Bullet Point Learning Design - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 132

have taught them how to play the game. The mistake my students
often make is introducing this harsh atmosphere much too early, and
instead of motivating players to cull all of their undesirable behaviors,
they just incentivize them to put the controller down.
No Small Rewards
This one really baffles me. One of the strongest contributors to learn-
ing is getting amazing feedback in such a way that you have a great
time, or an explosion of awesomeness immediately after a desired
behavior. This should be amazingly easy in games; after all, games are
designed to make people have a good time! Unfortunately, we some-
times dole rewards out bit by bit. We will show the players a badass
amazing character early on that they're intended to emulate, but then
make them play the entire game to get to that point. Worse still, we
sometimes let the character play that badass version of themselves,
then artificially strip their power away, making them effectively play
the entire game to get back to the power level they had at the begin-
ning of the game. Why not let the players emulate that character and
then surpass them? This was the norm in older games, but we have
stopped for some reason. If you have ever played Saints Row IV , it
is likely that you are familiar with constant amazing rewards. The
game literally dumps rewards in your lap repeatedly and continuously
throughout the experience—and that's amazing.
We know from what we have been reading that there are only two
things you can do with a behavior—reinforce it or correct it. If the
desired behavior is to be able to jump over obstacles, there should be
rollercoasters, fireworks, T-bone steaks, and fine cigars on the other
side. Other game designers have called a cascade of amazing things
that happen after minor input juiciness , and I think that is an appro-
priate enough term. Juicy games are ones that give the players huge
experiences without requiring them to do much in way of input. This
doesn't mean you are going to spoil the player: there's no such thing!
There is no shortage of good things you can do for the player. It's not
like if you give them a bajillion dollars and a ton of amazing weap-
ons after the first mission you will run out of amazing experiences to
give them, as if fun is a finite resource. For this reason, and to con-
tinue reinforcing good behavior, including overcoming obstacles and