Alex Britez's List: game design

• "The trick is you want to constantly feel like you're being rewarded," says Bowling.
• While incentives are important tools, Infinity Ward is conscious of achievement mania.
• Achievements can also act like traffic cops, directing players toward new features they might not otherwise experience.

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• Casual achievements are easier to come by -- say, by playing a game 20 times or by wasting a few hours gaming on a holiday.
• "The most important thing is you have to be sure that the achievements allow the player to really explore your game."
• should not rely on points
• should also be visually interesting, so players want to keep them in their collection
• all about displaying your accomplishments rather than bragging about your overall Gamerscor

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• With one look, friends, rivals, and developers can tell how far a player is in career mode or how many cars he has bought.
• Achievements are now an industry standard. When used effectively, they can teach players new skills, prod them to explore new areas, and teach developers how to improve their games.

• No one wants a pat on the back for simply going through the motions; it makes the whole notion of achievements meaningless
• When deployed skillfully, achievements keep players engaged. They foster community. They are a reason to play new games.
• add stickiness to the community

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• suggests that an important factor for explaining how  people respond to failure is their perception of why the  failure occurred. Those who believe that their failure is the result of stable factors, such as native ability or intelligence, which they  cannot easily change, are most likely to give up or not even try.
• people who believe that a failure is the result of unstable factors that they  can change through effort or strategy are more likely to believe they can  overcome initial setbacks.
• Players who believe they can learn  and master the game persevere, while those who think they lack a particular  game-playing ability, or that some other stable factor lies between them and  success, are likely to quit.

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• his concern is based around a growing body of research suggesting that giving people extrinsic rewards for completing tasks -- for example, rewarding kids for reading by giving them pizza -- decreases the subject's genuine interest in the actual task.
• research suggests commissions and bonuses don't actually encourage better work, "because of the idea that, if you do this, you'll get that, you end up hating the 'this' and focusing on the 'that.'"
• "You do things better when you want to do them, rather than when you're paid to do them."
• You want to make an intrinsically interesting game,

  • I think this is more largely based on the genre of game. From the research i have read, extrinsic rewards (badges, etc) work mostly in social type games. When there isn't a social aspect to a game however, the effect of these extrinsic rewards is less powerful.
• Extrinsic motivators will lead you towards dull tasks, and you're totally [cornering] yourself into designing shitty games that you have to pay people to play" with reward structures.
• eople are clearly perfectly willing to engage in repetitive dull tasks if they are extrinsically rewarded, even if their appreciation for the play itself is diminished.
• The beauty part [of gameplay] is the intrinsic part, whether you're a social game or you're Gears of War or Counter-Strike. We want to be making games, like other artists try to make books or music, that make people better." 
   

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• Making a game fun is not enough anymore. You have to operate under dual objectives -- you have to make a fun game that can monetize well, and those two objectives are equally important."
• When it comes to Western design, "Another assumption is games as an artform."