Pirates are a global fascination, proving popular in many cultures and inspiring all sorts of works of art and entertainment. As a theme, there’s a lot to love about swashbuckling adventures, and it goes far beyond the obvious connection between treasure and rewarding players. Here’s an investigation into exactly what makes them work so well when done right.
Multi-Layered Motivation
Providing players with a reward for doing well in a given game is a common trope, as it incentivizes ongoing play and keeps them engaged. The more layers there are to this motivation, the more satisfying and effective it can be.
When the game in question is pirate-themed, earning 1,000 in-game currency units for beating a boss holds much more weight both from a motivation perspective and in a narrative sense. Some games, like Sea of Thieves, even represent this physically in-game, with chests crammed with hard-earned loot that must be hauled around by players, while also making them vulnerable to theft by rival buccaneers.
This also applies in other gaming contexts where the stakes are high, like an online casino Canada has to offer residents, part of a wider online gambling market in which pirate theming is common. Spinning the reels on a game like Pirate Gold Deluxe has the incentive of a real cash payout, and that’s amplified in the player’s mind when the symbols and icons look like a corsair’s treasure trove.
Freedom and Danger Combined
The sea is where pirates make their home, and it’s one of the only true environments that has no borders or limits, and there’s always another horizon to strive toward. As a result, it represents ultimate freedom combined with untold danger, both of which can do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of creating and maintaining immersion in games.
When paired with land-based sections of exploration, as in the case of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, the promise of the open water and the treasure it might hold works on the imagination of the player without the design team having to lift a finger.
Embracing the Grey Area
Pirate games have a basis in historical fact, to a greater or lesser extent, but no one can argue that the people involved in them are part of a lifestyle that’s fundamentally criminal. The only difference here is that there’s a huge dose of romanticism attached to buckaneering, and enough time has passed to make loveable antiheroes part and parcel of this genre.
Hand in hand with this goes the fact that pirate characters don’t have to be whiter-than-white. There’s room in the grey area for human flaws, and also the opportunity for redemption that comes with any complicated character.
All of this meaning and knowledge is bundled up into pirate games of all kinds, from card games and board games to triple-A video games. While the average player might not notice exactly how the theme interacts with their emotions and assumptions, even something as simple as how treasure is used to reward them can enrich the experience.
