A Look into Self-Efficacy

As game designers and developers, we want our players to walk the line between believing they are too good at the game and believing they suck at the game. If a player finds a game is too easy for them, they will grow bored and stop playing, but if they find a game is too hard for them, they will give up and quit. As such, we want to know how to make our players feel like they are good at the game while still having room for improvement. That’s where understanding self-efficacy comes into play.

What is Self-Efficacy?

Simply put, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their capability to achieve specific goals. People’s sense of self-efficacy develops during ages 6 through 12 and carries through the rest of their lives. However, if we want to design games that retain players, we need a deeper understanding of self-efficacy.

How does balanced self-efficacy retain players?

A person’s self-efficacy determines the amount of effort they put into and how persistent they are with improving themselves toward achieving their goal. If they believe the goal is too easy, they will put in little to no effort. The result will be the same if they feel the goal is unattainable. We must find the middle ground where the player believes they have an attainable goal that is currently above their abilities but within their reach. When a player is in this middle ground, they will persistently put in effort toward their goal.

What determines a player’s self-efficacy?

There are four main components of self-efficacy: past performance, feeling confident or nervous, watching others, and verbal persuasion.

Internal Validation

If a player feels like they perform poorly when they first play a game, they will either give up or give it a few more tries to do well. The same is true if they feel like they performed too well. However, there is grace for the latter when it comes to tutorials. If the player does not have prior experience with similar games, this need is heightened because they have no other experiences to base their abilities on.

Similarly, a player’s nervousness or confidence affects their performance and desire to play. While a confident player is more likely to play than a nervous player, an overly confident player will either feel like the game is beneath them or perform worse than they believe they should.

External Validation

Watching others is how players get to compare themselves to other players. When someone else makes something a player struggles with look easy or makes how a player performs look inadequate, the player is more likely to quit. When someone makes a game look fun or like a goal is achievable, the player is more likely to play. This is why when I watch someone play Osu, I’m left in awe and never want to touch it, and when I watch someone get a nuke in Call of Duty because they were playing with people below their skill level, I suddenly have the urge to play Call of Duty.

Similarly, verbal persuasion is when others tell someone how good or bad their performance is. When a player is told they suck at a game and is not provided constructive criticism or the steps to improve feel impossible, they are more likely to quit. However, there is also a chance the player will dig their heels in and try harder. Conversely, if a player is told they’re great, they’re more likely to play. However, if they are told they’re great too much, they will likely put in less effort. Just like the previous components, the trick is to find the balance.

Balancing Self-Efficacy

So, by now, it’s obvious that our games need to balance these four components—past performance, feeling confident or nervous, watching others, and verbal persuasion—to balance self-efficacy in order to retain players, but how do we do that?

Some of it is outside of our control. We cannot change what people post on YouTube or stream on Twitch. We cannot change what people say outside our games. No matter how hard we try to prevent it, people will find ways to be toxic in multiplayer games. However, there are ways we can affect each component.

Players need an appropriate level of challenge early. They will give grace for a tutorial to be easy. They might even give grace for early levels being easy if there’s an indication that the game will become more challenging, but the sooner the players are provided with an adequate challenge, the more likely they are to play again. Their chances of playing again improve if they can also win while adequately challenged. If a game supports difficulty levels, having a feature to determine an adequate difficulty level will help with this. If a game is multiplayer, players need to be grouped with players of similar skill levels quickly; however, constantly grouping players by skill level in a casual setting can make players feel like they have to try too hard when they just want to play casually. So, casual grouping needs to have more wiggle room than competitive grouping. Even when playing casually, players are not likely to enjoy playing a game against a much higher-skilled player. We are still looking for balance in a casual setting, but our range for balance is more considerable.

The external components are arguably the most challenging to balance because of how much they happen to players outside of the game. However, we can still do things as designers and developers to affect them in-game.

To start, players need to be rewarded for doing well, and how the players are rewarded can vary. For single-player games, that can be more experience points, access to special items, special dialogue options, or other solutions that make sense for the game. For multiplayer games, it can be honoring systems, special items, more experience points, special mentions, or other solutions that make sense for the game. However, efforts must be made to prevent players from being flooded with these rewards. If a player receives the rewards too often, they will lose their meaning or make the player feel like they are too good at the game.

Players also need to have minimal exposure to toxicity. No matter how hard we try, we will not be able to eliminate toxicity, but we can minimize exposure. Automatically muting hateful players, banning players for being toxic, and encouraging positive interactions are some of the main ways toxicity exposure can be minimized. As any competitive, team-based player can profess, accomplishing these goals is not always easy. Hateful players find ways around filters. Angry players can find ways to throw games without always making it obvious, and we don’t want to ban players playing poorly in the name of banning players who intentionally throw games. We can’t go strictly off reports either because players will hate-report someone even if the reported player wasn’t toxic, which is another form of toxicity. Perhaps an automated system for these special cases can be created with the help of AI, but until such a system is made, manual reviews are the best option.

Then, there are scoreboards, arguably the largest source of comparison in games. When players see a scoreboard, they immediately see how they are doing compared to everyone else and how their team is doing compared to the other team(s). As a League of Legends player, I have watched this simple comparison be the downfall of games because one or two players see the team is behind by one kill and decide to give up. Meanwhile, in Call of Duty: Warzone, players cannot compare their performance to other players or teams beyond how many remain during a match. The balance will depend on the type of game. Call of Duty: Warzone players do not need that information during a match, but League of Legends players need some of the information provided by the scoreboard during the game. However, some information could easily be removed or replaced from League of Legends’ in-match scoreboard to reduce negative comparison while retaining necessary information, such as players’ kill-death-assist numbers, players’ minion kills, or the number of towers taken. While those metrics are provided so players can determine the gold earned by both teams, metrics such as bounties, team kills, and current items provide better insight into gold earned while not allowing players to focus on metrics that can easily be misunderstood. That’s not to say removing those metrics is the best choice for every, or even any, team-based, competitive game, but those factors and decisions should be considered during the design process.

Wrap-up

While self-efficacy is developed during ages 6 through 12, making designing around its components vital for kids of that age range, our sense of self-efficacy follows us through the rest of our lives. As such, designing games to balance the players’ sense of past performance, sense of confidence or nervousness, comparison to others, and verbal feedback will help retain players of all ages and abilities, especially children ages 6 through 12. If you want to read more about self-efficacy, I recommend reading “Self-Efficacy and Achievement Behaviors” by Dale H. Schunk, which was published in Educational Psychology Review.