Goals, motivators and progression

Entry posted by f13rce · April 14, 2015

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Felt like writing another blog... So here we go!

Goals, motivators and progression are crucial in order to keep your player playing for a decent amount of time. Goals are usually represented with objectives or progression, engaging the player into the game and let them have a reason to keep playing.

Like I talked about in the previous blog post, progression matters a lot when it comes to engagement. It gives the player a sense of achievement which keeps the player motivated to play. Rewards for progression give the player a good vibe and will most likely continue.

Rewards can be anything: A chest full of gold, the newest weaponry, but also a small little sound that plays whenever you pick something up (like coins!). I noticed with the recent playerbase playing mobile games: people want to be rewarded as many times as possible. (A sound or a bit of score could be enough already.)

Now I doubt anybody here is making mobile games, but you can process this concept in PC, Mac, Linux and console games - any type of game really.

Example

Let's take a look at the following game: Super Mario 64 (N64)

The game is constantly rewarding you for progression. Here we see:

1: Breadcrumbs (Motivator)

Coins are leading to a path towards the end of the level. Coins reward you by adding score, restoring health and giving a star and life at 100 coins. The coin rotates, giving the player some feedback that it can be interacted with. It also plays a little sound when picking up, this gives the player some extra positive feedback. Because coins actually help you, the player is motivated to pick them up - which is exactly what the developers of the level want you to do.

2: Exploration (Goal)

The player is now familiar with the coins, but this one is red! Woah! When the player picks the coin up it gives a different sound which gets higher pitched if you collect more of them. The coin also is worth two yellow coins (restoring two health as well), giving the player another reason to pick them up.

But because a number pops up indicating how many red coins you've picked up, the player will be eager to find more because there might be a reward for collecting them all. This adds up to the exploration of the level so the playtime of the game gets extended without having to add extra features or mechanics - while it is still fun!

3: Camera angle (Progression)

This game isn't the best example of it, but sometimes games try to aim you towards the end by having the camera point at them. As soon as you get closer and closer you can feel the reward coming to you. "I'm so close, let's just finish it!"

A good example of this is Journey, where in the intro you see this giant mountain. The game helps you towards your goal while the player doesn't necessarily notices it.

Game flow

The game can be simplified into this triangle:

The player gets a goal (obtain a ), gets challenged by obstacles and eventually gets rewarded with a fancy, shiny . *insert progression sound here*

So how do you keep a player challenged?

There are ways by introducing new mechanics, but that will increase the scope of your project. However, the mechanics don't have to be unique or difficult. Portal has a good example of that:

First they introduce a player to a fail-proof area. The player can't die here, nor is there an ability to fail the level in any way. As soon as the player knows how the certain mechanic or obstacle works, (s)he can progress to the next level.

In the second level the player won't have a safety net: It's time to put it to the test. The player gets challenged with his new knowledge and has to try to succeed using the knowledge he just gained. Usually it's somewhat the same puzzle but a little bit more difficult. If you try to change the way the newly learned mechanic is used in the second level, the player might get confused and punished too much by dying all the time - resulting in the player quitting the game. So don't.

In the third level the player knows the mechanic and has proven that (s)he can use it effectively. Usually you add a new way of using the mechanic by getting a bit creative where you also hint the player using signposting. An example could be breadcrumbs, arrows or particles popping up like "Hey, maybe you can use this!" (or just an NPC helper saying it). A safety net is not required, but helpful. You don't want the player to be punished for trying to learn - but that depends on the challenge as well.

You can see this coming back in this video:

So coming back to the question, you keep a player challenged by either introducing new obstacles or new mechanics. Rewards can help the progression of the player. In RPGs if you level up your combat stats so you can eventually get new weapons and armor. With this new gear you can kill new monsters, get new unlocks and adventure. It's actually an infinite loop of goal, challenge and reward if you think about it.

Summary

So to summarize this all up:

- Have clear goals (and have the player know his goal at all time)

- Give the player a sense of progression (feedback on coins collected, etc)

- Give the player an appropriate reward so he can advance in the game (sometimes a sound, sometimes a chest of gold)

- Have a clear game-flow (goal -> challenge -> reward -> goal)

Thanks for reading! My next blog post will be about juicing up the game.

Oh, and here's your reward: