User:C018368i/sandbox

= Rewards in games = Rewards are anything that can be earned in game through playing the game. The majority of games have some form of progression or reward but they are some games that have none. The main purpose to include rewards in games are to give players a sense of fulfilment and a reason to keep on playing the games after the main purpose of the game has been exhausted. Its also an easy way to add replay ability after a game has been released through updates and patches.

Gamification
Gamification is the process of turning real world tasks and giving them gameplay elements. A lot of the way this is done is through using a reward system for completing tasks. (Ring Fit Adventure, Nintendo – 2019) is an example of this as it takes the mundane repetitive task of working out, gamifies it and creates a reward system for users, giving them an extra layer of fulfilment for completing these tasks

Grinding
Grinding is preforming repetitive tasks over and over again to eventually achieve an end result or to collect specific items. Also known as farming, a big reason and cause for grinding is to obtain rewards, weather that be for a weapon upgrade or to complete all the external achievements of a game. A lot of Free to Play games use grinding to exponentially extend gameplay, however this is not always a good practise as many game developers’ introduce a way to skip the grinding by implementing a purchase scheme in order for players to pay money to skip the process to get the reward straight away.

Achievements
In most video games there are collectables called achievements, either built straight into the game or usually are added to the external launcher. These are goals and objectives outside of the original aim of the game and usually consist of milestones for the main aspects of games but also include other elements, for example kill 10 npc’s with a single grenade. The purpose of achievements is to engage the audience even more and to give the game itself longevity and more replay ability. Counter Strike: Global offensive is an example of longevity achievements, there are currently 167 CS:GO achievements to collect, where a lot are gained gradually from playing the game over a long extended period of time.

Idle Rewards
Many rewards in games are something you wouldn’t think as a reward. For example, unlocking a new ability after completing a mission or getting skill points for levelling up. These are called Idle Rewards. Many Idle games use this to keep you playing and engaged with little to no gameplay elements

Keeping Score
Scoring is another method of how the game will reward the player, not physically with an item or experience, but with an overall performance score. Scoring is effective because it taps into the competitive nature of people, making them want to best themselves. A lot of early games employed this game, Tetris, duck hunt, donkey Kong. All these iconic video games had a scoring/point system that added a significant amount of replay ability to them and this method is still being employed today on-top of many other mechanics

How Rewards Effect The Player
The main purpose for rewarding somebody for their actions is to encourage a specific set of behavioural patterns within the human brain. This was first discovered in 1973 when psychologist Mark Lepper and Richard Nisbett noticed a difference in behavioural patterns of kindergarden children when some were presented with rewards for doing tasks and others were not. 50% of the children were given prizes for drawing pictures and 50% were not, and the results found were that the children that got a prize showed significally less interest in drawing after getting said prize where as those who did not get a prize continued to draw as they had been. This can be seen a lot within rewards in games because once you have completed a certain set of tasks within a game and get that final reward you will most likely loose interest, this is why video game developers try to introduce different rewards that take as long as possible to complete to keep the players constantly involved in the game.

Clicker Games
Free to Play idle clicker games like Cookie Clicker which first started to gain traction in the early 2000's employ rewards with little to no interaction because the score is always increasing at a set rate, however when the player intervenes it increases the rate at which you gain cookies (score). Many idle games contine to play out while the player is away or completely offline because of this there is always possative feedback from the game conditioning the player to stay engaded because they're constantly progressing especially because of the little effort is needed to see this progression.

Idle Game : The longing
Scoring is another method of how the game will reward the player, not physically with an item or experience, but with an overall performance score. Scoring is effective because it taps into the competitive nature of people, making them want to best themselves. A lot of early games employed this game, Tetris, duck hunt, donkey Kong. All these iconic video games had a scoring/point system that added a significant amount of replay ability to them and this method is still being employed today on-top of many other mechanics