in the past. Furthermore, you have to provide a good game underneath them in order for them to be successful. Though a feature may offer a new level of agency, it’s not going to keep me interested if I have to put up with other agency failures.

So looking at this right now, I can pretty happily say that I can narrow down many of the features in old and new hit games and what created that feeling of agency, either in a new way they people had not yet seen, or in levels that combined to create addictiveness. However, my theories on agency are not yet complete. My last post is coming soon (I promise) and will take all of this to its inevitable conclusion.