Positive cycles refer to a system in which a given behavior produces a result that encourages that same behavior in an ongoing cycle, oftentimes at an increasing rate or quantity of those results. In terms of games, designers often infuse their work with these cycles to guide the player along his/her journey. They take the form of gameplay that is not repetitive, but self-referentially iterative, and this iteration is paramount for their success. For example, Mario first comes across one Goomba. Later, he must platform around several Goombas. Eventually, Mario must maneuver around several Goombas, piranha plants, and hammer bros all on one screen. Once learned, these cycles offer benefits of familiarity because a previously experienced, if not slightly altered, action is revisited. Once mastered, they offer joys of highly stimulating challenges because they can incrementally train the player to fairly and reasonably tackle such challenge. By continually elevating stakes, positive cycles help keep players engaged and committed to a game’s full articulation of its mechanics. It is valuable from a design standpoint, then, to dissect what aspects of positive cycles enhance the gaming experience.
Continual improvement
Games often incorporate positive cycles by developing and strengthening the player. This advancement could be through knowledge evoked from learning the game’s ever-present mechanics or through mechanical additions to the player’s arsenal. Regarding the first point, Advance Wars advances the player’s understanding of game elements in an iterative process. This grid-based tactical RPG tasks the player with comprehending intricate strategies. The player must manipulate troops, tanks, ships, and more - all with their own classes and uses - to outmaneuver and overtake the enemy. Understanding the game’s full set of mechanics at once would be daunting, if not amotivating from excessive difficulty. To prevent such disasters, the game incrementally guides the player along a series of opening missions to slowly accommodate him/herself with each type of unit and their gameplay interactions. Once the player learns a lesson, another one begins, thus helping players stay engaged. The game could have thrown the player into the bunkers of war with all strategies inherently available, and many games do to great avail; however, its gradual guidance of gameplay mechanics is a positive cycle that more organically and fairly prepares the player for increasing difficulty.
In addition to improving the player by enhancing his/her understanding of gameplay mechanics, positive cycles can also improve the player by unlocking gameplay mechanics. The Legend of Zelda is a classic example with heart containers and swords. The game tucks away heart contains among its vast world and dungeons. Upon finding a secret or slaying a boss, the player is rewarded with a heart container, thereby increasing the amounts of damage he/she can take before dying and losing progress. With the ability to now explore more of the world, the player can thus earn more heart containers, which can result in more exploration and so on. In addition to health, the game even embeds damage potential in positive cycles. The game’s various swords do differing amounts of damage, with stronger swords being unlocked by possessing more heart containers. Because of this system, the player advances his/her damage potential in an step-by-step manner of heart piece accumulation. These two positive cycles are inherently ‘linked,’ resulting in a game built upon the benefits of continual advancement that justifies the player’s commitment.
Progressive goals and rewards
To keep the player engaged, games can also design positive cycles that offer successive goals and rewards. Starlink: Battle for Atlas does so by constantly reinforcing the player’s behavior of liberating the galaxy. Upon defeating formidable foes, the game’s liberation meter raises, thereby returning more of the galaxy’s resources to its inhabitants and away from the game’s villain. Incremental progress is a subtle, yet powerfully compelling component in motivation, and Starlink: Battle for Atlas utilizes such psychology to reinforce the player’s behavior. That way, the player is more likely to liberate more of the galaxy to reap more rewards in an ongoing process. Along each step, the player’s behavior is valuable and contributive, successfully resulting in a constant sense of commitment to the game’s central goal.
Although many games are built upon these positive cycles to importantly progress plot or other pivotal game objectives, some games instead fruitfully design positive cycles that reward accomplishing inconsequential goals. Animal Crossing: Wild World, for instance, asks the player to accumulate enough funds to pay off a house loan. Upon paying that loan, an upgrade is instantly undertaken to further expand the player’s home. This is not a necessary goal in the game, yet the player most likely becomes smitten by the aspect of increasing his/her home’s surface area to display more and more decorations. Even though the player plummets into a crippling loan upon each successive home expansion, he/she often enjoys the prospect of continually growing his/her abode. Animal Crossing: Wild World’s positive cycle of home improvement is an optional, superficial goal that nevertheless galvanizes the player in a game about casual living. If only paying bills in real life were that entertaining…
Difficulty
As alluded in the section on continual improvement, games often utilize positive cycles to not lose the player among their difficulties. The player’s skill level should relatively match a game’s difficulty for optimal enjoyment and flow. When a game is too easy, its mechanics’ possibilities cannot be fully utilized and savored. Alternatively, when a game is too challenging, its mechanics can overwhelm the player and prevent him/her from enjoying the gameplay. By matching difficulty to skill level through progression in a positive cycle, games help keep the player in an optimal state of fun. The heart-pounding Thumper demonstrates this concept throughout its difficulty progression. The player begins a level by quickly learning a movement. Then, this movement is expanded upon at a gradual rate. Along the way, a new movement is introduced and learned. By the end of the level, the player seamlessly integrates these varying movements through the level’s most rigorous developments. This process of matching a game’s difficulty to a player’s skill level through positive cycles is a commonly accepted norm in gaming because it helps keep the player ready for the next reasonable challenge.
Exposure
As a more creative and less common approach, games can instill their positive cycles to incrementally expose the player to the game’s breadth. Far Cry 5 ingeniously links is missions by hinting at other missions upon an initial mission’s completion. In the game’s town that is overrun by a fanatical cult, the player can save a civilians, liberate cult outposts, and destroy cult memorabilia. Upon completing these missions, whether tightly scripted or not, civilians share their knowledge about nearby friends and enemies through their own set of optional missions. With this positive cycle, the player fluidly and naturally transitions from one mission to the next. There is no emphasis on mission lists; instead, the game emphasizes organic progression. This natural process of distributing missions by word-of-mouth is believable in the game’s isolated setting. Thus, this crafty positive cycle of sharing information results in increased worldbuilding, realism, and exposure to the game’s substantial content. The interlocking mission structures’ nature also gives the player a continual purpose and motivation because there is always something to do and a reason to do it.
Conclusion
Positive cycles can be difficult to spot; they are not always a visually identifiable design choice or a directly addressed game element. Despite their often incorporeal nature, positive cycles substantiate many processes in games. Upon successful implementation, they can uplift the gaming experience by instilling meaning and direction to the player’s actions. They can also enhance the player’s quality of life through both balanced and recursive progression. Many games attempt to capitalize on their key features, and positive cycles remain a tactful method to iterate on those features while instilling curiosity and satisfaction through slight, directed modifications.
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