Two of the primary sources of joy in gaming are rewards and achievements—that is, the sense of accomplishment, not the named task popups like “Kill 10 kinds of enemies.” Today, we’re talking about rewards and their unscrupulous counterpart, anti-rewards.
In video games, there are almost always rewards for success. Whether it’s a new weapon or power for finishing a boss, or some much-needed ammo or healing for taking the time to explore, games will give you things you like to keep the gameplay gratifying. The counter to this, of course, is penalties. Penalties are things like taking damage in an RPG, or losing a few seconds in a racing game. They’re designed to give you a consequence for failure, so there’s a challenge of some kind. How fun would Super Mario World be if you could never die or get set back? The game would consist of “run to the right.” Who would play it? Penalties are a necessary part of games, and there’s no reason to complain about them unless they are unfair or encumber gameplay. Even then, you’ll find some fans of hardcore games like Ghosts & Goblins or the original Prince of Persia. The problem arises when instead of penalties, you’re met with anti-rewards.
The host is a jerk
Anti-rewards are different from penalties in that they aren’t actually taking something from you. Instead, they’re showing you “what you could have won,” and then throwing that away. The thing about anti-rewards that makes them less fun than penalties is that they show you how much more fun you could be having if you did things the “right” way, and then make a point of how much less fun you’re having now. This upgrade to your gun’s damage? No, you don’t deserve it. The extra health you’ll need for the next boss fight? Too bad, you didn’t sneak well enough. It’s like the gameshow host who calls for an unseen announcer to show you the car you didn’t win, while you cry into your brand new muffin pan, except there is no audience to enjoy your agony. It’s just you and the host, and the host is a jerk.
There is only one possible use of anti-rewards that contributes positively to the game, and that’s to show you other things that exist in the game so you can try to get it next time, whether the next time you play a short game, or the next time you attempt some trial in a longer game. In the latter case, the trial’s purpose should be to attain the reward in question, and in the former, the reward should be an alternative to another reward—perhaps a spread shot weapon instead of a laser—and the alternate reward should only require a different choice to acquire instead of a more difficult performance.
Examples
Normally, I would discuss a game that does it right and one that does it wrong, but anti-rewards are never good. The closest thing to a situation in which an anti-reward that can benefit a game is a gated reward: one that requires certain standards of achievement to obtain, and gives you an alternate reward for lower levels. These are close to anti-rewards, but they usually tell you beforehand how to get the rewards, and the difference is usually in how well the player performs instead of what choices the player takes. Gated rewards can be negative if they don’t offer multiple chances or if the criteria for success are random or too difficult.
An example of a game that does this right is Bastion. In Bastion, there are trial areas for each weapon, in which you can test your mastery with the weapon in exchange for prizes, including upgrade materials and special skills for the same weapon.These are not anti-rewards, as the areas in which they take place are set aside and allow you to try again as much as you want without penalty. The reason Bastion does this right is because it shows you what there is to win upfront, tells you the conditions for winning each item, and lets you try as many times as you want, at any time that you want. Maybe you just haven’t upgraded your Repeater enough to get through its stage, or maybe you haven’t quite mastered perfect defense with your shield. In time, though, you can go back and get those coveted rewards. Some of these trials are frustrating and not fun, but others are genuinely fun to do, and they all serve to improve your core gameplay elements with the practice and tricks you might pick up. Overall, Bastion’s Proving Grounds are an excellent minigame with a gated reward that serves a purpose and carries no negative impact.
A game that does this wrong, and it almost hurts for me to say this, is Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Discarding Super Sonic, since the game never actually tells you about his existence ahead of time, this game’s problem is that there is a limit on how many times you can attempt to get each of the seven Chaos Emeralds—Sonic series’ MacGuffin—and you have to meet a condition (have 50 rings on hand) to even attempt it. When you do get the rings and find the checkpoint and try the Special Stage minigame to get one of the seven Emeralds, you’re blocked by an uncontrollable A.I. partner whose actions mimic yours, but aren’t always perfect, and always include a brief delay. The problem is that you have to collect rings and dodge obstacles, and you have to rely on Tails to dodge them too. The sync between your actions and his is decent, and it’s definitely possible to win the minigame, but it’s not perfect, and many players find the game more enjoyable when they change the options at the start to exclude Tails (or if you’re a Tails fan, to play as Tails alone without Sonic).
Even then, the minigame can be difficult and frustrating, and it’s no fun to miss the target by one ring and have the Emerald show up just out of reach, telling you you’re not good enough, here’s the Emerald, you can’t have it. Try again later, if there are enough checkpoints before the end of the game. Even worse, after the Special Stage, you’re penalized by losing all the rings you had going in, whether you get the Emerald or not. The gameplay on the Special Stage is completely different than the core gameplay, so you don’t get any practice at it, and you don’t wind up any better at the regular stages as a result of playing it.
Sonic 3 does a better job of this all around by eliminating the elements that are out of your control, removing the entry-barrier, and simply taking Sonic out of the Special Stage instead of showing off the Emerald you failed to obtain.
One of the worst offenders in this category is the Mega Man Zero series. In the second installment forward, the player can obtain upgrades upon defeating bosses, but only after completing the stage to a certain standard. Completion time, damage taken, enemies killed, and number of used Cyber Elves (one-off items that affect the player or game world) are all metrics for completion rank. A rank of A or S is necessary to get the upgrade, and the player only gets one attempt. This encourages resetting the game and trying again from the previous save point to clear the stage to perfection for the reward of getting the item. Players who press on have to make do without the reward and cannot go back and try again. This anti-reward is compounded by the issue with the Cyber Elves. Using an item in a game is a rewarding experience, but in this series, use of the Cyber Elves is tied to punishment as well. Knowing that my game would be negatively impacted by their use, I went through the series without using any Cyber Elves after the first game. I found them fun in the first Mega Man Zero, and I didn’t care about my rank because it was not correlated to actual upgrades. But in Zero 2 and on, I never used one again, because I would be depriving myself of the upgrade. In retrospect, I’m not sure it was worth it. The extra fun from those upgrades didn’t make up for the grueling experience of fighting through a stage over and over, restarting for the slightest of slipups. The Cyber Elves were a punishment tied to an item, and they went on to be the basis of an anti-reward. That level of anti-fun design deserves applause.
It’s all about fun
The example in Bastion is, as mentioned, actually a gated reward, and is an exceptionally good one at that. Anti-rewards punish the player for doing things differently (fighting instead of sneaking, maybe), or simply not being good enough at the right course of action (like clearing a stage with an end time of 3:00 instead of 2:59). They are particularly bad if there is no indication that a choice even needs be made, but there is a clear indication that the wrong choice was made unwittingly. Fortunately, games today tend to favor allowing the player to retry difficult things, but there are still some instances in which actual difficulty of a task is replaced by limited opportunity to attempt it, and therefore limited opportunity for fun and satisfaction.
What’s the point of playing a game if you don’t have fun?
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