Decoding random virtual rewards: a guide to identify hazard game design techniques in video games

The video game industry is an undeniable business that is increasing its revenue every year. More and more people are starting to invest time playing video games for different reasons and purposes such as entertainment, business, serious learning or education. The industry is rising and new methods to earn money do so, sometimes, with unethical and predatory tactics. Video games can bring us incredible and unforgettable experiences, valuable knowledge and learning resources, but when they are designed in order to take advantage of human behaviour and mental weaknesses, things won’t be positive in the player’s real life. In this research, we bring this question to the table: how can we build video games that are healthy for our players? The objective of this paper is to collect all the necessary data to understand the situation of this matter, how it is implemented in actual video games, summarise and understand them, and write down a solid guideline to follow while developing and designing games. The guideline answers the initial question of this research and it will be validated and iterated thanks to interviewing actual professionals in the videogame industr