Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
into the central opening at the bottom of the screen, the game lights up with fireworks, and
Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” plays triumphantly. It's a real spectacle.
Just as with other kinds of feedback discussed earlier in the topic, it's important to let play-
ers know when they've pushed into the system and done something “right.” This is part of
how players understand the shape of the system when they play. What's the purpose of the
conversation? How does the player evaluate whether she is going the right way? Just as Danger
Jane has to be shown pushing uselessly against a wall, or hitting an undiggable metal block
with a “ting” of the shovel, signifying the places where the game
can't
be pushed, we want to
show our players very clearly where the game
can
be pushed. Still, showering players with the
audiovisual signals of reward can feel gratuitous or meaningless if we use them everywhere,
as if we threw confetti and cheered every time a friend said something we understood in a
conversation. Reward, the pull of our system-created conversation, has to come at a meaning-
ful moment—and just as any celebration doesn't feel joyful
just
because people are throwing
streamers, the feeling of reward in games is based on what the player's been doing up to
that point.
Rewards are great for marking milestones during a player's journey and separating one part of
the game from the next. When you manage to navigate past a few minutes' worth of enemies,
pits, and navigational hazards in
Super Mario Bros.
, you reach a castle with a flagpole outside of
it. This sight, familiar to many gamers, lets you know that it's time for a pause in your journey.
It's a short pause, but it's still a break, a release and relief from your efforts. When you enter
the castle, fireworks go off. As the pace of activity suddenly slows for a moment, the visual ele-
ments of reward appear. All of this happens together to mark the event: you're done with one
part; now it's time to take a breath before the next part begins.
Not all games are broken into discrete chunks like this, but these pauses are useful moments
to signal players that they're successfully pushing into the game. When a player finishes one
section of a game, it could look like one level of
Super Mario Bros.
, leveling up a character in a
role-playing game, accomplishing a discrete mission objective, or fully exploring an area of the
game world. The relief of having finished an identified section can be a release from the pres-
sure of decision-making and responding to push-back from the game: a moment to stop and
celebrate.
Cat Cat Watermelon
(2010) from Lexaloffle Games is broken into 20 levels, each one posing
a more difficult challenge than the last. The player stacks various objects (including cats,
watermelons, beach balls, and more) on top of each other to create a tower that doesn't fall
over. If the player manages to stack all the objects for a given level, a sign appears with a fairly
standard victory message, telling her that the level's complete. Ironically and intentionally, the
sign actually knocks over the tower that the player just built, sending all the carefully placed
objects tumbling away. This is a great example of how the moment of success in a game can
create a feeling of release, even from what you've just accomplished. Hooray! You did it! And
now we sweep everything away. This is a kind of reward, too, even though it doesn't come with
