Goals, Challenges and Rewards

Goals within a game is usually the objective that the player have to complete in order progress along the game. There can be multiple goals that the player has to achieve to go on to next level, which are usually associated as mini objectives that the player to do such as collect x amount of items. Optional objectives are similar to side missions, where it’s not necessary to complete in order to complete the overall game but it’s beneficial as they allow the player to gain access to more items, shortcuts, currency etc. Games that usually have this type of objectives are adventure games. Uncharted is a prime example of different types of objectives to complete as you may be asked to find a specific artefact to get a reward.

Challenges are similar to mini objectives as they are a pathway to lead to a Main objective. The length of challenge may vary within games, for instance a short term challenge can be a “kill X”, where x can be an enemy, a medium challenge may be, is “collect X amount of items”, where it may take a few minutes to collect the items that might be scattered around the game world, and a long challenge could be get 100% on all challenges. A game that includes all different types of challenges is Assassins Creed, as they feature a kill mission, collect a certain amount of “packages” and 100% on all Sync(s).

Rewards are usually collected after a certain of challenge or mission has been completed successfully. The reward can vary from currency to increasing a certain attribute. This is common within games as it helps the player improve and carry on further in the game. It also gives the player an incentive for them to play more and complete the game. Game developers have realised that not having this feature will make the game boring and repetitive as players may think that all they are doing is just doing missions without any purpose.