[munificent]

"To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game."

A while back when I was working on a roguelike (i.e. dungeon crawl RPG) I stumbled onto the same realization: assured incremental improvement + random chance for something awesome = addictive gameplay.

This is how almost every RPG works at its core: every battle ends with a little guaranteed experience and gold plus a small random chance of an awesome loot drop.

[hugh3]

Y'know, I think most roguelikes are a bit more respectable than the pure super-optimized Skinner boxes that Zynga and Blizzard produce.

Why? Because you die. A lot. And when you die, you need to start all over again. And you make progress further and further into the dungeon on successive games, by learning from your mistakes and honing your strategy. And if you don't learn, you don't progress.

Contrast to WoW, where (as I understand it without having ever played it) death is merely a mild inconvenience, and you forever level up and up and up just by grinding away at it -- getting to the highest level is largely just a matter of being patient.

[davidtyleryork]

Well look at both Zynga and Blizzard games. They are super accessible and casual friendly. Dying is an inconvenience in Blizzard games, as you said, or isn't even possible in Zynga's games (even the competitive ones like Empires & Allies)

[hugh3]

Sorry, I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me anywhere?

[davidtyleryork]

No, I didnt :)

[davidtyleryork]

Nice comment, this is almost exactly how World of Warcraft works as well. There's always some awesomely epic item that rarely drops from even the easiest of raid bosses

[Androsynth]

In MMORPG's the rewards are a big motivating factor for playing, but they're not the only factor.

WoW still has very well designed game mechanics that are fun on their own. Learning (ie advancing up the learning curve) and decision making play a big role in having fun in RPG's. These are also true game mechanics (meaning they're fun without reward mechanisms).

On one end of the spectrum would be a game like Team Fortress 2, which is fun because of it's mechanics; on the other end of the spectrum is a Zynga game that is fun for the reward mechanisms. WoW, and other RPG's would be somewhere in the middle.

[sbov]

There's even a range within RPGs itself. E.g. I would say that Diablo is about at the same spot in that scale as Zynga games are.

[Natsu]

Yeah, that wand of wishing that drops off of some random orc is always fun.

Though things get a little bit easy once you get your two blessed scrolls of charging, blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card, blessed Orb of Fate, blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail, and whatever else you can wish up from the remaining charges.