Thoughts on the relationship between Frustration / Self-Expression.

The term "anti-fun" has gotten some notoriety over the years due to improper usage.  Buzzwords and Jargon tend to be rapidly misunderstood and generally gets a lot of bad rap due to how poorly the concept explains itself.  After all - the phrase doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own - it simply "negative fun."

What I want to look at in this post is a facet of this admittedly non-intuitive and complicated term: The relationship between how frustrating a mechanic is with how much it limits the players ability to express themselves.
 
Let's start with some exaggerated examples, to get a feel for the concept:

Let's say it takes you 10 minutes for you to walk to work and my job is to stop you from getting to work any way I can.

1) I could break your leg, causing you to limp to work - thereby causing you to take 20 or 30 minutes to get there.

2) I could restrain you for 10 or 20 minutes - thereby causing you to take 20 or 30 minutes to get there.

3) I could put a giant boulder in your way - or some other obstacle - thereby causing you to take 20 or 30 minutes to get there because you have to find your way around.

4) I could try to pull you back to your starting position as soon as you got to work - thereby causing you to take 20 or 30 minutes to get there because the first time you got there, I cancelled it out.

Which of these are the most frustrating? Which of these inhibit your ability to do things?  Which of these options take away options and which of these options force you to find new options?  Here's my take on how frustrating these obstacles are - based on how it limits your ability to express yourself and show off your abilities.

1) Breaking your leg: In terms of overall effect, breaking your leg is one of the most frustrating ways to delay you - because I haven't really made the problem any more difficult - I've simply taken away your ability to meaningful pursue any other options besides slowly tredging there.  I've also taken away your ability to find other modes of transportation easily - such as riding a bike or finding a car.

2) Restraining you: Restraining you for 10 to 20 minutes is obviously frustrating - but I've merely delayed you - I haven't hindered you in any way.  If I restrained you for 10 to 20 minutes - I haven't taken away your ability to find some other means of movement like riding a bike.

What is particularly interesting about the dichotomy here is that being delayed from doing something is typically less frustrating than being hindered while doing something.  We don't feel too bad about giving someone a "head-start" for example but forcing someone to run with their shoes tied together would be an absurd handicap.

3) Putting natural obstacles in your way:  This is frustrating - but also allows the opportunity for more expression on your part.  By putting an obstacle for you to overcome - you get the chance to be clever about it.  Because this is a natural obstacle with many possible solutions - putting a boulder in your path allows you to show off how creative you can be.  Do you climb the boulder? Push it out of the way? Walk around it?  Do you plow straight through it?

It's interesting because this method of delaying you also creates opportunities for you to fight back in a natural way - in effect, alleviating the frustration of being constrained by offering opportunities for you to show your stuff, so to speak.

Contrast this with breaking your leg - which directly negates any opportunities for you to be clever.  There's no obstacle to overcome - there's no challenge to overcome.  I've merely hindered your ability to meaningfully perform any action.

4) Resetting your progress:  This is frustrating in one of the worst ways possible - it gives you the illusion that you can express yourself but then rapidly shatters that illusion when you attempt to exercise that freedom. This is isolated from the above 3 scenarios because instead of attacking you or placing obstacles in your route - I've merely made it so that none of your actions matter in the end.  

Well, what does this have to do with game mechanics in general?

There are a lot of parallel mechanics to these four that I've found.  I'll list some easy examples:

1) Breaking your leg - Incredibly frustrating

Perma-Slows:  Permanent slow mechanics are analogous to breaking your leg.  I haven't done anything particularly clever to you - I've just made all your attempts at moving around suck.  Because positioning is now harder for you, as a baseline, it hinders every other actions you can take.

Permanent-Immunity / X-Immunity:  These are mechanics like Fire-Immunity or Lightning-Immunity or CC-Immunity.  Again, these don't really make things particularly clever for you - they just flatly remove your ability to take or make meaningful actions because they simply deny you the ability to function at a base level.

2)  Restraining you - Somewhat frustrating

Short duration CC effects:  Short duration stun effects are analogous to delaying or restraining your actions.  While they are annoying and frustrating - the key aspect here is that they don't take away your ability to perform meaningful actions - they merely delay it for a short time.  By compressing the amount time you have to work with - they force you economize your remaining time well - by forcing you to use additional resources to achieve the end result in less time.

For example, if you were running away and someone stunned you for a short time - your next recourse now is to blow any other possible escape mechanisms you have, like teleportation spells or countereffects to deal with the additional restraint.

Short-term Shield Effects / Dodge Effects:  Temporary shielding effects or dodge effects create windows where your actions are worth less - and thus force you to economize for when your actions are meaningful.   A boss that is immune to attacks 90% of the time is frustrating but the challenge becomes how you meaningful engage with the boss that 10% of the time - possibly by charging powerful attacks while the boss is immune.

3) Adding additional obstacles - Depending on how it's done, can actually be fun and not frustrating at all.

Terrain Manipulation:  Terrain manipulation effects directly hinder your progress but also give you a chance to show off how well you can adapt to the environment.  In fact, many side-scrollers derive their fun because of how absurd their terrain layout is.

For example, many Mario levels are staged around making it as needlessly complicated as possible to get to point A from point B through crazy terrain effects.  However, this is where the player can truly shine by showing how he can master various jumps and runs to get to where he needs to be.  In effect, the additional obstacles here enhance the player experience because it forces him to utilize his other advantages to their fullest.

Dodgeable Shots:  Shots that can be dodged are probably the easiest example of this type of design.  You want to get close to me?  I will shoot you with an arrow.  Now you have a choice: Take the damage, dodge the arrow or perform some other crazy trick in your arsenal of skills to bypass the obstacle.  Either way you choose to solve it, I put an obstacle in the path of your progress and the challenge is on you on how to solve it - and many solutions are acceptable and all of them show off how awesome *you* are.

4) Resetting the player's progress - Possibly the most frustrating thing when done repeatedly.

Pulls / Position Resets / Vacuums / Self-Heals / Draining:  There's a reason why many of these mechanics have to be carefully controlled through as many gates as possible - otherwise they warp the fundamentals of a game around them. 

Mostly because each of these mechanics simply negate or nullify anything that you are doing or have done.  Who cares how clever you are when I can reset your progress with a simple action?  It's why many of these mechanics are coupled with type #2 or type #3 mechanics in order to balance them out to a net neutral "frustrating" state.

In effect, obstacles of this type simply mocks the player's attempt to express themselves or take meaningful action by simply resetting all progress they've made.