The Core

Gaming is about reward. And it's a really basic reward loop at that. The rules of conditioning seem to indicate it shouldn't be this easy to get hooked on a game. I mean, yes, the random-reward, random-interval has the best return on investment. But how did I generalize the concept of reward to 'game score'.

Actually, I'm half lieing to myself there. The reward is that every time I do something worth a point, my name scrolls up the status area.

JeanLapointe(m1a-2)AnonymousOtherPlayer

usually accompanied by

You killed AnonymousOtherPlayer

And that's a point.

That and ducking what should be a "killed situation".