Reading between the lines of the Hyper Light Drifter mechanics (Hyper Light Drifter incentivizes reckless play) and Alfie Kohn's warning (Rewards rob people of doing good inherently) against rewards is a subtlety about how those rewards are structured and implemented.

Not all rewards are bad, per se. However they are extremely powerful and must be carefully considered if designed (Zettelkasten surprises with new ideas) into a system. They can easily spin out of control and incentivize unintentional negative behaviors (Second Order Thinking).

Hinted here (Bloodborne rewards players correctly), a good reward is one that offers something inherent to the system it is part of. For example, rewarding the player with very few bullets in Hyper Light Drifter to ease the difficulty of the combat only temporarily. This means the player must get good at the intended behavior - slashing and dashing - to get the reward - shooting.

A poor reward would be something akin to Kohn's warning. Giving gold stars for "good behavior" at school incentivizes the student to practice surface level positive traits, but the reward is completely divorced from good behavior. A dance between being given candy and being nice to people is, as a whole, not a positive reward structure.

It is never a problem to have a short burst of bullets, as the player must develop the correct skills (the combat dance (Chris Crawford conversation model)) to get them.

But it can be a problem to give out candy for correct answers at church because the intention of being in the scriptures should be about building a testimony, and candy has nothing to do with coming closer to Christ.

Source: Punished by Rewards

Hyper Light Drifter

#toolong