developing skills in the simulation: why computer games could be so relevant

Increasing participant's ability to apply and combine the right actions throughout an experience.

Participants in sims are building a portfolio of skills and abilities as they travel through different levels, and engage in different tasks and missions.

For each skill they:

• first learn about them, then
• use the combination of actions in the right way, then
• use the combination of actions in increasingly rigorous ways trying to avoid failure, and then finally
• combine them with other skills.

On the bottom half of this chart, the teal cones represent various skills, first as points, then getting broader as both the requirements of the situation increases and the ability of the participant, then mixing with others. The right use of skill cones minimizes the chance of accidental success.

See also frustration-resolution pair.

Author's note: In Half Life 2, as one example, there are creatures that are mounted to ceilings with long tongues hanging down that grab things and pull them up to eat them.

One technique to inform the player might have been an encyclopedia-like screen giving some information about these creatures. Another would be to have a virtual colleague say something like, "Careful - those tongue creatures are hungry and once they grab you, it's over."

Instead, Half-Life 2 carefully builds the skills in the player, and then pushes it. They first show the player what these creatures do by, in this case, having an unwary crow get scooped up. Then they expose the player to simple situation with a single creature. A few levels later, the player has to get through dozens of these creatures using increasingly clever techniques, including hybrid strategies learned from other parts of the game, and even enlisting the help of other characters.