Healthy people! Here comes the new content. And we will start, as usual, with questions. What motivates us to play video games? What makes you go through them from start to finish?? Why do we return to certain projects?? For what reasons do we buy new ones?? And what does this give us??

And today in the blog we will talk about exactly this, namely about motivation in games. I will tell you what types of motivation exist, how important it is, why player motivation is the basis of game design and how to make the game become popular and everyone plays it. Make yourself comfortable, because now we will find out what exactly makes us sit in front of our monitors for days on end!

If you want to absorb all this information in a simple and relaxing way, then click on the video and enjoy!

Let’s start with one of the main types of motivation. But first we need to think: where does it arise?, this is your motivation? This is especially important for a game designer, because games use a huge number of motivational systems to keep the player interested. And the starting point will be internal versus external motivation.

Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. One of the main pillars in game design.

Internal motivation comes from the player’s own desire, from the pleasure received from performing any actions.

External, in turn, is due to external rewards. You can compare with any rewards that directly affect the player.

For a complete understanding, here is a table that shows where external and internal motivation comes from.

Let’s think now. If I feel the urge to do something, we talk about intrinsic motivation. But when I get paid to do something, it’s external motivation. But not everything is as simple as it seems, in an instant everything gets mixed up into a mess!

For example, we are launching the acclaimed game Vampire Survivors. And we ask ourselves: we play it because we like the process (internal motivation)? Or because they give me points (external motivation)?

What if I myself strive to earn as many points as possible in order to stroke my ego?. Is this already internal or external motivation?? And it doesn’t matter. These two motivations must create synergy with each other, because each can flow from each and they cannot exist separately.

Yes, we have a game with just good mechanics and that’s it. Follow the line and enjoy. You have no points, no rewards for special actions, no upgrade moments, absolutely nothing. And no matter how much you like to walk this line, I think it can get boring quickly. Well, if we only have external motivation, I’m generally silent. These are basically phone jerk-offs with donations, where the moment of internal motivation disappears in the first 30 minutes. The point is that internal and external motivation are not opposite, but rather complement each other.

Motivation built into gameplay loops

You can also put the mechanics of short-term, medium-term and long-term motivation on the shelf next to external and internal motivation. In games, its support is carried out through certain gameplay loops. With the short abbreviation OCR (objective, challenge, reward – task, test, reward).

Short term mechanics:

Let’s start from the beginning of the list. Short-term mechanics represent frequently occurring events. They usually happen every few seconds or a minute in computer games and as often as possible in mobile games.

And due to frequent repetitions, the player does not have time to comprehend each of them separately, and therefore this mechanic is the main basis of the gameplay of the game. Although these mechanics will be invisible to us during the game, in the future they will certainly affect our level of pumping, certain points and the N-th amount of local currency.

For an example of short-term OCR, let’s take my favorite God of War:

These events have two purposes. The first is a basic motivator, which shows that the player is constantly progressing. Second, these events are a pass for the second type of motivators. Mid-term mechanic.

Mid-term mechanics:

Mid-term mechanics are events that the player expects to see within one session. The session depends on the specific game and may vary depending on the genre of the game. In mobs or shooters this is one match; in MMOs, complete a raid and quests in one game; in RPGs, for example, complete a location or kill a mini boss.

Mid-term mechanics are the most important part of the game. This includes: leveling up, defeating the boss, moving to a new location. As in the case of short-term mechanics, medium-term mechanics is part of a more global process – long-term mechanics. The difference from short-term mechanics is that the player will remember and wait for the event of the mid-term mechanics. Basically, all players evaluate their successful completion of the game through the medium-term mechanics, because it includes certain achievements that the game gives us for completing this or that activity or task. This could also be a choice in dialogue that will affect the rest of the game.

Example of a medium-term OCR. There will also be a GodofWar game:

Long term mechanics:

Now let’s move on to long-term mechanics, which are events or goals that occur over several sessions. And what makes us beat the game. It can last a long time over hundreds of hours. These mechanics are a continuation of the mid-term. The player needs to complete several mid-term events to achieve a long-term goal: complete all quests to end the game, kill all bosses to meet the main one, etc.d.

Long-term mechanics play a very important role, as they must give the player a goal for which he will want to continue to perform actions related to the medium-term mechanics. And we also have to not disappoint the player in the end. So long-term OCR should be as developed as possible and have motivation for the player.

Long term OCR example. God of War game:

State of rest

Well, you need to wrap all this in a wrapper called a state of rest. In order for the player to spend as much time as possible in the game, he must get into a state of flow (full involvement in the gameplay). For this, certain conditions must be met:

Objectives should be smoothly placed along the player’s growth path, so that there is no situation where he cannot complete the level. Also, tasks should not be too simple, otherwise it will just get boring.

Satisfying needs through games

Now let’s move on to the philosophical topic itself. This is the satisfaction of our needs through games.

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a scientific paper called A Theory of Human Needs, in which he proposed a hierarchy of human needs. This hierarchy is often depicted as a pyramid.

The idea presented here is that people do not seek satisfaction of higher order needs until their lower needs are satisfied. For example, if someone is hungry, this need takes precedence over the need for safety, etc.d.

And this pyramid is an excellent tool for analyzing motivation in games. Many game activities are associated with achieving goals and learning new abilities, which places them at the fourth level related to self-esteem. But some of them are below. By the way, by looking at the hierarchy, we can understand why multiplayer games are so popular. They satisfy a greater number of basic needs than single ones. Do you think why games like Dota 2 or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are so popular??

And now a task for you! Can you name your favorite games and say what levels of needs they cover?? You probably can! What about games that cover all levels?? Do you have any such? Write your options in the comments.

And here is one of the https://888ladiescasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ first games that absorbed all the needs of the pyramid and closed them. And it’s Minecraft again!

Minecraft achieved its success due to the fact that it was able to satisfy all the needs indicated by the pyramid. The game covers the bottom two levels using imagination, the player collecting resources to eat or build a shelter, and the top three – being a multiplayer game about skill and creativity. Another game that has achieved such success is GTA: V.

That’s why we love co-op survival games so much and immerse ourselves in them headlong and for a long time, for example, in the games Valheim, Project Zomboid, etc.d. Possible without co-op. If you’re an introvert like me, RimWorld, Oxygen Not Included and similar games are good options.

Self-determination theory

There is also a theory of self-determination. The most significant studies for games will be by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. The point is that in addition to physical needs, for example, to eat and rest, a person also has psychological ones. Not just a desire, but a need that, if left unfulfilled, can affect our health.

They identified 3 needs:

And what do you think? Games can give us all this!

Yes I’m good at shooting! I want and run to point B when everything is at A, because that’s what I want! Guys, let’s communicate without swearing! Now all three points of need have been fulfilled, you can move on! Amazing isn’t it?

Want or have to? The giant stumbling block that most game studios stumble over.

Let’s not stop there and keep digging deeper. You know what can turn play into work like never before?? And vice versa? This is just motivation.

For example, you and I work because we have to, but we play games because we want to. We go to work because we enjoy it? Or because we might get fired? Or because I get paid for it? And games are purely a search for pleasure. If I want, I play, if I want, I don’t. No one will punish me if I don’t play. I play because I enjoy it. The same principle exists in games I want or have to.

But you don’t always have to – that’s bad! Many games have different mechanics. And, for example, to achieve what you want, you must beat a boss or kill a pack of mobs, solve a puzzle or perform sophisticated tricks – all for the sake of seeking pleasure. To get the key to the door I MUST complete the quest etc.d. Both of these modes (want or must) serve as excellent motivation and work well in conjunction with each other. But there is also a dark side.

Let’s move on to the moment when our combination is not very balanced. And these are shareware free-to-play games. For a clear example, I’ll take my favorite genre – MMORPG. I’ve been through everything, from good to bad projects. And just recently I caught myself thinking the same thing. That for me MMOs turn into work I owe everyone and always!

As is usually the case, such games begin with a search for pleasure (I want): big rewards, bonuses every day for logging into the game, different activities, a lot of content. But after time, all this turns into obligations (should): log into the game every day to get a bonus, perform only profitable activities, otherwise you will lag behind others. Do only what will increase your gear or level. And these games turn from want to terrible must! Although you continue to play, you enter reluctantly and try to find a replacement game. But what keeps you in the project is that you spent your time on it and continue to play. Soon it turns from a game into a chore.

Many players experience all this, especially MMORPG players. For example, you want to play socially, join a guild, communicate with friends. But when the heads of guilds begin to compare their personal belongings and chase progress, you have new responsibilities: come to the dungeon at 21:00, complete all the guild quests that you have been doing for an hour, accumulate gold for the treasury, and so on.

All this turns into work and ceases to bring pleasure. Personally, I went through all this. Now I play roguelikes and single players and I want the project to have a meaningful ending. And I think some MMO players understand me.

Evaluation as a way to motivate

Next comes the assessment. We all want our efforts and efforts to be appreciated. We all have a need to know how other people treat us. One of the most attractive qualities of games is that they are an excellent system for objectively assessing a wide range of our abilities. What motivates us to play various projects.

Killed 20 people in a shooter, you’re great, you set your team up by losing a round, what a bad round, to put it mildly, go train. And we go and improve. We continue to play and improve our skills, as we have excellent motivation to take first place on the leaderboard.

Hmm… Although, where is the world heading now?. Let’s remove the statistics so as not to hurt the feelings of other players. Let’s reward everyone for any small action. Why progress, let everything be open at once?. And yes, more content monetization. And then they are surprised at the failure of their projects. Game studios seem to have started to forget about game design elements.

Evaluation can also include different types of players, since different players are motivated by different things and different evaluation systems. Someone wants to be the first in murders, another wants to collect a complete collection of door handles. And today we have come to divide players into 4 types:

Achiever – can be designated as a winner in everything. The goal is to get all the achievements, reach the maximum level, earn as much money as possible.

Here’s a more extended table. Here we can see that each type of player has its own goal. And the more people’s interests are covered by the system of rewards and ratings in the game, the greater the chances of the game becoming popular.

Let’s take an illustrative example and outline the field of competitive shooters, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, APEX or Rainbow Six: Siege. We can see that such games will be mainly interested in Killer type people when the Explorer passes by.

Innovation and Progression!

The next, albeit sparse, but no less important mechanics of motivation is innovation! Hmm… innovation as a motivator?

Did you know that you and I are born researchers??

We are constantly drawn to something new. If we put quality and stability at the forefront, we would now be playing template games that are similar to each other. But no! Games come out and continue to come out: strange and unusual, with mechanics and physics that are incomprehensible and new to us. The thirst for innovation is a very important factor that makes us buy new games. Why do we need a new Forza or GTA: VI? Are you old enough?? But we always strive for something new.

The same thirst for innovation pushes the player to move forward (play), so to speak, the desire to see what will happen next, what awaits us at the next level.

This becomes a powerful motivation to complete previous levels and complete the game to the end. In short: Innovation is good.

However, remember that too much innovation is bad. All good games mix a bunch of innovations and a pinch of solid and familiar mechanics. It will be very bad if the game consists only of innovations. Players simply may not understand it. And it is important to have such innovations that they can retain the player after the novelty wears off.

Conclusion

Well, on this note I want to sum it up. Motivation in games is one of the most important elements of game design, although it has blurred boundaries. It depends on it whether the game will be successful or not, whether they will play it all day long and have fun, and what target audience will come. Games must incorporate different mechanics of motivation and answer a large number of our needs, and game designers must masterfully weave all of this into the game in order for it to become popular. Your game should have a little bit of everything: a touch of innovation, a competent reward system, compliance with the player’s requirements and skills, and high-quality OCR models. But you can’t please everyone. Of course, we are all different people, and everyone is motivated by something different. So we can’t achieve the ideal!

And that’s all! I hope I told you something new. And let only good games motivate you!

Good luck to everyone and see you soon!

Best comments

Overcomplicated. Issues of gaming impotence have long been studied in the nerd community and all the answers to all questions have already been found. First you need to read the book “Simulacra and Simulation” by Baudrillard in order to understand the mechanics of the difference between labor pleasure and simulacra of masturbation.

There are seven types of motivation:

1) Classic. The hero is given an impossible goal and the player is interested in how the hero will solve it. These are the banal goals of the game and the tools to achieve them. Or the plot and its denouement.

2) Escapism. Just an escape from reality into fictional worlds.

3) Sensory orgasm: bright pictures, sounds, everything that brings variety to the sensory perception of the world.

4) Social. The herd mechanics within us are quite strong and community along with parasocial relationships can motivate.

5) Sophisticated. Children and housewives will play donut dumps and grinders, because they didn’t know better games. The conscious mechanics of many corporations to parasitize children’s minds. Popularly called “involvement”.

6) Onanistic. This is when you are a sophisticated player and have gone through all types of gaming experiences and nothing gives you any more, but you want to continue the banquet. This is how parasitism on nostalgia appears. Retro genre imitators are a great example of this.

7) Career. Many games have an ultra-difficult mode that normal players will not complete. But if you are a streamer and make money from camming, then you have a great motivation to get these achievements.

The very concept of “game” in the animal world is used as training: the body gains experience that will be useful in adulthood. This is why games are so much fun as a child. And for the same reason, gaming impotence comes: you don’t learn or experience anything new. Or is it not profitable?.

Separately, it is worth mentioning such a factor as work. There’s nothing you can do about it. Because of it, both sexual and gaming impotence occurs. Many have noticed that during the holidays the love for games returns, as well as for creativity. And with its end I don’t want anything again. This is how we live.

Overall, the post is interesting. However, there are several complaints, the main one is the confusion of different concepts and vice versa – some types of motivations clearly overlap.

For example, the last paragraph about “innovation” – if we talk specifically about motivation, then it is curiosity. Moreover, this is precisely curiosity in relation to the content of the game – that is, we are talking about “researchers” from Bartle’s classification.

Also, the “I want or should” section largely repeats the very beginning about internal (want) and external (should) motivation.

And of course, external motivation in the light of Maslow’s pyramid, it would be worth separating the motivation associated with the player and those associated with the character. For example, the player wants to go further in the story to find out what happens next (intrinsic motivation). To do this, he must kill the boss (external motivation). To do this, he must improve his equipment and upgrade his character (external motivation for the character) and he must learn to fight better (external motivation for the player).

I offer for your acquaintance!

These are all statements at the level of mysticism. Solid theories. The human psyche began to be considered sanely not so long ago. And in some places, where autism spectrum disorders dissipate upon reaching 18 years of age, they have not yet begun.
The gaming aspect is even younger, it has even more blind spots and those same nerds are more likely to catalog their own stereotypes.
And it’s also not very correct. It’s the same social sphere, where helpers and griefers differ almost to the point of physiology, and it’s strange to shove them into one group. Well, or retro, where 15-year-olds coexist, having perceived the masterpieces of the past except in the form of a sperm. And suddenly 30 (or more) year olds who saw the light after the reviews, like the same bloodline fans, about whom nothing much was heard until the end of the 2000s.

The humanities are humanities because you can’t describe anything exactly and there will always be fifty shades of gray. You can only roughly follow the manuals, as long as it works. And it works, since the content production schemes in corporations are quite conscious and adhere to certain schemes. There have been no works of authorship in aaa for a long time.

I agree with the previous speaker. If 15 years ago they delivered action games and shooters, including online ones, now they are not interested in anything other than single-player strategies. Just out of curiosity, "what would happen if". Play as a city-state in Civ or fanatical spiritualists in Stellaris, for example.

Author, thank you for sharing your observations.

Were there not enough more sane conclusions at the end?. For the structure to be of type:

1. What is motivation?

2. How does it work?

3. Types of motivation.

4. How to put an owl on a globe – or how to trace motivation using specific examples.

5. Results: motivation – good or bad. OR trends in changing motivation – where it’s all going? OR what is your personal motivation from all of the above?

Well, something like that

Thanks for the article! It was interesting to read. In principle, if you rummage around in your head, you can come to approximately the same conclusions without any smart books. Is it not so systematized?.One urgent request: proofread the text, please! Fortunately, this is not such a big problem with highlighting errors in Word, and the volume, frankly speaking, at best is comparable to a “letters” type publication.It’s even more strange to see a bunch of typos and mistakes from a humanities scholar.You have three different-term motivations there, wrapped in a package from a “state of rest”. So that the players don’t get nervous, apparently 🙂

And now a humanitarian approach is optional. People have already realized that psychiatry cannot be considered in isolation from physiology. They are slowly getting used to the idea that psychology cannot be considered in isolation from psychiatry (with the exception of the area where deputies and other especially successful people are told that they behave well), etc.d. If desired, you can build a full-fledged evidence base from start to finish. But it’s problematic, it’s difficult to diagnose everyone, especially when some diagnoses are condemned in society. And for a long time. Mastering the field will require 10-15 years of training and practice. Few people would want to bother themselves so much just to explain the results of a big date to top managers.

Awesome stuff! There’s nothing new (all these thoughts have been sitting in my head for a long time and whispering), but, here, to systematize it all and submit it in fifteen (a little more) minutes… Bravo! I give a standing ovation! I really liked it! Thanks for your efforts!