If games were purely contemplative activities, they wouldn’t be able to capture players attention. So at the end of the day, there must be something to do in games. There goes the concept of tension. Players should be constantly challenged. At every moment, they should feel that it matters that they are in the game, and playing as well as they can.

The temptation of short and easy games

Much has been said about the difficulty of games. They are so difficult, that nobody gets to finish them, that it deters novice players, etc. So the general movement has been to lower the game difficulty in order to make them more accessible.

On top of that, before the difficulty was criticized, it was the games life expectancy that was under close examination. Games were valuable if they could entertain the player during long hours. Game developers therefore added tricks to make their games last longer (like adding things the players didn’t want to do).

Both were a wrong reaction.
 Games were not too difficult: they were unfair. That is different. But provided that a game is fair, if the rules are clear and accepted by the player, a game should be difficult: it should mobilize all the capacities of the player.
 Games were not too short: they were not compelling enough, or lacked "super-gaming" possibilities. If a game is compelling, it is valuable, no matter how many hours were spent on it. If it can be played on multiple levels, it has some replay value. On the other hand, if its duration is artificially expanded, players are less likely to play it again.

But the problem of creating long, easy games is that they let the player switch to spectator mode, just watching the game, pressing an occasional button, without any involvement. There is no way that the player’s attention will be reached. They can be hooked, addicted to the game, but not committed, actively playing the game, which is what we want.

Commitment and tension

We know that the mere fact of getting a game implies a certain involvement from the player. The more difficult it is to get the game (expensive to buy, difficult to find, awaited for a long time), in other terms, the more was invested from the player to get the privilege to play the game, the stronger the initial commitment will be, and therefore, the stronger the drive to play, keep on playing, and play to the end. Inversely, everything that makes a game look cheap and common will strongly deteriorate that determination. A game that comes for free, that wasn’t specifically desired or expected, will be much less interesting to play.

But this mechanism is not enough to motivate players. Even If a player can be convinced to get the game, they will not automatically play it until the end.

In fact, games are not (anymore) made of one single block, repeated ad lib. Rather, they are made of a series of smaller game moments, whether they are formally presented as such (missions, chapters, levels, etc.) or not. When someone starts playing a game, this doesn’t mean they accept to play until the end of the game, but they do commit to play until the end of the first segment. In order to conquer the player, one must make them accept to keep on playing from segment to segment.

Modern game makers keep finding new ways to entice the player to keep on playing, which is what I call tension. A few tried-and-true approaches include:

 high skill requirements. This forces the player to be concentrated to play.
 a good story. The player will be begging for more.
 a diverse game experience. Very difficult to do right.
 a good system of game rewards.

Here is how this works.

Some examples of efficient tension systems

 Skill.

Super Mario World, SNES, 1990

If you don’t pay a close attention to what you are doing, you’ll never get past this castle.

That’s the old-school approach. If you play a game of Pac-Man or Space Invaders, you’d rather not break your concentration or you lose pretty much immediately. Modern games cannot go that far. So they replace that bargain: be skilled or lose fast, with a newer one: be good and be rewarded. Functionally, it is equivalent, but it is less frustrating.

Final Fantasy VIII, PC, 2000

The player can push the right button at the right time to be more efficient in combat.

An example: in Final Fantasy VIII, if the player hits R1 just when the hero Squall hits an enemy with his "gunblade", he does double damage. This makes the combat parts of the game, which in an RPG are often contemplative, much more active.

 Story. A good story is probably the best drive to keep the player hooked through the game, and beyond. And a good game story is just that. Not purely narrative, like in a book or a movie, but designed to keep the player interested. Take the story of Metal Gear Solid 2. From end to end, it’s probably a little ridiculous - after all, we’re talking about a game that ends with a sword duel between the hero and the president of the United States.

Metal Gear Solid 2, PS2, 2001

MGS2 featured long dialogues on the "Codec" radio device.

But it twists so much, with betrayals, conspiracies, secrets unveiled, that it really works in that respect. Another example: Resident Evil. The first Resident Evil, too, was certainly a bit ridiculous from the outside. But through the adventure, the player would find "documents" or "files", each of which shedding some light on the great conspiracy. At the end of the game, the player would know more about the big picture. And for each new title in the series, the promise was that the player could learn more. And it works.

 Diversity.

Shinobi, PS2, 2002

A typical moment of the game: the hero swiftly executes opponents in a large empty room.

If a game is repetitive, if two segments of the game are exactly alike, this is a good way to discourage the player to continue playing. Shinobi on the PS2 was an unfortunate example of that. That game had everything to work: a great license and a very cool hero with fantastic moves. But all the levels were pretty much the same. After a while, the magic stopped working.

GTA San Andreas, PC, 2004

There are so many different things to do in San Andreas... the hero can even steal a train.

On the other hand, the PS2 Grand Theft Auto games feature an incredible variety of missions. There are between 50 and 100 missions in each title and no two are alike.

Maintaining a correct degree of diversity is extremely difficult. On one hand, if the game is completely uniform, the player will be bored soon. Then, if several segments of the game are too different, this could make the game less legible and possibly inconsistent. One part of such game could be completely outside of the players expectations. That can utterly break the drive of the player.

 Game rewards. Playing requires an effort, and players like to know that this effort will be rewarded, that somehow, they’ll get more out of the game if they give it more of their time and their concentration. Rewards can be :

• more story,
• more game options such as secret modes, new weapons or abilities,
• more content such as FMVs, music, images, etc. They can be attributed to a player if they make some significant progress in the game, or if they play "well".

Final Fantasy IX, Playstation, 2000

The infamous Chocobo mini-game. Tens of hours were necessary to get everything out of it.

The mere fact that such a system exists will be an incentive for the player to keep on playing, even if they are not interested in gathering such rewards. For instance, some games feature extremely tedious mini-games, such as the Chocobo sub-quest in Final Fantasy IX. Even if the player doesn’t play such games, they are happy to know that they are here and offer extra depth to the game.

With the internet comes a special form of reward: recognition. This can take many forms:

• some game internet services let the user record their collection of games and show it to the rest of the world, some provide statistics, and players can boast about their gaming feats in forums.
• Many online games feature competition mode among players. The will to win such challenges becomes one with the will to play the game, and is reinforced by ranking systems and by the social interactions that arise through competition.
• On another level, players can join guilds or teams which value each of their members, providing them a strong incentive to play and become an expert in the game.