Privately owned Finnish game studio Colossal Order Ltd. made a big splash earlier this year with the release of Cities: Skylines, a city builder game that sold 250,000 copies in its first 24 hours and one million in its first month. At this week’s GDC Europe, lead designer Karolina Korppoo attributed some of the game’s popularity to the studio’s desire to reward players for doing something right rather than punishing them for doing something wrong.

“Learning and helping them out, guiding them towards finding new features and learning more, that’s how a game should reward the players,” Korppoo said. “It seems to be working quite nicely for us.”

Korppoo used the example of Blizzard Entertainment Inc’s Diablo III as a game that never stopped teaching players how to play, ensuring that no one felt overly punished for being new and inexperienced.

As a city builder, there is no end goal in Cities: Skylines other than continuing to improve upon a city, building it larger, more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing. According to Korppoo, the failure of not fully optimizing a city due to a mistake is enough to teach players to improve next time.

“If you are going to play a city-builder, you want to build a city that matches the ideal in your head,” she said. “If the city isn’t working, that’s your punishment — and that’s enough.”

Korppoo also explained that players can become attached to their cities as they progress, saving it from catastrophes or solving particularly difficult problems. As that attachment grows, so does the sense of failure for not doing something as well as they could have. By the same token, they also feel a stronger sense of satisfaction for doing something right. Rewarding players for small achievements, says Korppoo, increases their overall enjoyment and makes them continue playing.

“When you make your first city, it’s probably not going to be awesome; it’s likely to be quite awful,” she said. “But this doesn’t matter, because if you get an achievement you can use the unique building you’re rewarded with in a new city.”

Image courtesy of Paradox Interactive