ON SECONDARY GAME OBJECTIVES

author=Study-Conclusion
Our examination of two online Flash games shows that secondary objectives can negatively impact player retention if they are too challenging. Off-path coins distracted players from the primary goals of the game, causing them to complete fewer levels than players with no secondary objectives.

In terms of overall play time, players reacted differently to difficult secondary objectives. Players who played for a moderate length of time quit earlier, while expert players who played for a long time played longer, presumably to go after
the coins. In both games, the proportion of players who quit earlier due to off-path coins was surprisingly large; in Refraction, this group was four times as large as the group of players who played longer. Therefore, game designers
should not assume that players will ignore secondary objectives if they find them too challenging, and should consider the possible harmful effects of player frustration. By creating secondary objectives that support the primary
objectives rather than distract from them, we were able to reverse these negative trends. Players with on-path coins who played for a moderate amount of time played longer than both players with no coins and players with off-path coins.

Additionally, long-term players played for a longer time with on-path coins than players with no coins. As a result, the benefits of secondary objectives appear strongest when they directly support the main mission of the game because
they increase the retention of long-term players without negatively impacting the rest of the population.

While more work is necessary to know exactly what players will and will not tolerate, and how to find the optimal level of difficulty for secondary objectives, we find it encouraging that the same approach succeeded in both games.

Our results show that secondary objectives can have complex effects on player behavior, and that game designers should exercise caution to avoid unexpected negative consequences. A key question that arises is how these results
generalize to other games and genres. There are many kinds of secondary objectives, and we only experimented with basic collectibles in a platformer game and side challenges in a puzzle game. Further experiments with a greater variety
of secondary objectives and achievements are necessary to know how they impact player behavior as a whole. However, if the effects that we observed are present in many kinds of games and with many kinds of optional challenges, these results
could have a profound effect on our understanding of player behavior and motivation.

Our findings also point to the importance of player metrics and large-scale measurement of player behavior because these effects are likely hard to detect with small amountsof player data. Many game designers and experts have strongly held beliefs about player motivation, but more numerical data is needed to support these recommendations. We believe that experimentation within games will help researchers evaluate the validity of these beliefs and discovergeneral principles of player behavior and motivation. The venues for rapid and inexpensive distribution of games thathave recently emerged, such as Kongregate, make this kind of iterative experimentation possible on a large scale.