Penalties

The one-sentence "definition" that should be in italics.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Examples

Left 4 Dead series,

Monopoly

Chess

Pac-Man Asteroids

Dungeons & Dragons

Super Mario series

Space Alert,

Pandemic

Using the pattern

Typical reasons for receiving Penalties include taking Damage, triggering Traps, or suffering from Death Consequences. More uncommon but still possible reasons include performing specific Actions Have Diegetically Social Consequences of a negative kind.

General categories of Penalties include Setback Penalties, Energy Penalties, Life Penalties, and Game Termination Penalties. Besides these, there are many, more specific, Penalties that can be used as well. Downtime, Helplessness, and forced No-Ops, remove Player Agency from players. Turnovers also do so by giving the turn in a Turn-Based Game to some other player. Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, and Movement Limitations can make further challenges more difficult or impossible to complete but without removing all Player Agency. Lowering Resource Caps can serve the same purpose.

Can Be Instantiated By

Area Control, Critical Failures, Critical Hits, Critical Misses, Eliminate, Enemies, Factions, New Abilities,

Committed Goals together with Quests

Game Time Manipulation together with Single-Player Games

Other common ways of creating Penalties is to negatively modify players' Resources or Scores.

Can Be Modulated By

Arithmetic Progression, Extra-Game Consequences, Geometric Progression, Individual Penalties, Mutual Goals, Parallel Lives, Predictable Consequences, Privileged Abilities, Shared Penalties, Shared Resources, Randomness, Rewards

Characters together with Emotional Engrossment

Cutscenes in Single-Player Games

Consequences

The possibility of receiving Penalties in games create Tension in them.

Experiencing them may break any Exaggerated Perception of Influence that players may have had, and can easily break Thematic Consistency if not following the diegesis or narration (e.g. killing a player's character but then letting them restart at earlier positions of a Level).

Can Instantiate

Destructible Objects, Ephemeral Events, Safe Havens, Spectators,

with Anonymous Actions and Unmediated Social Interaction

Roleplaying

with Ephemeral Goals

Committed Goals

with Factions

Outcast

with Movement and either Avatars, Characters, or Units

Evade

Can Modulate

Attention Demanding Gameplay, Ephemeral Goals, Player Killing, Quick Time Events, Rewards

Potentially Conflicting With

Save-Load Cycles in Single-Player Games

Relations

Can Instantiate

Destructible Objects, Ephemeral Events, Safe Havens, Spectators, Tension

with Anonymous Actions and Unmediated Social Interaction

Roleplaying

with Ephemeral Goals

Committed Goals

with Factions

Outcast

with Movement and either Avatars, Characters, or Units

Evade

Can Modulate

Attention Demanding Gameplay, Ephemeral Goals, Player Killing, Quick Time Events, Scores, Resources, Rewards

Can Be Instantiated By

Ability Losses, Actions Have Diegetically Social Consequences, Area Control, Critical Failures, Critical Hits, Critical Misses, Damage, Death Consequences, Decreased Abilities, Downtime, Eliminate, Enemies, Energy Penalties, Factions, Game Termination Penalties, Helplessness, Movement Limitations, New Abilities, No-Ops, Life Penalties, Resource Caps, Setback Penalties, Traps, Turnovers

Committed Goals together with Quests

Game Time Manipulation together with Single-Player Games

Can Be Modulated By

Arithmetic Progression, Extra-Game Consequences, Geometric Progression, Individual Penalties, Mutual Goals, Parallel Lives, Predictable Consequences, Privileged Abilities, Shared Penalties, Shared Resources, Randomness, Rewards

Characters together with Emotional Engrossment

Cutscenes in Single-Player Games

Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

Exaggerated Perception of Influence, Thematic Consistency

Save-Load Cycles in Single-Player Games

History

An updated version of the pattern Penalties that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.

Acknowledgements

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