Skill Tests vs. Gameplay

Skill Tests are what I call an element of many games that sometimes looks like what I described as gameplay - but I don't think it actually is gameplay (as I defined gameplay). But I do think it's important to look at.

The best platform, I think, for distinguishing skill tests from gameplay is to look at fighting games - specifically 2D-style fighting games, like the ones made by Capcom, SNK, and others.

At their core, these games are just about dealing damage to the opponent. The last person standing wins. Generally, in these games, damage is dealt initially by exploiting an opening in the other player's defense. After an initial opening is realized, the amount of damage dealt off of that opening is determined by Combos.  I'll explain more about Combos later, because they are actually less important from a gameplay perspective when compared with exploiting openings.

Finding and exploiting openings are really the gameplay of fighting games. In super general terms, exploiting openings means using a combination of:

• The rock-paper-scissors of attacking, blocking and throwing
• The properties of your attacks/throws(speed, the hit box of your attack, the vulnerable space on your character during a move) 
• The fact that you  and your opponent can only do one thing at a time. 

...to set up situations in which you have better options than your opponent. If this sounds really simple, it's partly because it's a gross overgeneralization and completely glosses over the depth and complexity that makes fighting games so enjoyable. It's also because fighting games don't tend to have very complex mechanics. The complexity comes from rapid interactivity.

You need to be able to read your opponents strategy, understand which options you have that are strong against the ones you believe they are likely to use, and respond accordingly. And, in an ideal world, you are presented with a menu of options, and any of them could be correct in one circumstance or another. The gameplay of fighting games emerges as each of the players chooses actions,  trying to select the correct move. What makes them dynamic and interesting is the fact that the relative effectiveness of each move changes based on a huge matrix of variables, some of which are "baked in" and unchangeable by players (e.g. each character's move speed., the hitboxes and properties of their attaks, etc.) and some of which are interactive (where the character is on screen at the moment, which attack the player chose, etc).

Properly exploiting an opening results in a hit, which causes damage, which is what you need to do to win. But the amount of damage done by an exploited opening is actually mostly determined by whether/to what extent you can Combo off of it.

Combos require a bit more explanation as they are more of an emergent element of the basic mechanics of the game. Combos have a long history - they started as a bug in Street Fighter 2 back in the early 90s - but the basic idea is that when you hit your enemy, for a very short time (usually less than 10-20 frames, or less than a third of a second) they will be frozen in place, unable to perform any actions. The mechanic is usually called hitstun, hit reacts, or some variation on that. Hitstun exists to help makes hits feel "impactful" - if you've ever played a game that doesn't do this, a side effect is that combat feels "floaty", "soft", or like your hits are just passing through an opponent and not connecting.

But, an unintended side effect emerged from the hitstun in SF2. In many older games, after getting hit, you had a brief period of invulnerability to overlap the hitstun, but SF2 didn't do that. If you managed to attack your opponent faster than they could recover from hitstun, you got a guaranteed second hit - there was nothing the opponent could do about it. That's a combo. One exploited opening, multiple hits.

If it seems like this is a recipe for degenerate gameplay where one hit could lead to another, to another, to another, ad infinitum, congratulations - you probably played X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Most fighting games these days do something to prevent those situations, but it's definitely still an issue today.

Regardless, the thing with combos is that they aren't dynamic, or interactive. There aren't many different options in a combo - you either input the series of moves correctly, and get the extra damage, or you don't, and you get less extra damage. It's entirely based on timing, and repeating a set of inputs that you memorize over time. You don't make poor choices in a combo, you either input the moves correctly with the correct timing, or you don't.

That's what a Skill Test is. Something that you either get right or wrong. You may be able to get it more or less right or wrong, but nonetheless there's always a correct answer.

Now, there is some gameplay that comes with selecting WHICH combo to do - sometimes you want one that does the most damage possible, sometimes you want one that puts the opponent at a specific place on the stage - but when it comes to executing a combo, you could write a macro to do it.

On a smaller level, the same issue comes into play with special moves, which usually require complex inputs to pull off in fighting games. Being able to execute a move is a skill test. Knowing which move to use is gameplay.

Now, skill tests are important because they help foster long term engagement with a game as players can very directly see their skills improving as they are able to complete tests they weren't before. And sometimes, the whole point of a game is to execute skill tests properly - DDR, Guitar Hero, etc. (though those my not meet my maybe overly-strict definition of a game).

On a more general note, though, I think my ideal game has skill tests intertwining with gameplay, such that a player's ability to execute on a skill test might affect their decisionmaking in the overall game. Otherwise, the skill test really isn't adding depth to the game as a whole, it just exists to allow individual players to show off - which can be great, but isn't as fun as watching a deep, interactive game. It's a lot more fun to watch a football game than it is to watch football training camp - and, for me, at least, it's a lot more fun to watch a Fighting Game tournament than a DDR tournament.