Negative and Positive Feedback In Videogames

I thought about describing the positive/negative feedback from games, such as losing a level, dying, not being able to rack up a score multiplier. I wanted to talk about a game like Rockband, and how one gets a positive or negative reaction from the audience depending on one's playing ability. Hitting the majority of "notes" earns you audible praise from the audience, whereas missing most of them will earn you boos before you lose the level. It's definitely a good tactic to get one to improve. This is, of course, actually an effective way of teaching if you happen to play drums, which is the closest representation of an instrument in the series. Games like Rocksmith have adapted and improved on this idea, and one can actually plug in their real electric guitar into the computer and have the same experience.

However, not all games have positive and negative feedback that directly affects the player. It may culminate into a negative or positive experience later on. I was thinking particularly of Dishonored, where the player is rewarded for not killing, and not alerting enemies. Not only are there achievements for not killing and keeping completely out of sight, but the interlude and endings of the game are much darker and undesirable if you are a violent, killing machine. I have no moral issues with the killing aspect in games, so I think it's a bit annoying that developers seem to consistently push that; I think there can be more nuance implemented than simply "killing bad". Bioshock 2 had a similar system, where consuming the children of the Big Daddies would lead to an "evil" ending. Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, works with a morality system that is much more nuanced. However, if we just consider the difficulty aspect, achievement-wise, avoiding confrontation is certainly more difficult than just slaughtering everyone.