The Princess, the Plastic Guitar, and the Hook Shot

Game require us to learn pretty curious things: how to time a jump precisely, whether to watch TV or study a book on cleaning, how to navigate a three-dimensional space by using teleportation, and so on. We would not learn these skills if we did not have a good reason to, or at least a perceived reason to. Some games do teach us valuable skills we can use in real life, but most games will be regarded by non-gamers and grumpy seniors as a “waste of time”. When playing however, it suddenly becomes vital information that some tubes are inhabited by fire-breathing plants, and then learning how to avoid these plants. Since many skills taught by games are too abstract or removed from reality to appear applicable in daily life, each time a player learns something, he needs some kind of motivation that gives the skills value, or the learning will not be regarded as fun.

The most common and obvious motivation for players is story. It seems all you have to do is place a princess at the far end of a level, and the player will happily overcome any obstacle, murder hundreds of innocent tortoises and learn the most intricate of boss patterns in order to reach her. But just providing the player with a long-term goal is often not enough; the player will never feel like he has progressed farther towards the princess if he has to beat level after level just to rescue anthropomorphic toadstools. Providing too many sub-goals is not ideal either. No matter how important someone tells you a skill is to learn, if you never find any concrete uses for a skill, the time it took to learn the skill is viewed as a waste (this is commonly known as Education). Story also hits a bump as a motivator when it is poorly executed; suddenly all skills the game teaches are worthless because the player does not want to achieve the end goal. Many open-world games also have issues with the story as a way to give value to their teachings, since many activities are far removed from the actual narrative. For example, in Fable 2 many skills learned have nothing to do with progressing the story in any way. The story tells you to avenge the guy who shot you out of a window (and save the world), yet you spend a strangely large amount of time buying property and working as a barman/barmaid. Now, if the forces of evil was defeated through barkeeping contests, it would have made sense for the player to spend her time learning that skill. The side-skills taught by can therefore feel meaningless if other factors cannot give them value.

Adding real human beings to the mix can act as a very good way to make sure players master a set of skills. Learning complex fighting combos becomes much more relevant when you can try them out on your friends. Co-operation can also be as good a reason to learn new skills, even though most MMO:s that require teamwork focus more on what skills the player character has, rather than what actual skills the player has learned. In many games with an active community, usually with a multi-player aspect, many gamers develop their proficiency with the game because it gives them social status outside of the game. The actions required to complete the games are perfected because they translate to power within a certain group of people, so even dancing on a large, flat d-pad is deemed a valuable skill. The sense of advancement and power this gives is also present in solitary single-player games, but in that context the reward is very much tied with the story and how characters in the world are in awe of your powers.

This brings me to the final way I have found to convince the player the subjects taught are valuable: each skill taught reveals parts of a finely tuned system of mechanics. The act of playing becomes rewarding in itself (one of the characteristics of Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of “flow”). More than a mere power fantasy, as the skill of the player increases, she begins to utilize the game objects in synergistic ways. Consider for example an chess player, who is capable of placing his pieces so as to protect other pieces. As his skills grow, he can construct complex defensive and offensive relationships between the pieces, even though the interaction of one piece alone is relatively simple. However, care must be taken each time the player acquires a new verb so it is well integrated into the game system, and is taught at an appropriate time. Take for example the multitude of objects that can be accumulated by slaying bosses in the Legend of Zelda series. A well thought-out item like the Hook Shot can work in a multitude of ways, both in combat and exploration. A level 2-type power bracelet, on the other hand, only allows Link to lift heavier objects and in effect working like a “key” to open new areas.

So from the four ways of creating perceived value of a skill: narrative, social standing, power fantasy and “system exploration”, the latter is the most challenging to create, but also can be the most powerful. Setting up a four-line clear in Tetris can be as thrilling as the most carefully coordinated cutscene (well, maybe). “System exploration” is also instrumental when constructing “art games” that rely mostly on the mechanics to convey a feeling or message.