Game Analysis

There is a saying in the game circle, "I will go to sleep after next round ". This sentence usually refers to the fact that players are very addicted when playing 4x games. Player always think they will go to bed after the next round, but often it’s already dawns when they actually turned off the game. However, 4x games have no exciting plot to push players to continue playing, and there is no immersion that the well-designed world of 3a brings to players. So how does it keep the player in front of the screen all night? The secret code is dopamine motivation. In this article, I will analyze how the design ideas and game mechanics of 4x games create dopamine motivation and explain why such games are so attractive.

 

When player first enter the game, there may be many factors that make players feel novel, but this feeling will decrease as time goes by. However, many players will continue under the influence of dopamine even if they are tired. At this time, whether the game mechanism can stimulate the player's dopamine secretion plays a vital role, because it is the maker of game motivation. Generally speaking, motivation is divided into two types, external and internal motivation. If the player is motivated by motivation rather than playing the game because of their own interests, this is because the game using external motivation, and after the game is over player usually feel a sense of emptiness. But if the player is playing through intrinsic motivation, he will get a happy and addictive experience. Ingeniously, that the design idea of 4x games is to create a reward loop based on player’s  internal motivation, which is why this type of game is so fascinating.

 

First of all, the most important element for producing dopamine motive is to create rewards that players are expecting. Take the game ‘humankind’ as an example , the player’s intrinsic motivation in game is usually to build their own country and make it stronger, but in the process of building the country, the game will give players unexpected rewards, such as era stars, and these stars can upgrade the country to a more advanced era in, and achieve a virtuous circle. This kind of reward that is in line with the player's intrinsic needs will be combined with the player's original motivation to achieve a strong incentive effect. Imagine that in each round, players will face many similar open choices, which lead to a more open ending. If the player makes the right choice after careful consideration, and caused the city develops better and gets rewarded. Positive feedback will bring players a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction and become a motivation for the player to continue, because the rewards of the game are consistent with the player's intrinsic motivation.

 

Secondly, the timing of rewards is equally important to the consistency of rewards. As for the timing of rewards, it is determined by the reinforcement schedule. For example, in an RPG game, the player will upgrade after killing ten enemies. This is a fixed-ratio reinforcement schedule. But this kind of reinforcement schedule is very unstable, the player’s motivation when killing the ninth enemy is significantly stronger than when the first enemy has just been killed. Similarly, in 4x games, a game usually has hundreds of rounds. If an important facility will be completed after dozens of rounds, even if the reward is very attractive, the expectation and motivation of players will gradually decrease during the waiting period of these dozens of rounds, which is the ‘shelf moment’ we often say. So how do 4x games fill this gap? In order to avoid the shelf moment, the game will run multiple reinforcement schedule at the same time and weaken the gap between each motivation by superimposing the reinforcement schedule.Take ‘humankind’ as an example again. In the early stage, designers used a large number of variable-ratio reinforcement schedule to encourage players to explore, players need to control units to search for grids with question marks or animals on the map to accumulate resources. But these positions are random. Player might not find anything in this round, but in the next round they might find two or more resources. In this case, the player will always expect more rewards for the next round, and this randomness will make the player eager to start the next round. After several rounds of exploration, the player will enter the next era, and from here onwards will join the fixed-ratio schedule. At this stage, players can start science research and construction. Same time, the variable-ratio schedule will gradually decrease, and replaced by the reinforcement schedule, such as scientific research or construction that requires a fixed number of rounds to be complete. As the game progresses, a large number of reinforcement schedule will be accumulated. It is possible that the player’s new city will be built in the next round, and the infrastructure of another city will be completed in the round after, and the player might have enough influence in the next round to build something else. This leads to a large number of reinforcement schedule in the late game, and there will always be upcoming rewards to keep players motivated.

 

In general, the 4x game will motivate players by creating rewards that are consistent with the player's goals and weaken the gap between each motivation through a superimposed reinforcement schedule,  let the players set some short-term or long-term goals imperceptibly in their hearts. These goals will be achieved one after another when the player enters the shelf moment and will pull the player back to the pleasure brought by the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, thereby giving the player the motivation to continue the game to complete more goals, so as to form a cycle of positive experience of the game.