Rewards

Rewarding ourselves is often the way many people get through different aspects of life. I may think, when I complete this work I will have a chocolate bar. This is a short term reward but a longer term reward may be if the work is completed well, I will receive a good degree. We reward ourselves as that is what is needed. Freud as cited in Stephenson states that “We strive fundamentally, for pleasure and to avoid pain” (page 52).
Within gaming, rewards are often used to keep the gamer playing. “Rewards shape a player’s sense of pleasure and overall play experience”, “on balance a play experience needs to be pleasurable” (Salen and Zimmerman. Pages 345-347). However when playing games you don’t always find them fun, for example when playing Solitaire on the computer, often I get stuck when there are no cards left for example, but I keep on restarting and playing again for the final reward of actually winning.

Hallford and Hallford as cited by Salen and Zimmerman believe that players need to be rewarded, they need to finish tasks and feel satisfactions whilst playing. They list four general types of reward.
Rewards of glory
Rewards of sustenance
Rewards of access and
Rewards of facility.
If you take for example the game Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azikban for Playstation 2. When playing you get rewards of glory, these have no impact on the game, for example a reward of glory would be completing the game. It also has rewards of sustenance; you collect Jelly Beans to gain extra health. Rewards of access are also used; these are rewards that help you to enter a certain level for example a key. Within the game you are required to find certain spells to complete aspects of the game, for example the flying spell so you can fly on the dragon. The game also uses rewards of facility, for example another advantage of collecting Jelly beans, is that you can buy certain spells which allow you to advance within the game. These rewards within the game keep the player going. The option to revisit past levels means that you can collect more Jelly beans that may have been missed to help buy a reward which may then in turn help with a level later on within the game. I believe that without these mini-rewards I would find the game dull and uninteresting, part of the motivation for playing is to finish levels, which itself is a reward of glory. By motivating players with rewards it means that they are more likely to play for a reason. Rewards teach the gamer what actions are best to take. They craft larger structures of pleasure. By having rewards within the game, it keeps players interested and should be something that game designers look at as one of the main tasks when creating games, as without rewards games would be dull and in some cases unplayable.

Word count: 487

Bibliography
Salen. K and Zimmerman, E (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Stephenson, W. (1988). The Play Theory of Mass Communication. USA: The University of Chicago Press.