Powerful Players as Incentive

One of the things I mentioned in my previous post is the way that powerful players -- those with high scores, cool gear, and achievements -- serve as role-models to new players.

It is often not, strictly, the players themselves. It's not like they spent their lives getting good at a sport, or a musical instrument. We're talking gamers that spent too much time in a raid dungeon or playing their XBox and so did something that nearly anyone else could do, given enough time. "Role models" isn't the right word; I guess I'm hunting for a better one.

When I was playing WoW, I took a break after about a year of playing, then came back a couple months later. I remember talking to a new level-60 priest and he said I was regarded as one of the best priests on the server. I was definitely one of the best-geared, having played on that server since opening day, but best? How does he know?

I've felt the same way myself, about other accomplished players. And friends. I see someone with high scores, cool gear, etc, and I want to match them. Their accomplishment is a challenge to me, to do better myself, to match (or surpass) their score.

Knowing something is possible is a big part of the incentive to me; it's knowing that I could be even better. It's like, I think I do well and then see a bigger score, and say, "hey, I'm a good player, too, I should have a score that high." I want to have the high score but I'm not as concerned with letting people in my real life that I'm the one with that score; for me the draw is testing myself against a known measurement.

There's a lot of different incentives, really. One of the other incentives for me is closure, which drives collecting. It is an encouragement to get a full set of Tier X equipment in WoW, or to collect all the Pokemon, or have a full set of Magic: The Gathering rare cards from a certain set, etc. Other goals include wanting to be on top; to measure themselves; to crush other players; accolades; or keeping up with siblings or friends. I mentioned jealousy and greed yesterday.

These are all drives that come from seeing other players that have already achieved these goals; I'm not talking about the Achiever/Explorer/Socializer/Killer spectrum here. This isn't really just an achiever thing either -- at least, I don't consider it to be. My point isn't that players want to achieve these things, it's that they see other people that have achieved them and are motivated by that to go do it themselves.

The Lesson here is: make your achievements visible. Give players a chance to show off their
accomplishments. Make sure new players are exposed to the wide variety of power-ups in your game.

And the ways of going about that are plenty: leader boards, flashy gear, XBox Live-style achievements, and providing some way for high-powered and low-powered players to mix.