Rewards that Retain: Understanding how rewards can either motivate or deflate sustained engagement with online games

Following a overwhelmingly positive reception on player rewards at last years GDC (talk rating of 4.8 out of 5), Scott Rigby of Immersyve will be presenting a talk at the 2010 LOGIN conference on optimizing game reward mechanisms (”Rewards that Retain: Understanding how rewards can either motivate of deflate sustained engagement with online games”). Here’s the scoop on the talk…

Rewards and player motivation to stay engaged with an online game are fundamentally linked, but often not well understood. Motivational data shows that rewards do not always have the intended effect of getting players to “stick.” In fact, if rewards are not structured well, they can actually encourage churn rather than retention. The LOGIN talk will outline and illustrate through game examples multiple dimensions of reward mechanisms - including (1) the motivational qualities of rewards that encourage deeper engagement (e.g. intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation) (2) how reward contingencies (e.g. performance-contingent, completion-contingent) influence sustained motivation, and (3) how the context of reward delivery (e.g. expected vs. unexpected rewards) differentially impact the value of that reward and its influence on keeping the player engaged over the long term. In each case, examples from online games will illustrate concepts alongside data from longitudinal studies of online game players.