Ever wondered what actually makes the gunplay, fighting and questing sections of a game actually fun? Many games rely (when you get right down to it) on the player performing a series of repetitive actions over and over again to constitute the gameplay – with MMO titles being particularly bad offenders. These games are often built around a “gameplay loop” which is what I want to talk about today.

Defining a Gameplay Loop: A sequence of events or objectives in a game that is reused throughout the title. Almost every MMO uses “go to location > kill a bunch of weak bad guys > kill a strong bad guy > open reward crate > leave location” as one of the loops. You can also view much shorter term actions as being loops – casting one ability to “prime” a target then a second to “detonate” it in Mass Effect 3, for example. In this way, multiple gameplay loops can be nested inside each other, to build the mechanics of a game.

Good Loops: A good gameplay loop doesn’t drag itself out too long. Human beings have a limited attention span, and if they get bored before the loop completes, there will be not gratification, and thus no incentive to keep playing.

Attention Span: Human attention span increases with age, but it’s generally thought to be around 20 minutes for an adult – though if the task at hand isn’t intrinsically motivating (i.e. it’s not fun) attention can drop off quite quickly.

Memory: The shorter gameplay loops will likely be stored in the short term memory, and thus will only be retained for around 30 seconds. This will eventually be transferred to the long term memory via constant repetition, which in turn can explain why you may suddenly find combat in a game boring when it was fine before.

Gratification: Humans are hardwired to want rewards – getting things after performing an action makes us more likely to perform that action in future (you can read about the mechanics of this if you do a search for Operant Conditioning – it’s where we get the Skinner Box from) and we rapidly lose interest in an activity if no rewards show up. The reward is a key part of the gameplay loop, whether it’s an actual reward, progress in a bigger loop, or even just a neat animation – to use Mass Effect again, those detonations made a large boom, sent opponents flying and looked very cool.

Summary: Games consist of layers of looping actions, all of which must retain player attention (usually via some kind of gratification, whether a reward or animation, even a high damage hit) if a game is to remain engaging.