Chapter 2.25. Emotioneering Techniques Category 25: Motivation Techniques

Chapter 2.25. Emotioneering Techniques Category #25: Motivation Techniques

Baiting the player to finish the game.

Motivation Techniques

are techniques to make the player want to keep on going and make it through the game.

Trends come and go. And it's a good thing, or we'd all look like we stepped out of The Brady Bunch.

One current trend in games, at least in some genres, is to make games shorter. The game that takes 50 hours to complete is, in some circles, giving way to games that take 25 hours to complete and sometimes games that are even shorter.

This trend is occurring to combat the fact that more than a few game players never make it to the end of a game. This occurs for several reasons:

• They get bored with the game, feeling that if they progress with the game, they won't get much more out of it than they already have.

• The average age of the typical game player is steadily rising. Adult gamers have other responsibilities in their lives and can't devote as much time to playing as they could when they were younger.

• They also have more disposable income, so they can afford to buy more games.

Shorter games might be one way to ensure that players make it through to the end of a game. But I know a publisher who swears that's the wrong answer, and that the right answer is to design games so that player can sit down for an hour and perhaps even 15 minutes and still have a fulfilling game experience. The player can then leave and later come back, and so digest the game in enjoyable installments.

I wanted to mention these two approaches, because I think we'll see game designers experimenting quite a bit with both of them.

Besides issues of length or segmented gameplay, however, there are definite mistakes to avoid if you want to keep your player motivated to continue on through to the end of your game. Here are a few.