A big part of game design is reward mechanisms. When you do good, the game should let you know. Some games are almost entirely built around this idea (check out Peggle for PC, Mac, iPhone, DS if you haven't already, it's a great example and a great game in general).
What becomes apparent when you spend a bit of time working on this stuff is that:
- rewards are a big part of what makes a game fun, to the point that
- it's almost unfair to judge how "fun" a game is without them.
If you were playing AFL, would kicking a ball between sticks be as much fun if the crowd didn't cheer afterwards? Or if the crowd didn't exist in the first place?
There are a lot of ways to give players positive or negative feedback. Audio is a big one, visual effects, explosions, lasers, all the obvious stuff. The flip side is obviously reprimanding a player when they fail. Similar principles apply.
But when you're making a little game prototype to find out if the great idea you had about a robot tyrannosaurus is really fun, rewards are a bit tricky. You don't want to spend all day coding that awesome fireworks effect until you know what you're doing is going to make a decent game in the first place. One trick I've used to get around that is to use standard placeholders that load the game with the right emotional feedback. A favorite of mine is the Super Mario coin collection sound effect. When you hear this sound, you feel good, I don't care if your heart is made of ice. Chuck that in, and you can quickly see whether your gameplay is working or not.
In a game we created for the Football Federation of Australia, we give the user these messages a few ways. When you make a successful pass, we play a sound effect (the crowd saying "ooh" with increasing excitement per pass). When you miss a pass or a shot, the crowd sounds disappointed. When you score a goal, the crowd goes crazy. And when it comes to rewarding users, more is more. So we added 3D confetti, a pinball scoreboard animation, a video of the crowd celebrating, fireworks and a commentator shouting.
I've read some criticism of the games industry for being condescending for these simplistic tricks. It's like patting a stupid kid on the head for solving a simple maths problem. Given that the average age of a video game player in Australia is 30, aren't we all mature enough for something a bit more sophisticated? Interesting sentiment and I'm not sure what the future holds.
In the meantime, this gem from Nintendo's recent game Rhythm Heaven (shown above) is really interesting. When you mess up your timing and fail to sing along with the choir, you get disapproving looks from your band-mates. The crazy thing is that it really works – you do feel a bit sheepish when it happens. Not surprising I guess when you realise that the human brain is hard-wired to care about social status.