Time Limits

An amount of time, either game time or real time, used in determining if players complete an action, reach a goal, stay in a certain mode of play, or finish a game session.

Many games put limits on how long players can plan or perform certain actions while other put limits on how long the game as a whole can take. By doing so they can guarantee that the game progresses according to some planned design or that the gaming activity will be concluded before a certain time. The latter can can also be used to create end conditions in game where there otherwise would be none. The measurement of time can be either in game time or real time, or both although limits in game time only influences rather than controls the length of play and game sesions.

Typically Time Limits indicate that something needs to be achieved before the given amount of time has passed but only can equally well have gameplay built upon avoiding certain events occurring until after a given Time Limit has passed.

Examples

In the racing games Sega Rally and Outrun gamers have a certain number of seconds to reach the next check point or lose the game. Reaching it in time adds time to reach a new check point, encouraging gamers not only to reach the point within the given time but do it as fast as possible.

Soccer matches have a time limit of 90 minutes (plus some extra time depending on the judgment of the referees) divided into two periods of 45 minutes. This limits how much physical effort the teams must be able to produce and makes it easier to plan tournaments and media coverages.

Chess tournaments typically have rules regarding Time Limits, both for making a move and for the whole time available for a player.

The final parts of campaigns in the Left 4 Dead series typically end with pitched stands where the gamers need to survive for a certain amount of time. Although the time is fixed it is not revealed until it is passed and a vehicle taking the PCs to safety shows up. In the survival modes games of the same series the goal for players to still be alive after 4 or more minutes to meet the goal conditions but in this case the time survived is shown clearly in the interface.

Ricochet Robots gives the other gamers a limited amount of time to find better solutions to the game's movement puzzles after one has been given by one of the gamers. This provides a chain of Time Limits in the game until all gamers fail to find a better solution.

The experimental art game 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness has one sole requirement to win: one has to be the only player in the world playing the game for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. No actions is required while playing.

Using the pattern

Time Limits are usually meant as something that one needs to complete an action or goal before is passes, but Continuous Goals are exceptions to the rule.

The existence of Time Limits can be introduced implicitly or explicitly in a game. Basically all Real-Time Games or games providing the pattern The Show Must Go On have implicit limits on how much time one has available for some actions or before Penalties occur due to the actions of other players or Enemies but can be understood rather as conflicts or competitions with these adversaries. Even if these mechanics do not exist in games, social pressure from other players wishing to avoid Downtime typically create implicit Time Limits in Multiplayer Games. Therefore Time Limits may not exist in Single-Player Games unless explicitly designed for, but may also be needed to be mechanized in Multiplayer Games to provide Player Balance or commonly-shared Time Pressure.

An archetypal examples of a Time Limit due to the presence of others is Races - one needs to finish something quicker than other players but experience of Competition can easily overshadow the experience of Time Limits. If it is important that implicit Time Limits are perceived by players as such other means exist. One possibility is to make available Resources unavailable after a certain time, something that often occurs naturally with Shared Resources through other players' exploitation of the Resources (and in this fashion is an example of the Social Dilemma Tragedy of the Commons). Ultra-Powerful Events and Delayed Effects that are announced significantly before they occur but without measures when they will occur are another possibility. Interruptible Actions with Development Time that offers Preventing Goals for others can also be perceived as having Time Limits since unless they are completed quickly the risks of not completing them may increase, and the likelihood of this perception can be increased by both Goal Indicators and Progress Indicators. The Time Limits in a game are usually easy to make explicit both from a deigetic and interface viewpoint, see those subsections for more details.

Both how time progresses in the real world or in number of updates in the game state can be used as the basis for Time Limits making the pattern possible in both Real-Time Games and Turn-Based Games. It can even be used twice in Tick-Based Games, to limit the number of ticks available besides the mandatory use of limiting the length of each tick. Time Limits in Real-Time Games are however somewhat cumbersome to use in Self-Facilitated Games unless the measuring of the time is designed as an integral part of the gameplay since it requires a form of Attention Swapping between gameplay and game facilitation. Game Pauses in Real-Time Games can disrupt the effect of Time Limits in planning is a noticeable part of reaching goals and performing actions. For example, if players are allowed to pause the game in Tetris the natural stress that makes planning more difficult disappears.

Power-Ups and Penalties (e.g. Helplessness) are often used with Time Limits to balance the gameplay and provide more Varied Gameplay. Time Limits can be used with Privileged Actions to create Cooldown periods, but also with New Abilities, Improved Abilities, Decreased Abilities, Ability Losses, and Game Pauses make these temporary and thereby support Player Balance and Team Balance when player skill do not outweigh these. Time Limits do not only have to concern how long Power-Ups persist or how long an action lasts but can also be how long it takes before new Power-Ups appear or the action can be performed again, in both cases determining, in a sense, the interval for Renewable Resources to appear.

Games in which modes of play or game instances do not have natural end conditions often use Time Limits as end conditions, e.g. in Soccer or some Quick Games. Games with Continuous Goals, such as Survive or those being Preventing Goals, sometimes use Time Limits also in similar fashion to determine winning conditions. For example, in King of the Hill variants the winner is the first player to remain the king for a certain period of time, say three minutes, which also acts as an end condition for the game instance.

Time Limits may also be used to create Optional Goals simply be stating that goals that are reached within a certain Time Limit are provided with additional Rewards. One use of this possibility is to provide Handicap Achievements to reward Speed Runs and thereby support more Challenging Gameplay.

Diegetic Aspects

Time Limits are usually quite easy to incorporate in the diegesis of a game since many real-time events typically have noticeable indicators before they occur. These can both be natural occurrences, e.g. rock falls or rising water levels, but also man-made ones, such as countdowns on explosives, which provides game designers with a wide range of possibilities to explain the Time Limits within the Game World presentation.

Interface Aspects

If Time Limits as to be explicitly presented to players in a non-deigetic way this can most easily be done through Game State Indicators. Progress Indicators are also possible when Time Limits are used in Delayed Effects. A slightly special case of this kind of modulation is to have Time Limits on the life time of Ephemeral Goals where the goal is available for the players only for a certain amount of time during the game. Note that these may be implicit in the sense that they do not have to show exact measures of how much time is available but can instead show approximations.

Consequences

Time Limits make time a Resource, more specifically a Limited Resource due to the presence of a Resource Cap, for players and when the amount of time is little enough create Ephemeral Events. They automatically give players Limited Planning Ability (regardless if any planning is required), which can give the design Challenging Gameplay, and make the players have to accept Tradeoffs between which actions they want to perform, including evaluating the Tradeoffs themselves. This may also lead to Experimenting in which a player may try something without great hopes of succeeding but instead aiming at learning something for the next try. When used to control the contraction of Shrinking Game Worlds or limit how often Resources can be invested when situations, Time Limits create Tick-Based Games out of Turn-Based Games. For games that requires Player Physical Prowess the use of Time Limits puts a limit to the needed effort, or at least the needed endurance of the players.

More specifically, Time Limits can be used for at least three different reasons: first, to create Time Pressure and Tension for the players related to achieving a goal or performing some actions in the game (including planning such as that required by Action Programming); second, to limit the effect of consequences of player actions and game events, such as effects of some types of Penalties, Rewards, and Power-Ups; and third, to create Time Limited Game Instances, limit the lifespan of specific modes of play or to make Tied Results possible. Given that Time Limits force players to consider if they want to try and perform some action or not before the time has run out, the pattern works against Pottering since they do not have a freedom to select freely when to perform various actions.

When the players have some Game State Indicator of how much is left of the Time Limit naturally creates Anticipation and sometimes Hovering Closures. Often Time Limits are used to have more pressure on the players leave areas in Game Worlds, such as Deadly Traps and Safe Havens, or to perform other types of actions, e.g. Trading and Puzzle Solving. Time Limits used for Turn Taking, and Game Pauses in general, limit the possible Downtime. Time Limits on game instances can also alleviate some of the downsides of Early Elimination as the eliminated players have a clear indication how long that game instance is going to last.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Challenging Gameplay, Ephemeral Events, Handicap Achievements, Limited Planning Ability, Limited Resources, Resource Caps, Resources, Tension, Tick-Based Games, Tied Results, Time Limited Game Instances, Time Pressure, Tradeoffs

Can Modulate

Ability Losses, Analysis Paralysis, Anticipation, Arithmetic Rewards for Investments, Continuous Goals, Decreased Abilities, Early Elimination, Empowerment, Ephemeral Goals, Evade, Experimenting, Game Pauses, Helplessness, Hovering Closures, Improved Abilities, King of the Hill, Multiplayer Games, New Abilities, Preventing Goals, Puzzle Solving, Quick Games, Race, Renewable Resources, Resources, Safe Havens, Single-Player Games, Tension, Tick-Based Games, Trading, Turn Taking, Turn-Based Games

Can Be Instantiated By

Continuous Goals, Deadly Traps, Shared Resources, Power-Ups, Delayed Effects, Real-Time Games, Speed Runs, The Show Must Go On,

Development Time together with Interruptible Actions

Can Be Modulated By

Goal Indicators, Progress Indicators, Game State Indicators

Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

Downtime, Game Pauses, Pottering, Self-Facilitated Games

History

This pattern was part of the original collection in the book 'Patterns in Game Design' (Björk & Holopainen, 2004).

References

Björk, S. & Holopainen, J. (2004) Patterns in Game Design. Charles River Media. ISBN1-58450-354-8.