Trigger Happy
300
How do videogame designers achieve such a
delicate balance? Such considerations are very
important to Richard Darling. He argues that what
makes an action game (driving, sports or shooting) fun
is precisely this: “The player’s efforts being rewarded
by achievements.” It’s not so simple, however; Darling
continues:
And those achievements need to appear to be worthwhile to
the players, they need to be visible and valuable. Of course,
people’s perceptions of what’s needed to make a game fun
have been stretching and stretching as games have got better
and better. A long time ago you had Space Invaders, where
basically you move from one level to the next level and
you’re very excited because you’ve achieved the next level.
In fact, the next level was exactly the same as the last one but
a little bit harder, but you’re still very pleased: your score’s
gone up, you’ve moved to level two, and the same thing
happened when you moved to level three, four and five. That
had a simple reward system whereby you achieved a certain
goal in the game and reached a discrete target and you got
rewarded by a score and a level change.
In principle it’s the same now, it’s just that people’s
expectations are much greater than just wanting the score
to be ticking up. If you move from one level to the next
you want a new experience, new gameplay features, new
