How game designers can take "fight or flight" and turn it into video game gold.
By William Johanson@whatwillplayFeb 20, 2019 15:35 PM
Colloquially, the term "stress" is typically used when referring to some unfavorable force or unseen burden. It could be an impending deadline on a project or a paper; it could be a workload that never seems to get any smaller - think of characters in shows with beads of sweat on their forehead as they try not to make any errors while they disarm a bomb, or the building tension as the character gets ready to put on the biggest event of their life. It's a word that carries with it a lot of negative connotations.
Game developing outfits have a lot of boxes they're looking to check off to make sure a game sells (or at least reviews well). But while the developers focus on tightening the screws on things like technical performance, controls, graphics, audio, something that we the gamers often overlook is the influence of stress and how it might be used to identify a game's success - or lack thereof.
Selye's distress and eustress
In psychology, there are two kinds of stress (for our purposes): distress and eustress. In order to understand the difference, it's important to understand first where the terms came from and why.
Janos Hugo Bruno "Hans" Selye, a Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist, is responsible for coining the terms. Through his studies (and some modern-day-questionable experiments with rats), Selye documented the body's reaction to stress - or, for Selye, "noxious agents" introduced into the body.
He discovered that, regardless of the source of stress, whether it was objectively beneficial or harmful, perceived to be good or bad, the body's reaction always set off a chain of events involving the hypothalamus (brain), pituitary gland (brain), and adrenal cortex (torso) or the HPA axis.
The differentiating factor, then, would be the person's interpretation of the stress, which would then affect how strongly the body would react (in other words, how much homornal release, and for how long).
It was important to Selye - and for the future of psychology, as it turned out - to find a way to define a stressor. However, as most of us have discovered in our lives, not everybody perceives things in quite the same way.
A good example of this would be a rollercoaster. The whole situation - being locked in and restrained on a device meant to hurl you down faster than gravity would otherwise take you, and oh right, you're going to upside down a few times - many would without hesitation acknowledge that it's stressful.
To others, though, to those that enjoy rollercoasters, they might use a different word. Exciting, perhaps exhilarating. But the body does not make these distinctions, not on a physiological level. It's all just "stress." So, in order for Selye to better explore the myriad kinds and sources of stress, he categorized them based on how the person perceived them: distress and eustress.
Fight or flight: It's all just stress
It can be a little difficult to talk about stress - well, it can be difficult to talk about a lot of subjective things since everyone viewing the same horror film or attempting the same obstacle course might perceive these things in very different ways.
You may have heard the term "fight or flight." The hypothalamus (part of the HPA axis) regulates something called the autonomic nervous system (or the ANS). The ANS is responsible for a lot of your body's unconscious behaviors, like breathing and your heart beating. The ANS is comprised of smaller parts or functions, but for simplicity, it should be good enough for now to say that the ANS is responsible for "fight or flight."
"Fight or flight" (or hyperarousal or acute stress response) is the body's physiological respnse to stress - specifically, those stressors that are identified as an immediate threat of challenge, harm, and/or survival.
Remember the rollercoaster example? In that situation, each of those people described are experiencing an acute stress response. Their bodies are reacting the same way - heart rate increases, pupils dilate, breathing quickens, among other signs.
To the body, it's all just "stress." But game designers are tasked with judging how many people will find it to be "bad" stress - distress - or "good" stress" - eustress. Not only that, but they have to make sure it's not too much, since our minds can quickly turn too much of a good thing into something that is overwhelming and irritating (and not enough into something that is boring).
Technically, anything in a game (anything in the world) could be defined as a stressor, and we could have a discussion surrounding the burgeoning effect of adding stressor on top of stressor, I wanted to take a look at some of the things designers add intentionally to invoke players' acute stress response systems.
Difficulty+
Those that game on the regular, especially in many of those sprawling open-world games, are likely familiar with New Game Plus (New Game+ if you want to look cool, which I do). New Game+ allows players to go through the game all over again, usually keeping some items, character progress, or other such bonuses. In games with multiple endings, such as role-playing games that emphasize player choices (think butterfly effect), New Game+ allows players to start over, but with a bit of a leg up - this way, they don't feel like they wasted all of their time going through 60+ hours the first time around, and still get to enjoy everything the game story has to offer.
In many modern games, New Game+ comes with a new set of challenges. In it simplest form, the mode scales enemy power up to the player's character. Other games might grant enemies additional abilities, add new enemies, or even unlock brand new areas to explore.
New Game+ isn't the only way games introduce difficulty "stress," but it tends to be the most common (especially as an incentive for players to return to their game after having beaten it so many months or years ago). Games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Bastion, for example, allow players to pick and choose various modifiers that increase the game's challenge, while others resot to the simple difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard, etc.).
At what point is difficulty ... too difficult? When does it go from creative design decision to a challenge for challenge sake?
Busy, busy, busy
On the topic of open-world games, many gamers look forward to the freedom and exploration that they are promised. Games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mass Effect: Andromeda (open-galaxy?), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Horizon Zero Dawn are just some examples of an ever-growing market of "go wherever you want, do whatever you want" role-playing games.
Many of these games (excluding Mass Effect: Andromeda in this list, I suppose, which the review community was not to kind to) have been praised for their depth and the sheer amount of things to do and discover. Hidden treasure chests, random world events, tombs to raid, monsters to hunt, people to save - the games are ambitious.
Some criticism refers to this style of game as a second job. Many players feel the pressure to complete everything they see on the map, to go to every question mark and make sure they aren't missing something crucial. Some games even tie this level of dedication to an achievement or trophy (game systems' way of rewarding players for performaing certain feats to show off to their friends). But at the core, almost none of the games actually require total map completion for the game to actually conclude - the main story, and even many of the secondary or side stories, are kept separate.
The stress in this case comes from the idea that something remains incomplete. Many players might feel as though they didn't get the full "bang for their buck" or feel as though they may have shorted themselves if they didn't uncover every secret or treasure. What might be intended to add life to what could be an otherwise wide, empty game world can make a game in some cases three or four times longer.
Risk ...
Finally, game designers will use the risk of consequence as a means of manipulating player stress. Or, what does the player stand to lose by making that choice?
In its simplest form, risk is a health bar. Players new and old (refined?) that have played any of The Legend of Zelda games will immediately recognize Link's hearts. These hearts represent his health points, and taking too much damage results in ... a do-over (I refuse to believe Link ever dies).
(This type of risk can be linearly connected to difficulty, which we discussed earlier. Difficulty can decrease maximum health points, or it can reduce the effectiveness of said points. This can increase risk. It's important to make the distinction between a player actually doing something and the fear of something not working out in their favor. Difficulty versus danger. Risk is the latter.)
Some games feature more complex and creative methods of introducing risk stress. Darkest Dungeon, a roguelike role-playing game, is filled with game mechanics that are constantly piling on stressors (each character in that game actually has a "health" bar called Stress). While exploring its many dungeons, the game gives players a choice: proceed and reap the riches or cut your losses and come back another day. Fight, or flee. Each treasure chest could be rigged with a noxious trap, each dimly lit hallway could hold an ambush waiting in the shadows.
The stress of risk can be deeply emotional for players. When a player fails at the risk game, they are punished - and that consequence is a result of a direct choice or action they made, or not. When a game has risk, and the stakes are high, players could find themselves in a position of reflection, where all of their poor decisions and missed opportunities come back to haunt. Some games will kill off meaningful characters, or raze entire villages, all because of a choice the player made.
Risk doesn't have to be unknown. Some games will lay the risk out bare. This is common in platformers, where spikes, narrow ledges, and roaming monsters make it clear that one misstep could spell doom.
... and reward
Difficulty, tasks, danger - three major video game stressors. We've defined them, we've identified them, but what does it actually mean for the games? How can we use this information?
A successful game is a balancing act of these three factors. If a game fails at one - whether it's too much or too little - it could result in less-than-stellar reviews; or worse, a big ol' financial flop.
Let's look at the Assassin's Creed franchise. Routinely, those games have large open-world maps players are free to explore, filled with all sorts of landmarks and buried goodies for them to unearth. Is it fair to say that the in-game reward system for completing these objectives is not worth it for many? The items found randomly while venturing about the map are not better (and usually worse) than those obtained through specified, story- or side-story driven missions. The games are also notorious for littering the map with mundane collectibles, such as letters or photos or other such "stuff."
This is not meant to be a knock on the series, but it is a common criticism, and illustrates the impact of having too much to do in a game and how it can lead to stress, which leads to critcism, and may depress overall game scores.
The next time you sit down to play a game, whether it's a classic, an old favorite, or something new, pay attention to you, your body, your mental "knee-jerk" reactions. Do you find yourself coming up to a boss fight and wanting to charge in, sword gleaming ahead of you, or do you feel the cloud of defeat hanging overhead? Your body is trying to communicate with you, tell you whether it's ready to fight or needs to come back better prepared.
And that is the difference between a successful game and a missed shot. A game that makes its players think "I can do this," that the stress can be overcome, that the goal is obtainable - more often than it tries to pummel its players' spirits and confidence into the ground.