One of the more intangible desiderata of a good videogame is its tempo. Not in the simple sense of speed, but the structural ebb and flow of the gameplaying experience - how moments of high stress (say, battling a boss in Zelda 64) may be balanced against other periods of relative calm or nonviolent suspense (Link taking time out to do a bit of fishing).

In games such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill that aspire to the cinematic, the pattern of tempo is clearly drawn from the movies: crawling around the Nostromo’s ducts in Ridley Scott’s Alien is interspersed with shocking apparitions of the slimy xenomorph, just as the wandering of eerily silent streets and rooms in survival horror games is punctuated by shattering noise and drooling zombies. Now it might seem that adrenaline-based twitch games have no room for such tempo variation. Yet even in racers such as Gran Turismo, a varying tempo is lent to the player’s campaign by the differing styles of “mission” that must be completed, from sprints round short circuits to multi-race championships. Much of the fun of two-player beat-’em-ups, meanwhile, lies in the way the opponents conspire to create a balletic tempo of their own, alternating suspenseful stand-offs with flurries of blows.

Crucial to the overall flow of tempo is the pattern of player rewards. Media psychologists use the term “reinforcement” to describe how a player is rewarded for her actions. Rewards in themselves can take many forms - the acquiring of new skills or new weapons, simply seeing the next level or getting a lap record or high score - but the pattern of reinforcement needs to be very finely tuned to induce that “one more go” feeling. Too much reinforcement, or reinforcement that is regular and predictable, and the player quickly becomes bored; too little reinforcement and she is frustrated and abandons the game. What is desirable, it turns out, is “partial reinforcement” - giving the player enough to induce the feeling that the next reward is just around the corner, even if it isn’t.

Now the design of reinforcement strategies is not an exact science, because there will always be a varying range of skills. Most players might happily find it sufficiently challenging, while a minority may sail through it. The classic way to palliate this problem is the strategy of handing over control of tempo during short periods to the player, by offering risk-reward scenarios. The game offers the player an option of attempting something risky, in return for a greater reward - whether it be an extra life, a shiny new gun, or quicker victory. But the risk is, crucially, voluntary. The player can choose not to attempt it if she feels her skills are already being fully tested, but the confident player can thus gain extra satisfaction out of exactly the same part of the game.

Risk-reward scenarios are everywhere: do you choose to negotiate a hail of bullets in order to get that tasty-looking weapons-upgrade pod? Do you try to land that human safely in Defender or do you just concentrate on getting the Mutant off your back? Do you want to try to break that guard’s neck in Metal Gear Solid instead of just sneaking past him? Do you go for the elaborate throw in Dead or Alive 2, and risk being reversed, or are you satisfied with a simple jab and retreat? In short: do you feel lucky, punk?

Risk-reward makes videogames fun because we enjoy it in other walks of life, too. The investor in tech shares, for instance, like any other gambler, is driven by a love of risk-reward scenarios. And it is also inherent in every popular sport. Do you go for the spectacular baseline drive in a game of tennis and risk hitting the net, or do you just get the ball in with less power? If you’re a striker, do you attempt a Gazza-style juggle and volley into the goal and risk looking really stupid when it doesn’t work?

The pleasure of some videogames, indeed, is heavily dependent on their concentration on risk-reward scenarios. Consider the seminal puzzle franchise Bust-A-Move. The game is constantly daring you to build a perilous dangling stalactite of bubbles in the hope that the right colour will eventually appear for you to dump it on your opponent’s side of the screen. A good player needs to take that risk constantly. The structural tempo of Metropolis Street Racer, meanwhile, is made compelling by the inbuilt risk-reward scenario of gambling with your kudos by rerunning races. Or how about the uniquely beautiful choreography of Bushido Blade? It encouraged a highly suspenseful tempo, of constant advance and retreat, between the players - and that was because the very idea of attacking, in a game of one-hit kills, is itself a risk-reward scenario.

The psychological importance of risk-reward scenarios is emphasised by developer Cas Cremers, of Dutch studio Shape 9, who has created a fascinating concept game in which risk-reward is built into the very control system. Playing something like a cross between Asteroids and Speedball, the game, Scalar, constantly dares the player to move his ship out of the relatively safe zone at the centre in order to be able to destroy more targets - but this is an inherently risky exercise. The most disturbingly addictive bit of web-candy your correspondent has seen, Scalar can be played for free at http://games.shape9.nl/scalar/showcase/index.html.

The importance of risk-reward scenarios to videogame pleasure, and their contribution to exciting variations in tempo, would seem unarguable - yet games are still regularly released that take no advantage of this guarantor of psychological addiction. The total absence of any meaningful risk-reward architecture (aside from the twee sub-quests), for example, is the primary reason why Shenmue is so hypnotically dull. In the end, the concept can be applied at an industry-wide level, too. For if developers don’t offer us risks, why should we reward them?

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