Whether a gamer is looking to relax and just play or is looking for some sort of masochistic challenge, it is universal that they desire some sort of feedback that they have succeded in their task. At the most basic level, this can simply be the passing from one level/stage/world to the next. Or perhaps an incrementing score count.

These two concepts have gone hand in hand since the beginning of video games. When expressing your arcade achievements to a friend, you’d tell him you got to Wave 26 while defending the galaxy or had earned 306,225 points. Each of those means different things, though. When talking about levels (or stages, worlds), those are relatively large segmentations of progress. What constitutes a level? How long does it last? Did you die at the beginning or at the boss battle at the end? Regardless of your individual sub-progress within that level, you’ve at least reached a very definite milestone with very definite context relative to the overall length of the total game.

Let’s take Guitar Hero as a very modern example with several layers of goals.  You can aim to:

• Beat the song
• Earn X number of stars
• Hit 100% of the notes
• Earn a crazy high score

Regardless of your level of dedication or “hardcoreness,” there’s an achievable goal for you.  You can stop and be satisfied with the goal you’ve just achieved or aim for something loftier and more abstract.  Note that the more specifically defined goals are at the most basic level, and they’re very broad in their definition of what it requires to achieve it.  This gives the more casual player something to aim for.  This kind of player has no concept of what 2,000 points means, let alone 200,000.  They can beat a song by the skin of their teeth with a 4-digit score or with a 6-digit score; winning is winning.  But as a player evolves, he looks for how he can do “one better.”  Aim for that fifth star next time, but aside from passing an arbitrary checkpoint, the actual score still doesn’t matter.  Aim for 100% notes; the score still doesn’t matter, either, so you don’t even have to worry about Star Power.  But the ultimate level is where each individual increment of the score meter matters, and you want to milk it for all it can offer by perfectly timing Star Power deployment.

Score is a moving target.  One day you’ll wake up and find that 5 million points isn’t all that great, especially when compared against the rest of the world.  Modern day leaderboards are like the high score screen of arcades of yore.  We didn’t really see much of them until consoles got back online, bringing with them the resurgence of heated competition.  That score is a moving target means the game is never over for the most dedicated; each competitor continues to raise the bar for the others.   A self-populating list for mere bragging rights is a cheaply designed goal/reward for players, but it doesn’t mean much and can even be intimidating for those far from the top.  Sure, a player may add another 100,000 points to their old best (if they even bothered to remember their old score), but moving up in ranking from 538,923 to 537,201 is almost worthless in the grander scale.

To offer a wide range of stacked goals allows games to cater to both the casual “just have fun” game player and the fanatic “gotta get my initials on the board” player.

I’m not saying that’s the only way to go about things, but it’s just a warning that not allowing for “less than perfect” execution can alienate a player.  Make sure the player knows that they’ve reached the milestone with some sort of positive feedback, like a text/icon pop-up indicating the end of a section, a new item, or an Achievement/Trophy unlock.  Heck, even Ninja Gaiden litters the world with life-rejuvenating save points.  That reward of a life refill is enough of a pat on the back of the player to say, “good job for making it this far.”