Part

Progression

You might say: how capability changes over time

Progression changes what the player can do, understand or afford as play continues.

What it does

Paces new capability and complexity against the player's growing mental model.

Ask

What changes, at which pace, and what new problem or choice makes the next step worthwhile?

What to look for

1. New capability during play
2. A newly affordable option

Parts

• Progression curves: A progression curve relates a measure such as level or time to cumulative progress, capability or cost; distinguish total progress from the marginal cost of the next step.
• Unlock gates: An unlock gate sets the cost, prerequisite or threshold for a new capability.
• Capability progression: Capability progression changes the action set or the player's understanding as progress accumulates.
• Level and experience measure: The current level and cumulative experience locate the player on a progression curve.

Sources

1. Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 253Nearly all games present the player with some way to progress—to increase in ability, power, resources, or knowledge.
2. Ian Schreiber, Level 3: Transitive Mechanics and Cost Curves, prerequisites, limitations and cost curvesLeveling is also transitive: a higher-level character is better than a lower-level character in nearly every RPG I can think of.
3. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, pp. 72–77; contents p. ix, ch. 11 pp. 247–270Access can be used to gain more rewards or can be required to progress through the game.
4. Raph Koster, Geek Fun Isn’t Frivolous, “Mental models” and “learning”; author discussion of A Theory of FunThe ultimate goal of a game designer is to create a rule set, a model, a simulation, that offers self-refreshing game play, to extend the cognitive challenge by presenting ever more complex patterns to absorb.
5. Raph Koster, Game design is simple, actually, sections “Loops,” “Variation and escalation,” “Pacing and balance”The second loop is really your progression loop but is better thought of as a spiral.
6. Ian Schreiber, Game Design Concepts, Level 16: Game Balance, Balance in Single-Player Games: later levels, increasing difficulty and pacingthe later levels of video games are usually harder than the earlier levels.

Use it on your project

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