Punish Me Gently, Reward Me Loudly

There’s a moment in every gamer’s life when they realize something odd is happening.

You pick a build that feels right. Not “right” as in optimized, spreadsheet-tested, or approved by the hive mind of YouTube meta-analysis, but right for you. Maybe it’s a weird hybrid mage in a PvP arena. Maybe it’s choosing a sword because it looks cooler. Maybe it’s the sweet satisfaction of slowly milling your opponent’s deck to oblivion. And then the game says:

“That was fun. But wrong.”

Welcome to punishment and reward in game design, where success is often measured by conformity and creativity is quietly discouraged. And yet, getting this system right, really right, is what separates a decent game from a masterpiece. The truth is, punishment and reward aren’t just feedback loops. They’re how we teach players what kind of experience we actually want them to have.

So, let’s talk about it. Because when the system punishes success, creativity, or individuality, it’s not just bad design. It’s bad philosophy.

Reward and Punishment: The Invisible Dialogue

Games talk to us through consequences.

Do what the game wants: it gets easier or you grow stronger. Go against the grain: it gets harder, or your potential shrinks. That’s the most basic system of punishment and reward, and at a glance, it seems fair. Do well, get rewarded. Struggle, get a message. Classic game theory.

But that balance can get skewed quickly. In PvE, the game has full control over what’s allowed and what’s possible. In PvP, it’s even simpler. Winning and losing handle most of the motivation on their own. That’s part of why balancing PvP is so incredibly hard. Because when something works too well and starts dominating, the instinct is to nerf it. But nerfing something just because it wins often does more harm than good.

You should never punish success.

Punishing overuse, maybe. But only carefully. What you risk instead is sending the message that being good at something, being successful, is a design flaw. And that? That’s how you lose players.

The Johnny Problem: When Winning Isn’t Enough

This is where I come in.

In the world of trading card games, there’s a well-known trinity of player types: Timmy, Spike, and Johnny.

• Timmy plays for the experience. Big cards, big plays, big explosions. Timmy just wants to feel powerful.

• Spike plays to win. Doesn’t care how. Just wants the W.

• Johnny plays to win too, but only if he gets to do it his way.

I’m Johnny. Always have been. I want my wins flavored with creativity and spiced with self-expression. If I beat you, it better be because I came up with something new, something wild, something me. And in most games, that’s the hardest path.

When I built my Esper Consuming Aberration deck in Magic: the Gathering, it took me forever to get it right. But when I finally beat someone by grinding their deck to zero, that wasn’t just a win. That was art. In Yugioh, I only wanted to play dragons. I didn’t want the best cards, I wanted my cards. I played Robin in Smash Bros, knowing full well it would never make the top tier list. And I’ve made peace with the fact that, across all these games, I have to work harder for my wins.

But here’s the kicker: that’s fine.

The problem isn’t that it’s hard. The problem is when the system itself labels that harder path as the wrong one. When your win doesn’t just come with effort, but also with scorn from the mechanics or the community or both.

Dishonored Me: A Case Study in Quiet Scolding

Take Dishonored. I loved this game. Loved the powers, the aesthetic, the swordplay. Blink became one of my favorite mechanics in any stealth game. So I played. I blinked. I slashed. I enjoyed.

Then I looked up the endings.

Turns out, Dishonored grades you. There’s a “good” ending where you save the girl and kill nobody, and “lesser” endings where you kill too many people or don’t save her at all. It wasn’t subtle. One ending said, “you did it right.” The others said, “not quite.”

And just like that, I stopped playing.

Not because I didn’t like the game, but because I realized it was going to judge me for using the toys it gave me. I wasn’t running around stabbing innocents. I was just playing the game. But apparently, my approach meant I didn’t “deserve” the best ending.

That’s not punishment. That’s passive-aggressive design.

The Elden Ring Effect: Everything Works, Nothing’s Judged

Now compare that to Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is the masterclass in letting players be weird, reckless, experimental, or absurd, and letting them own it. Want to beat the game with daggers? Go for it. Want to do it naked at level one with no weapons? Apparently that’s possible too. The game doesn’t scoff. It just says, “Sure. If you can pull it off.”

You don’t get punished for trying. You just accept the risk.

That’s how you do it. You don’t predefine the “correct” way to succeed. You design a world, build its rules, and let the player figure it out. The punishment is intrinsic. It’s harder. But the possibility remains.

And when you succeed your way, that’s the reward.

What Should Punishment Look Like?

Here’s a principle worth considering: punishment should never feel like the game saying “no.” It should feel like the game saying, “You sure? That’s going to be tough. But go for it.”

The true punishment, in an ideal system, is that your path might be tougher. Not invalid. Not wrong. Just challenging. In a PvE world, that’s a tension you can play with beautifully. In PvP, though, it’s trickier.

Remember, in competitive spaces, someone is always losing. That’s built-in punishment. So what do we do with players like Timmy or Johnny, who want something else out of the match?

We recognize it. We reward it. We celebrate it.

Building Better Incentives: Reward the Intent

Let’s say a player wins a match in your competitive game using a rarely used weapon. Or pulls off a win without ever leveling up. Or builds a hyper-versatile character with even stat distribution, just to see if it could work.

There should be an achievement for that.

There should be a badge. A leaderboard. A message at the end of the match saying, “Hey, that was wild. You made something work that most people don’t.”

This doesn’t take anything away from the Spike player who crushed their way to the top. Let them sit on the leaderboard. Let them rack up win streaks. But for everyone else, for the players who value personality, challenge runs, or just plain weirdness, give them a win condition they can chase.

Achievements are an elegant way to do that. Timmy plays the big shiny thing? Cool. Make an achievement that lights up when that thing actually lands and does what it was meant to do. Johnny builds a deck no one else is using? Cool. Track how many games they win with it and celebrate the milestone.

Even speedrunners want love. Put the timer in the UI. Let them know the devs see them.

Every player type wants to be seen. Show them you see them.

Design the Sandbox, Not the Solution

Ultimately, here’s the philosophy I come back to every time:

Don’t design the strategy. Design the system.

Your job isn’t to create the “best build” or even ten viable ones. Your job is to build a world with rules that make sense, then let players break those rules in brilliant, surprising ways. You don’t need to hand them the puzzle pieces. Just give them the sandbox and the shovels.

This is where balance becomes art. Sure, monitor the data. Patch if something truly breaks the game. But don’t chase equilibrium so hard that you punish people for being good, or worse, for being different.

Let the win mean something. Let the win reflect them.

Final Score: What Kind of Win Are You Designing For?

Games aren’t just about success. They’re about what success means. And if we define success too narrowly, we shrink the kinds of players who get to feel like they belong.

So here’s my challenge to game designers: what kind of win are you building for? And what kind of player are you quietly nudging into the shadows?

Build your system like a world. Make the rules feel real. Let the players decide what success looks like, and then, when they get there, reward them like you meant for it to happen all along.

We’re not asking for easy wins. We’re asking for meaningful ones.

So go ahead. Punish me gently. But reward me loudly.