Roguelikes are Not my Cup of Tea

A few weeks ago I started playing Invisible Inc., only to find it was one of the best games I had played in the past year. As soon as I installed it I sank tons of hours in the first couple of days, many more than I’d like to admit. After two days of shameless antisocial isolation, I managed to reach the end of the game and watch that final cutscene resolve. After many tries, I managed to tailor a pair of agents and give Incognita a set of skills that worked efficiently with each other, but also individually. After more than twelve hours of playing, I knew enough from the game’s system to beat a campaign that lasts less than two and a half hours if you do it right off the bat. Then, the game encouraged me to try any of the other higher difficulties available , offering me a test to my skills and many hours more of fun to enjoy. So I took the challenge: I ramped up the difficulty and chose my agents.

I then started feeling something that I had also strangely felt when playing FTL, or Don’t Starve: boredom; even though I loved these games. I hesitated about the reason why I was submerging in the litany of completing the game again. I knew how the plot would develop and end, and I never had the feeling that there were parts of the game I was missing, even though I still had a couple of agents to unlock. Did I really care about the challenge and how good I was at this game? Did I really want to get new agents I was not going to use? Did I really want more of the same? It turns out I didn’t, and with it I moved onto the next game to review. However, it bugged me for quite a while. I was able to appreciate the sheer quality in any of these games; why was I bored then?

Now what?

It all came down to the motivation to keep playing. The term ‘gamification’ has popped up quite often in conversations about compulsion and motivation, whether it’s in Gamasutra blogs or corporations’ coaching sessions. In the case of games, it is based around the idea that a player will need additional factors to remain engaged, aside from the basic mechanics. Most of all of these factors are different forms of reward, whether they’re achievements, new characters, a score count or new bits of the narrative. As a general rule, they are widely separated in intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

Intrinsic motivators are those that root in yourself and your approach, like a desire to beat a score. Sometimes, these motivators are not necessarily gamified. For example, the simple enjoyment of a game’s mechanics may be enough of a motivator to have you wasting your life in front of the screen. The extrinsic ones are those that the developers place ahead of you, with the promise that you’ll get there someday. Again, not all of these are artificially implemented aiming at gamification. Sometimes seeing the ending of a game may be motivating enough. In some other cases, like Call of Duty, for example, many spend uncountable hours trying to reach the highest prestige, or unlocking certain weapons or camos. This level progression has generally been enabled so the player can aspire to higher badges, more powerful weapons or tackier camos. Achievements and trophies that don’t affect the game in any way, but that are markers of your ability and dedication, are a clear representation of artificial motivators.

Among all these, only the extrinsic ones can be considered gamifying factors. Nevertheless, the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy is rather artificial, as in many of these situations there are both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. The desire to obtain a certain badge may be intrinsic, but the fact that the trophy is there to achieve, offering you a chance to show off your skills in your PSN profile or even test them for yourself, makes it an extrinsic factor. What’s more, some people may not care about having trophies at all! Not every reward or motivator works the same way for everybody.

Here's the distinctive spaceship number 3. I think.

Much of the motivation in each person to play a game comes from how that person approaches games. For example, some may find the character progression a chore, only being interested in picking up as many collectibles as possible. This person would not be interested in levelling up their Pikachu to level 100, but they might find cathing ’em all the epitome of entertainment. This doesn’t mean that they won’t care about beating the Elite Four; it means that this is not their main motivator in the game. This is where player types come into action. Different players may find different motivators in different games. Although not enclosed categories, and in many occasions dependent upon the game you’re playing, player type usually determine what kind of play and/or game a person will like.

How is all this linked to Invisible Inc.? Well, Invisible Inc. is a roguelike game. Mastering the game, getting to know its intricacies and key aspects, is certainly appealing for me. In roguelikes, you do this through repetition and trial and error. You screw up, you restart the game, and you don’t screw up again. The reason why this is devised this way is because during your character’s personalization phase, the gear and the way you level up abilities matter in the results of each level. Indeed, there is a great deal of skill needed when in-mission, but some missions will become unplayable if you’ve chosen the wrong path. Anyway, what I’m saying is that these games focus on the mastery of engaging and challenging mechanics, as well as testing yourself.

Now, from all extrinsic motivators that you can come up with, the ones keeping you playing for months are those that are purely intrinsic for you. If we adventure into the domain of psychology a bit deeper, we find that individuals find no interest over certain things, and trying to catch their attention with these is useless. Steam achievements? Not for me, thanks. Some other things, however, extrinsic motivators, will be effective only for a certain period of time. I’m more than willing to spend some time unlocking new characters, but they better be different and worth it. Lastly, there are those motivators that are truly intrinsic, those that really pique your interest consistently and that keep you engaged for hours. This, for me, is the narrative content. Sadly, once a story reveals itself as shallow and worth only one run-through (ahem, Invisible Inc.), there’s not much to do other than moving on to the next game.

I never played Skyrim as a personal quest to level up my character, like some of my friends. “Check out my level 60 argonian, man!”. Meh, don’t care. I never looked at how many Xbox achievements I had. I didn’t mind being in the first prestige of Call of Duty, or having less badges to show, as long as I had enough weapons to keep playing. I’m not a social gamer, so my rewards must be enjoyable on my own, savoured in the solitude of my dark gaming room. And this comes as quite the revelation for me, as I know that I can appreciate roguelikes, but I don’t have to sink as many hours as the internet world claims to have done. Such a relief! The rewards each person gets and appreciates from each game are different for each person. You don’t have to care for my story and characters, and I for your achievements.

This is me after dying and losing my 5 hour progress in any roguelike.

Gamification seems like quite an artificial term, manipulating players into spending tons of money and hours in front of the screen. However, it is not. Gamification can be simply summed up by asking yourself “why do I play this game?”, or “why don’t I play this game?”. It helps us understand what kind of gamer we are, and this can potentially be translated into understanding what kind of person we are. What keeps us motivated playing games can be used for our own advantage; we must know what games to seek or where our weaknesses as a part of the audience are. They give us a bit of insight regarding our own subjectivity, which is worth exploring by ourselves. And I do love roguelikes, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that, because of their nature, they don’t compel me into spending a gazillion hours in them, but only a few. And you know what? I don’t care what Yahtzee says, FTL bored me after I unlocked the third ship.

Forcing gamification? Well, that’s a different story.