作者：Dylan Holmes

我眨眨眼睛。我刚启动《战地风云3》，出于某种原因，页面弹出一个窗口。

“厌烦于同‘战地风云3’的老兵们进行逆境战斗？Ultimate Shortcut Bundle将解锁19种升级武器、装置和交通工具。”它将我带到这样的链接：只需支付EA 40美元，你就可以得到所谓的“捷径”。

这种营销手段实在过于露骨。11月份得到新工作后，我的《战地风云3》体验暂时搁浅。出乎我意料的是，当我3月份重新再进行体验时，形形色色的玩家都在游戏的“永久头衔”机制中晋升至将军之类的级别。成群高级指挥官在步兵战斗中一决雌雄的超现实画面因这样的实况而不再有趣：我不过是个中士，在经验和装置上都略逊一筹。

和现代在线动作游戏一样，《战地风云3》利用“解锁内容”，这通常以玩家的附加武器、附件、装置和技能形式呈现。从理论上来说，解锁内容通过取得成就而获得：完成更多操作的玩家将获得更多积分，这反过来会解锁更多设备和策略选项。

但发行6个月后，《战地风云3》的解锁机制就自食其果；我掠夺的每把枪械都是装有激光瞄准器和超大广角的尖端无托步枪，而我持有的是突击步枪版空气枪。我似乎只有打败我的资优对手，方能升级自己的战场；没有绝对的机制优势，我们似乎很难打败这些经验丰富的敌人。我随后发现，《战地风云3》的新武器和初始武器在性能方面相对较平衡，虽然玩家依然需要解锁武器附件，以保持竞争性（游戏邦注：值得注意的是，Ultimate Shortcut包裹无法做到这点）。但这无关紧要；所以很多同伴都运用此明显缺乏平衡性的解锁内容机制，新玩家以为这就是实际情况，进而萌生自卑感。要得到这些解锁内容，我只需支付EA些许现金。即便价格有些荒谬，我依然被其诱惑。

随后我发现这愚蠢之极。EA设计的这款游戏存在一个严重问题：原本在与有经验同伴的竞争中就处于不利地位的新用户因利用解锁内容而令自己进一步处在不利位置。EA推出Ultimate Unlock Pack清楚说明他们承认自己所存在的问题，但他们不是积极通过创造性方案解决这一问题，反而是很高兴自己能够从中获得收益。

这是设计过多着眼于解锁过程而非争取在游戏虚拟战斗中获胜的必然结果。《战地风云3》已充斥众多“高价位”元素，它们能够延长各方角色的寿命，让玩家进行无止境的较量。我觉得之所以通过这些内容的唯一原因是，很多玩家将比赛的终结、附带的计分板及加载时间看作是打断积分积累的讨厌阻碍。解锁内容似乎变成主要关注焦点，一个游戏（游戏邦注：这一游戏旨在利用玩家的强迫倾向，促使他们在游戏中投入超出预期的时间）表面的附加“游戏层”。

但我只能责怪自己。当解锁内容刚出现时，我满怀欣喜地迎接它，是个忠实拥护者。我在数百万用户的身旁创造了一个怪兽；这个怪兽追根究底就是RPG的源头。

解锁内容的来源

和多数游戏内容一样，解锁内容源自于《龙与地下城》。当我们谈及解锁内容时，我们实际谈论的是持久性；其主要理念是，你的决策和成就具有长远意义，你可以在众多体验回合中发展角色。这一理念几乎体现在早期所有的电子游戏当中，从射击和平台游戏中的让积分和角色在关卡中延续到早期探险和角色扮演游戏中的设置专门仓库或发展技能。事实上，唯一未融入这类持久性元素的是基于竞争性街机体验的游戏作品，如《街头争霸II》；比赛非常简短，旨在赚取更多收益，融入持久性机制完全毫无意义，因为玩家持续发生变化。有些内容需要保持静态，这样玩家才能够逐步掌握游戏机制，而不是需要持续把握其中变化；这样战斗游戏就比传统单人电子游戏，离运动或棋盘游戏更近一步。

这似乎是早期在线第一人称射击游戏的基本模式（游戏邦注：例如《迷宫战争》和1993年的《毁灭战士》），这些作品创造了所谓的“死亡模式”，促使自由模式的射击比赛变得无处不在。虽然玩家能够在比赛中获得新道具，但这不会带来持久影响；只要关卡发生改变，所有玩家的积分就会重新归0，他们重新回到只有初始武器的阶段，争相搜寻猎枪或火箭发射器。

这是10年之后的行业情况。虽然有些游戏（例如《军团要塞》模式和《银河生死斗》系列）通过引入角色类型或定制存储机制提高角色的自定义水平，但在线游戏并未融入真正的持久性。至少射击游戏没有引入此元素。

RPG设计师不能忽略这样的事实：网络游戏逐步变得越来越受欢迎，在《毁灭战士》问世若干年后，设计师开始基于RPG模式开发在线游戏。虽然这始终维持在多人地下城模式（玩家可以通过文本解析器进行浏览的文本在线世界），但直到1997年《网络创世纪》问世，在线角色扮演游戏才取得巨大成功。《网络创世纪》让玩家能够发展角色，学习新技能，参与靠玩家推动的经济活动，甚至是拥有自己的家。简而言之，包含各式各样你无法在在线第一人称射击游戏中进行的操作。2年后《无尽的任务》取得杰出成绩进一步说明这些功能非常有市场。

这两种题材第一次结合是在2003年的《星球边缘》，这款游戏主要围绕3个帮派在10块大陆上发动大规模联合作战。除持续性的游戏世界（各帮派可以占领不同基地，进而延伸到整个大陆）外，《星球边缘》还融入“不同战斗难度”，相当于关卡。作为一款纯FPS游戏，游戏没有改变玩家属性；相反，附加的各种战斗难度让玩家能够得到额外“技能证书”，这是操作游戏交通工具及运用各种专业武器的必要条件。在此基于现代模式的解锁内容就诞生了。

虽然游戏的大规模战斗及复杂分组机制带来新的操作方式（Quintin Smith的“Planetside: The 1%”有详述此话题），但促使我持续体验游戏的是持久性元素。网络技术尚未做好准备迎接《星球边缘》雄心勃勃的设计，因此其中枪法显得非常普通，游戏几乎没有什么物理元素和矩形有效射击区，让人觉得像是只有基本要素的FPS游戏。但游戏持续涌现的新元素促使我继续体验游戏。我看到一架武装直升机，我想要驾驶它。我被武装直升机消灭，我想要学习防空技能。

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但《星球边缘》开发者有意让玩家不受困于自己的技能证书。当玩家晋升至新关卡时，她会得到“证书积分”，这可以被运用至新的技能证书中。但这并非绑定决策，我的决策有24小时放入冷却计时，之后我可以通过选定的技能证书交换其他其他证书；例如，放弃我的火箭发射装置训练，学习如何运用狙击步枪。冷却计时器防止玩家持续变更角色，让获得附加证书积分变得更有意义，而交换选择权利则让玩家能够抽取特定游戏内容，不会觉得自己“受困于”特定游戏内容。我最终试验完所有技能证书，因此没有自己专门的部落，对实际战斗提不起兴致；完全看到任何新鲜内容。

通过2005年的《战地风云2》，解锁内容首次在传统竞赛FPS游戏中同玩家见面，这是我最喜爱的在线游戏的首个续作。和先前的作品一样，《战地风云2》融入系列不同角色类型；但它还引入系列数据追踪功能，甚至给予持续取得成就的玩家勋章和绶带奖励。取得特定进展后，玩家将能够解锁“特殊武器”，供其在7个游戏角色中选定的角色进行操作；和《星球边缘》不同，这一决策具有绑定作用。

到2012年，我们已很难接受这样游戏：各角色只有一个解锁内容，但当时这就让玩家兴奋不已。甚至连枪械是什么都没有关系；单是能够在表现糟糕的游戏中取得进展就极大强化游戏体验。我希望自己的决策能够发挥作用；虽然我并不像在《战地风云1942》那样如此享受于基本游戏当中，但我逐渐着迷于其中的持续发展感觉，希望这能够出现在更多游戏作品中。

1年多后，EA和DICE推出了《战地风云2142》，除科幻背景外，游戏最大的改变在于广泛融入解锁内容。《战地风云2》的7个角色类型被缩减至4个，但取而代之的是，游戏在各角色的武器和技能中引入复杂的技能树，这不仅带来更庞大的力量，而且允许玩家做出广泛调整；其中的Recon Class更多扮演的是“狙击兵”或“突击队”角色（游戏邦注：这取决于玩家如何对其进行升级）。

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从理论上来看，这是在线游戏的大胆突破，从某种意义上来说，更接近真正的RPG前进机制，而非《星球边缘》技能证书。但这些解锁内容存在一个“黑暗面”。各类型角色曾经的基本技能如今需在游戏中进行解锁；在能够解锁内容前，他们在与更有经验玩家的竞争中完全处在不利地位。Graham Swann在Eurogamer对于这款游戏的批评是这一模式首次遭到否定。他表示，“在多人射击游戏中，发现自己技不如人非常糟糕。引入让他人处于绝对优势地位的机制是对这一题材的背离，这主要围绕技能的竞争，而非持久性。这是因为《魔兽世界》有700万用户并不意味着每场游戏都应该变成‘魔兽世界’。”

但这样的担心并没有阻止Infinity Ward在作品《使命召唤4：现代战争》中采用相同的模式。在作品获得巨大成功及其后续作品创下破纪录销量后，这完全没有回旋余地。

游戏表面的游戏层

2010年，社交游戏设计师Seth Priesbatch在TED大会上发表了一个名为“The game layer on top of the world”的讲话。和Jesse Schell 2个月前谈论的内容一样，Priesbatch描绘这样的未来：游戏机制完全突破传统游戏，渗透至社会各个方面，也就是众所周知的游戏化手法。Priesbatch在详述前表示，“开个玩笑，通过7种类型的游戏机制，你可以让任何人做任何事情。”例如，“约定机制”（游戏邦注：在此机制中，要获得成功，玩家需要在预定时间返回游戏完成预定操作）早已以条框“快乐时光”形式存在很久。

但Priesbatch在论述如何将这些机制运用至更大游戏空间中，促使个体采取有益举措及享受其中的同时，还谈到游戏开发者如何刺激我们体验游戏。这些机制构成新兴“游戏即服务”模式的基础，这旨在将游戏由独立的“盒装产品”转变成搭载互联网，其通过订阅或持续虚拟交易维持的连续性游戏体验；从根本来说，这就是电子游戏版“云计算”。

例如，“约定机制”被当作轰动巨作《Farmville》的基础元素，其中玩家可以通过有限窗口浇灌和播种庄稼，这同时还以“double experience weekends”的形式出现FPS游戏中。在谈到《Farmville》是，Priesbatch详述了这一机制的惊人力量。“当开发商Zynga调节其数据，宣布你的作物会在6、8或24小时后枯萎时，他们完全颠覆7000万用户1天的生活周期。玩家会有规律地在不同时间点返回游戏。”

解锁内容通过结合众多游戏机制实现其预期效果。《战地风云》和《现代战争》的等级机制通过“影响和状态”（希望自己的社交地位和同伴相当，或者甚至超过他们）机制促使玩家持续体验游戏，担心自己会“落后他人”。但更必不可少的是“前进机制”——在“所成绩逐步显现出来，通过完成编号任务衡量所获成就的过程中，玩家收获的发自内心的喜悦和成就感。”听起来非常熟悉？

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当这些机制被视作辅助元素（其唯一作用就是提供持续体验的额外动力），而非游戏设计的完整组成部分时，问题就出现了。《战地风云3》中的解锁内容并非旨在提高游戏的趣味性；它主要是为了鼓励玩家进行更多体验。去除解锁内容，游戏的经典玩法依然保持不变。唯一会丧失的是，自定义角色的权限，但即便前进机制也没有同此要素绑定。开发者可以第一天就向玩家呈现所有附加武器和技能，或是在几小时的体验后将内容广泛解锁。

这里的解锁内容只是要促使我持续体验《战地风云3》。这似乎起到一定作用；就许多玩家晋升至一流水平的速度及这需要进行数百小时体验的事实来看，我们只能做出这样的假设，他们很少体验《战地风云3》之外的游戏，或者他们有大把休闲时间。这就是EA想要的。如果若干忠诚度不高的玩家掏出40美元以“平衡游戏竞争环境”，那就再好不过。我担心诸如《Progress Quest》（是款本身就非常戏剧化的RPG游戏，只是融入各式各样的条框和数据，追踪玩家的财富和能量进展）这类颇具嘲讽性的作品也变成真正的商业产品。

在短短几年里，排除解锁内容的在线FPS游戏就完全销声匿迹。和其他人一样，我也有很大责任；我的消费行为，当《战地风云3》推出时，我掏钱购买，心中清楚游戏包含解锁内容。一开始我甚至还享受其中。但体验越久，我越是感到沮丧，开发者刻意给我的胜利设置人为障碍，向我传递人为目标。

幸运的是，EA和动视并没有在游戏开发领域处于垄断地位。最近基于Kickstarter进行融资的“旧式”游戏设计风潮充分说明，90年代的游戏作品依然有其市场，如果有人创造出和《雷神之锤》而非《使命召唤》类似的新款在线FPS，我完全不会感到惊讶。但我还不打算成为守旧者；过去的作品并不完美，在通过众多战斗逐步发展我的《星球边缘》角色的过程中，我着实感受到颇多乐趣。《星球边缘2》的开发者承诺，所有解锁内容将是提供额外战略选择而非绝对优势的“辅助筹码”；虽然这操作起来非常困难，但我相信他们的美好初衷。而其他有些游戏则只是单纯着眼于不会直接影响玩家力量的“地位”元素、有益装饰品及社交强化功能。此外，还有若干其他未经检验的解决方案。也许还会出现此类包含“多个方向”解锁模式的FPS游戏：给予新玩家特定技能，这些技能会在他们获得经验时丧失，让他们能够同更有经验的玩家进行战斗。随着“解锁”模式继续同免费模式携手并进，以及游戏逐步演变成服务，越来越多的开发者将尝试修复其中的内在平衡问题，同时维持游戏所包含的满足感和成就感。我只能希望最终有人能够找到完美解决方案。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

‘Unlocks’ and the Gamification of Gaming

by Dylan Holmes

“LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD INSTANTLY!”

I blinked. I had just launched Battlefield 3, and for some reason there a pop-up promising me…fairness?

“Tired of fighting an uphill battle against Battlefield veterans?” it continued.  “The Ultimate Shortcut Bundle unlocks 119 weapons, gear and vehicle upgrades.” At which point it directed me to a link where I could pay Electronic Arts a mere $40 for said “shortcut.”

The marketing hit close to home. After getting a new job in November, my Battlefield 3 play tailed off. When I resumed regular play in March, I was amused to find that every Tom, Dick and Harry was some sort of general within the games’ “persistent rank” system. The surrealism of a bunch of top commanders duking it out in infantry combat was made less entertaining by the fact that I was a measly sergeant, and was thus outclassed not just in experience, but in the equipment available to me.

Like every contemporary online action game, Battlefield 3 makes use of “unlocks,” which takes the form of additional weapons, accessories, devices, and abilities for the player. Unlocks are, in theory, earned by merit: players who accomplish more earn more points, which in turn unlock more equipment and tactical options.

But six months after release, Battlefield 3’s unlock system had eaten its own tail; every gun I looted was some cutting-edge bullpup rifle tricked out with laser sights and oversized scopes, while I was running around with the assault rifle equivalent of a BB gun. It seemed that I couldn’t level the playing field except by defeating my overqualified opponents; it would have been hard enough to match such experienced foes WITHOUT them having an outright mechanical advantage. I later learned that Battlefield 3′s new guns were relatively balanced against the starting weapons, though players still needed to unlock weapon accessories to stay competitive (something, it’s worth noting, that the Ultimate Shortcut pack doesn’t do). But this was almost beside the point; so many of it peers had used overtly unbalanced unlock systems that new players assumed this was the case here, and the feelings of inferiority were just as real. Now EA was spinning DICE’s carefully balanced system as a great divide between the haves and have-nots, and without doing detailed research on the weapon statistics I had no way of knowing how disingenuous they were being. I wanted those unlocks, and all I all had to do was give EA some cash. Even with such a ridiculous price tag, there was some part of me that was tempted.

Then I realized that this was utterly insane. EA had designed a game with a serious problem: new users, already at a disadvantage against their more experienced peers, had the deck further stacked against them through the use of unlocks. EA’s marketing for the Ultimate Unlock Pack explicitly acknowledge the problem they had created, but rather than come up with a creative attempt to solve it they seemed content to monetize it.

It was the inevitable result of a design that placed more emphasis on the unlock process than on winning the game’s fictional battles. Battlefield 3 was already awash in “high ticket” servers that extended the number of lives each side had, allowing for near-endless matches. The only reason I can think of for such servers is that many players viewed the end of a match, and the accompanying scoreboards and loading times, as an unwelcome interrupting of the points flow. It seemed as though the unlocks had become the chief focus, an additional “game layer” on top of the game that was designed to tap into player’s compulsive tendencies and drive them to play longer than they otherwise would.

But I had no one to blame but myself. I was there when unlocks first started to appear, welcomed them with open arms, and supported them every step of the way. Alongside millions of other gamers, I created a monster; a monster that could trace its lineage all the way back to the origin of RPGs.

The Origin of Unlocks

As with most things in gaming, unlocks have their roots in Dungeons & Dragons. When we talk about unlocks, what we’re really talking about is persistence; the idea that your decisions and accomplishments carry long-term weight, that you can develop and character over many play sessions. This idea was present in almost all of the early video games, from having your points and lives carry over between levels in shooters and platformers to having a dedicated inventory or set of developing abilities, as in early adventure and role-playing game. In fact, the only games that didn’t have this sort of persistence were those designed for competitive arcade play, like Street Fighter II; the matches were short to keep the quarters coming, and there was no point in having persistence because the players were constantly rotating in and out. There was also something to be said for keeping things static, so that players could develop mastery over the system rather than having to constantly learn changes; in this way fighting games were closer to sports or board games than traditional single-player video games.

It was this design that seems to have been the basis for the early online first-person shooters, namely Maze War (the 1973 originator of the genre) and 1993’s Doom, which invented the term “deathmatch” while popularizing the free-for-all shootfest. While the player could get new items during a match, there were no lasting consequences; once the level changed, everyone’s score was reset to zero and they were once again spawning with the starter weapons and racing to find a shotgun or rocket launcher.

This was the status quo for the next decade. While some games – namely the Team Fortress mods and the Tribes series – allowed increasing character customization through character classes or a customizable inventory system, there was no real persistence in online gaming. At least, not in shooters.

RPG designers couldn’t ignore the fact that internet gaming was growing exponentially more popular with each passing year, and a a few years after Doom started developing online games in the RPG mold.  While there had always been multi-user dungeons, or “MUDs” for decades  (text-based online worlds that players navigated with a text parser) it wasn’t until the 1997 release of Ultima Online that an online role-playing game achieved mass success. Ultima Online allowed the player to develop a character, learn new skills, participate in a player-driven economy, and even own a home. In short, all the things you couldn’t do in online first person shooters. The massive success of Everquest two years later only further demonstrated the demand for these features.

The two genres would merge for the first time in 2003’s Planetside, which featured three factions waging a massive combined-arms war across ten continents. Apart from a persistent world where different factions could capture and hold bases and, eventually, entire continents, Planetside also featured “Battle Ranks,” the equivalent of levels. As a pure FPS, the game had no player attributes to change; instead, additional battle ranks allowed the player to complete additional “certifications,” which were needed to operate the game’s vehicles and wield a variety of specialized weaponry. It was here that unlocks, in their modern form, were born.

While the game’s massive battles and sophisticated squad system led to some truly novel movements – perhaps best exemplified by Quintin Smith’s “Planetside: The 1%” –  it was the persistent elements that kept me playing. Networking technology was simply not ready for Planetside’s ambitious design, and as a result the gunplay was mediocre at best, with barely-there physics and rectangular hitboxes making it feel like an FPS stripped down to its base elements. But the constant possibility of new things on the horizon kept me playing. I saw a gunship, and I wanted to fly it. I was killed by the gunship, and I wanted to train in anti-air capabilities.

But the Planetside developers made the conscious decision to not lock the player into their certifications. When a player leveled up, she would get a “certification point” that could be used towards a new certification. But this was not a binding decision; there was a 24 hour cooldown timer on my decision, after which I could swap any chosen certification for one other certification; say, abandon my rocket-launcher training to learn how to use sniper rifles. The cooldown prevented players from constantly juggling roles and made gaining additional certification points actually meaningful, but the choice to swap allowed the player to sample all the game had to offer and not feel “locked out” of any aspect of the game. I eventually tried every certification, and lacking a dedicated clan and being continually underwhelmed by the actual combat, I left; there was nothing more for me to see.

Unlocks would see their first release in a traditional, match-based FPS with 2005’s Battlefield 2, the first true sequel to my favorite online game. As with its predecessor, Battlefield 2 featured a number of different character classes; but it also had an array of stat-tracking features, and even awarded player’s medals and ribbons for continuing accomplishments. After enough progress, the player would be allowed to unlock the “special weapon” for one of the game’s seven character classes; and, unlike in Planetside, the decision was binding.

In 2012, it must seem quaint to imagine a game where each class had only a single unlock, but at the time it was positively exciting. It didn’t even matter what the gun was; just the idea that I was making progress even in games I was losing badly really enhanced the experience. I wanted my decisions to matter; and while I didn’t enjoy the base game quite as much as I had Battlefield 1942, I became hooked on this constant sense of growth, and looked forward to it appearing in more games.

Just over a year later, EA and DICE released Battlefield 2142, and other than the sci-fi setting the biggest change was the massive expansion of unlocks. Battlefield 2’s seven classes were cut down to four, but this was more than made up for by having complex skill trees for weapons and abilities within each class that not only allowed for greater powers but a fair amount of tailoring; the Recon Class could fill more of a “sniper” or “commando” role, depending on how the player upgraded it.

In theory, it was a brave new front in online gaming, and was in some ways even closer to a true RPG progression system than Planetside’s certifications. But there was a dark side to these unlocks. What had once been basic abilities in each class now had to be unlocked in play; and until a player did, they would be at a real disadvantage against the more experienced players. Graham Swann’s review of the game at Eurogamer offered one of the first critiques of this model. “It’s bad enough in a multiplayer shooter when you find yourself being outplayed,” he wrote, “[but] introducing a mechanic where someone else is just better in absolute terms seems like a betrayal of the genre, which is based around competition of skill not persistence. Just because World of Warcraft has seven million people playing it doesn’t mean that every game should become World of Warcraft.”

But such concerns were not enough to stop Infinity Ward from doing the same thing (minus the class system) in a little game called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. After its smash success, and the record-breaking sales of its successors, there was no turning back.

The Game Layer on Top of the Game

In 2010, social game designer Seth Priesbatch gave a TED talk titled “The game layer on top of the world.” Much as designer Jesse Schell had done two months earlier, Priesbatch described a future in which game mechanics would expand well beyond traditional games and into every facet of society, a technique known as gamification. “We like to joke that with seven [types] of game dynamics, you can get anyone to do anything,” explained Priesbatch, before explaining a few in detail. For instance, the “appointment dynamic” – in which, to succeed, “a player has to return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action” – has long been around in the form of bar’s “happy hours.”

But while Priesbatch talks about the ways these mechanics can be applied to the larger world in order to (hopefully) drive individual to do good and have fun, his breakdown also gives us insight into the ways game developers seek to provide motivation for play. These dynamics form the basis of the emerging “games as a service” model, which seeks to shift games from self-contained “box products” to ongoing gaming experiences hosted on the internet and funded through subscriptions or continued microtransactions from the player; in essence, the video game equivalent of “cloud computing.”

For instance, the “appointment dynamic” is used as the basis for the enormously successful Farmville, in which players have limited windows in which to water and harvest crops, and has been introduced to FPS games in the form of “double experience weekends.” Speaking of Farmville, Priesbatch explained the dynamic’s incredible power. “When [developer Zynga] tweak their stats, when they say your crops wilt after six hours or after eight hours or after 24 hours, it changes the life cycle of some 70 million people during the day. They will return, like clockwork, at different times.”

Unlocks combine numerous game dynamics to achieve their effect. The rank systems of Battlefield and Modern Warfare use the “influence and status” dynamic – the desire to achieve equity with and even exceed one’s peers in social standing – to drive players to constantly play the game, lest they “fall behind.” But even more integral is the “progression dynamic” – the visceral feeling of pleasure and accomplishment players feel when “success is granuarly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.” Sound familiar?

The problem comes when these dynamics are applied, not as an integral part of the game design, but as a ancillary layer whose sole point is provide added motivation for continued play – and nothing else. The point of unlocks in Battlefield 3 isn’t to increase the fun I’m having; it’s to encourage me to play more than I would otherwise. Take away the unlocks and the typical play experience remains unchanged. The only thing that would be lost would be the ability to customize my character, but even that isn’t inherently tied to the progression system. The developers could have all of the additional weapons and abilities available to the player from day one, or – if that was too overwhelming – unlock them in significant chunks after just a few hours of gameplay.

No, unlocks are merely here to keep me playing Battlefield 3 eternally. And it seems to be working; based on how quickly many players achieved top rank combined with the fact that it takes hundreds of hours of play to do so, we can only assume that either they’re playing few games other than Battlefield 3 or have an unusual abundance of free time with which to play it. Which is exactly how EA wants it. And if they can get some of the less-devoted players to give them $40 to “level the playing field,” then all the better. I fear a world in which the likes of the satirical Progress Quest – an RPG that plays itself, and merely consists of various bars and stats tracking your progress towards wealth and power – will actually be a serious commercial product.

In just a few short years the unlock-free online FPS has been entirely wiped out. I’m to blame as much as anyone; I vote with my dollar, and I bought Battlefield 3 when it came out, knowing full well the unlocks it contained. And at first, I even enjoyed them. But the more I played, the more frustrated I was at the artificial constraints placed on my success, and the artificial goals that were dictated to me by the developers.

Fortunately, EA and Activision don’t have a monopoly on game development. The recent wave of “outdated” game designs being funded on Kickstarter has shown that there is an audience for the games of the ‘90s, and I won’t be surprised if someone ends up making  a new online FPS that has more in common with Quake than Call of Duty. But I’m not ready to be an old fogey yet; the past was not perfect, and the excitement I felt at developing my Planetside character over many battles was very real. The developers of Planetside 2 are promising that all unlocks will be “sidegrades” that merely give additional tactical options rather than outright advantages; and while it’s a difficult act to pull off, I have faith in their good intentions. Other games are focusing solely on the “status” aspect, rewarding cosmetic and social enhancements that do not directly affect power in the world. And there are other, untried solutions. There could be an FPS with a “multi-directional” unlock model that gave new players certain abilities that they lose as they gain experience, giving them a fighting chance against the more experienced players. As the “unlock” model continues to spread hand-in-hand with free-to-play and games as a service, more and more developers will take a stab at fixing the inherent balance problems while keeping the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that I value. I can only hope that, eventually, someone will get it right.（Source：gamasutra）