Player Driven Cause and Effect
by Dave Calabrese

We are human.

      This gives us many distinct advantages over things that are not human, such as the amoeba. How often have you gone outside to see an amoeba walking a protozoa down the street while whistling the theme song to Three's Company? Okay, so you probably have also never seen a human doing this with a dog, however the point here is that a human could do such an action. The question we must understand is why would a human walk his or her dog while whistling the theme song to Three's Company?

Reward.

      The walk is something one does because they want the reward of being in shape, taking the dog for the reward of having a companion on their walk, and they hum a tune they enjoy for the reward of the happiness that it causes. Don't like to walk a dog or don't have a dog, you say? Well let's look at a medium that is probably a bit more familiar...

Video Games

      When we sit down and play Doom 3, why do we play? Because it is fun, yes, but why is it fun? This fun comes from the emotion that the game is causing, and this emotion becomes an award for us. For me, Doom 3 causes quite the adrenalin rush and the excitement of fighting the denizens of hell. It also creates a good deal of fear, which I enjoy since it is a fictional and exciting fear. Right there, we have a fistful of rewards – entertaining fear and excitement. Your heart pounds and you shout blasphemous remarks as an Imp sneaks up behind you and digs its bony claws into your skull.

      These various rewards are the basis of what we gain from entertainment that we pursue. These rewards however don't need to be obtained from something such as taking down an entire room full of baddies in an FPS. Doom 3 contains a rather simple reward for when you reload your weapon.

      The developers of Doom 3 could have just played a simple 'click-CHACK!' sound effect when you reloaded your weapon, but they did not do just that – instead you visually see the hands of your charac ter remove the spent cartridge and click another in its place. You caused the weapon to be reloaded by pressing the reload key, and the effect of this was a visual reward.

You made it happen.

      This is a small and simple thing – yet try and imagine the game without it. The immersion would be lost, and reloading your weapon would just not be the same. This can even be broken down to the interface itself. In Kingdom Hearts 2, presuming you are running it with its default settings, the HUD you see while playing changes in every world. Let's look at the HUD you see in the 100 Acre Wood for a moment. It is very wooden looking; a bunch of faded wooden signs stacked on top of one another. However, when you switch between your two separate menus, the sign at the top spins. It spun as the effect of you causing the menu to switch.

      You might be thinking "... that sounds kinda dumb. Why would that be interesting?" And to this I say one thing – imagine it without it. Something small, something minute, would be lost. And in it are these minute things that help to add polish to a game, because each tiny reward that the player receives will mold into one massive reward from playing the game as a whole.

    This is what I mean by Player Driven Cause and Effect. The player causes something to happen, which in turn has a visual and audible effect, which is perceived to the player as a tiny reward. Take any of the more polished games out there and you can break down these tiny bits of cause and effect. Everything in the game has a tiny reward of its own.

      This can also be looked at in reverse, however. What if the effect that the player caused was undesired? This could actually lead to something of an anti-reward, and make the player feel uncomfortable or could snatch them from the immersion of the game.

Let me take and example...

      ...that commonly works in games, and apply it to a situation where it would be seen as very out of place. In many fighting games, if you manage to score many hits and attack moves in succession, you might hear the announcer yell "COMBO!" along with the words illuminating over your character. That is a reward for pulling off a usually complex maneuver.

      Let's apply this to World of Warcraft. There you are, a rogue, battling another player in one of the Battlegrounds. Stealthed, you sneak up to the player and backstab them. "CRITICAL!" blasts out of your speakers while the letters rain upon your character. Your foe turns and attacks you – uh oh, they're a warrior! They strike you once, twice, thrice before you can move – "COOOOOOMMBBBBOOOOO!!!!" echoes out the speakers on their end.

      Imagine how this would change the fighting experience in World of Warcraft. The fighting in this game is nowhere near a pace fast enough to allow for such intense rewards, and these verbal shouts and falling text would simply feel out of place in the game world. In some fashion, it might even make the manuvers uncomfortable to pull off with such an out of place reward.

So....

      From reloading your weapon to interacting with the HUD, everything you interact with in the world has a Cause and Effect. It is very often worth the extra month or two that it would take to polish your game, or even the section that your team is working on. Make sure that the experience has many tiny rewards which add up to one massive reward, making the player excited at every turn. From the moment they see that first developer logo on program launch, nothing about a video game should be boring. Nothing about it should be undesirable to play or experience.