For years, I’ve noticed the ways people have described how certain games feel like slogs or how some others are snappy and fast-paced, and whenever I would inquire about any of these ideas, it would more often be in reference to the way a game may handle progression and the rate of acquiring new equipment, gear, and abilities in order to keep the game fresh. Surely a minor aspect like that shouldn’t be an issue if the game is highly polished with really good graphics and excellent gameplay? Well, if you’ve been following me long enough and have at any point checked out any of my reviews for games which I leave on Twitter or Steam, you’ll know that I am the bearer of the curse of caring far too much about very tiny mechanics and aspects of game design philosophy, where these minuscule parts could easily make or break games for me.
Before we begin, I would like to give a shout-out to my mutual Rose on Twitter, as her tweets concerning skill trees were what helped me have the courage to coalesce my various thoughts from over the years into something more concrete that I could share with you right now.
What is progression in video games?
Before we get started, I need to bore you all with some information you likely already know, but please for the sake of this article, it is necessary in order for the both of us to be on the same wavelength. For starters, why do we need a form of progression in video games? Why can’t you have all of your abilities, upgrade, etc. unlocked from the very beginning? Well, for a lot of reasons actually. If you’ve played a lot of games, you may have noticed that video games are inherently repetitive in nature. They have to outline a subset of rules and mechanics which need to be fulfilled and carried from the start to the end. For example, you can’t have a game that is a first person shooter suddenly turn into a fighting game in the second act only for it to turn into a sports action game, and before you suggest the idea of minigames, I mean it in the sense that the game completely abandons the genre it started out with and the core of the game’s mechanical philosophy fundamentally changes. So once you get to the fighting game third of the game in our example, the first-person third is completely abandoned and never returned to, as well as the game obviously playing completely differently with no commonality between both parts’ cores. It is also very risky to pull something like this off as your audience who comes in for the first part of the game but is turned off by the rest of it and ends up disliking it as it clashes with their expectations as well as their interests, not to mention that sensory overload with how the player could feel overwhelmed of having to learn then unlearn the rules of the games in favor of new rules.
So now that we’ve established and accepted the repetitiveness of video games, developers have also acknowledged this and over the years have come up with ways to offset it with drip-feeding content that would hold the attention of the player over long periods of time, and that is where game progression comes in. A lot of this progression can be included in the form of new mechanics added to the game that build on established ones, or new abilities the player can unlock which allows them to interact with the game in more interesting ways, be they through new equipment, weapons, consumable items or innate moves the player can learn. Often times, the game will also progress the difficulty of the obstacles by introducing more difficult enemies, puzzles or dialogue choices, thus upping the challenge of the game. There is also an element of tutorialization in the way the game is designed, as the game will start out slow and steady in order to slowly teach the player how to grasp the mechanics, even without expressly telling the player as the tutorial segments last much farther past the “tutorial” of the game, and later challenges are meant to tackle elements the player would already have been made familiar to and are designed in ways to test them further, leading to more entertaining and engaging levels. Progression is then no longer just an element of maintaining a player’s interest, but also a means of accessibility so as not to front-load the player with everything at once and scare them off.
All this of course needs to be used correctly within the context of the game itself. If you’ve played a Mario game for example, you’ll notice that the mechanics you start the game with are the ones that carry you from the start to the end, and the bulk of the game is in the level design that tackles various different concepts with some occasionally limited power-ups that offer a very slight change in gameplay. A Hat in Time is also similar where the player is capable of unlocking all their abilities within the first world. Having a skill tree to upgrade abilities might bog down the experience since it would lock out certain abilities that might be necessary in reaching areas the game would obviously have available if such mechanics exist, and it could necessitate needless backtracking the developers likely were not aiming for.
Similarly, Resident Evil games make do with just having your progression be locked to obtaining new weapons and facing harsher threats, but if the game suddenly gave you better innate abilities like dodging or double jumping, it would interfere with the horror element that would normally require the player to have limited options so that they may not be fully equipped to deal with every situation perfectly and have to compromise somehow, which is the main thrill of the game series. Some games can even employ different styles of progression to different aspects of each game, with Resident Evil 2 Remake having a linear aspect to its progression inside the game, with a feat-based progression around the game that unlocks secret weapons and cheats for better players to unlock.
At the end of the day, the intention of progression is meant to maintain a player’s interest in the long run, while also escalating the challenge to hopefully reach the peak of what the game has to offer by the end with all the tools available at your disposal. Some games may even encourage replayability in order to take the game beyond and even further with additional difficulties or post-game content that gives the player more to do, and in the advent of achievements and trophies, players are further incentivized to fully complete the games they play. Good progression that would enable a player to reach the end of the game is healthy, not just from an artistic expression, as the climax of a game is a serious defining moment that could solidify the game for the player, but it makes business sense since a player left with a satisfying game that managed to keep them engaged till the very end, and feel content with their money which was spent on the game be put to good use, is likely to recommend or even gift the game to others. Progression is an art form that should be given as much attention as any other aspect of game design.
What makes progression interesting?
Our vast brains rely heavily on chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine for emotions related to pleasure. Overtime when the same receptors are stimulated in the same way, our pleasure begins to grow weaker. It’s why you feel the sudden need to take breaks from games sometimes as your body is exhausted from any pleasure you might feel. Come back next session, and you’re suddenly getting that high once again.
However, because these chemicals are reliant on what our brain experiences, eventually the effect is a lot weaker than the first time, and so in order to keep our pleasure receptors working, things in the game need to change. The game needs to get tougher, the array of items need to increase, the story needs to progress, and so on. It’s because of this as to why we need progression, so that we aren’t bored of these games sooner than later.
With the variety of games out there as well as the vastness of even a few types of different forms of progression, it’s important to know which ones cater to you the most so that you can attempt to get the most enjoyment out of the games that you play. Other aspects such as gameplay and story do in fact matter still, but it’s still as important to know how progression in the games you choose also work.
Simple Linear Progression
The names that I use for these various types of progressions might come off as a little weird, but you are definitely familiar with them. For starters, simple linear progression means you are on a fixed path from start to finish, where simply playing the game progresses your upgrades, and you learn a fixed pattern of new upgrades along the way. It cannot be modified nor can it be obtained out of order. What this means is that every player receives the same experience when playing this game, with almost negligible wiggle room for the player to try something different compared to most what other players try out.
You are on a curated path by the developer to obtain these items regardless of your attempts to break free of the confines within the game’s design. This isn’t a necessarily a bad thing, as having the experience be carefully curated means that every player will experience the same things in the game, meaning you can near-perfectly mold the best experience for your game yet with little room for error. You’ll notice these a lot more in singleplayer games with linear stories, including several games in the Resident Evil series (specifically the survival horror entries in the franchise), with every upgrade being on a set path that you need to obtain in order to progress.
The more recent Metroid Dread adopts this for its obligatory upgrades as well despite its nature as a 2D exploration action game (or Metroidvania if you will), as you hit hard blocks in your way which require you to obtain items in a specific order before moving on to the rest of the map. While Metroid Dread does have some optional upgrades the player can obtain, for the most part you do not necessarily need them in order to complete the game, especially when some of them ask of you to go back and explore certain parts that are not near the player.
This is, without a doubt, the easiest form of progression you can achieve in a video game, but do not mistake its simplicity for antiquity as several games adopt this method of progression still till this day. This is due to simple linear progression being the easiest to play for, with little room for human error on the player’s side. There are much less variables employed which would radically change the experience of the player beyond simple human intervention. Indie games like Undertale adopt this mode of progression as you receive progressively-stronger items simply by advancing the story of the game.
With that said, however, there are several games where this form of progression is not suitable. I mentioned Undertale, which is a role-playing game mixed with a bullet hell, but its unique nature allows it to get away with this, as most other RPGs would not benefit from this sort of progression due to its limitations in regards to catering unique experiences to each player. Several games like the hack-and-slash Devil May Cry, or first-person shooters such as the reboot of the DOOM games, all cannot adopt this form of progression due to their heavy reliance on player expression.
Malleable Linear Progression
Let’s say your game is a lot more complicated than just a simple go from Point A to Point B affair, and requires a little bit of input from the player based on their own personal style of expression. Games like the Devil May Cry series and DOOM Eternal if you will. Well, here’s the middle of the road between linearity and customization: malleable linear progression.
This form of progression is very much a Point A to Point B affair still, but it’s a little bit more complicated than that as the player is given a subset of tools they unlock at their own leisure or in the order they wish for. Any game that has some sort of ability shop, weapon shop, skill tree or skill wheel all employ this form of progression, making malleable linear progression the most sought-after means of progression philosophy. You can still curate the experience for your players, but they have a little bit of wiggle room to select and choose a little on how to progress through the game.
In Devil May Cry, you’re given the near full move list of each character you can play as, with only a handful locked until after certain beats. How you progress is based on how you wish to spend your obtained currency to unlock certain moves you deem more helpful to your playstyle earlier than others which you do not find much use in. A Stinger might be more important to some people, while others find more solace in obtaining Air Hike first.
This form of progression allows you to let the player choose their own way at progressing through the game, while still curating their experiences carefully so that they do not hit a dead end with a skillset that very much renders finishing the game impossible, as least frequently as possible. It has more wiggle room for the player to express and feel good about representing themselves in the game.
The downsides come from both ends of the extremes here. For starters, this form of progression has less control over the experience, which might let some players run the risk of acquiring an inadequate list of upgrades required to finish the game. On the other hand, it doesn’t fully give the player the means to completely curate their experiences, something many players do seek out when playing video games.
Controlled Committal Progression
On the subject of players who are fully in regarding self-expression, we have a different form of progression suitable just for them, that being controlled committal progression. What this means is that you are committing to a specific build for your character even if within the parameters set by the developers, like choosing which class the first party member in, say Final Fantasy, that they are allowed to choose, or even receiving points as raw numbers you can dump into the stats of your choosing in certain Souls games.
This method works for several role-playing games as well, as you are given an assortment of skills and stat upgrades to work through and choose based on how you want to play the game, depending on how much time and effort you wish to commit to those elements. Do you want Cloud to play the role of a paladin, or the role of a black mage in Final Fantasy VII? You’re offered the Materia for both which you can easily swap between at any given point. In a series that is more heavily-focused on a more controlled form of progression that the player needs to commit to, having Final Fantasy VII be a lot more loose with the way it hands out new shiny trinkets to the player, compared to the majority of the series, is most likely a huge factor into why that game was as popular as it was even beyond its prime.
This form of expression gives the player full control over how they wish to build their character, with a bit of commitment on their side in order to grind out the upgrade points that they wish to spend on their characters. It also gives players the choice to grind their characters early if they ever get stuck, as is the case with the Pokémon games when at a time you were younger and couldn’t fully grasp the games beyond hitting the correct elements against your opponent.
Of course, the amount of freedom each game allows differs from game to game, and the more freedom there is, while it may lead to player satisfaction when it lands, can also completely ruin a player’s run of a game very early on if they do not properly allocate their stats. When I was younger, I played Demon Gaze, which follows the same principles as Etrian Odyssey. However, being new to the game allowed me to start off with a party that was completely inadequate as I couldn’t get past the first level of the game and I needed to restart the game fresh again.
This is also an issue specifically with games that bolster character creators with all the room in the world for errors that would unintentionally make the player’s experience that much more difficult or completely blocked off from the end of the game. It’s why several western role-playing games all feature fan guides on how to create good characters by allocating the stats in ways correctly to be able to finish the game eventually.
Feat-Based Progression
No two video games are the same. Much how there are games which live or die by their abilities to space out their upgrades, some other games do not need upgrades whatsoever due to their very nature, and here I am talking about competitive game genres like fighting games, competitive first-person shooters or MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arena). There is nothing to gain other than the satisfaction of winning matches you play against others, so in order to give these games a bit more girth, achievements are put into them.
Seeing as the player has no means of achieving anything physical as a reward in order to, say, unlock new characters or new moves for certain characters in order to keep things fair between players, there are small achievements scattered around to give the player incentives to improve at the game by aiming for these achievements. Things like winning 100 matches online, losing a certain number of matches, beating the arcade mode on the hardest difficulty, and so on.
There is only one singleplayer game franchise that I can think of that does incorporate this form of progression in itself, and that is included in both these games: Wolfenstein The New Order and Wolfenstein The Old Blood. You unlock new abilities and rewards by doing in-game feats and playing certain ways in the games, and your rewards are new passive abilities you can obtain in order to help you catch up to the rising difficulty of the games.
The downside to this form of progression is pretty apparent; it only really works on competitive games or narrative-driven games that can’t offer more content for the sake of competitive fairness between players. I personally wasn’t a fan of it in the Wolfenstein games and I thought there were better ways to upgrade your character instead of relying on doing trick jumps that were hard to pull off in an already-difficult game.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, I wanted to outline the importance of progression in video games as well as the few types that exist so that you may be more aware of them and make smarter decisions when purchasing games. It’s an element that plays an integral part in our games and can either make or break those games if done brilliantly or poorly.
I wanted to personally thank my readers for reading this far, as well as my friends for supporting me during the writing of this article as well as providing me with screenshots necessary for this article when I asked them. I have credited them for each screenshot used. All images used in this article are personal screenshots of myself or of my friends. All rights reserved for the property holders of these games.
Kimo Force May Or May Not Nitpick About Games 