Player Choice and Reward in Role-playing Games
One of the primary responsibilities of a game designer and a level designer is to encourage players to invest in a game experience. This investment provides the player with a connection to the game and the player’s success within the game, bolstering the player’s desire to continue playing the game. Two methods designers use to promote a player’s investment in a game are rewards and opportunities for players to make distinct choices. Player rewards include non-gameplay related rewards, such as points and achievements, and gameplay related rewards such as health and ammunitions refills, more powerful armor and weaponry, and experience points. Player choices include multiple path options, levels designed to accommodate different play styles, and giving the player the ability to customize the player character’s abilities. These two techniques provide designers with multiple ways of connecting the player with the game.
In games such as role-playing games (RPGs) a link exists between rewards and opportunities for player choices. Players gain the reward of experience points to further customize the player character. They, also, receive other items such as weapons and armor that enhance the player character. The way the player chooses to utilize these rewards directly affects the player character’s strengths, which directly affect how successfully the player obtains more rewards. Many of these games allow the player to specialize in distinct play styles such as combat, conversation, and stealth. This project studies how players prioritize rewards and their chosen style of play in RPGs.
This project seeks to analyze how players prioritize play style and rewards by offering them two different play styles, combat and conversation, but informing them that one provides better rewards. Through questionnaires, it looks at how they wish to play the game versus how they did play the game and why. Also, it considers whether or not a person’s Bartle Test gamer personality type affects how the player prioritizes play and rewards. By providing players with the ability to choose between different play styles and by providing them with specific information about how those play styles effect the rewards they receive, this study observes how reward influences the way players choose to play a game. Information from this study provides the industry with insight into how designers can use rewards to influence how players play a game.