Game Studios Are Turning Play into Work
In my opinion one of the worst things to happen to online modern gaming is the tendency towards several different kinds of &quot;rewards&quot; for the player. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m unique in this view but I also know a ton of gamers disagree with me.<p>A recent example is Battlefield 2042. The game is massively flawed, but one of the silver linings is the Portal mode, which enables highly customizable games on retro maps. It&#x27;s fun - a lot more fun than the base game. But almost no one plays it because DICE (the developer) has disabled XP rewards for the mode, meaning people can&#x27;t &quot;earn&quot; points which enable them to unlock yet more rewards for the main game.<p>If you read the forums or subreddit you&#x27;ll see people claim to enjoy Portal mode, but also say things like &quot;what&#x27;s the point in playing Portal if you can&#x27;t earn XP&quot;. It&#x27;s an attitude I don&#x27;t understand at all - the point in playing Portal is that it&#x27;s a lot of fun! But most of the community seems to disagree with me and as a result Portal mode is empty.<p>You can criticize game developers all you want for turning games into work (or skinner boxes) but from what I can tell there&#x27;s a huge amount of demand for this type of gaming and very much less demand for high-quality, fun experiences without an endless stream of &quot;rewards&quot;.