Rewards Systems: Why We Play

So what is it that keeps gamers inside their virtual worlds? It's been established that games are generally fun, and that some can offer an escape from the real world, but within the framework of the game, there has to be some form of incentive to keep the players interested, and enjoying the experience.

What if a game failed to create any goals for the player to meet? What, then, would be the point of playing? In absolutely every game, there is some sort of goal - something one aims for and desires to achieve. After all, desire is the motivation for human behavior.

Videogame goals come in many flavors, catering to the variability of our desire. From the very beginning, there have been rewards systems in place, encouraging gamers to persist at their electronic pursuits.

A very rudimentary system involves the accumulation of points. As arbitrary as they may seem to a rationalizing mind, the value of the "point" is, in many cases, astronomical. In the early days of gaming, especially in arcades, gamers had little else to play for. Getting the most points, becoming the top scorer, and inputting one's initials, (or, "AAA" or even, "ASS" "DIK" "FUK" and the like) was the epitome of gaming achievement, and what most players strove for.




To make the points system more concrete and meaningful, the concept of money was introduced to videogames. From coin-collecting to the economic management of sports teams, money has found its way into, and solidified a position within our favorite pastime. At first, it was simply another points system with a new label, but quickly became a useful commodity with which players could gain access to more game content. New equipment, another section of the game world, character improvement, etc., are all likely candidates for the expenditure of wealth.

In-game currency comes in innumerable forms, from leaves to dollars, and now is even transferable to real-world cash. MMOs most notably display this currency-conversion trend, allowing some industrious gamers to take advantage of others' desire for virtual funds. It's a very simple 2-step process:
1) make lots of in-game money
2) sell it on ebay
This can become quite lucrative, if done right, and I've know a few gamers who have made a somewhat stable income doing it.



Normally, virtual cash flow leads to virtual character growth, and that is the ultimate incentive behind the proximate behavior. Gamers want to have the best, most powerful and truly badass characters they can. Improving one's avatar is a huge reason to spend hours upon hours engrossed in gameplay. Oftentimes, this equates to a reasonable level of tedium (i.e. leveling), but gamers stay hooked, awaiting the eventual payoff. We know Time=Money, but in videogame land, Time=Success, as well. The more time spent with a game, the more likely one is to achieve greatness within that game.

Growth and development are also applicable to the players, themselves. There are many skill-based games that require a certain training period in order to become successful. First-person shooters are probably the most popular examples of this, where time spent playing the game is in direct relationship with a gamer's ability to be successful while playing. Simply, you get better as you play.




Improving one's skills becomes fruitless if a game offers nothing more than a limited pre-defined AI to compete with. There is a ceiling, and once a game is conquered, interest wanes rapidly. In today's online world, competitive gaming is growing in leaps and bounds. More and more gamers are participating, looking for a challenge that can only be found through such a medium, in other dedicated players like themselves. For these gamers, the rush of competition, the feeling of progress, and achieving victory over their opponents is the best reward any game could offer. Many competitive gamers won't play any other type of game at all.

For the more laid-back interactive entertainment consumer, there are other sorts of rewards. These are less material, and not quite as obvious as the others. For many gamers, the audio and visual input they soak up from the game can be enough reward, in itself. In exploring a game's content, the player is presented with a variety of stimuli designed to be sensorily pleasing, and this beauty of the craft keeps them interested.

The evidence is clear when you consider the popularity of websites like Overclocked Remix, which thrives solely on gamers' love of game music. Additionally, the number of desktop wallpapers and other videogame-related imagery available on the web is simply staggering. Gamers love their games' content.



The element of discovery is a big incentive to spend time playing games. Each game is a new world to unfold, and uncovering all of its secrets can be a truly enjoyable experience. It is no wonder that so many games include tons of collectibles, side-quests and mini-games. Complete-ism runs rampant among the gaming community - we long to explore every nook and cranny of our games, and see everything it has to offer.

Finally, there is the story. We've all heard the phrase "that book was so good, I couldn't put it down." The same applies to interactive visual stories - if a game's plot is riveting, it becomes damn near impossible to stop playing. Gamers simply want to see what happens next, and thus get lost in marathon gameplay sessions, possibly foregoing food, water, and personal hygiene.

Time is a small price to pay for the reward of entertainment. Maybe...

Rumble | Sex Versus Videogames

I know which one I would choose...

And it looks like Google agrees. Apparently the number of searches for sex on Google is so incomprehensibly vast that videogames barely even register in comparison. Here's a link to the trend search for you to see for yourself: http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex%2C+videogames&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Escapism: What Does Your Game Offer?

Ask ten gamers how they got into gaming, and you are likely to hear the recital of ten markedly different sequences of events. All gamers have some sort of recollection of how they were initiated into this virtual 'club,' but beyond that, one might speculate as to what keeps them in the game. Why, exactly, do people play video games?

Of course, games are meant to be fun. Gamers most often pick up a game in hopes of enjoying the use of that particular piece of software. If a game does not satisfy the basic human desire to experience pleasant stimuli at least some of the time, it is not likely to be embraced by an incredibly large audience. Any evidence to the contrary, although extant in a few cases, is unfortunate information to discover. Realistically, who wants to play a game that they don't even enjoy?

Enjoyment comes in many flavors, however. What is a pleasurable experience to one may be utter hell to another. For example, certain gamers can't get enough of the grind of RPGs, where each slaughtering of the many repetitively-encountered enemies strikes their pleasure centers with loving ferocity. To others, the mere thought of this process is much akin to a night in the torture rack. Someone like this may prefer the feeling of an intense firefight, frantically ducking and dodging from one area of cover to the next, all the while enjoying a rush of adrenaline that manages to get them high for the duration of the gameplay session. Our RPG-playing friend might look at this, and quickly dismiss it as...boring and repetitive.


Boredom... This is a concept commonly related to video games, and is often a determining factor in assessing a game's value to the player. How much boredom will be relieved versus the amount the game goes on to produce? In a perfect world, no game would have a positive boredom balance, the gamer coming away LESS entertained as a result of having turned on his or her console. All games should at least serve the basic function of boredom release, and unless we are examining them in true Taoist fashion, then there will always be a mix of entertaining and boring video games. The best one can do is to simply avoid the latter. After all, isn't boredom a vile abomination from which we all wish to escape?

Besides boredom, there is another perceived disaster that quite a few gamers would admit to running away from at one point or another. This terror is daily life. For many, gaming represents a retreat from a world that is filled with very real stressors and unpleasantries. The world they escape to almost invariably has its own problems, but in that virtual domain the gravity of the situation is significantly diluted. Now, all conflicts and the paths to their resolutions have become a recreational pursuit, rather than a dire endeavor. It seems that solving problems in an imaginary world is entirely more interesting than tackling the trials of the real.


So what worlds do gamers choose to reside in, then? Oftentimes they are hectic and war-torn, in collapse or on the brink of destruction. It doesn't seem that all of the most popular virtual habitats are as pleasant as one might think an "escape" from the real would tend to be. The draw to these places, rife with adversity, goes further than this superficial contradiction, down to the level of the individual character.

Video games can be empowering to gamers. They place your average Joe in the shoes of heroes, and give him the opportunity to defeat enemies, conquer adversity, and even save the world. Having this level of influence upon an entire realm can be truly comforting to someone who has, or feels he has little sway over the world around him. A basic outline for a large portion of literature is as follows:
exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution.
Games generally follow these guidelines, and usually end with all problems solved - peace and happiness restored. Real life does not offer such guarantees, and with every temporary resolution comes another obstacle. The route is just a bit more difficult.

Sometimes the virtual world is simply a more appealing residence than the actual world. It can be a pleasant escape, with all resolutions within grasp, experienced by you, the hero.

It can also be turned off...so don't fall in too deep...

Back In Business

I'm back in the land of the fatties, and the Game Crush command center has already been re-established on American soil. Expect an almost DAILY stream of news, views, analysis, and shitty jokes from here on out! In the past month or so we've been a bit lax about getting things up on the old blog here, but, realistically, there hasn't been a damn thing happening anyway. Lost Planet came out, I haven't gotten to play it yet, people have been calling PC gaming dead, they're mostly idiots, Jack Thompson is still an enormous jackass, Raph Koster is still fat, etc. 2006 is over, the march of time drives us one year closer to our inevitable, respective dooms, and Eddie insists on listening to the crappiest, most ancient music possible a few feet behind me. Luckily, I have plenty of, admittedly, barely not-revolting Red Stripe to drink to keep me tranquilized. Barring any explosions of murderous rage, Game Crush is going to be in your face in 2007 like a crazy rottweiler that chews it's way through your damn front door and scares the hell out of you while shitting all over your living room. That's how we roll.

Nintendo Moving To Korea

Recently, as reported by the Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata announced intentions to expand the company into the South Korean market. This may come as a surprise to many, considering that Nintendo products reach much of the rest of the world and the fact that translating between Korean and Japanese is relatively simple, both languages possessing nearly identical grammar. So why hasn't Nintendo been active in Korea up until this point, and what is the significance of this announcement? I've spent some time in Korea and I believe I may have some answers.


As a nation with one of the highest per capita rates of broadband penetration in the world, South Korea is obviously both technologically capable and rich enough to be a valuable market for foreign consumer electronics. However, the availability of broadband is telling. In fact, South Korean gaming culture is drastically different from what is common in the United States or Japan. Consoles and home gaming are not the norm, nor are arcades. Instead, the cities of South Korea are dotted with PC Bangs, or internet cafes, that are so numerous and inexpensive as to make any other method of gaming irrelevant. The last time I was in Seoul, I often stopped at PC Bangs throughout the day to contact people or check my e-mail. At every place I've been to, the price has been set at roughly a dollar per hour, and everytime I've gone the places have been full of gamers playing homegrown Korean MMOs or Counter Strike clones together, cheering and yelling. The gaming culture is actually incredibly social there, more akin to Eastern Europe than any other place I know of.


This socialness is a vital aspect of South Korean culture. I've heard it said that a Korean person would rather go hungry than eat alone, and it may seem to be an exageration, but I can't remember ever seeing a Korean person actually eating alone in Seoul. Perhaps some of the same social pressures apply to the gaming culture there. So the question must be asked, what does Nintendo have to offer to Korea, a culture that has its own style of play and has shown incredible acumen developing games suited to Korean tastes?

My initial answer was not much, honestly, but then I gave it a bit more thought. The barriers to widespread adoption of Nintendo products in Korea are many, the universal availability of the PC Bangs, places to meet friends and play together, coupled with a nationalistic competitiveness between Korean and Japanese products may make things very difficult for Nintendo to overcome. In fact, I'm not sure I can really see home consoles taking off excessively in South Korea anytime soon. However, the wireless capabilities of the DS and its portability may present a compelling opportunity for game developers in Korea. Nintendo has already announced its intentions to work closely with Korean developers, and the idea of porting popular Korean MMOs or creating new ones for play on the go to either the DS or the Wii may lure a number of developers. The potential to reach enormous foreign console markets alone may be a powerful draw. Once Korean games are on Nintendo systems, the systems themselves would become much more valuable to Korean consumers, leading perhaps to the same sort of universal adoption of the DS that Japan has already displayed (they are ALWAYS sold out). Time will tell whether or not the Korean public will embrace Nintendo products, but there are clearly many IPs that would be easily ported, such as Ragnarok Online or Maple Story, and I for one look forward to playing them on a DS at some point in the near future.

Expense Of Old Software

Along with Nintendo's newest piece of hardware comes something never before implemented in a home video game system. What I am referring to is the Virtual Console, which offers gamers the opportunity to download games from all of Nintendo's prior hardware units, as well as the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx, and play them on the Wii. It is a lovely idea, considering the immense library made available by including these systems - but is it worth the money?

The cost of each Virtual Console titles ranges from $5 for NES and TG games, up to $10 for N64 games, with SNES and Genesis games weighing in at $8 a pop...plus tax. These prices are just too much. Buying these games nowadays is entirely less expensive, with N64 games fetching about $5 on average, and NES games coming nearly gratis at various auctions, yard sales and bargain bins in retail stores.


A solid argument to this might be something like, "Those old games don't always even work, and who still has all the old systems, anyway? The Virtual Console games run flawlessly, and all sit neatly together in one place, in my living room."
Well, that is true. However, I will do you one better.

In today's world of super duper advanced computer technology, there are other ways to play ALL of these old games, all in one place. These nifty little programs are called emulators, and they've been around for ages. For those of you who DON'T know what an emulator is, I will take the liberty of learnin' ya sumthin'.

An emulator is capable of taking raw game data, called a ROM, and playing it 100% accurately on a user's PC. It takes up minimal space, and executes quickly and easily. ROMs are available for FREE at various places throughout the internet, and are not terribly difficult to locate. Once they're on your hard drive, it only takes a USB game controller (or just the keyboard, if you're cool with that) to enjoy the entire library of any game console of yesteryear. On top of that, these emulators are available for other platforms, too. Sony's PSP is more than capable of running NES, SNES, Genesis, TG, PSX, etc at full speed and with fine control.

This is where legality becomes a question. Some might argue that emulation is not exactly allowed, but there ARE stipulations to that. Any game an individual has owned at some point is technically legal to possess in ROM form - considered a "backup" copy. Besides that, most old video games are often labeled "abandonware," meaning that the copyright owner no longer supports the software, and has, in essence abandoned it as a viable commercial product. While this term really has no legal foundation, it is most certainly a veritable concept.

At some point, a game's profit-making days should be over, or at least become nominal. Nintendo is notorious for squeezing the most it can out of every single franchise, game, or character. This ranges from milking a game series by making a half-million sequels, to re-releasing old games (updated or not) on newer systems, to charging $$$ to download about 500 kilobytes of data - 15-20 year old games - onto the Wii.