More Wealth Than You Can Imagine!
I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.
—Han Solo
Game designers have many very powerful tools to keep players playing. Mystery, delight, pride, and power we’ve already talked about, but now we come to the two most powerful of these tools: greed and reward.
Greed will get players to do interesting things. They will grind their way through the grindiest MMOs to get that stronger sword, that unique hat, gain that next level. They will jump onto the smallest platform festooned with the deadliest traps just to grab that one additional coin. They will fight the biggest, meanest enemies just to find out what comes next in the story. Or to score that achievement. The following very important thing rings true:
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE GREED OF THE PLAYERS
But … instead of using the players’ greed for evil—luring players to their death to prove that you, the game designer, are cleverer than the players—use their...