RISK AND REWARD

Introduction

Every game is reliant on the player having the will to continue playing until the game's conclusion. There are a number of games that players will never complete because they either get stuck, get bored, or lose their motivation to finish the game.

This can occur for a number of reasons, but today we're looking at one specific area of game design which can cause or prevent this from happening - depending on how well you use it.

Risk and reward.

What's Risk and Reward?

When the player achieves a great feat in your game, they should be rewarded. This reward can be anything from a cutscene that advances the story, a new item or skill, or simply a save point.

Whilst some gamers feel that the sense of self-satisfaction of conquering various challenges in a game is the only reward they need, most will crave something more. Providing it will usually please them and they'll praise you before continuing. Not including any rewards will commonly cause them to stop playing your games and complain. It's a simple win or lose situation.

A good example of this, is the Achievement system on the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows titles (recently emulated on the PlayStation 3 via Trophies). Consumers are willing to play bad games just to get the Achievement points from them – this is an extreme case of risk and reward where the quality of the game is often overlooked if the Achievements are easy to attain.

Obviously, amateur video games don’t include Live Achievements, but take a look at the rental figures for Avatar: Burning Earth to see my point. The game itself is terrible, but tons of fans have rented it just for the quick and easy reward of 1000 Achievement points.

Good rewards, such as unlocking new characters, costumes, areas or levels, even concept artwork, can add replay value to your game, and generally improve the experience. A good example of this would be any beat-‘em-up, such as Tekken, Soul Calibur, or Street Fighter. One run through each game can take as little as five minutes, but the rewards it gives you for doing so make you go back to play it again.

The reward you provide should reflect the accomplishment your player just attained. Rare items and skills should be awarded for exploring areas other than those you have to visit, save points should be given after the completion of a difficult task, and a cutscene should be awarded for completing an entire area, or arc of the plot.

Proper Use of Risk and Reward

We’ll start by looking at giving out extra items. You’ll want to make one or two of your hidden items early in the game somewhat obvious, but without making them seem like a regular item. This will tell the audience that there are secrets to be found if you stray from the beaten track and then set them up to look out for them later on in the game. A good way to achieve this would be to put such an item down a dead end that the player could easily end up on by accident.

Another good idea for this, is to make it so that the item shows on the screen, but without showing the path to it. For example, you could place one behind a wall in an RPG. The player can see the item from the main path, but not the route to get to it. This then engages your audience further as they’ll be keeping an extra eye out for any hidden paths and actively trying to figure out how to get that elusive rare item.

You can also give out rare items as a reward for defeating bosses and high level enemies, especially if that enemy is in an optional area, or if you don’t have to defeat them in order to complete the game. Usually these are among the rarest items and greatest rewards but I will explain later how this can be done badly, and ruin a good game.

Finally, you could give out an extra item for the completion of a side quest, but that would require an entire article on side quests altogether.

Next, we have regular items, such as small health boosts. These should be dotted around your playing area and placed a good distance from each other. There should be health boosts after large battles, with either a high quantity or high level enemy, as well as before difficult battles and boss fights. This is mostly part of making your game fair and balanced and is crucial to making a good game.

Save points are a way to reward the player too. Save points and checkpoints should be provided after every major challenge and/ or event. If there’s a lengthy cutscene, put a save point after it so you won’t have to watch it again if you die. If there’s a boss coming up, put in a save point so that if you lose, you don’t have to start the whole dungeon over. If the player’s just completed a tricky puzzle or event, again, include a save point so it needn’t be repeated. On top of that, if you have a particularly large area, save a dungeon or a cave, include a save point every now and again so that if the player needs to leave the game for any reason, they don’t lose too much data or progress.

Save points really are a matter of common sense, and yet tons of games, even commercial ones, manage to really screw up in that department.

Larger rewards, such as extra costumes, cheat codes, or new characters, should require a lot of effort from the player. If the reward is available in a shop, the price should be substantially higher than that of any other item. If the reward is hidden within the game world, it should be extremely difficult to find, for example, you could hide such a reward in a forest, but have the foliage block your view of it. Only through exploration and experimentation should the player find they can pass through the foliage to the reward. They can also be given out as the reward for completing a lengthy side quest, but as with defeating optional bosses, there are ways to ruin your game with this.

The main issue with the larger rewards is making them balanced. The effort required should be reflected within the award, without making the work required so hefty your players can’t be bothered with it.

Examples of How NOT to do Rewards

My favourite example of a bad reward comes straight from Final Fantasy. Not any specific game, but the series in general. In most games, there is some form of ultimate weapon, usually called Ultima Weapon. To collect this weapon you usually have to accomplish a feat more challenging than the last area of the game, for example, defeating an optional boss, or trying to breed a golden chocobo (VII, that means you).

More often than not, whilst filling out the criteria to get your reward you either become more powerful than you’d need to be to complete the game without the reward, or the reward itself removes the challenge from the game completely.

Let’s first look at obtaining this ultimate weapon or skill from an optional boss. The idea is relatively simple, defeat a secret boss and you get a weapon that makes the rest of the game easier. The problem is that the secret boss is the single most powerful enemy in the game, meaning that if you beat it you probably never needed the weapon in the first place. It defeats the point.

In the case of Knights of the Round in Final Fantasy VII, by the time you’ve gone to the effort of breeding a golden chocobo, you could have beaten half the game or trained to defeat the end boss. Not only that but once you have Knights of the Round, you can more-or-less take down anything with little effort. It’s overpowered.

I feel that these types of award are pointless and can take away from the experience and fun of the main game. In short, they should be avoided.

Examples of How You SHOULD do Rewards

Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 3 and Knuckles offer a fantastic reward for completing the task of collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds, you get to play as Super Sonic, an invincible, faster version of Sonic! Unlike the Ultima Weapons of Final Fantasy, Super Sonic doesn’t ruin the gameplay. First of all, after obtaining all seven Emeralds you still need 50 rings to activate the Super Sonic transformation. Secondly, Super Sonic only lasts as long as you have rings – and whilst you’re Super Sonic, you lose a ring every second to sustain the form. This means that you only ever have a limited time as Super Sonic and when the effect expires, you can be killed in a single hit. Finally, Super Sonic can still be killed by being crushed, drowned, the timer running out, and falling off the stage. With his increased speed, those things can quite easily happen, so you have to be alert and learn to properly use your new power. In the hands of a novice player, being Super Sonic can even be a hinderance.

In later games, collecting the Emeralds allowed you access to the final stage and let you see the true ending of the game. Whilst I personally disapprove of this method , it is perfectly viable.

Final Word

I hope this article on risks and rewards helps you in creating your games. If you have any comments, questions or something you’d like to add, feel free to comment.