作者：Chirs

多年来，动物训练员一直都在使用正向训练方法，这是教导动物行为过程中一种只奖励不惩罚的系统方法。这也是一种有效的技巧，广泛用于各地海洋世界的表演动物培训中。这一技巧也能够用于游戏设计系统——但是何为正向游戏设计，它又有何优点？

正向动物训练

很多优秀的犬训练员，如Pamela Dennison，Pat Miller以及Gwen Bailey都实践了正向训练方法，这是基于操作性条件作用原则而形成的一种奖励机制，以强化预想效果而避免不好的结果。就像我之前在研究人们为什么要玩游戏中提到的，让这种训练技巧生效的大脑奖励机制正是人们获得不同快乐体验的来源，因此这种训练方法与电子游戏设计之间也存在一种天然的联系。

我们很容易理解正向动物训练原理，而最简单的总结便是来自于Pamela Dennison的“三大学习定律”：

1.重复得到奖励的行为。

2.停止被忽略的行为。

3.以可变的奖励鼓舞任何特定行为。

正向游戏设计在设计过程中也包含了这三大定律。

也许有人会认为将训练动物的技巧用于人类身上很奇怪——当然了，人类与动物存在着明显的差别，而游戏也不同于动物训练方法。但是，我们已经明确了游戏理念是一种学习工具，而且我也发现了，“游戏是一种学习工具”的另一面便是“游戏是一种奖励方式”，因为学习与操作性条件作用紧密相联。

正向游戏设计的目的

在分析之前，我想先申明，我并不认为正向游戏设计能够取代任何一种游戏设计方法，只是认为正向游戏设计是一种特殊的游戏设计方法。从原则上来看，它有三大优势：

*教育类游戏的目标是教育

*面向大众市场的“休闲游戏”更能迎合那些不喜欢游戏惩罚的用户

*游戏中的新手教程能够帮助游戏获得更广泛的用户群体。

要奖励而不要惩罚

正向游戏设计的最重要原则是要奖励而不要惩罚。玩家会因为成功受到奖励而不会因为失败遭到惩罚。但是这一原则却很难被众多玩家所接受，特别是在布满惩罚机制的电子游戏中，尤其是时间惩罚（即让玩家反复回到之前的关卡中重新开始），在这里惩罚能够创造一种足以调动玩家肾上激素的恐惧感（经常是关于死亡和失败），而因此推动他们争取更多奖励。

我们没有理由在游戏中惩罚玩家，并且我们也完全能够设计出一款只有奖励没有惩罚的游戏（尽管这款游戏可能会与我们熟悉的电子游戏有所不同）。在一些游戏，如《动物之森》（游戏中没有惩罚，并且已经卖出了2千2百万份），以及高科技电子宠物游戏（没有惩罚，并且已经卖出了2千2百万份）中，如《任天狗》中我们也能看到一些类似于正向游戏设计元素。虽然这些游戏并未将正向游戏设计作为基本原则，但是却表明了这种方法能够成功吸引广大不喜欢惩罚的用户（迎合了许多业余游戏玩家的喜好）。

Dennison的第一大定律是，重复可得到奖励的行为。例如，资深电子游戏玩家总是会不假思索地粉碎板条箱（即使游戏已经明确告诉他们里面没东西），因为他们在之前的游戏中经常发现板条箱里藏有道具（如奖励）。所以我们很难扭转众电子游戏玩家的这一行为。

在针对于大众市场玩家（即那些未拥有骨灰级玩家那般高深技能的玩家）的游戏设计中，你必须确保玩家在游戏中采取的行动能够获得奖励。而这里会出现一个特殊的设计挑战，即不同玩家喜欢不同事物，所以我们很难保证所提供的奖励都能够被玩家当成是一种回报而接受。然而，还有一些事物是真的能够得到玩家认可并被当成一种奖励（而是大奖励还是小奖励便都依赖于玩家本身的看法）：

货币奖励：带有虚拟货币的游戏很容易为玩家提供奖励。对于玩家来说，这种奖励很直观，更像是实际正向游戏设计中一种基本的奖励机制，重要的是，这种奖励货币必须能够用于购买某些东西，否则它便失去了意义。

角色完善：玩家总是希望不断改善游戏中的角色，特别是在角色扮演游戏中，这种机制更是根深蒂固。当说到是什么促使这类型游戏吸引了如此多的用户，作为一种奖励机制的角色完善更是功不可没。三个典例：提高跳跃高度，加快移动速度以及提高武器的破坏力。并且应该尽量避免基于数字的完善（如+1能量或者1%利益），因为对于人们来说，这种完善方法显得相对疲弱（而对于资深玩家来说这种方法却是可行的）。

礼物：提供给玩家新事物便是一种奖励，不管这种礼物是否有趣。虽然这是一种很棒的奖励方法，但是因为较高的开发成本，所以更须谨慎对待。可以让玩家使用货币系统购买礼物，或者单独为其创建一个合理的奖励机制。

奏乐：通过高分贝或令人振奋的音乐，你可以创造出一种关于奖励的情感共鸣。但是如果你频繁地使用相同的奖励音乐，玩家便很容易对此感到厌烦。然而因为这是一种成本较低的执行方法，所以是正向游戏设计中的必备工具。

音效：音效是一种很好的奖励方法，特别是当它能够很好地体现出代表物特性，或者特别有趣时。与奏乐一样，较低的开发成本也让音效成为必备的正向游戏设计工具。

视觉特效：是与音效和音乐一样让人愉快的方法，爆炸，灯光，颜色波纹，粒子系统（游戏邦注：特别适合于表现火焰、魔法、武器等）以及其它一些具有视觉震撼的内容都是给予玩家很棒的奖励。

图章：带有“图章收集”功能，即让玩家在找到或完成某些任务时能够将其慢慢填满，这是另外一种可靠的奖励方式。适当的“图章”音效或华丽的图像能够吸引更多玩家完成“图章收集”。这种方法与货币机制同等重要，或者说它是一种有用的额外奖励机制。

故事进程：大多数玩家都喜欢故事，而故事的发展本身就是一种奖励。但是这种方法也具有一定的风险，即如果玩家喜欢一则故事，但是故事却未能如其所愿发展，这无疑是带给玩家一种惩罚感。所以使用故事进程作为奖励模式更应该小心。

奖励的类型多种多样，但是关于他们的价值主要还是取决于玩家，以及游戏。例如，有些玩家更乐意追求高分，尽管对于其他玩家来说这些数字除了能够衡量游戏表现，并不具有实际意义。

当你在使用正向游戏设计时，你总是想要奖励那些按照你的要求行动的玩家。例如，在正向射击游戏中，玩家应该努力射击敌人并躲避敌人的射击，而你希望能够同时奖励完成这两种任务的玩家。大爆炸本身就是一种奖励（特别是具有特效效果），并且能够提供分数/货币，但是在射击游戏中玩家如果被射击了也会遭到惩罚（当你的船舶遭到损害后，它最终会慢慢沉没）。而在正向射击游戏中因为没有惩罚，所以即使遭到射击也只会产生一种特殊的音效或者显示船被袭击的那种视觉感，并且船只不会真正爆炸（因为这也会被当成一种惩罚）。

关于针对侥幸脱身的奖励设计，正向游戏设计师可向《疯狂出租车》和《Burnout》等游戏取经（这两者向那些成功“在夹缝中求生”的玩家提供奖励，与之相似的例子还包括《Radiant Silvergun》等射击游戏）。但这种设置可能会导致玩家刻意制造一种“险些遇害”而非真正成功躲过一劫的假象。我们可采用的一个替代性方法就是在玩家被击中时，打破一些未遂的连击组合（尽管这种方法很像是一种惩罚）。

忽视而非惩罚

在正向游戏设计中，我们要让系统忽视玩家的失败结果而不是对其进行惩罚，也就是说，失败应该造成一种中立结果而非负面结果。这虽然有违多数玩家对一般游戏的看法，但我们也不该将这种偏差视为设计障碍（例如，虽然很多玩家不把《任天狗》当成是一款游戏，但是它还是受到绝大多数玩家的极力追捧）。

惩罚的构成要素能够帮助我们更好地理解正向训练，在操作性条件作用中包含有2种不同类型的惩罚。第一种是积极惩罚，即“惩罚将引起一些不好的结果”，而这也是我们通常意义上理解的惩罚。游戏中的相关例子有：

*受伤（下一步便会促成死亡)

*暂时性不利条件（如反操纵）

*死亡（因此不得不重复之前的某些游戏内容）

*玩完了（因此不得不重复更多相同游戏内容）

*前进资源的亏损（如经验值等）

*设备或能力的永久流失

“永久性死亡”（不得不从头开始游戏）。

一般来说，积极惩罚也就是一种时间惩罚，即不论玩家在游戏中遗失了什么，在一定时间过后便能弥补回来。最严重的惩罚结果是永久性死亡（如在游戏《Fire Emblem》或《Steel Battalion》中），而最轻的结果是暂时性不利条件，但是我们需要记住的是，在这点上，惩罚不再是一个游戏理论术语，这是关于玩家的感受，所以惩罚也会根据玩家的不同而有所变化。

操作性条件作用中的另外一种惩罚是消极惩罚，即去除一些玩家想要的内容。包括暂时禁用玩家的某些能力或者破坏能够让玩家受益的分数机制。不论是积极惩罚还是消极惩罚都有可能挫败玩家的游戏斗志，而任何可能让玩家感到沮丧的内容都属于潜在的游戏惩罚。

在正向训练中并不允许融入任何积极惩罚因素，而消极惩罚也只适用于避免那些不受欢迎的行为（而不是用于鼓励任何预期的结果）。因此，在正向游戏设计中，玩家从来不会受到任何积极惩罚（不能出现上述列表中的任何一种情况），而同样的，消极惩罚也应该尽可能减少到最低程度。

Dennison的第二大定律是停止某些被忽略行为。几乎在任何游戏中都能看到这一定律，即如果某些行为不再奏效，玩家便会慢慢停止这种做法（尽管仍然存在一些深深嵌于玩家心中的行为，如上文提到的摧毁板条箱，这种理念很难从资深玩家心中抹灭掉）。

正向游戏设计应该尽可能地忽略那些不受欢迎的结果，并且尽可能保持游戏中失败的中立性。没有收获的失败仍是可被接受的，但要尽量避免导致玩家损失时间或资源的失败。

也许这种“忽略而不用惩罚”的理念主要是在寻找一种能够替代惩罚的中立结果。例如在以前的正向射击游戏中，将玩家船舶的毁灭改成遭到攻击；因为在正向射击游戏中，奖励是关于玩家能够成功避开攻击，而惩罚是指玩家遭受到攻击而未能获得奖励，也就是在这里并不需要额外的惩罚。在正向平台动作游戏中，应该避免的一种困难惩罚便是玩家错过跳跃机会所遭受的时间惩罚，但是通过“安全线”系统便能很好地解决这一问题——当玩家通过各种定位点时，如果遭遇了失败，他们便需要回到之前的某个位置重新开始游戏（这与《波斯王子：时之刃》的“倒带时间”设置类似，但是却可以在游戏中无限次使用）。

正向游戏设计中必须包含一些“天外救星”（游戏邦注：指意料外的、突然的、牵强的解围角色、手段或事件），以帮助玩家避免惩罚；如果玩家在某个关卡中抗战已久，这些额外元素将会出现帮助他们解决“燃眉之急”。例如，在正向射击游戏中，会出现一些航母帮助玩家杀死敌人并修理他们的船舶。在正向平台动作游戏中，将会出现一个伙伴帮助玩家跳跃并通过定位线。在正向打斗游戏中，伙伴将会拯救玩家，击退敌人并治愈玩家。诸如这样的方法，失败（就像是一种惩罚）将能以更为中立的结果出现。

同时我们还需要注意，一些本为奖励的设计元素可能会引起玩家的挫败感。例如之前提到的正向射击游戏中的打破未遂连击组合问题。创造一种连击组合会让玩家感到兴奋，因为一个错误就可以打破整个链条，但是游戏设置让玩家的分数因此变为0则是大多数人都不能接受的惩罚。为了避免这点，正向游戏射击师可以摆脱传统的视频游戏逻辑而相对减轻这种惩罚。例如将直接变成0分改为扣去10分，或者保持原先的未遂连击而让玩家的分数暂时保持不变。（虽然这也是一种惩罚，但是至少程度大大降低了）。

实际看来，出于游戏设置的需要，我们不能完全避免游戏中的各种惩罚，但是我们却能够尽所能地降低惩罚程度。总之，在正向游戏设计中，我们应该尽可能地奖励成功而避免惩罚失败。努力避免任何会引起玩家挫败感和厌烦感的内容，至少将破坏程度将至最低。

可变的奖励

可预测的奖励便不再是奖励——保持奖励的神秘性能够通过不断调整奖励而获得最大效能。在正向动物训练中，固定的时间表（即在每一次成功后给予奖励）只适用于首次训练，但是为了确保一个特定行为的长存性，训练师还是建议使用可变的时间表。随机元素可以用于判断奖励时机，奖励程度等，而实际奖励本身就是一种可变体。

Dennison的第三大定律是，当确立了一种特定行为时，你可以通过使用可变奖励而强化这种行为。电子游戏设计便很好地使用了这种随机奖励机制。例如在《恶魔城：月下夜想曲》中的随机财富表象征着可变的强化机制更能够吸引玩家的注意。一旦玩家知道杀死怪物能够获得财富（大多数角色扮演游戏中都会使用的机制），那么使用这种随机财富便能够让游戏更加具有吸引力。正向游戏设计能够学习这种做法，并进一步利用它。

有效使用了正向游戏射击技巧的《动物之森》中便包含了多种可变奖励。首先，每天在游戏中的商店里会出现不同商品，如此能够吸引玩家反复回到游戏中，寻找自己想要的商品，或者其它特别而有趣的商品。此外，游戏中还会一直出现一些随机事件，如溪流中珍贵的鱼，或者突然出现一些稀有的昆虫或挖掘出一种新化石等，各种特别事件都以一种自然发生的方式出现在玩家眼前（至少都是首次出现）。正是如此多可变奖励（可变事件也是一种奖励形式）才让这款游戏如此受欢迎。

训练师不断给动物提供各种奖励以及一些随机的额外奖励的方法也能够用于游戏设计中。想象在带有收集品的游戏中：玩家会为了获得奖励而不断拾起各种收集品（最小的奖励可能只是获得特效反馈，而最大的奖励可能是给予玩家一定的收益），但是如果游戏能够提供额外的随机奖励，玩家定会变得更加积极。如果玩家拾起一个货币能够因此获得双倍的收益，那么他们肯定会更加乐意去寻找并收集这种货币。

奖励的频率也是可变的，而且游戏中的“撤退”机制也能够确保玩家获得适度的奖励。正向平台游戏会在玩家每次跳跃时给予奖励（也许只是一点点的游戏内部货币奖励），当玩家完成一次较长的跳跃时，游戏将增加10%的奖励。而后来，当玩家完成一次高难度的跳跃时，游戏将再次提高5%的奖励。按照这种方法，玩家将更加积极地跳跃着，因为他们知道这么做便能够获得更多奖励，虽然他们不知道什么时候能够获得奖励以及能够获得多少奖励（这种方法与老虎机的游戏机制相类似）。这与传统的平台游戏（即玩家跳跃到某些特定场所时顺带执行收集任务）有所不同，但是正向游戏设计能够促成更多不一样的游戏设置。

许多游戏都在使用这种随机奖励方法。例如《前线任务3》在某些特定预设条件下触发了随机频率。似乎一些随机触发器会让游戏中的战斗显得平凡，但是《前线任务3》在这方面却做得很好，特别突出了这种随机触发器的优点而帮助它吸引了更多玩家的注意。

关于奖励频率需要注意的一点便是合理性。根本没有必要提供一项极其稀有，需要玩家花费很长时间才能偶遇的资源。这种设置经常出现在传统视频游戏中——即游戏中有一些财富需要玩家投入大把时间去争取，这种游戏设置对于那些愿意投入大把时间的业余玩家很有效，但是却不适用于正向游戏设计。

结语

正向游戏设计非常有效，因为其本身原则能够适用于所有哺乳动物身上，而且除了动物，电子游戏也通过不同方法合理地利用了奖励和强化机制。除此之外，一些游戏如《动物之森》和《任天狗》也成功使用了正向游戏设计，尽管并非出于本质意图，但是它们的确从中受益，甚至超越了最受欢迎第一人称射击游戏和角色扮演游戏。

对于那些针对于大众市场“休闲”玩家的游戏，以及致力于训练玩家掌握一定技能的严肃游戏，正向游戏设计是一种值得深入探索的新方法。即使是针对传统玩家市场的游戏（即“硬核游戏”），正向游戏设计也能够提供有益的辅助作用。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2009年8月19日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（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）

Positive Game Design

Animal trainers for many years now have been using what is known as positive training, a system which uses only rewards and never punishment for teaching behaviours to animals. The technique is effective, and has been used to train everything from champion showdogs to the orcas at SeaWorld. The same technique could be used as a system of game design – but what would such positive game design be like, and what would it be good for?

Positive Animal Training

Positive training, as practised by a great many dog trainers such as Pamela Dennison, Pat Miller and Gwen Bailey, is based upon the principles of operant conditioning (Skinner etc.) to develop reward schedules that reinforce desired behaviours and eliminate undesired behaviours. As I have discussed previously in my exploration of why people play games, the same reward mechanism in the brain that makes these kinds of training techniques effective lies behind the different kinds of enjoyable play – thus there is a ready-made connection between this kind of teaching method and videogame design.

It is very easy to understand the basics of positive animal training, and one of the simplest summaries of the method is Pamela Dennison’s “Three Laws of Learning”:

Rewarded behaviour gets repeated.

Ignored behaviour stops.

Once a behaviour is in place, variable rewards will strengthen the behaviour.

Positive game design would incorporate these three rules into the game design process,

It may seem strange to be suggesting using a technique intended for training animals on humans –surely humans are significantly different than their animal cousins, and surely games are very different than animal training methods? Well, yes, but the idea of games as tools for learning is actually very well established (Raph Koster etc.) and, as I have previously observed, “games as learning” has as its flipside “games as rewards”, since learning and operant conditioning are intimately related.

The Purpose of Positive Game Design

Before proceeding, it’s worth explaining that I am not proposing positive game design as a replacement for other kinds of game design – there is not, nor can there be, a single method to game design as I have discussed in the article Zen Game Design and the book 21st Century Game Design. Instead, positive game design is proposed as one particular method of approaching game design. In principle it should be good for at least three different things:

Educational games whose express goal is to teach

Mass market friendly “casual games” looking to reach an audience who do not enjoy punishment in games

Tutorials in games expected or intended to reach a wide audience.

Reward, Don’t Punish

The highest principle of positive game design (as in positive animal training) is reward not punishment. The player should thus be rewarded for their successes, but not punished for their failures. This concept may be difficult for some people to get their heads around, especially given the ubiquity of punishment in videogames, particularly time-penalty punishments, and punishments used to generate fear (usually of death and hence failure) in order to enhance the rewards of play.

Yet there is no reason that a game need punish players, and it is perfectly possible to design games that reward the player without punishment (although of course such games look very different from many of the videogames we usually see). In some respects, we can already see something akin to positive game design in games such as the hugely successful Animal Crossing (which has no punishments, and has already sold 10 million units on DS), or in advanced tamagotchi’s such as the phenomenally successful Nintendogs (which has no punishments, and has already sold 22 million units on DS). These titles may not have been designed with positive game design as a foundational principle, but they demonstrate how successful this approach can be in appealing to a wide audience not so willing to endure punishments to enhance their rewards (as with many gamer hobbyist titles).

The first of Dennison’s “Laws” is that rewarded behaviours are repeated. So, for instance, experienced videogame players always smash crates (even when they are expressly told there is nothing to find) because previous games have rewarded them for doing so by placing power ups and items (i.e. rewards) inside crates. The behaviour is very hard to break in most videogame players because they have been heavily rewarded for smashing crates and barrels in the past.

In designing games for mass market players (those who may not have the game literacy of experienced hobbyists), it is thus necessary to ensure that the things you want the player to do will be rewarded. Now a particular design challenge here is that different players enjoy different things, and thus there are no guarantees that something that is offered as a reward will be received as such. However, there are a few things that can be counted upon to be interpreted as a reward by any player (although whether they are seen as a big or a small reward will depend upon the player in question):

Currency rewards: any game with an in-game currency easily provides rewards; simply pay out some of that cash! This kind of reward is intuitively understood by all players and is likely to be a foundational reward scheme in practical positive game design, but it is important that the currency earned can be spent on something, else it becomes meaningless.

Avatar Improvement: players love to improve their abilities in games – in fact, role-playing games have their success rooted in this kind of improvement. However, when considering what appeals to a wider audience the kind of improvements that will work as rewards must be immediately appreciated. Three strong examples are increasing jump height, faster speed of movement, and improved weapon damage. Improvements that are essentially mathematical in basis (+1 Strength, 1% interest) should be avoided, since these kinds of improvements appeal to a minority of people (although they work well among gamer hobbyists).

Gifts: giving the player new things is always rewarding, even if the gift that is given out isn’t of particular interest. These are great rewards, but can also be very expensive to develop, so they must be used carefully. Gifts can be purchased using a currency system, or alternatively can constitute a structured reward scheme in their own right.

Fanfare: from an ascending scale or an uplifting chord, you can count on music to create the emotional resonance of a reward, but of course the more often you rely on the same reward music the less enjoyable it will become. However, because they are cheap to implement they are an essential tool for positive game design.

SFX: a good sound effect can also be extremely rewarding, especially if it fits the representation of the game well, or is particularly amusing. And as with fanfares, the cheap development cost makes fun SFX essential to positive game design.

Eye Candy: just as sound effects and music are universally enjoyable, explosions, lightshows, colour ripples, particle systems and anything else that is visually showy and impressive will work as a reward for almost all people.

Stamps: having a “stamp collection” that fills up as the player finds or completes things is another reliable reward (although some players will find this more rewarding than others). A reassuring ‘stamp’ sound effect and pleasing graphics all add to the appeal of stamp collections. This is a possible alternative to a currency scheme, or a useful additional reward mechanism.

Narrative progress: the vast majority of players enjoy a story, and advancing that story becomes a reward in itself. However, there is a risk in this kind of reward in that if the player is enjoying the story, failing to progress becomes a form of punishment. Care must be taken when using narrative progress as a reward.

There are many other kinds of rewards, but the value of these will vary more from player-to-player, and from game-to-game. For instance, some players are perfectly happy to chase high scores, even though these numbers have no real meaning beyond an arbitrary measure of performance.

When using positive game design, you want to reward the player for doing whatever it is you want them to be doing. So in a positive shooter, for instance, the player is supposed to be hitting enemies and avoiding being hit. You want to reward the player for both these activities. Blowing things up is usually intrinsically rewarding (especially with good SFX), and can also provide points/currency, but normally in a shooter being hit is punished (your ship takes damage and then eventually blows up). A positive shooter cannot punish, so being hit can produce a sound effect or show the ship being beaten up, but it can’t actually blow up (this could be perceived as punishing).

To reward not being hit, a positive game designer can draw upon ideas used in games such as Crazy Taxi and Burnout, which give bonus points to the player when they narrowly slip past other cars. (A parallel could also be drawn with “bullet scraping” in vert shooters such as Radiant Silvergun). However, this might train the player to produce near-misses rather than simply to avoid being hit. An alternative approach would be a combo of missed shots that is broken when the player is hit. (Although there is a risk here that a broken combo will feel like a punishment; this idea is discussed below).

Ignore Instead of Punishing

In positive game design, undesired outcomes are to be ignored and not punished, which is to say, failure should produce neutral outcomes, not negative outcomes. This runs counter to most gamers expectations as to what a game should be, but this deviation from the norm should not be considered a barrier. (After all, most gamers do not consider Nintendogs, for instance, to be a game, yet it is still enjoyed by a great many mass market players).

What constitutes a punishment is an important aspect of understanding positive training, as there are two very different kinds of punishment in operant conditioning. The first is known as positive punishment, meaning “punishment where something bad happens” and corresponds to what we normally think of as punishment. Examples in games (in rough order of the degree of punishment) include:

Damage (thus taking a step towards dying)

Temporary disadvantage (such as reversed controls)

Dying (and thus having to repeat a portion of gameplay)

Game Over (and thus having to repeat a large amount of gameplay)

Loss of a progress resource (such as experience points)

Permanent loss of equipment or abilities

“Permadeath” (i.e. having to start again from the beginning).

In general, positive punishments can be interpreted as forms of time penalty – since whatever is lost could be regained by the player in a certain amount of time. The most punishing outcome is thus all progress lost (permadeath, as in Fire Emblem or Steel Battalion), and the least is a temporarily applied disadvantage, but it’s important to remember that “punishment” in this context isn’t a game theory term, it’s about how the player feels, and thus what is a punishment will vary somewhat from player to player.

The other kind of punishment in operant conditioning is known as negative punishment, which means removing something that the individual in question wants. This could include temporarily disabling an ability, or the disruption of a scoring mechanic the player is benefiting from (such as the aforementioned breaking of a combo that gives increasing score as it advances). Both kinds of punishment – positive and negative – risk frustrating the player, and anything that may frustrate a player is a potential punishment of some kind.

In positive training, positive punishment is never permitted, and negative punishment is allowed only to prevent entirely unacceptable behaviours (never to encourage the desired outcome). Thus in positive game design, the player should never be actively punished (everything in the bullet list above can never be allowed to occur) and cases where desirable aspects of play are withdrawn (i.e. negative punishment) should be minimised wherever possible.

Dennison’s second “Law” is that ignored behaviours disappear. This can easily be seen in any game – if it doesn’t work, players will eventually stop doing it (although some deeply embedded behaviours, like crate-smashing, may be impossible to remove from an experienced gamer).

Instead of punishing an undesired outcome, positive game design should ignore anything but success wherever possible, aiming to design the game such that failure on the part of the player has as neutral an effect as possible. It’s acceptable for failure to result in no gain, but it is best to avoid failure resulting in a loss of time or resources.

Perhaps the key to making the “ignore don’t punish” concept work is to find ways to replace punishments with neutral outcomes. In the previous positive shooter example, the death of the player’s ship was replaced with it becoming beaten up (although there is a risk here of watching it get toasted being rewarding); since the positive shooter rewards the player for avoiding being hit, the penalty for being hit is not being rewarded – there is no need for an additional penalty. In a positive platformer, a difficult punishment to avoid is the time penalty for missing a jump, but this is easily fixed by a “safety line” system – as the player passes various generously positioned points, they clip on a rope that reels them back to that point if they fail (not dissimilar to the ‘rewind time’ ability in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, but with unlimited uses). In a positive fighting game, perhaps the closer the avatar gets to death the stronger it becomes – victory is assured, it’s only a question of how beaten up you get first.

Positive game design might also have to resort to deux ex machina to make the avoidance of punishment workable, bringing in an extra element that comes into play if the player struggles for too long. In a positive shooter, their mothership appears, kills the enemy and repairs the player’s ship before leaving. In a positive platformer, an ally makes the jump and then runs a line across. In a positive fighting game, an ally rescues the player, drives off the foe and heals the player. In ways like these, failures (which risk feeling like punishment) are recast as neutral outcomes to some degree.

Some care needs to be taken with design elements intended to reward which might instead frustrate. In the positive shooter example above, the issue of broken combos was raised – building up a combo is exciting because a mistake breaks the chain, but having the chain drop to zero feels very punishing to many mass market players. To avoid this, positive game designers can deviate from conventional videogame logic and simply ameliorate the penalty. Perhaps breaking a combo subtracts 10 from the counter, rather than zeroing it, or the combo could remain the same but be temporarily blocked from increasing. (These are still forms of punishment, but heavily reduced).

Pragmatically, the needs of gameplay may make it impossible to entirely eliminate punishment from all kinds of games, so reducing the extent of the penalty may have to suffice. In general, however, since success is rewarded there is no need to punish failure when conducting positive game design. Anything that could frustrate or annoy the player should be eliminated where possible, and minimised otherwise.

Variable Rewards

Predicable rewards cease to be rewarding – the secret of keeping rewards effective is to vary them to ensure maximum effect. In positive animal training, fixed schedules (rewarding after every success) are recommended when first training, but in order to ensure that a specific behaviour persists trainers recommend switching to variable schedules. Random elements can be used to determine when to reward, and how much to reward, and the actual rewards themselves can be varied.

Dennison’s third “Law” is that once a particular behaviour is established, you can strengthen the behaviour by using variable rewards. Videogames design already uses random reward schedules to great effect – the random treasure tables in games such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Diablo (and it’s cousin World of Warcraft) epitomise the compulsiveness that can come from a variable schedule of reinforcement. Once the player has learned that killing monsters gives treasure (something common to most RPG designs) it’s easy to use random treasure to make the game extremely compelling. Positive game design can learn from these successes, and also take it further.

Animal Crossing, which effectively uses positive game design techniques, is packed full of variable rewards. Firstly, every day there are different things on sale in the shop – players thus come back over and over again, looking for specific things they want, or seeking something unusual and interesting. Furthermore, apparently random events occur all the time – a rare fish is seen in the stream, a rare insect appears, or a new fossil is dug up – and specifically staged events occur in ways that appear to the player (at least at first) to be entirely random. It is this density of variable rewards (and variable events that provide rewards) that help make this game so compelling for its audience.

With animals, trainers are encouraged to vary what is given as a reward and to provide additional rewards at random – this can easily be incorporated into game design. Imagine a positive game with collectibles: the player picks them up for the rewards inherent in doing so (including the minor reward of the collection SFX, and the major reward of whatever benefit is conferred), but they can be made more rewarding by triggering additional random rewards. Imagine that sometimes when a cash pickup is collected by the player it is worth double – this variable reinforcement will make cash pickups even more desirable to players, and will increase the player’s desire to find and collect them.

The frequency of reward can be made entirely variable as well, and a system which ‘retreats’ can help to ensure that the player doesn’t burn out on too generous a reward. A positive platform game might reward the player every time they jump when they are being trained (perhaps with a tiny in-game currency reward), then later give them a modest in-game currency reward 10% of the time they complete a long jump. Later, it might give them a giant in-game currency reward 5% of the time they complete a difficult jump. In this way, the player is encouraged to keep jumping because they know that new rewards will come, but not when they will come or how big they will be. (This is the same trick that makes slot machines so compulsive to gamblers). This is very different to a typical platform game (in which pickups are almost incidentally collected as the player jumps in specific places), but positive game design if pursued should be expected to produce unusual approaches to gameplay.

Existing games have already made use these kinds of randomly triggered rewards. For example, Front Mission 3 features special abilities that trigger with random frequency under certain preset conditions. It might seem that having random effects trigger would make the combat less engaging, yet Front Mission 3 is considered to be one of the best games of its kind, and the compelling nature of these randomly triggered advantages helps contribute to that popularity.

A word of caution concerning frequency of rewards is warranted. There is no point in rewards coming so rarely that the player can no longer expect to encounter any additional reward except by persevering for ridiculous lengths of times. This happens all the time in conventional videogame design – there is always some treasure that is so legendarily rare that players strive to attain – but as effective as this might be with the gamer hobbyists, who are often willing to commit a great quantity of time to the games they enjoy, it should be largely resisted in positive game design.

Conclusion

Positive game design will certainly work because the principles upon which it is based apply to all mammals, and many other animal species besides, plus videogames are already capitalising on rewards and reinforcement schedules in many different ways. Furthermore, games such as Animal Crossing and Nintendogs arguably already use positive game design, although perhaps not by intent, and have achieved success that equals and exceeds the most popular FPS and RPG titles.

For games seeking the mass market “casual” gamer, and Serious Games looking to train an arbitrary individual in a certain skill, positive game design represents an intriguing new possibility worth exploring. And even in games seeking the conventional gamer hobbyist (“hardcore”) market, there may be merit in exploring positive game design in the design of tutorials.

I would like to extend my thanks to the people whose work influenced this piece, including John Hopson (who first convinced me that applying Skinner’s models to videogames was not insane, but in fact inevitable), Raph Koster (who more than anyone challenged me to credibly consider “games as learning”) and of course Pamela Dennison (from whom I have learned the most about positive dog training).

The opening cartoon is Dog Video Game by Mitra Farmand, which I found here as part of her fuffernutter comic blog. As ever, no copyright infringement is intended and I will take the image down if asked.（source:ihobo）