Every successful video game leverages human psychology to keep players engaged and motivated. Good games can be made without a solid understanding of the psychology, but it is much easier to make a successful game, if you understand how to keep players engaged and motivated.
Every video game designer endeavors to make a "fun" game. What is "fun" though? If we could understand exactly what makes a game fun, then we could make all sorts of game with no fear of failure. There are a number of common game activities that are considered fun. One category is exploration. This includes things like discovering new things, experiencing a story as it unfolds, doing things we cannot do in real life, and wielding extra power. Another category is playing. This includes exercising real skills, doing real thinking and problem solving, and accomplishing real achievements. There is also the meta-game, which includes enjoyment of how the game is implemented and joking about the game. The problem with all of this is that different people enjoy different categories or different subcategories. There are a lot of people that find the economics of Eve Online to be great fun, but many other people feel like it is a lot of unnecessary drudgery. Some people enjoy the constant action of real-time strategy games, while other people prefer games like chess, where players can spend some time thinking about their decisions before they commit. The fact is, "fun" is far to subjective to be a useful metric in designing games. Using game psychology to design successful games needs a bit more science.
There are two things a game needs to be successful. First, it needs to be motivating. A motivating game will first convince people to play it, then it will make players want to do the work to accomplish tasks that drive progression in the game. Second, it needs to be engaging. An engaging game will keep the player playing, even if there are other entertainment options available. A motivating game will make the player want to play it, and an engaging game will make the player not want to stop. If you can make a game that is motivating and engaging for a large number of people, your game can be successful.
Scoring
Scoring is an important motivation tool for games. Scoring is a metric for progress within a game, and video games can have many different scoring metrics.
Points is a generic scoring metric that generally measures the overall success of a player. The player will gain points for actions that help the player progress. This encourages the player to progress more, and it offers a metric for comparing the progress of different players.
Prestige is a scoring metric that is reputation based. In some games, prestige might be represented as reputation with NPCs. In multiplayer games, it might be something like a titles or achievements. Prestige in multiplayer games can encourage competition between players.
Levels is a very common scoring metric in RPGs. Not only is it a metric for comparing how powerful a character is, it is also used to determine how powerful a character is. Levels can encourage competition, but usually they just motivate players to want to progress more.
Ranks is a scoring metric similar to levels and prestige, but it is generally only of importance to NPCs. Ranks don't necessarily determine how powerful your character is, but they may affect what your character has access to. Ranks are a level independent measure of the characters position in an in-game group or organization. For example, a character may have a rank in an in-game military that affects what technology the character has access to. The character could also have a level that determine how well he or she can use that technology, but it does not affect access. Rank can encourage competition, however it is usually sufficiently motivating by itself.
In-game currency can also be a scoring metric. How much game money a player has can affect what the player has access to, and for some people, amassing a lot of game wealth can be a strong motivator by itself.
In RPGs and similar games, gear or equipment can be a valid scoring metric. In Diablo 2, level advancement tends to stall around the early 90s. Once a character has gotten into the 90s, gear makes a much bigger difference than level, so the primary metric of progression is how good a character's gear is.
Collectables, including badges, achievements, items, or even graphics (some modern games have unlockable "skins" that are alternative graphics awarded for accomplishing some task) can also be strong motivators for many people. Collectables are especially good for end-game characters, to help avoid the boredom that can be brought on by a sudden halt in progress.
Scoring is generally a motivator. People want to play a game to progress, and scoring shows them that progression. Wanting to level up your character, get better gear, or amass more wealth in a game makes people want to play that game. Scoring can help a game be more engaging, but it is not usually engaging by itself.
Envy and Competition
Competition can be both motivating and engaging. Playing a game because you want to beat a friend's high score is motivation, but playing with a friend (cooperatively or competitively) is engaging. If as long as your friend is playing, you want to keep playing, it is engaging. There are several common things that can encourage competition, generally by causing envy and a desire to do better than someone else.
Leaderboards are perhaps the biggest mechanism for encouraging competition. A leaderboard is an ordered list of players. It is ordered by score, with the highest score at the top Each entry lists the player in that position and that player's score. The typical leaderboard has a limited number of entries, containing only the highest scoring players. Leaderboards motivate players in several ways. First, they give the players a goal. Since leaderboards show the score of the highest ranking player, other players can see that score and know what they have to beat. They also know who they need to beat, which may encourage competitors to target that player (depending on whether the game mechanics allow this or not). Once a player gets on the leaderboard, there is additional motivation and even engagement, as the player can see the progress more clearly. Leaderboards are not always the best mechanic for all applications, but they are so common because they work.
Badges are virtual rewards given for accomplishing some task. They are essentially awards for achievements. Badges give players something to compare. Badges can be awarded multiple times, each time a difficult task is completed, or each badge can be awarded only once, to signify that some challenge has been overcome. Perhaps the best example of badges is Khan Academy, a web site devoted to offering free education to anyone with internet access. Several years ago, the founder of Khan Academy was working with a grade school class, and several of the students using the web site started competing with each other for badges. Supposedly, they ended up going through elementary, and high school level math, into college level math, just so they could get more badges. Badges can be extremely strong motivators, and when people start competing, they can encourage intense engagement.
Even bragging rights can be a motivator. When someone accomplishes an especially difficult task in a game, they may feel justified in making a big deal about it to friends. Even something as simple as this can be a good motivator. Bragging rights can also help engagement, if a player is close to accomplishing some difficult task. Bragging rights might be something as simple as beating a very difficult opponent for the first time, or it could be something as complicated as beating the entire game on an especially high difficulty level. In general though, people like to share especially notable things they have done, and giving players opportunities to do things worthy of telling can make a game more motivating and engaging.
Peer Pressure
Peer pressure can be good for motivation and engagement. People like to play games with their peers, and when they peers encourage them to play a game, they are more motivated to do it. Peer pressure can also make a game more engaging, especially when friends can play the game together.
Peer pressure is such a strong motivator that it can motivate people to play games they don't even like. A great example is Call of Duty. It turns out that a significant number of Call of Duty players do not actually consider it a "fun" game. They don't enjoy the game itself. They only play it because they have friends who play it. The motivation in this case is not fun. It is companionship and human interaction. When they play with their friends, these people can be very strongly engaged in the game, despite the fact that they do not find the game fun. This brings up some interesting observations. A game does not have to be fun to be fulfilling. A game that is not fun can still have legitimate value. Admittedly, it would probably be an even better experience if these people played games with their friends that they did find fun, but even a game that is not fun can have value. This offers some additional insight into why "fun" is not a very good metric for the value of a game.
Another example of peer pressure motivating people to play a game is Farmville, which relies almost exclusively on peer pressure for motivation. Engagement is handled by having scheduled events (crops need harvested on a regular schedule, or they will wilt and lose value). The primary marketing strategy, however, is purely peer pressure driven. As with Call of Duty, Farmville has value whether people find it fun or not. Many people use social games like Farmville to keep in contact with friends.
Peer pressure tends to be associated with bad behaviors like drug use, but peer pressure does not have to be bad. It might seem a bit manipulative for games to use peer pressure to motivate players, and it probably is, but not only is it an effective marketing strategy, it can also provide ways for games to be more beneficial.
Cheating and Strategy Guides
This is a psychological thing, because it is about how players feel about and react to certain game strategies. Cheating in video games is generally looked down on. This is even true of single player games, where cheating does not give any advantage over anyone else. It is such a big thing that there are even myths about it. According to many gamers, using cheat codes to improve your chances of winning will prevent you from improving your skill in a game. It turns out that this is not true. Cheat codes can be used in the same way training wheels are used on bicycles. I have had experience with this effect in several games, where I started out with cheat codes, but eventually I gained enough skill to get by without them.
Cheating is looked down on so much that there is a specific term for playing though a game without cheating. This term is playing "legit." Someone who cheats is "not legit." From a competitive perspective this makes sense, but in single player games where no one cares about score, it makes no difference, but many people are so concerned with cheating that it bothers them when other people do it.
In competitive games, cheating is a lot more serious, and it goes beyond just cheat codes. If cheating can give one player a competitive over another, then it becomes truly problematic. This will be discussed more in a future article, but preventing cheating in multiplayer games can be quite challenging, but it is also essential for games that may be treated like e-sports.
Strategy guides are generally not viewed as cheating, but in some circles they are looked down on. Generally strategy guides provide hints about how to beat or do well in a game. In non-competitive play, strategy guides are often viewed the same way movie spoilers are viewed. For many people, discovery is part of the fun of the game, and strategy guides tend to ruin that. For competitive games, however, strategy guides are starting to see greater acceptance. For games that have become e-sports, competitive players often spend a lot a time watching videos on strategy to improve their own skills. This is a lot like how basket ball players sometimes watch videos of themselves or their opponents to learn and improve
Investment
Investment can be a very strong motivator for games. This includes both money and time spent on the game. When a person has spent a lot of time or money on a game, they are more likely to spend time playing it, because they don't want to feel like they have wasted anything. Ironically, this further increases the investment, which also increases the motivation. There are some business models that capitalize on the connection between investment and motivation.
The subscription model is a very effective investment motivator. The subscription model requires players to pay a regular fee (generally monthly) for access to the game. Once a person has spent a few hundred dollars on a game, they are less likely to quit playing it, because quitting would make them feel like they are losing all of the money and time they have already spent on the game.
The paid content model allows people to play the game for free, but it offers special content for some kind of payment. The paid content may just be something that takes a long time to get normally, or it may be something that cannot be obtained without paying. Either way though, when a person has paid a lot of money for in-game content, that person is less likely to quit playing the game, because it feels like the money paid would be wasted.
Even just time invested into a free game can be a motivator, if there is some long lasting benefit gained from spending that time. Things like character levels, items, or even just collectibles can make time spent playing a game feel valuable enough to make a player want to keep playing to avoid losing a valuable investment.
Example
World of Warcraft is a very good example of using psychology to motivate and engage players. The advancement cycle of WoW early in the game is designed to be very engaging. The player easily increases in level at quite a fast rate. The fast rate of progression keeps the player engaged. This progression gives the player a sense of achievement, and it makes the character feel like an item of great value. It only takes a few hours to get a new character up to level 20, so the time investment is not that great, but the character itself feels like it has value, and abandoning it would feel like throwing away a valuable item that required several hours of hard work to create. This connection between the player and the character motivates the player to continue playing the game, even when the progression slows down dramatically. Once this happens though, the character is even better, with better equipment and more in-game currency, and the player has invested a lot more money and time in the game. This progression curve hooks new players, and then keeps them through investment based motivation.
WoW also uses a good engagement strategy in its quest system. Quests are tasks given to the characters by NPCs. WoW's quest system works by giving characters many small quests, with small rewards, in rapid succession (often with some concurrent quests, so that multiple quests can be worked on at the same time). This constant stream of small quests always giving players something to do is engaging, but by itself, eventually it will get boring. So, occasionally, the characters will be given larger quests with much better rewards, to interrupt the stream of small quests, and to motivate the player to continue doing the small quests. This reward cycle keeps players engaged and motivated, and it also keeps the character constantly gaining experience and better equipment, which makes the character progress. All together, the steady stream of small rewards, the occasional big rewards, and the constant character progression keeps the player engaged and motivated. The result is that WoW is one of the most profitable video games ever created, has 5.5 million subscribers (it has been as high as 12 million), and the total cumulative WoW time played by all of humanity totals well over 6 million years.
Psychology is essential to creating a successful game. Understanding how psychology affects motivation and engagement in games can help you to make games that are much more likely to be successful.
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