Elliott's Insights

Why Infinity Blade is Designed Not to Be Played

Infinity Blade is a popular game for the iPhone that has received a lot of attention due to it being included in various Apple presentations. In playing through this game for the last few days I’ve come across some issues with the design of the game that are not only highly irritating, but also illustrate a troubling trend in video games recently. In summary, Infinity Blade is designed in such a way that the player is forced to either grind or pay real money in order to progress in the game.

Warning: highly nerdy discussion on video game mechanics mixed with some economic theory. If this fazes you, see the summary below.

Infinity Blade is fundamentally a series of battles with progressively more powerful monsters culminating in a battle with a boss which either kills the player or is defeated by the player which ends the current “bloodline” or play-through. While doing this the player becomes progressively more powerful through an altered system of what is generally termed “RPG elements.” The player earns experience points (XP) for defeating enemies which in turn allows the player to level up. In a typical game with these elements (such as Fallout 3 or World of Warcraft) the level of the player is generally the most important indicator of the relative power of the player. XP thus, is the most important stat that the player works for and is, in an economic sense, the currency that the player trades his time for. This is because the player’s level (depending on the game) directly influences damage given or taken, what items can be used, and what areas/quests can be taken on. In Infinity Blade the level of the player does not matter directly; instead the skill points that one gets from leveling up determine the power of the player.

Unlike other games in the role-playing area the combat in Infinity Blade is not based solely on the numbers, the player’s skill also plays heavily into the outcome of a battle. However, especially at the higher levels, the stats, that the skill points affect, become increasingly important. There are four of these stats in Infinity Blade: health, which determines how much damage the player can absorb before dying; attack, which determines how much damage the player can dish out;¹ shield, which determines how many hits the player’s shield can take; and magic, which determines how powerful/useful the player’s spells are. There are three ways to increase the total stats in each of these categories:

1. By leveling up, which gives the player two skill points per level to put into any category;
2. By “mastering” an item in the game, which gives the player a skill point to put in any category;
3. Through the stats that the equipment gives the player while equipped.

Notice that two and three have to do with the items rather than with gaining XP. And actually, leveling is tied to items as well. Let me explain, each item has a gauge or bar on it that represents how much XP is required to “master” the item, say for example 2000 XP. Once you have defeated an enemy you are rewarded an amount of XP. This amount is split five ways for the five pieces of equipment that the player wears at any given time. This XP is then applied to the bar on each of the items, filling a of portion the bar and then going to the overall XP counter for the player. If an item is “mastered” this does not make it more powerful or useful in any way. Rather, “mastering” an item makes it far less useful to the player. It does two things, it makes the item’s resale value double and it renders the item unable to give XP to the player. If a player is using a “mastered” item the XP that would go through that item to the overall XP count of the player is simply lost. So, if the player is using mastered items in all the available slots the player could not gather XP at all and could not level up. Taken together this produces powerful incentives to the player to methodically take each item in the game, “master” it, and then sell it in order to replace it with the next item.

To recap, the power/progression of the player, measured in total stats, is completely dictated by the items/gear in the game. This is compounded by the fact that there are no minimum level requirements on what gear can be used. These facts are not necessarily bad, it simply reveals an unorthodox game design. However, there are a few more aspects to the game that take advantage of these mechanics in a way that I think violates good game design. First, the player has the ability to “master” an item by paying gold. In Infinity Blade the player earns gold in addition to XP for winning battles. There are also bags of gold scattered around the environment of the game that the player can get by paying attention and exploring, in a limited sense. This gold is primarily used to buy new items from a store that can be accessed at any time, as the items gained directly from defeating enemies are few and far between. But, the gold can also be used to “master” an item. So, in effect, the player can trade gold directly for a skill point. Not only that, but when the player pays gold to master an item the amount of XP that was left in the bar of the item is then given to the player. Thus, gold can be directly traded for power/progression in the game through buying weapons (which add to the player’s stats), and paying gold to “master” the item (which both directly give the player additional skill points and give the player the XP to level up, and in turn, get more skill points).

While this is an interesting design choice that places a high emphasis on gold within the game, it’s the ability to directly pay real cash for gold in the game that pushes me over the edge. This means that the player can pay money to avoid having to actually play the game. On a purely economic level this makes sense: instead of buying progress in the game with our most basic currency, our time in this world, we can buy it with money, a currency we have already traded our time for. However, this is the most cynical outlook about games that I have ever seen. It reduces the goal of playing a game to merely completing it, like a simple task, and then tells the player “you don’t have to spend a lot of time to complete the game, you can short cut that work for some cash.” By paying cash the player can become powerful enough to defeat the final boss in the game (Zero Mech) with relatively little effort. The only more cynical outlook about games I can even think of is paying cash to simply complete the game itself. At that point video games would become so deconstructed that they simply die. The player pays money for the game and pays money to finish the game. This is good in the short term for the video game distributor, but not for the player, who has just been milked for cash, or for the people who actually made the game, who, I would imagine, would like people to play and enjoy the game. While the above situation is absurd, it is the logical outcome this kind of thinking: of paying not to have to play the game.

While this game is not on that level yet, there are indications of it. From my experience Infinity Blade is balanced so that there is a decreasing curve of value for the time the player invests in the game. Meaning that, the actual progression of the player slows down the longer he plays the game. I don’t know if this is accidental or intentional (and thus insidious when viewed in the light of the above discussion). I have not done the math on this,² so I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Ideally a game like this should have a relatively smooth progression. The player should be constantly rewarded for their efforts and not have their progress stalled. For much of Infinity Blade the player has five equipment slots which are slotted with equipment which is constantly being mastered and rotated out for new equipment and thus progressing the player. At a certain point the player will run into a situation in which he does not have enough gold to buy the next best item for a slot. Which will thus slow his overall progression by 1/5. This only gets worse, especially since each of the five slots which represent the five types of items do not scale evenly in number, cost, or effectiveness (e.g. there are far more swords and helmets than rings and they are far less expensive). The player then either has to resort to grinding for gold (playing the same section through multiple times while gaining little XP to save up gold for the next best item), or paying for it. If true, this is a subversion of good game design in order to annoy players into plunking down more money. It tarnishes an otherwise good-looking and entertaining game to the point where I can’t recommend it to people as a good game.

Summary

Infinity blade as a game seems purposely designed in order to annoy players into paying more money on top of the premium asking price to progress at the same pace as they were allowed to in the beginning of the game. In fact, a player could simply pay money to reach the level needed to easily defeat the final enemy in the game and thus complete it. Essentially, the player can pay money to not have to play the game. To be fair, the player still needs some amount of skill to defeat the final enemies in the game, however, it still cheapens the experience significantly. This is not an isolated trend either. More games are appearing that allow the player to shortcut the game and pay for progress. At that point the game ceases to be about enjoying the experience of playing the game, but into a series of psychological and economic tricks to milk the “player” for money. The player becomes a sucker and the game becomes a con-game.³

Addendum on grinding

For people who have the game and are running into this problem of having to grind for gold and XP there is a hidden way in the game to progress further with far less irritation. This works for people who are either just starting the game or for those who are running up against the wall. The player can progress through the Negative Bloodlines in order to gain both a lot of experience and gold, enough to buy the infinity blade and enough good gear in order to defeat the Deathless Kings and Zero Mech.

Further Reading

• Who Killed Video Games? - A long, but worthwhile examination of the deconstruction of video games (make sure to read all the parts, it’s not just one page).
• Contrivance and Extortion: In-App Purchases & Microtransactions - While the author does engage in some hyperbole to make his point, it covers another aspect of Infinity Blade that I have not.