Motivation Vs Demotivation

In videogames, sometimes a player gets a choice in Style vs Power, but sometimes, the consequences were so much worse than it sounds, that the player is demotivated.

For example in Bioshock, the ice plasmid allows you to freeze the enemy, however, smashing the enemy, while killing them, loses you the loot. Also, the rewards for saving the little sisters were so far spread across the net and by word of mouth that those that were less concerned about getting a greater reward bothered to harvest them.
How do we make the consequences fair?

1.Make it useful still
Bioshock already has one plasmid to immobilise the enemy, so why dont I just use that? The thing is the Ice plasmid is obsolete in comparison to the Shock Plasmid.

2.Think, then Balence
The designer for Bioshock could have thought with more care about the consequences of saving the Little Sisters as the player is greatly rewarded in such a short time. If the rewards throughout the game were both as useful, then we would make up our own minds instead of going down one path as if we had no choice.

I really know of little other applications but for when you are doing character customisations.

Game Design: Getting the player to keep playing: Adding replay value

How to add replay to a game:

-More content
This can be done two ways:
1.Large amounts of content, which a player must go through twice or more if they want to see it all. This is done in Need for Speed Carbon, the player needs to continue playing or start again if they wish to see all cars, or to customise a large amount of time. This also to an extent is adding such a large amount of content that the player starts fantasising over what he could make, basicly giving the player the illusion that your game is is a Mary Poppins bag of content.
2.Content Exclusive to second+ run through, which is done in Fatal Frame 3. Basicly, the player needs to go through and see more. 'Nuf said.

-Achievements
By giving the player goals that extend beyond the first run through, we all see it alot, so you understand :)

-Procedural Content
The content is generated as you go along. So the landscape may be different, new looking enemies or new looking guns.

-Experimental Nature
Spore does this, Falling Sand does this and so do many games. What I mean is the player must keep playing, see what he can make and what he can see. This goes nicely with the other points I have made.

Ill try to put something cool up tommorrow :)

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