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What are some games where the “reward mechanism” is increasingly delayed the longer you play?
A game like chess arguably has the same amount of reward per game regardless of elo, it just gets more difficult. (Games will take similar amount of time and chance of winning/losing doesn’t shift much). Same with MOBA games. World of Warcraft and other RPGs may seem as if they delay the rewards, because it takes longer to get to the next level, but I’m not totally sure if this is the case, because you still acquire loot and have same amount of exploration and combat while the next level is delayed.
I suppose Souls games may be an example: because you keep dying and retrying as you progress through game, then the reward (the completion) genuinely delays over time. A lot of older games have this mechanic, where you are forced to retry until you complete the level. This is rare in modern games. Puzzle games and games like Portal have this mechanic. Crosswords and Sudoku as well.
I’m in interested in how this mirrors the real life progression of skills; ie, real life contains an element of delayed rewards across progression. Reading a book goes from quick and fun (children’s books) to long and tedious (professions involving lots of reading). Math problems don’t just get harder, they may take 10x longer to solve. Occupational obligations may involve increasingly delayed feeling of reward. Someone’s goal in meditation may go from 5min to 35min. Etc.
Games having increasing delays is a very common feature. I'd argue that MMOs are a good example of this because while you may continually get loot, there's increasing delays in getting useful loot. Basically all video games have very quick rewards at the beginning in the "tutorial" section (which might not be explicitly set out as a tutorial, often just the early game introducing the mechanics via clearly intentionally easy levels) when teaching the mechanics followed by more spread out rewards. Which isn't necessarily exploitative: a more interesting, difficult challenge will of course take longer than the tutorial of "here's what the A button does".
But for a more pure version, you can look at "incremental games" or really any game with a gacha/loot box mechanic, which I understand is standard in generic modern mobile free-to-play games. Basically, there's a whole type of games where increasing the delay is combined with the option to pay real world money to shorten the delay.
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