Progression and Motivation Through Upgrades in Games

How to engage players using evolution, discovery, and rewards

Progressing through a game is commonly done by using said game's mechanics and resources. While the player's skill definitely increases as they get more experienced, these very mechanics and resources are also changed during the game session to enhance the player's capacities and expand the possibilities. In a generic and open interpretation, these changes in the mechanics and game resources can be referred to as upgrades.

As an upgrade, we can understand any general improvement, not necessarily power, on the player's capacities, options, skills, and/or resources (including resource mechanisms). For that, we avoid using the more specific term powerup, which would mean an upgrade directly influencing the player's power. For example, increasing the character's damage output.

The opposite of an upgrade is a downgrade, and it happens when a player element is worsened or deteriorated. For instance, reducing the character's damage output or removing one of its skills. Notice that changing to a previous upgrade is not necessarily a downgrade. If both states are simply different, then no deterioration happened — it was merely another upgrade.