Comment Re:B2B only (Score 1) 82
Traditional gaming rewards in a more subtle level -- mastery of mechanics gets you into an almost meditative "flow" state during play, and improved mastery means longer unbroken sessions of flow, which is exhilarating (even more so when the play is physical and high-speed -- eg skiing). Early computer games didn't do a lot of recognition, with the waves in Space Invaders, for example, being identical apart from their speed. The next step was to include some visual confirmation of progression, and Centipede did that by changing colour between stages, whereas PacMan relied on stage numbers and occassional interstitial animations, and Donkey Kong had multiple different screens. Then we had progression through a combination of these (Pengo had the baddies change colour on each level, accompanied with interstitial screens on the same every-third-level schedule as PacMan, Ms PacMan added multiple maps).
Some of this comment is overly generalized and not entirely correct. The creator of Space Invaders did say he wanted the primary motivator to be the exhilaration of destroying the alien ships, yes, but he also said he wanted it to be easier and it's relatively common knowledge (or so I thought) that the game is intended to be harder than it starts out. It was actually programmed to run at the same speed through each wave but since there's less to render when there are fewer ships left, it moves faster as the wave is reduced (the intended speed). The lack of color was also a technological limitation, not a real design decision. Space Invaders was notable for being one of the only arcade games a player could beat with a single payment, if they played well enough.
More recently, games have very much turned away from necessary skill and improvement as the primary motivator, even without the freemium model being a primary influence. Contrast a game like Dark Souls with Skyrim: one is very much about skill and gradually improving and the other doesn't intend to make you try harder at anything or to learn anything new (in fact, the game becomes easier the more you get hit). I would argue that the second is far more common, especially in blockbuster titles (Grand Theft Auto, God of War) and you should recognize (from Extra Credits, if nowhere else) that most games give players more and stronger powers / abilities and therefore make themselves easier as the player progresses through the story. Games and player progression within them these days are rarely about skill so much as gaining more powers to make the gameplay increasingly trivial, though well-done games tend to scale challenges well. This has been incredibly common in the games industry even without being built around freemium models, though obviously proper competitive titles and skill-based challenges do exist and are relatively popular. Still, saying games are fundamentally about challenge is a value judgment that I do not think holds water.
