Author’s Note: This has become a bit of a scattered rant - I decided to just leave everything as is instead of trying to condense things down so consider this your warning for the incoming word vomit.
Enjoyment of Gaming
I’ve recently been playing Persona 5, and for the first time in a while I’ve fully immersed myself into the game without binding my gameplay to any kind of progress or improvement. Explorings the streets of Tokyo as I wish with no ulterior motive of becoming stronger or game completion has been an amazingly refreshing experience for me.
I’ve already been playing less and less games throughout the past few years, but even within the games I do play I find myself trying to grind through content in some way - whether it’s through beating Hades runs while slowly improving my heat or maximizing my score in Mini Motorways to get a better leaderboard spot. Regardless of the genre, I’ve been obsessed with this cycle of iteration and improvement to the point of fatigue that makes me want to stop playing a game - a phenomenon which I now refer to as “Number-go-up”.
Number Go Up
I chose the name Number-go-up purposefully to align with the book about cryptocurrency, Number Go Up. While the contents of the book and what I’m describing here aren’t the same, there may still be some commonality in the thrill behind watching something increase in value - whether it is actual money or just a silly number in a game.
The core definition of the concept boils down to the importance of progression in the enjoyment of a game. The meaning of progression is broad and can vary a lot between different games and genres - including something as direct as leveling up in a RPG, or grinding out a better rank in League of Legends. Almost every game has some kind of progression tied to it in some way, shape, or form - through leveling, score, or even just general skill improvement. Fundementally, there is nothing wrong the enjoyment of seeing numbers go up, we are only human after all! However, I’ve recently found myself picking what games to play based on this concept - which I feel has been limiting my enjoyment of video games.
Mentality
So, how exactly do I choose what game I want to play? First and foremost, there’s comfort vs exploration - leading me to choose either a game I know I like or exploring a new game to try. When I pick comfort, there are a few games I usually cycle between: Guild Wars 2, Hades, Maplestory, or TFT. Within all of these games, there is some kind of long-form progression that lasts well beyond a single session of gaming. Leveling up in Guild Wars 2 or Maplestory, maxing out heat in Hades and grinding my rank in TFT.
There are plenty of other games that I’ve played and also enjoy - Castle Crashers, Pyre, Rogue Legacy, One step from Eden, Paper Mario, just to name a recent few. I genuinely enjoyed playing all of these games, so why do I keep replaying the same 4 games instead of them? In the moment, it’s hard to pinpoint the reason since most of the time my choice is just based on what I feel like playing in the moment; However, a deeper examination into my thought process reveals the ugly truth…
My first step in choosing a game to play is to look at my steam achievements: do I still have a lot to unlock or am I mostly done with them? There is no doubt that I gravitate towards games that still have achievements to unlock - but why should that affect my game choice? The game itself and its gameplay doesn’t change at all, so why does an arbitrary achievement create desire for me to play a game? If I am choosing a game based on achievement progression, am I even enjoying the game or do I just enjoy watching my achievement progress go up?
To rewind a step further, my choice in console is already deeply affected by this as well; I have 2 switches (one was a prize of a game jam), but when it comes to playing games I spend very little time on them. There are plenty of games I like on the switch: Breath of the Wild, Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros, Octopath Traveler - and yet I almost exclusively play on my steam deck now. The biggest reason is simply that I like having my hours recorded and achievements tracked to feel like I’m playing a game that matters.
In the end, it all boils down to the actual enjoyment of playing games. Whatever game I end up playing, whether it be on the Switch or my Steam deck - I end up hyper fixated on trying to make these arbitrary numbers go up. There is some visceral gravitation towards trying to progress and achieve something, a lot of times at the detriment of the actual gameplay experience.
Story Progression
I used Persona 5 as an example of me finally being able to break this cycle; However, it also begs the question of whether story progression falls under the same “number go up” phenomenon. While playing through the game, I feel genuine enjoyment of experiencing the story as well as exploring the streets of Tokyo with no specific goal of getting stronger or game completion. Personally, I consider story progression as a separate mechanism from typical game progression of upgrades, level ups and game completion - and as such, I felt my experience to be different from my typical gaming experience of optimizing numbers.
Game Design
With all of this talk about how my enjoyment of games has changed - I begin to wonder if games themselves have changed or if it is purely a shift in my mentality. Most likeley - there is some mix of both that contributes to this, but I’d like to closely examine the topic and maybe help bring back a more naive gaming experience for myself.
It is without a doubt that game design has changed over the years, it is only natural that as technologies and cultures change - the industry would change along with it. The question then becomes what exactly has changed, and how do those changes impact how people play games. There are a few obvious changes - especially in triple A games and payment models such as microtransactions, subscriptions, DLCs, and season passes; The game design necessarily has to change to fit the monetization.
A lot of studios now use player retention as a key metric when determining a games success, and a lot of decisions are made using that metric as a benchmark. When I was at Ubisoft, I was often included in meetings that went over ways to increase player retention, and often it was comprised of decisions that examined the psychology of how to keep a player playing instead of what made a certain mechanic fun. For example, widely using time-gated resources throughout the game so that the player has to keep playing the game to gain the resources, even if there is no meaningful gameplay other than purely waiting.
However, especially having not played many triple A games in my childhood, I am not 100% sure if these things have changed that much over time or if my perspective has simply shifted. I value my time differently now, and that difference in value may also contribute to why I choose to play something that seems to be generating value rather than something that is purely entertainment in the experience.
Interjection
Author’s Note 2: I dropped this for a few months and am just coming back to try to finish it so things might be a bit disconnected from this point…
Corollary
To extend this concept further, I believe there are many other aspects of my life where I feel trapped into this feeling of progression. The most obvious examples are with my more athletic endeavors, such as running and climbing; When I first started running, it was mostly just to offset all the drinking I was doing in university. However, I quickly started trying to run faster and faster, eventually signing up for half and full marathons and trying to beat my own PRs with each one. Every time my pace improved on a run, it was an amazing feeling that could power me through an entire day or even week.
However, there was a giant wall that I was destined to hit - it is impossible to improve my pace and time forever, just as nothing in this world can grow infinitely. I was really struggling to beat my own times and distances, and it was definitely not a great feeling; I even stopped running for a while because so much of my enjoyment was tied to that sense of improvement.
Nowadays, I still run occasionally but I try my best to enjoy my run for the experience rather than trying to meticulously track every run and improve my times. I’m glad that I was able to change my perspective a bit with my running, but there are still many aspects of my life where I sometimes feel a burden of improvement. Even things like art and painting makes me feel burdended with stagnation sometimes, even though even though it’s such a subjective concept that’s meant to inspire joy and creativity. I definitely didn’t care much as a kid if my art was “good” and if I was “improving”, I sometimes look back and wonder when did all this extra anxiety start to creep in?
Counterpoint
With all this said about progression, it is also important to consider what the alternatives are if not for progression? By removing the progression from a game, what is left for the player to do? Even most simple games have some form of progression, such as keeping high scores in tetris or doodle jump, or even skill-based progression like learning to play the map in getting over it. Without progression, these games become an experience in the purest form - would you still play flappy bird if it didn’t track how many pipes you jumped through? Even with satisfying combat and gameplay like Hades, how long would you play it for if it was just an endless dungeon instead of a run-based roguelike?
I think it is possible to enjoy things even without progression - back in the old days of Guild Wars 2, playing the world vs world gamemode gave extremely minimal rewards; Yet, it was my favourite way to play the game, just roaming around and having fun with fights and objectives. I never really cared what our score was or what my world vs world level was, it was just fun to duel random people and getting run over by a random zerg was always a good time. Perhaps that experience that I treasure can help me find the answers of how to keep a game interesting and engaging without having to tie in some sort of progression system.
Thoughts
At the end of the day, I just wanted to examine more closely my own enjoyment of games and what I find fun about them. There is never a right or wrong with these topics, as every person in the world is different and sees the world differently. I hope that by analyzing some of these designs and motivations, I will be able to design and make better games that more people will enjoy playing.
My personal conclusion is that there are no mutually exclusive options. You can certainly enjoy the progression of a game while also enjoy the pure gameplay experience that it is providing as well. The game can set the expectation of how much progression exists, but the player can project their own preferences over it too. Just like everything in life, a good balance of both is what a great experience needs!