It's a Boy!

Dear Baby Product Creators,

Gerber, Enfamil, Similac, and Baby Magazine, please stop sending Sandswept Studios complimentary baby formula and baby-related magazines. We did not have a baby. In fact, you could say we even had a miscarriage with the cancellation of our first project. This offends us.



If we were ever to have a collective child, it would be an abomination to the human race, and you would very well be hunted down by PETA (yes, PETA) for encouraging the nutrition and well-being of such a biological perversion.

Sandswept Studios is not a mother. That is all.


- Geoff Keene
CEO of Sandswept Studios

P.S. This stuff tastes disgusting.

Elements of Game Design: Rewards

I'm going to start doing a series about elements of good game design, titled "Elements of Game Design". Strange, I understand. I'm going to start off with Rewards. Rewards keep the game driving forward for the players, (but not in terms of game flow, which I'll be touching on in the next post) and keep players coming back. Let's get started.

What are Rewards?

First and foremost, Rewards are just what you'd expect them to be, hence the name. Achievements (Xbox360), unlockables, leveling up, you name it. Things the players are rewarded with for doing good things, or even just playing the game for a certain amount of time. Core but often overlooked components of a great game. Winning is a reward, but it is common (or you would hope!). The rewards I'll be mainly referring to are unlockable weaponry, attachments to said weaponry, player models or "armor", and so on.

To be clear, Downloadable Content (DLC) is not a reward. Generally speaking, if it costs money, it's not a reward, it is a product, in which you would hope to find additional rewards. We'll now touch on balancing rewards.

Balance

Balancing rewards is a big deal. I'm not referring to the unlockables themselves, being unbalanced, but rather the unbalanced distribution of rewards found in some games. Oftentimes developers will withhold a large (sometimes very large) amount of content in order to allow players to "unlock" it. While this can create somewhat of a feeding frenzy, where every one wants this content, it can also cause some distress to the players, and often, the hardcore fans. Here are the DOs and DON'Ts.

DON'T rip players off.
No one likes getting ripped off. If you know you're ripping people off, chances are many of them do too. People aren't nearly as dumb (as a collective) as some people like to put across. If a game is released to the public, and a DLC (downloadable content) expansion pack or map pack is available immediately thereafter for a steep price, that's damaging to the image of the bean-counters making those decisions, and therefore, the company (or publisher).

DO give players frequent rewards.
Call of Duty: World at War is a brilliant example of this. While playing it, I notice I seem to achieve something almost every game, be it a new weapon, a mini-challenge (bonus experience for doing cool things), or even leveling up. Frequent and obvious rewards make the player feel heroic, courageous, and manly. (The women out there may feel the same way, but we won't tell anyone.)

DON'T leave out the hard stuff
From epic skills come awesome-sauce rewards. Pretty sure that's from Spiderman. Peter Parker has a 1337 uncle. But to stay on topic here; players want a challenge. Sure, hand out rewards willy-nilly (well, not too willy-nilly) but make sure you sneak in some really tough ones with some great payoff. The skilled or simply dedicated players should be able to obtain some rewards. Bragging rights are worth their weight in gold, am I right?

DO spread the rewards out
The rewards need to be spread sufficiently throughout the game, that not only do players earn many on their first time through, but continue to earn them after they return to play a second time. (or third... fourth... fifth...) This goes without saying for multiplayer as well. Looping back to bragging rights, what's better than showing off your sweet new armor that many other players don't have?

DO tie singleplayer to the multiplayer
Following on the curtails of spreading rewards -- most games these days sport both single and multiplayer game modes. Players who beat the story mode (or singleplayer, I suppose some don't really have much of a story), should be encouraged to do so by earning rewards for Multiplayer.

Next up...

Good Rewards

What exactly make for good rewards? I mentioned some things vaguely already, such as armor or weaponry. There are really two kinds of rewards -- we'll call them Internal and External.

Internal rewards are rewards the player receives, but they're generally not shown to other players. These are often "feel good" rewards. Things you get that may not show to other players, but the fact that you have them makes you, the player, really feel great. Some abstract examples of this would be unlocking challenges for doing something cool, which other players may not be able to view. Achievements, on the other hand, fall into the latter category; External rewards.

External rewards are much more obvious, and usually far more common. Achievements are a great external reward. Every Xbox 360 game has them to some level, some give more focus to them, some less. These are a great way to brag about just how awesome you are at everything, ranging from picking up a controller to being able to move the controls in an inhuman manner. These are a good example of giving easy and hard rewards, for players of both skill-sets (or simply players who play the game more, as mentioned before.)

Other examples of external rewards are armor or armor colors (which can change the appearance or sometimes statistics of a player), weapons and attachments to said weapons (which can drastically add some advantages, hopefully properly gameplay-balanced though), and much more. I'll close this little article with two examples of what I believe to be the best examples of games giving players great rewards (while there are many more, these are two that I frequently play, and yes, they are both FPS games). The games that don't reward well aren't worth mentioning, as people have long since stopped playing them.

Call of Duty: World At War -- Every time you score a kill, numbers pop up in a non-obstructive way and show you how much experience you've earned for your next level. With levels come rewards such as new exciting weapons and attachments, and within levels come quite a few mini-challenges, which further your experience earned. There's a fantastic amount of re-playability to be had in this game, and many diverse situations thanks for the ever increasing arsenal available to the player. While there is a ceiling to this (as in all games), it's way up there.

Halo 3 -- This game has a beautiful but reward system, as have it's predecessors. The third installement of the series in particular does an even better job, refining elements from the first two. First, medals are earned for certain types of kills, be they a melee, snipe, or even running someone over in a vehicle. Along with that, these medals pop up with a satisfying announcer voice saying things like "Double kill!". This kind of thing really gets the adrenaline going, and that kind of 'high' leaves the players quite satisfied with what they've done. This game also takes a nice advantage of achievements, and awards armor pieces based on what the players have accomplished, which gives them incentives to play singleplayer, as well as multiplayer. More playability for all.

In closing, rewards go hand in hand with longevity of play, and fun for the player. Don't forget these important nuggets.