the game design of taskmaster: fun to watch vs. fun to play

Let’s start with this statement: Taskmaster is not a game.  It is a comedy panel television show, with a format that lends itself to incorporating game elements in the form of tasks.

This means that the audience for Taskmaster is the viewer (the person at home watching the show), rather than the player (the comedian participating in the tasks).  This critical distinction provides some interesting insights into designing games today.

Who is the audience of a game?

Traditionally, we’ve designed games for players.  The mission statement of a game designer can be condensed to three simple words: “make fun games”.  Across genres, consoles and generations of players, the main goal of a game designer is to understand the concept of fun and distill it into an interactive experience, for the player.

And this has worked!

Perhaps where we all start on our journey as game designers is to try to answer the question, “What makes a game fun for players?”  This has no doubt led to interesting answers, from getting frightened to solving mind-bending puzzles.

The increasing importance of games as viewing entertainment

In the last ten years, however, our consumption of media and of video games has changed.  While a game’s primary audience will always be the player, nowadays, it’s equally important to design a game to capture the attention of viewers.

While immersion and interactivity have long been touchstones for game designers, this shift to games being used as theatre or show puts an bigger emphasis on making them entertaining.

Increased viewership of games is largely driven by technology.  Today, there’s almost ubiquitous access to viewing digital content, in particular video, on our phones and tablets, plus a much lower barrier to entry to creating such content.

As games have become more mainstream, a game that is fun to watch stands a better chance of gaining popularity or “going viral” and becoming successful in a crowded marketplace.  Designing games that are fun to watch is a topic that is less discussed in game design theory, but one that has gotten more important over the years.

What makes a game fun for viewers?

Taskmaster applies techniques from different types of entertainment to create game-like situations that are intended for an audience of television viewers rather than for the contestants.  Here are some examples of things we enjoy watching in various media formats, how Taskmaster uses them, and how one can apply them to the task of designing games.

1. Competition

The most obvious draw for viewers is a sense of competition.  From sporting events to a local county fair’s pie-eating competition, there’s something inherently satisfying about watching a group of people duke it out for victory.  This is reflected in Twitch streaming, where shooters and competitive multiplayer games like Counter-Strike, Fortnite and League of Legends consistently rank in the top percentage of viewing hours.  According to Twitch statistics and analytics website SullyGnome, these three games have ranked in the Top 10 hours watched every year since 2018.

In Taskmaster…

The sense of competition between the five comedians on Taskmaster is vital to the show’s appeal.  In each series, the selection of contestants ensures that there is not only a variety in age, background and how well-known they are, but critically, in how competitive they are and how they play the game.  This gives viewers different champions to root for, increasing their enjoyment in watching the show.

In game design…

Creating multiplayer games that provide competition is fairly straightforward, but the key is to design competitive games that give players the ability to showcase a particular playing style or skill.  For example, League of Legends games have five players in the roles of jungle, top, mid, support and ADC on each team, promoting different champions and play styles.

We watch players for their personality and charisma, so it’s wise to develop games that enable players to play in different ways or giving players the framework to become characters that viewers can root for.

• How are you enabling competition in your games?
• How are you allowing your players to show their personality and gain supporters to cheer them on in the competition?

2. Mastery

Going hand-in-hand with competition, viewers love watching highly skilled individuals doing what they are good at, no matter how niche the activity.  Live performances like the ballet, the opera, the circus and music concerts are enjoyable because of the high level of mastery required in these artistic pursuits.

It pays to combine mastery with competition.  Featuring athletes at the top of their game, professional sports and the Olympics are huge industries that consistently draw in viewers.  Additionally, popular television competitions showcase highly talented bakers, glass blowers and LEGO builders.  On the gaming side, esports bring together highly skilled individuals in a competitive environment.

In Taskmaster…

Watching skilled comedians create entertaining content is a treat all on its own.  Taskmaster goes one step further, designing tasks that allow these comedians to not only show their comedy and personality, but also other skills.  The show includes artistic tasks, athletic tasks, puzzle tasks and music tasks in each series to give comedians who have those talents the opportunity to shine.

For example:

• Art
  • Joe Lycett in Series 4, Episode 2: “Paint the best picture of the Taskmaster. Only the paint, and brush may touch the mat, easel and canvas.”
• Sport
  • Russell Howard in Series 6, Episode 7: “Knock the bails off the stumps. You’ve got a maximum of one over. You must make your attempts from behind this stump. No stumps may be moved.”
• Puzzle
  • Victoria Coren Mitchell in Series 12, Episode 4 (team task, with Alan Davies): “Solve the riddle. You must all stay in your rooms. Fastest wins.”
• Music
  • Mark Watson and Nish Kumar in Series 5, Episode 8 (team task): “Write and perform a song about this woman.”

In game design…

Developing skill in a game to the level of a grandmaster in chess is intimidating.  Thus, allowing multiple avenues for interest and skill development aside from the main purpose of the game can be beneficial to allow mastery in different ways.  And because even unconventional talents are interesting to watch, different masteries can increase a game’s appeal to a viewing audience.

For example:

• Different game modes
  • Hearthstone, which started as one game, has expanded to include different game modes such as the auto-battler Battlegrounds, which appeal to different player types and audiences.
• Creative in-game activities
  • Raft, a survival game, allows players to design their rafts, which has resulted in incredibly elaborate designs that have become popular to share in addition to the main game content.
• Mods
  • Wildermyth provides a storytelling engine for players who wish to develop their own adventures, which results in additional hours of play and new content to share and watch.
• Speedrunning
  • Super Mario 64, along with other vintage games, are particularly popular with speedrunners, who have brought new audiences to older games.

3. Social drama

People are interesting to watch.  Even in scripted television programmes and movies, it is usually the interaction between humans that forms the core drama and pushes the plot ahead, whether in a sitcom or a horror flick.

Framing these social interactions in a game can be very effective, as proved by the success of reality television shows like Survivor and Big Brother.

In Taskmaster…

Taskmaster taps into social drama by bringing contestants together in both collaborative and competitive ways.  The team tasks encourage contestants to work together, while the studio tasks (prize and final) have them working against each other.  These result in interesting social dynamics that are fun to watch.

Social drama becomes even more interesting when Taskmaster twists competitive and collaborative conventions in its own tasks, creating some of the most memorable tasks.

• Collaborative team task becomes competitive
  • Joe Lycett, Lolly Adefope and Noel Fielding versus Hugh Dennis and Mel Giedroyc in Series 4, Episode 5 (team task): “Put as many different things in the bathtub.”; “Seal the top of this bathtub with cling film.”; “Fill the bathtub with water.”
• Competitive studio prize task becomes collaborative
  • Alan Davies, Desiree Burch, Guz Khan, Morgana Robinson and Victoria Coren Mitchell in Series 12, Episode 6 (prize task): “Most desirable thing for the person below you in the alphabet, or the highest alphabetically if you’re the lowest alphabetically.”

In game design…

An interesting example of fun-to-watch social drama in games has emerged in recent years in the rise of watchable Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.  These, and similar tabletop role-playing games, have become immensely popular to watch, making stars of players in groups like Critical Role.

TTRPGs provide a good balance of collaborative and antagonistic relationships, often bringing out the personality of players.  It fosters layers of social drama, between the players themselves, between the players and the Game Master, and between the characters in the fantasy story they are all telling together.

Such games also rely on an element of chance through dice rolls that makes them all the more watchable.  Which brings us to…

4. Chance, luck and surprises

Surprise is a very effective tool to capture the audience’s attention.  It’s fun watching someone get surprised, and it’s fun being surprised as the viewer.  This ties into the roll of the dice in TTRPGs, a surprise to both players and viewers, where a very good or very bad outcome results in drastically different outcomes, which have to be devised by the Game Master and reacted to by the players on the spot.

In Taskmaster…

There are task like “Surprise Alex” (Series 3, Episode 2) that are the simplest form of using surprise to create entertaining content.  But beyond that, Taskmaster is known for various secrets, reveals and tricks that make tasks all the more intriguing to players and viewers.

For example:

• Morse code in the arrangement of balloons in Series 3, Episode 2: “Pop the balloons.”
• Rhod Gilbert’s lateral thinking in Series 7, Episode 10: “Tie yourself up as securely as possible.”

Chance can also be an important mechanic in creating something with great potential for surprise when it pays off really well or really badly.  An example of this in Taskmaster is Jo Brand’s streak of 13 correct guesses in Series 9, Episode 7 (live task): “Read the Taskmaster’s mind. The Taskmaster will choose a card. You must state if that card features a horse or a laminator. You will receive 1 point for every correct answer in a row.”

In game design…

One of the easiest ways to include surprises in video games is by putting in various Easter eggs, which are now quite common.  Examples are the animations in Hearthstone‘s playing mat that are triggered by certain combinations of actions, or the hidden pocket dimension known as Whimsydale in the Diablo games.

In addition to Easter eggs, games should include surprises in more integral parts of gameplay.  This could be mechanics-based, like the first time you find out you can shield surf down hills in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  Or, surprises can be part of a story in a more traditional way, as seen in the plots of books and movies.  A great example of a plot surprise is the beginning of Assassin’s Creed III, where the player starts playing with the same mechanics as an Assassin from the previous games, but it is revealed through a cutscene that they are in fact part of the opposing faction, the Templars.

These surprises make a game fun to watch through the reaction of the players as well as the viewer’s own feeling of discovery from the reveal itself.

5. Schadenfreude and its opposite

Schadenfreude is the word used to describe the pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune.  For audiences, this can often be a sense of amusement by watching someone fail or struggle.  But, we also enjoy watching people succeed.  Joy at the success of someone else, sometimes known in German as “mitfreude” or the coined word “freudenfreude”, is an equally strong draw to watching favourite players performing well.

In Taskmaster…

Watching a certain contestant succeed or struggle is so compelling that the show often saves the video footage of the person who does exceptionally well or badly for last.  One of the most elegant examples of how the show uses schadenfreude and mitfreude is its treatment of Nish Kumar’s attempt in Series 5, Episode 1: “Get the basketball through the hoop. You may not touch the basketball with your hands. You may not wear gloves or anything that could reasonably be construed to be gloves.”  The clip is edited to show incredible success, and then it is revealed that it took Nish many tries to complete the task.

In game design…

In competitive games, comeback mechanics are especially effective at creating a fun viewing experience because of the feeling of watching someone fail or succeed in an unexpected manner.  A classic example is Mario Kart, which is popular in arcades and in group settings because it’s fun for a group of people to take turns playing and watching.  Because Mario Kart favours losing players by awarding them better power-ups, there’s often a win where a player races ahead of the current leader at the last minute, making it exciting.

Games allow players to fail in a safe way, which means that our schadenfreude at watching them is less loaded than watching a “fail” compilation on YouTube or a classic blooper reel.  Plus, this makes seeing the success that they finally achieve through persistence even more rewarding.

• How are you making failure fun to watch in addition to successes?
• How are you enabling your players to come back from almost-certain defeat to win spectacularly?

6. Fantasy fulfillment

A big appeal of fictional worlds as experienced through books, movies and television is the idea of putting oneself in the shoes of the characters.  From superhero comics to epic realms, many of us have a favourite fantasy of our own, whether it’s to attend a school for kids with superpowers, or to visit a mythical land where magic exists.  Theme parks that bring these worlds to life are popular for this very reason.

In Taskmaster…

Taskmaster is extraordinarily good at creating interesting situations where viewers might want to imagine themselves taking part.  Having the budget, crew and resources of a television show, it can stage elaborate and fun fantasies.  One such example is the hide-and-seek task in Series 8, Episode 1: “Alex is on that bridge in the distance with lights on his head. Get as close as you can to Alex without him noticing you. Alex will duck down behind the wall for 10 seconds, then pop up for 10 seconds, then back down for 10 seconds, and so on until he notices you.”

In game design…

The pinnacle for fantasy fulfillment in video games is role-playing games that put the player in an alternate world, usually very different from reality.  These can be as in-depth as MMORPGs like Elder Scrolls, which have complex in-game systems for crafting, trade, combat, items and multiplayer.  Or, they can be lighthearted and fun like the LEGO games, which often put players in a familiar story with a humorous LEGO twist in its installments for properties like Lord of the Rings and Marvel.

However, while these games are fun to play, viewers are one step further removed from the immersion.  A challenge for game designers is to involve the viewer somehow to make them also feel like they are part of the world without having to be an active participant.  Game-like experiences in various interactive theatre or analog group games like watchable Dungeons & Dragons or LARPing have made some progress in this field, but there is more space for designers to continue to innovate.

7. Bite-sized clips

As we watch a lot of videos on social media and on mobile devices, short-form content has become increasingly the norm.  Some researchers claim that our attention spans have dropped significantly in only a few decades.^{1, 2}

In Taskmaster…

Individual task attempts can be a matter of seconds to a few minutes, which is the perfect length for socials.  What’s more, an entertaining task attempt can bring the viewer to the show proper, increasing its audience.

In game design…

Making a short game cycle that is intrinsically watchable is a less-explored game design space.  Though there are many games that have short bouts or rounds, there’s no guarantee that this will have the drama or a moment of hilarity or tension that can captivate viewers in a short social share.  Often, translating games to social content relies on viewers of long-form clipping exciting moments, such as a rampage in League of Legends, which often would only appeal to viewers who are already fans of the game.  Another example is Untitled Goose Game, which is fun to watch in long-form, but leans towards memes in terms of social sharing.

Taskmaster exemplifies making games fun to watch

By thinking of the television show viewers as its priority, Taskmaster brings to light several important ways game designers can think about creating games that are fun to watch.  This is increasingly important today, when we do a lot of passive viewing, especially on our phones and on social media.  By making games fun to watch, designers can draw a new batch of players or encourage current players to engage more with the game.

Learn more about game design in my blog series The Game Design of Taskmaster!

References Cited

1. Moulton, Cyrus. “Squirrel! Why attention spans seem to be shrinking and what we can do about it.” Northeastern Global News, 23 January 2024. Web. 22 July 2024.
2. Lorenz-Spreen, P., Mønsted, B.M., Hövel, P. et al “Accelerating dynamics of collective attention.” Nature Communications 10 (2019): 1759. Web. 22 July 2024.