Why rewards always devalue the game experience

by thebruce , Ontario, Canada, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 08:01 (4013 days ago) @ Xenos

One being achievements are not like trophies in the sense that when you enter a competition you are competing against other people actively, they are right there most of the time even. Achievements are often even a passive way to track your progress in a game. And in game rewards are usually similar. I have used the example of Halo Reach many times, I played it because the gameplay was awesome, I never once thought "Oh man, I need to get this awesome helmet! I need 1,000,000 more credits!"

Aye, and I think elsewhere in this thread the types of rewards have been discussed. I was just referring to general reward systems, whether competing against yourself (more akin to profile achievements, game progress, etc) or others (character boons); either way, the result is a tangible, display-oriented reward (gamerscore, leaderboard, achievement badges, etc)

Secondly, marathons are a great example of a competition where a lot (if not most) of the people that run them do it for enjoyment and not because they hope to win.

Exactly. But as per one of my comments, the 'reward' in that case is still display-oriented; I can say "I ran and completed X marathon!" Whereas, if it were purely for the enjoyment of running (per the hunting analogy), then why wouldn't I just run the same length outside the marathon event? If I wanted I could still track my accomplishment in comparison to others if I didn't care about its 'reward'. Basically, if I'm running in a marathon, even if my placement in the end doesn't matter and I'm only doing it complete, I'm still running to earn the achievement of completing that marathon; that would be my reward, even if it's not in competition against others.

Again, this is based in the context of reward-oriented tasks.

Now, I do not think that this means that those rewards in games are good, just pointing out my thoughts when I read your post.

For sure :)

Really, I can't say I'm for or against reward-based gaming, because I recognize the value of 'fun' is very subjective. I just hate when someone makes an objective judgement on a subjective point. =P

Even if reward-oriented gaming (presume it's hugely successful) spells the downfall of gaming as we know it, it's the rise of something else that, of course, is success to others, a different type of gamer. *shrug* We just don't want the ones who fall /:)