[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[Sean Howard]

"cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> A lot of the current discussions have involved, obliquely, how players
> are rewarded for what they do.

Perhaps. I see the discussions more about something else, and people just
interpret that through the eyes of rewards. If all you have is a hammer,
every problem is a nail, yeah? :)

> The whole point of these is that players want them. However, therein
> lies the problem - gameplay becomes fixated on the reward, to the
> detriment of whichever activity is necessary to achieve it. Especially
> in a multiplayer environment players become competitive between
> themselves, even when this is not desirable in the game's universe.

Competition is, I believe, a separate issue from rewards. Americans,
especially, are culturally built to be competitive. Sometimes, it gets
down right silly. Right now, I know of a few groups which are actively
competing to see who can log more hours into folding at home (the PS3
distributed computing genome unfolding thing). That's right. They are
actually competing to see who can cure cancer more.

We compete about EVERYTHING, even things where competition is so
fundamentally detrimental that our very quality of life suffers. Things
like education, job advancement, work projects. I've done creative
projects that were somehow put up against completely different creative
projects in competition. Somehow, the thing I did was either superior or
inferior - there is no equal, no "different". Just some linear path that
everything is rated upon. A golf videogame rated 8.0 is worse than a
strategy videogame rated 8.1. Heck, we've got red states versus blue
states.

So, I don't think the rewards create competition. I think competition is
an unfortunate side effect of existence in at least America, and since
most of the literature about videogames seems to be written from the
perspective of an American, it is only natural that a vast majority of it
believes videogames to be somehow competitive in nature. I disagree.

Anyway, rewards don't breed competition, but rather competition colors the
value of the rewards. Something which gives an advantage to competition is
more sought after, and more threatening.

> Between achievement-seeking and player-competition, players will quickly
> determine the most efficient method of achieving the reward. Often, this
> will bare little resemblance to the activity the reward is supposedly
> for...the virtue quests in UO, for example.
>

This doesn't just happen in videogames. You'll have to excuse the constant
references to the educational system, but I've got a young daughter about
to start in it and I've been reading a lot about it. But the very concept
of rewards in education is completely opposite to what the purpose is. For
instance, the SATs are purposely designed to create a spread - to separate
the top from the bottom. Some tests exist merely to test aptitude, but the
SATs purposely won't insert questions that a majority of the preview
testers got right. In a test with a certain amount of losers guarranteed,
is it any surprise we think the school system is crap?

So what happens? Kids need these scores to get into college. Unable to
predict with any certainty the material that will be covered, and in fact,
as the material on the tests becomes more commonplace, the tests
themselves by nature change into something else, college seeking kids are
forced into test prep schools where the height of their advice is that if
you can narrow it down to two answers, you have a statistically higher
chance of improving your score. That's not knowledge. That's minmaxing.

Achievement-seeking is, I think, a behavior of a particular temperment of
people - even a majority of people, which is probably why it is usually
unquestioned and even rewarded. The problem with gaming is that all too
often, the people who design these things are achievement-seeking
personalities in the first place (only they would've thought the Xbox
360's achievement system was a good idea). Within their own narrow
interpretation of the world, they are creating their own perfect
playground and somehow deluding themselves into thinking that what games
are and should be.

I think achievement-seeking personalities can enjoy non-achievement games,
just like competitive personalities don't always thrive on competitive
games, so ultimately, I have to point blame at the game designers for not
being creative enough to see alternate solutions.

(For the record, I don't think rewards are innately an achievement thing.
I don't think rewards are always bad. But I think that when they are used
even slightly as a driving force behind a game, then you've got a
situation where minmaxing can destroy it).

> Equally, players will often participate in activities that provide no
> reward, simply because the activity is enjoyable - re: the anecdote
> about chicken dancing in UO.

Usually, it involves being annoying. Given the state of the internet, I
sometimes believe we'd be living on Mars if it pissed off a group of 14
year old boys somewhere.

> Thus:
>
> a) Players don't need rewards if the activity is enjoyable.
> b) Rewards for activities often reward the wrong behaviour.

Yes, and god yes.

> As a generalisation, the available enjoyable activities increase with
> more players, since we are at heart social creatures (yes Sean, I know,
> you hate people ;)

I don't hate them. I think people are a constant source of fascination,
and I am constantly amazed at the sheer variety and volume of creative and
intellectual works out there. I just don't want to interact with them on a
personal level :)

But I'm going to disagree. Get a room full of jerks together and the
enjoyable activities will not increase. Look no further than the Night Elf
starting area in WoW compared to the other races. What I think happens
with more people is that you have more individuality - more creativity,
more differences, more ingenuity - that leads a greater variety of
experiences.

Yes, some people are very much social animals and they enjoy sharing their
experiences, even with complete stranges. I think it somehow validates the
experience to be acknowledged by others. I don't particularly understand
this behavior, but I don't think it is actually improved by a greater
audience. Maybe it is, I don't know. But I know that it would suck to have
a bookstore that sold books from only one author.

> As per Caliban's recent posts, the more players, the more opportunity
> for b) to become disruptive and spoil your game.

Hey, I'm a pessimist of the highest order (I'm a dragon-level pessimist
back at the lodge - two more naysays and I get a funny hat), but even that
seems to be taking it too far.

I think it is truly impossible to spoil a game from a player perspective.
You can fail to live up to your own designs and aspirations, but once the
game is release, the players will find a way to enjoy it the way they want
to enjoy it. That this enjoyment may not be particularly rewarding for the
designer or publisher is beside the point.

I keep bringing up the Night Elf starting area, but the truth is, though
the players there tend to be xenophobic, hostile, and not particularly
bright, they are indeed having fun - the kind of fun they want to have in
the way they want to have it. The only reason they have a foothold is
through volume and precedence. They got there first and in droves, so they
"claimed" the zone for themselves and people like them.

I don't think a multiplayer game can be permanently spoiled by a
particular type of player. These things change over time. SWG is a good
example. When it launched, it was a bunch of different types of players.
After a while, the type of game it was retained a specific type of player.
A few changes later, and another type of player became dominant (much to
the chagrin of the previous emperors). And after the NGE, still another
type took charge.

What I'm saying is that you, as a designer, have some control over the
types of players that populate your game. If you don't make it achievement
based, you'll still have minmaxers, but they may not have dominant control
over the gameplay devices. However, just because the people who play your
game aren't the people you want to play, or that they don't play it in the
way you desperately wished they would, it doesn't make their enjoyment of
play less worthy.

I think a game design exists within a vacuum. All that is good and
terrible about it can be decided without regard to a particular type of
player. But games themselves do not exist within a vacuum, especially
multiplayer games, and you can't predict or dictate how others will play
or enjoy your game. In other words, once it is released, it stops being
your game. It's their's. As designers, the only thing we can do and should
do is to ensure a perfect design - a perfect design without pandering to a
specific type of person. Once you start caring whether players play your
game the "right way", you're fighting a battle you'll never, ever win.

> Which leads me to the conclusion that in a multiplayer game, rewards
> should be minimal, if existant. They certainly should not involve an
> increase in power, since that will only worsen the competetive streak.
> The exception to this, obviously, is if you can make your rewards immune
> to b) above /and/ can evenly distribute them amongst all the play styles
> you wish to encourage.

I see encouraging a particular play style as discouraging the opposition
play style. Encouraging grouping discourages soloing, and so on. Rewards
should NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER be used as a social control mechanism.
Behaviorism has been proven wrong repeatedly and no psychologist worth his
degree would ever attempt to apply it to human behavior.

If I were to design some sort of reward system, it would be something
where every reward is available to every person through multiple means.
I'm very much a virtual communist.

-- 
Sean Howard