Rewards

At the end of a goal there is nearly always a reward and the majority of the time we have to strive and stick with a particular activity to achieve this goal. The definition of reward in the dictionary is “reward n something that is given in return for something done”. Often we would associate a reward with something physical such as money for chores, a promotion from work or eating something you enjoy after doing a piece of school work. However, we can also apply the idea of gaining rewards to gaming.

Within games we often have rewards that we always strive to achieve or gain. These rewards can vary from collecting keys and passwords to completing a level to move on to the next. Have you ever thought about what you normally do to gain these rewards? Gamers often put themselves through pain to gain the rewards within the game that they are playing. Most people will put themselves though the pain of being stuck on levels, stuck trying to kill one character and doing the same task over and over to get the reward of the new level. If I think back to a time when I was stuck on in a game, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, I would often push myself to sit and play the same level over and over just to try and get over one river without falling in and having to play the level again. The reason I strived to get past this part in the level was so I could move onto next world. The next world was my reward. Quite often I would get very frustrated with playing the same level all the time, but I would make sure I did it so I could get my reward.

However, the reward was the irrelevant part of playing Sonic. It did not matter what the reward was, I was just striving to gain my reward and the pleasure that getting rewards can give. This can be applied to many other games and it will never matter what a gamers reward is. It is purely about how the human brain is wired to seek out rewards. This can be within digital gaming or in real life.

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Bibliography

Glossary of Terms (Date unknown) Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 8th 2007 from:
http://www.lhfm.salford.ac.uk/students/Stratman/glossary_ntor.htm

English Dictionary (2005), Geddes and Grosset