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Positive Feedback: Rewards winning. This makes the game easier as you do better. In a multiplayer game, this usually helps winning players instead of hurting losing players. In a single player game, this could involve rewards, currency, game specific items (such as a new character unlock or a nice looking weapon.) • Negative Feedback: Helps losing players. This makes the game easier as you do worse. In a multiplayer game, this usually helps losing players sometimes while hurting winning players. In a single player game, this could mean the game will get harder if you are doing well, or makes it easier if you are failing.
Why is positive feedback important? • Positive feedback helps provide excitement to the game. When you unlock a new weapon or character, you are excited to use them. • It also gives the player a reason to want to win.
What happens when I have too much positive feedback? • The game becomes too easy! • Imagine a multiplayer 1v1 game where every time you fought an enemy and won, you got a lot stronger than they did. If this game is about skill, you already have an advantage over your opponent. What would happen? • You would get bored because there would be less challenge. Your opponent would get bored or frustrated because there is nothing they can do to win now.
To combat this problem, we use negative feedback! • Negative feedback helps give the losing player a boost or hurts the winning player in some way. • This helps the losing player feel like the game is fair and keep them have a chance of winning.
What happens when I have too much negative feedback? • You could make the game be too hard for the winning player and frustrate them. You could also make the player exploit your rules to win at the end of the game if possible. • You could also make it possible for the losing player to have too easy of a comeback and easily win.
Popular examples of negative feedback • Mario Kart: In first place, you usually get items like green shells, bananas, coins, etc. In last place, you get more powerful items like Bullet Bills or blue shells. • Mario Party: By default, the price for something that would cost the player in first place is a quarter the cost for the player in fourth. Ex: an item costs 20 coins for 1st place, 15 for 2nd place, 10 for 3rd, and 5 for 4th place.
What is a real life example of too much positive feedback? • The most simple example would be a short foot race. If someone is faster than me, there is no way for me to reasonably catch up to them. I wouldn’t want to race them because I know I would lose.
Where can I find a happy middle ground? • It depends on what kind of game you want to make. Some players want games where they can turn off their brains and just do things. Others may want a challenge and want more negative feedback for when they win. • If you want something general however, a good rule of thumb would make it possible for someone to win after losing, without making it too easy.
Which of these graphs is most ideal?Why are the others not as ideal?
Xcom 2 • XCOM 2, a AAA game, has you command soldiers in a war against aliens. Soldiers you use on missions gain experience, the ones left behind do not do anything. Your enemies increase in power every time your soldiers level up. Your soldiers can die permanently. • Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
Xcom 2 • This is a very notorious system of an unbalanced positive feedback loop. The soldiers that become very powerful can die and when they do they die permanently. If you lose all your powerful soldiers, you are now left with very weak soldiers, but very powerful enemies. How would you fix this issue?
Feedback demo • You should try playing the feedback demo I made. It is designed to be a two player game. There is no score limit. It is up to you who should be the one to choose whether to increase positive or negative feedback. • Try to find the most balanced game you can make. For reference, both players start out moving up at 5 pixels per key down, and can push their opponent down by 2 pixels per key down. When you increase positive feedback, it increases the moving up speed of the winner by 3. When you increase negative feedback, it increases the moving back power of the loser by 2. • If you would change anything, what would it be?
