Measure
Capability growth
You might say: the player can do more
Capability growth is the measured increase in actions, reach, output or resilience that a loop produces.
- What it does
- Shows whether the reinforcing loop is actually changing the player's available power.
- Ask
- What new option or output exists after the investment?
Sources
- Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 237
Games known as engine-building games use this system (or a more complex variation of it) as the primary way for the player to gain power and ability: as they build their engine, the player increases their capabilities within the game, or they can choose to use the resources to act within the game.
- Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 6, pp. 113–117: feedback changes system output and team capacity
the score of the better team quickly spirals upward as the difference increases, allowing them to field more and more players.
- Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, pp. 66–69
the economic growth potential of a base in StarCraft is vital in the long run.
- Daniel Cook, Value chains – A method for creating and balancing faucet-and-drain game economies, “Source Type: Investment (Exponential)”; “Balancing value chains”
They can invest the resources to do more of the action. Which in turn gives them even more sources
- Ian Schreiber, Game Design Concepts, Level 5: Mechanics and Dynamics, Feedback Loops: power-ups make the next score easier
players explore the map, which gives them access to more resources, which let them buy better technology, which let them build better units
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Capability growth" (loop-capability-growth) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
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