How Punishment Systems Hurt Videogames

Don’t Kick the Player When They’re Down

An essential element of videogames, and by extension any game, is having a win and lost state. One aspect we have seen to add more weight to a game’s design is the use of “punishment systems” — systems that penalize the player beyond the initial lost state. However, we’re going to talk about why kicking the player when they’re down is not the best way to motivate them to keep playing.

Penalizing Punishments:

The core concept of a punishment system is taking the lost state and extending it. In most games, when the player has a lost state — typically running out of health or dying — the character and the world around them return to a neutral state.

When you play a platformer and you die after a checkpoint, the world resets and the player returns to the last checkpoint reached. In this regard, there is a lost state, but its impact doesn’t extend beyond the loss.

The earliest example of a punishment system would be the use of “lives” in many classic games. When the player runs out of lives playing an older game, they can be sent back to the start of a level, or even back to the start of the entire game.