A collection of things as random as my mood and personality.
Motivation
Posted 03/17/2011 at 21:12 by Vaidas B
Hello everyone, sorry for dragging this out again, I’m not that good with schedules. Without further ado, let’s get started, have you ever played a game that fast fun at fist and later on became boring or even tedious? What makes player play a game and then crave some more and not just quit or wait until new content? How do the game makers motivate you and give you the incentive to play? Well, today’s subject is motivation!
Every game has its dirty little secrets that are used to keep players coming back for more, some use encouragements like badges, some use other methods.
Most games have reward systems that give you something in return for playing. For example – most shooter games have a badge system. It works by rewarding a player for completing a certain mission, while it doesn’t seem like much, it gives the most competitive players the need collect them, and give them some occupation.
While they may look nice on your profile page, badges don’t have a specific function and will not change the course of gameplay. So game developers thought of a new idea, rewards, although rare in shooters, it is not uncommon to receive a gift from the system – especially at early levels. Most MMORPG games reward players for playing their game, for example, games like “Battle of the immortals”, “Perfect World”, “Forsaken World” (and so on), give players rewards for gameplay time. If you play for a certain amount of time you can get a costume, some potions, a pet and various other objects, the same method works for leveling (most common in all games is a box that opens on lvls 5,10,15,20).
As strange as it may sound, in most games, players get rewards for not playing! A lot of games are very protective of their players, so they can do almost anything to get as many of them back from other games. So the easies t way is to reward the “old-timers” that decide to come back to their game, and so the return package was born.
It’s a clever idea, but the best plan is to stop them from leaving in the first place! Every game has GM’s, game moderators that are faithful servants of their community. It’s always good to know that GM’s are always on, and always ready to help a player in need. And it’s even better if they are fans of their own games. GM hosted events are real moral boosters for players if GM’s themselves participate in them, since they can try their strength against a GM (and it’s even better if a gm gives up, without showing it of course).
GM’s are great moral boosters in general, a public appearance might cause a bit of a hassle, but it’s all good for as long as there are able to understand the needs of players. When a brand new game set into closed beta (Aika Online/Global) the GM’s stood in the starting city answering every question, buffing people, cracking a few jokes, and just interacting with the players in general.
Well, it’s already clear that you can lure an MMORPG player to a game with drinks and candy. FPS player on the other hand have it though. Most FPS games nowadays try to keep their player-base by putting huge disadvantages to normal (non-premium) weaponry. Most of them have a very nasty time limit that still counts down even though your offline leaving casual players with a major disadvantage against hardcore gamers who spend the majority of their time playing.(with the exception for BlackShot online, if you buy a weapon there, it only continues counting while you’re playing and stops when you log off).
Although, FPS players are not as abandoned as they seem, as I said before, every holiday brings events to every game! That’s the time for FPS games to take a break from the realistic approach and slap some Santa hats, Pumpkin heads, or Cupid wings on players. What’s a better way to give these things out, other than winning? Head-Shot contests are very popular evens these days, as the kids become more and more adapted to the “twitch shooter” genre.
A while back the nice people who made “Operation 7” announced a “video montage contest” the goal was to make a montage of your gameplay and make it as entertaining as possible (the more kills the better) and upload it to Youtube for ratings and votes. Personally I think it was more of an advertisement campaign more than an actual event.
It’s always good to see game companies and game communities bond and cooperate. But let’s not forget priorities, for us it’s all about the fun, for them – profit. Believe it or not, but that’s a good thing for every fellow gamer, because then it makes the game companies edgy and on their toes, trying to give us the incentive to play! Though I wouldn’t expect game staff dancing around for you, but every now and then, they can put up a real show.
Conclusion: every game is made to have a playerbase, and it’s all about the way the game is built, and the team that watches over the game. Remember one thing, it’s all about having fun, and when you participate in an event of any sort – remember it’s aimed for the average player, like you or me.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
And as always, if you have any ideas on future articles, or just want to talk, feel free to send me a PM here, or send me an email at
(It’s my personal email, so feel free to add me, just and E*PVP and your user nickname to the subject). I’m also on the e*pvp TeamSpeak3 servers for about 30min a day, join now! Maybe you’ll catch me on!
As a side subject, would you like to know a little bit about me? Like who I am, and why I do this? What’s my goal in life?
Every game has its dirty little secrets that are used to keep players coming back for more, some use encouragements like badges, some use other methods.
Most games have reward systems that give you something in return for playing. For example – most shooter games have a badge system. It works by rewarding a player for completing a certain mission, while it doesn’t seem like much, it gives the most competitive players the need collect them, and give them some occupation.
While they may look nice on your profile page, badges don’t have a specific function and will not change the course of gameplay. So game developers thought of a new idea, rewards, although rare in shooters, it is not uncommon to receive a gift from the system – especially at early levels. Most MMORPG games reward players for playing their game, for example, games like “Battle of the immortals”, “Perfect World”, “Forsaken World” (and so on), give players rewards for gameplay time. If you play for a certain amount of time you can get a costume, some potions, a pet and various other objects, the same method works for leveling (most common in all games is a box that opens on lvls 5,10,15,20).
As strange as it may sound, in most games, players get rewards for not playing! A lot of games are very protective of their players, so they can do almost anything to get as many of them back from other games. So the easies t way is to reward the “old-timers” that decide to come back to their game, and so the return package was born.
It’s a clever idea, but the best plan is to stop them from leaving in the first place! Every game has GM’s, game moderators that are faithful servants of their community. It’s always good to know that GM’s are always on, and always ready to help a player in need. And it’s even better if they are fans of their own games. GM hosted events are real moral boosters for players if GM’s themselves participate in them, since they can try their strength against a GM (and it’s even better if a gm gives up, without showing it of course).
GM’s are great moral boosters in general, a public appearance might cause a bit of a hassle, but it’s all good for as long as there are able to understand the needs of players. When a brand new game set into closed beta (Aika Online/Global) the GM’s stood in the starting city answering every question, buffing people, cracking a few jokes, and just interacting with the players in general.
Well, it’s already clear that you can lure an MMORPG player to a game with drinks and candy. FPS player on the other hand have it though. Most FPS games nowadays try to keep their player-base by putting huge disadvantages to normal (non-premium) weaponry. Most of them have a very nasty time limit that still counts down even though your offline leaving casual players with a major disadvantage against hardcore gamers who spend the majority of their time playing.(with the exception for BlackShot online, if you buy a weapon there, it only continues counting while you’re playing and stops when you log off).
Although, FPS players are not as abandoned as they seem, as I said before, every holiday brings events to every game! That’s the time for FPS games to take a break from the realistic approach and slap some Santa hats, Pumpkin heads, or Cupid wings on players. What’s a better way to give these things out, other than winning? Head-Shot contests are very popular evens these days, as the kids become more and more adapted to the “twitch shooter” genre.
A while back the nice people who made “Operation 7” announced a “video montage contest” the goal was to make a montage of your gameplay and make it as entertaining as possible (the more kills the better) and upload it to Youtube for ratings and votes. Personally I think it was more of an advertisement campaign more than an actual event.
It’s always good to see game companies and game communities bond and cooperate. But let’s not forget priorities, for us it’s all about the fun, for them – profit. Believe it or not, but that’s a good thing for every fellow gamer, because then it makes the game companies edgy and on their toes, trying to give us the incentive to play! Though I wouldn’t expect game staff dancing around for you, but every now and then, they can put up a real show.
Conclusion: every game is made to have a playerbase, and it’s all about the way the game is built, and the team that watches over the game. Remember one thing, it’s all about having fun, and when you participate in an event of any sort – remember it’s aimed for the average player, like you or me.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
And as always, if you have any ideas on future articles, or just want to talk, feel free to send me a PM here, or send me an email at
(It’s my personal email, so feel free to add me, just and E*PVP and your user nickname to the subject). I’m also on the e*pvp TeamSpeak3 servers for about 30min a day, join now! Maybe you’ll catch me on!As a side subject, would you like to know a little bit about me? Like who I am, and why I do this? What’s my goal in life?
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