Stuck! Stalling in Computer Games
Games are commonly designed to assist players in their progression, maintaining their attention and motivation until they achieve closure while presenting challenges that need to be overcome to progress. But not all games are designed with this in mind, and players do not always play to progress. When that happens, we call it stalling. In computer games, stalling is when players or the game system try to maintain a particular state, impeding player progression and the game from developing. This chapter explores stalling as an act of players and, alternatively, as an act of the game itself that can be designed or result from emergent behaviours. It presents a model composed of two axes—Player/Game and Transitory/Permanent—that generate four types of stalling: Squandering, Casting-off, Lingering, and Taunting. This model leads to the conclusion that stalling is a legitimate playing tactic and versatile strategy for the design of games.