Challenge: Neuropsychology (Problem Solving)

Welcome back to my attempt to define how games challenge us by looking at the areas of brain function listed on the Wikipedia entry for Neuropsychology and seeing which ones games test.

This will be the last article in the "original series". I'm skipping Planning (as a subset of this article) and Thought (as a superset of previous articles). I'll do one more post to attempt a summation, hopefully bringing a few insights out of the effort, even though I lost my way halfway through. :P

What is problem solving?
Problem solving is what happens when an intelligence does not know how get from a current state to a desired state.

What types of problems are there?
The article on Wikipedia lists four main characteristics of difficult problems.

1. lack of information


2. multiple goals


3. complexity (lots of stuff to keep track of)


4. time considerations

For a game to be worth playing, it has to turn these sliders up enough to keep the player challenged, otherwise, what's the point? A platform game like Super Mario Brothers may not be complex at all, but will probably demand impeccable timing on very short notice. A turn based strategy game like Civilization may wait for player input until the computer ceases to function, but will probably be complex enough that the player will need to spend five or more minutes just to fully review their status (build queues, military strength, research progress, civil unrest), much less decide what to do next.

For a game to be playable, it generally needs to allow users ways to decide what level of difficulty is right for them. In some games, that's simply a menu option which changes some variables in the game (e.g. how much damage the player's weapons do). In others - most RPGs, for example - you can do a lot of planning to use the right weapons, right characters, and right attacks to defeat a tough monster, or you can just level up by fighting weaker monsters until you're tougher than the tough monster.

How are problems solved?
The Wikipedia article currently lists 28 different techniques. Many of which lead to pages with other lists. In the interest of brevity, I'll try and pick a few examples that jump out as worth discussing.

• Trial and Error is a technique I've talked about a few times before. When the penalty for error feels steep, and the information given to make decisions feels insufficient, trial and error is very frustrating. But if a game has doesn't penalize too stiffly and makes failure entertaining, trial and error can be part of the fun. Lemmings is probably the most classic example of this.


• Lateral Thinking is solving a problem, by changing one's own perceptions. Games play with this all the time, especially adventure games. "There's a key stuck to the ceiling. The broom won't reach. I can't knock it down with the football. What if force isn't the answer? What if I can use other properties of the items involved? What if I set the broom on fire and try to melt the glue?"


• Research (often known as cheating) is finding out how other people solved the problem (or one like it). This is another way players decide what level of challenge they want to tackle. But there's often legitimate research in games, too, accessible from help menus, in game books, and non-player characters.

So what's the takeaway?
There are a lot of problem solving tools players bring to bear in gaming. Designers need to understand them, and how the tools they give players interact with them, to make challenges that feel worthwhile.