Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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15
Motivation
Such a rush! The summit of life!
But it's not found with loving folk
It's on a peak that's much less rife
An empty room; the last brushstroke
A game designer's motivation must be both strong and carefully directed.
Strong, because we need a powerful drive to overcome the great challenges
of game development. Carefully directed, because it's easy for that drive to
go in the wrong direction and accidentally encourage us to do things that
don't help the game, or even harm it. This chapter is about motivation—
where it comes from, how to grow it, and how to direct it, in ourselves and
in others.
Extrinsic Rewards
It seems intuitive to say that the way to make people work better is to
reward them better. Developers who work better should get more money,
stock options, a parking space, health coverage, a bigger office, or a hun-
dred other goodies. This is akin to a factory owner paying workers a dollar
for each ton of pig iron they haul onto a rail car. These kinds of incentives
are called
extrinsic rewards
.
EXTRINSIC REWARDS are rewards that are separate from the work itself,
usually in exchange for some measurable performance on the job.
Extrinsic rewards are common in businesses ranging from finance to
government to industry. But they are doomed to fail in game design. There
are four key reasons for this.
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