The Game Design Canvas: Punishment and Reward Systems

Photo: i yudai

You have many choices in your everyday life.  Wake up and jump out of bed, or hit the snooze button?  Eat chicken, beef, or veggies?  Do some work, or go out with friends?  These choices, these actions that you can take are the different colors you use to paint the landscape of your day, your week, and your life.  It is through these choices that you experience and express yourself in the world.

If life were a game, these actions that you can take are examples of the Base Mechanics of life.  They are actions that you can perform, that you have the ability to perform, and that you may choose or choose not to perform.  They are the inputs into the system from yourself.  You can freely choose from all the possible abilities you have and perform them to your liking.

…Or can you?  Well, there’s more to it than that.  Your actions and free will are not as free as one would think.  Yes, you have choices you can make, but there are consequences, there are requirements, and there are strings attached.  You may have the ability to go into the middle of a library and shout at the top of your lungs.  You may have the ability to insult your best friend or to rob a convenience store.  You may have the ability to sit in your apartment and be depressed instead of going out and enjoying the weekend with friends.

You could do these things, but you probably won’t.  Even though you have the ability and the means, there is something else that is guiding your decisions.  There is more to this so called “choice” business than you might imagine.  It is as though some invisible force outside of yourself is governing your actions.

Enter the third component of the Game Design Canvas: The Punishment and Reward Systems.

Free Will?  Or Not So Free?

As we discussed in our last introductory article to the game design canvas on Base Mechanics, every game has actions that it lets the player perform.  The player can run, shoot, paint, throw, eat, duck, swap polarity, teleport, or what have you.  But these actions are not isolated; they have higher systems that govern them.  These Punishment and Reward Systems nudge the player towards certain behavior.  They give meaning and weight to the Base Mechanics, forcing the player to think about their choices. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »