The Business: The Death Grip of the RPG Design Cargo Cult (Part 3)

The key to commercial success in RPG design is to create a gameplay loop that also acts as a feedback loop. The player gets a dopamine hit every time that he completes the loop. He ties the dopamine hit to the gameplay paradigm, making him want to keep playing so he can keep getting those hits. This is why D&D and its derivatives are so dominant.

What a player has to do to run that loop is the whole of the game to him. When you see players complaining that there "nothing to do", what they mean is that the substance of the loop is exhausted so there's no more dopamine to be gotten from it. The game stops being fun, so they quit playing.

This is what AAA videogame developers realized when they finally started listening to folks familiar with how gambler psychology works. The proof is in the pudding; just look at how much casino trickery is in AAA games now.

The secret is to tell the player what they have to do to get that hit. This is the dirty trick behind why Leveling works. In AD&D 1st edition, players gain levels by earning Experience Points. Each level makes their character stronger across the board. They gain the most Experience Points by looting treasure and returning it to base, with each Gold Piece in value granting one Experience Point.

There is your game. You have a unit. To make your unit stronger, you must gain levels. To gain levels, you must earn Experience Points. To earn experience points, you must loot treasure and return it to your secure location for valuation; that total becomes Experience Points, with which you gain levels, and get stronger- all encaspulated with "DING!"

That is your brutally efficient game design.

The thing to take away from this example is the importance of designing the whole of your game around that gameplay loop. You don't need levels, etc.; you need to define what your player must do to make his unit stronger. Shadowrun designs its core gameplay around getting the currency--money, Karma, etc.--needed to buy upgrades. You execute a Shadowrun, you get paid, you buy upgrades. There's your loop. You'll find this loop with Cyberpunk also.

The flaw is that there is no "DING!"

By that I mean a big moment of accomplishment that releases the dopamine in a noticable rush. Instead, you get small and incremental releases that can be easily missed, much like no one notices the day-to-day things someone does for you but never fails to notice a big event.

You don't levels to get that "DING!" effect. You need a payoff that's big enough to get the effect. That's easy enough to do; you tell the player that they do X they get Y rewards as a big chunk. This is what real-world employment does: "Do X job, get paid Y amount". It can be, and should be, that simple; it ties into Leveling because of the other things Levels do.

So, let me sum up: You don't need Levels. You need what Levels do. Build your game around what Levels do and you win.

I mention above that Levels are used for more than structring a dopamine release schedule--which is what good game design, the stuff that pays your bills, does--and I'll get into that tomorrow.

Play the older games. They're often better at this structure than the newer ones.