Psychological Needs of the Player
Article
As an eldest brother with many siblings, I have spent a lot of time pondering how best to guide my brothers and sisters into careers and hobbies that will make them feel fulfilled. One major lesson that I picked up in life and try to pass onto them is that what determines your likes and dislikes is often shallow and reactionary. Much of the garnered value that sticks with you for life comes from places that you never would have expected to profit due to your surface level dislike for particular styles.
Too many times have I met people that claim “I only enjoy watching crime dramas and romcoms… oh but Breaking Bad is an exception!” …..what!? Or similarly “I can’t stand anime… oh but Death Note is one of my favourite shows!” …..sorry!?
The truth is, things which we enjoy the most, appreciate the most, and ultimately gain the most from are often NOT what we claim to like the most. There is a theory called ‘self-determination theory’ that, as summarised by Wikipedia: “is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people’s innate growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It pertains to the motivation behind people’s choices in the absence of external influences and distractions.”
In application to the workplace, it states that what determines your sense of fulfilment at work is:
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Autonomy: the right or condition of self-government.
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Competence: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
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Relatability: able to be related to (by colleagues)
Notice how the amount in which you like the task at hand is not a part of this list. This is because actually, what you like to do the most is based more on autonomy, competence, and relatability than it is on surface level preferences.
Application In Gaming
I believe self-determination theory to be a powerful tool for game designers, because it suggests that how autonomous you make your players feel, how competent you make them feel, and how well they relate to the characters (such as through cut-scenes and in-game barks), is more important to the internal psychological needs of the player than appealing to their likes and preferences.
Thinking of this in reverse can help to put it into perspective. Think of a certain time period or culture that you don’t find particularly immersive when applied to video games. I tend to be picky about video games in medieval settings, so I will use that. Now take your setting of choice, and apply it to some titles that you are a fan of… I’m picturing a medieval Grand Theft Auto… a medieval Bioshock… a medieval Final Fantasy… they’re not too bad! If I saw them in a shop, I would likely think “blegh” and not pick them up, but considering the game mechanics, narrative, and design outside of the art and world-building stay the same, I think I’d still very much have enjoyed playing them!
Now take the same games that you applied your setting to, but picture them just the way they usually are… now remove any sense of freedom of choice or self-government that those games possess… now remove the sense that you can and ever will be able to play it proficiently… and now, imagine that the characters are all unrelatable to you… all of a sudden, although you would still have purchased the game at the store, it doesn’t provide an experience you can appreciate or would stick with for very long!
Creating Autonomy, Competence, and Relatability
This is a difficult thing to narrow down or summarise, because each of these three qualities are worthy of an entire book series to themselves. But there are some general areas which can be designed to quickly nurture these qualities within a game.
Autonomy in campaign-mode games is created most effectively with choice-driven plots. However, the risk to this is that if the player feels their decisions are not affecting the story in the way they’d like to, or that the choices they want to make aren’t given as options, it can have the opposite effect. It is therefore important that a game’s writers are able to predict the emotions and desires of their players and cater to them with cleverly written narratives and scripts.
Competence is a feeling that one might expect is built in the player by the game’s mechanics and level design. However, a certain amount can certainly fall on the the game’s writing also. For instance, in a choice-driven plot, whilst the macro decisions may affect the overall direction of the story, the game can be littered with micro decisions that do lead to realistic consequences that can make the player admit their own mistakes. And by conditioning the player to becoming more capable of spotting these potential traps and mishaps, the game can then award the player greater and greater results from their making smarter / more thought-out choices as they progress.
Relatability in single-player games comes from the characters. This includes their personalities, developments, decisions, reactions, internal thoughts, monologues, barks, and so much more. Creating powerful and effective characters that feel relatable to the player is a hefty task, and one that ought to be researched both inside and outside of gaming. Novels, films, television shows, plays, manga, anime, poetry, video games, and even songs can provide a vast array of methods and approaches for creating relatable characters. The more one can absorb as a sponge, the more that can then be squeezed out from the brain onto paper, and ultimately into a game engine.
Conclusion
A great approach to creating an emotionally fulfilling game is to apply self-determination theory by aiming to make the players feel autonomous, competent, and related to. Shortcomings in these areas can disappoint players far more than shortcomings in style and aesthetics. I therefore find that self-determination theory is an appropriate and valuable theory to apply to the game designing process.