Contextual Studies: Reward and Punishment

While researching things to talk about for my contextual studies presentation, I often found myself referring to rewards and punishment, and how a balance between these two things must exist to create a coherent world, so I have decided to focus on this topic. The balance between these two is important because a game that rewards the player too much can make it too easy and thus boring. This works in the other direction, a game that punishes the players actions too much can make the game hard and seem unfair especially if there is no apparent reasoning for this.

Physical In Game Rewards: Money, Items (better weapons), points etc.
Player Satisfaction:

I have divided these types of rewards and punishments into different groups

In game rewards and punishments:
Characters Moral: Good characters get rewarded, Bad characters should show some sort of punishment, if not it is not just or coherent.
In game laws/Rules: Law enforcers etc.

Player rewards and punishments:
Game Difficulty: Player choices that can effect how easy or hard the game play is: these are often combined with game moral choices.
Player Satisfaction: Things that do not affect the game play, but rewards the player for completing a task (e.g. FFX-2 bonus ending for completing 100%)

Examples of reward and punishment in games and why these create a coherent world:

GTA series: I have looked into the Grand Theft Auto series in a previous blog. Ultimately, the police are your enemy in this game, yet there are still rules set in place so you understand why they come after you.
 And example of this would be, while roaming the city, if you're character commits a crime, only then will the police come after you. The more severe the crimes, the more police and more force. This type of punishment creates a coherent world because we know the setting is of a real city and therefore expect these reactions to the breaking of such laws. Without this, the player would not feel fully immersed into the gaming experience. The main point of the game is you're playing as a criminal, therefore the player expects a body of law enforcement to react to their actions. Part of the fun in these games is to do something bad and the thrill of getting caught or trying to at least out run this as long as possible. If you did not get punished in someway for this, that fear would go and so the excitement would be lost.

Bioshock: You have the choice to Harvest or save a Little Sister
Fable:
Final Fantasy X-2:
Portal 2: Some games reward the player for being fully immersed into the game. An example of this can be explained through a personal experience of mine while playing the game Portal 2. In Portal, you play as a young woman named Chell, seemingly trapped in a laboratory forced to undergo puzzles described as tests. Your reasons as to why you are in this laboratory is kept a mystery throughout the game. In a section of the game, I was informed that the scene in front of me was the result of a "Bring your daughter to work day" which intrigued me and so I began looking more closely at each project. They all presented the idea of being created by young children, and the last one lead to the discovery of a project made "by chell", the same name as the main character.

Reward and Punishment is necessity for games that require the player to make choices:
Look at Fable 3 and Heavy Rain.