Thinking about punishment enhances the now by increasing tension. Thinking about reward devalues the now since you realize the now is only a stepping stone to get what you really want.

ohhhhh
This whole time I thought you were being your pedantic, idealistic, prescriptivist self, but what I quoted, that I get. I still think you're completely wrong in generalizing it to all rewards and all gaming, for reasons that have been talked about plenty, but this is more understandable than "a lot of rewards have negative effects so let's generalize it".

Ok fine, that might be true. All that means is that the unwashed masses get a worse experience hunting since they aren't doing it purely for the sake of enjoying the moment of doing it.

I must have glossed over this post when it first went up.

Yesterday, you said to me

I'm sorry if I give off that impression, and that's obviously not true that there's only one way to enjoy a game.

And yet here, you're suggesting - nay, not suggesting, but stating outright - that if you're playing (or hunting, or whatever) for any reason other than the sake of enjoying the moment, your experience is 'worse' than it would be if that WERE your reason for doing what you're doing.

AND THAT IS WRONG. ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY WRONG.

It might true for you (maybe) - but it is NOT true for the people you're talking about. It's this absolutist attitude that makes it so difficult to talk to you about this stuff - you've got great ideas, a lot of the time, but they're couched in ways that make me want to throw up my hands and walk away.

Just a pity they won't listen to their prophet of fun!

Well of course, nothing can be done until his sermon is complete!

Punishment ENHANCES THE NOW.

Which scenario do you think is more thrilling / exciting / satisfying:

1. Hitting a jump shot in a pick up game with your friends in which your team is up by 30 points.
2. Hitting a jump shot at the buzzer, winning the NBA championship by one point.

Obviously number 2. Why? Because something is on the line, and failure leads to severe consequences. Missing the jump shot in 1. is no big deal, thus success carries little satisfaction since failing is not significant. But in 2. if you miss, your team loses the NBA championship, and your team spent the entire season winning for nothing.

Right, so something on the line beyond the simple joy of play can increase tension, and improve the now. We both agree to this point. You still haven't established that giving the player a boon for something is somehow different.

I posit that depending on implementation of the reward structure, it is no different. Here's a simple example, time attack modes with ratings or leader boards. These contain both a punishment (hey you didn't go fast enough so you failed and can't get to new content till you get it right) and rewards (Hey you completed the level really fast, here's a trophy to show off, or a place on a leader board, or some bonus content to play with). Monaco is a recent game that does this really well.

And that's just one example, there's many more.

Rewards

A "Reward" I shall define as:
"Something you receive which intends a positive feeling or reinforcement."

Now, this can indeed mean "level 2" as you suggest, as can cutscenes, dollops of story, items, chunks of XP, in-game currency, lore segments, achievements, unlocks in-game, etc etc etc. The reach of this word is far-flung and many people far smarter than me have discussed it to great length.

The important thing about "Rewards", however, is that they tie intrinsically into what makes a "Game". Games (in general, not just videogames) are simply a variety of structured human interaction with an environment which has goals, rules, challenges and rewards (even if that reward is "You won" or "You didn't lose").

Compulsion Loops

In videogames (and, indeed, many other games), what you very-often find is that they are designed around what are known as the "compulsion loop". This term has been given a bad rap recently due to it being linked to slow-burn Facebook games such as Farmville, et al. The Compulsion Loop, however, has always been a part of videogame design from the get go.

A compulsion loop is (at its core) four main steps:

1. Commitment
2. Trigger
3. Action
4. Reward
(5. Repeat)

These may be called different things depending on who you are talking to at the time.

So, to break this down

1. Commitment.
This is your simple act of playing the game, or taking an action in the game, or even paying to play the game. This sets up your mind for what is to come. This includes "I will get to the other side of this room" and "I will finish this level".

2. Trigger.
This is a sudden disparity between how you want things to be (or are told they should be) and how things appear. The prince needs saving, or 3 Grunt Aliens and an Elite Alien enter a room that you must progress through, or a door is locked that you feel like you need to open.

3. Action.
This is the action you take to resolve the trigger. Killing the aliens, progressing through the level towards the kidnapped prince, or you search and enact for a method of opening the door.

4. Reward.
This is what you are given for completing the action succesfully. Ammo, Resources, In-game relationships or reputations, XP, etc as I previously stated.

It should be clearly understood that these aspects are spread throughout games in many different ways, and you will have short, medium and long-term loops, all of which offer rewards. For example, at any given time you may be attempting to:

• Aim at one moving enemy (for the reward of reduced numbers of enemies you are currently facing)
  
• Kill the entire squad of enemies (to allow you to progress the level)
  
• Navigate the specific building/area in which you are currently playing (to see and experience more content)
  
• Finish the current level (To see more story, whether or not you've seen it before, and/or see more content)
  
• Finish the game (To feel a sense of completion)
  
• (Meta-loop) Play the game and feel good.

Motivation and personal commentary.

Now, different people may have different views on what motivates them. You state, for example, that you do not particularly enjoy finishing a game. You do not enjoy the "longest-term" goal (excluding the meta-game of community engagement). Now, this is fine, but the fact that it is there should never be assumed to "undermine the inherent value of the game's moment to moment pleasures" for other players.

Personally, I adore rewarding players in all sorts of ways. When Call of Duty added XP and unlocks, while I rarely played Call of Duty I was very happy with the direction the videogame industry was going. I never enjoyed the "One-Shot and lose it all" methods of Counterstrike, or the original Halo/Halo 2, but loved the addition of XP in later Halo games.

Conclusion (tl;dr)

The point I am trying to make here is that you have ALWAYS had a reward in games you play, of a multitude of different types. Your post, however, seems to suggest that you only like very specific kinds. I would ask that you, simply, understand that one man's meat is another's poison, and that your apparent dislike of long-term rewards is an outlier in the gaming industry's design mantras, let alone business mantras (ie keeping players playing for longer periods of time using XP-based multiplayer).

Not winning the NBA is a lack of a reward, not a punishment. Since you still have everything you had before.

Except arguably you may even have more now since you have the experience of coming so close (which is in addition to or greater than experience you may have had in the past).

You're just twisting words (poorly) to try and worm your way out of the fact that your point is fundamentally wrong.

Punishment is necessary to create tension in games, since in 99.99999% of cases there is nothing significant on the line while playing a video game. It's an analogy.

Except arguably you may even have more now since you have the experience of coming so close (which is in addition to or greater than experience you may have had in the past).

You're just twisting words (poorly) to try and worm your way out of the fact that your point is fundamentally wrong.

You are also wrong in thinking that opposing rewards means opposing penalties.

Why? if the issue follows your thesis, that rewards cause alter player behavior in a negative way by putting less focus on the now, punishments do the exact same thing. Now the player is altering their behavior to avoid a punishment instead of gain a boon.

Punishment ENHANCES THE NOW.

Which scenario do you think is more thrilling / exciting / satisfying:

1. Hitting a jump shot in a pick up game with your friends in which your team is up by 30 points.
2. Hitting a jump shot at the buzzer, winning the NBA championship by one point.

There's something inherently self-defeating about your analogy in #2, in that what you call a punishment is not getting a reward you would get as the result of a cumulative record of achievement.

If I need five stickies in a game to get an achievement, and I've got only four with 20 seconds to go, tension is added to the gameplay, and whether you call that the result of a reward or punishment is a question of semantics.

Hit a jump shot, gain points, and win the game by 1 point NOW
Hit a jump shot, gain an increase in your season stats towards an award farther down the line.

Miss a jump shot with 2 seconds left, your team loses, NOW
Miss a jump shot with 2 seconds left, you're disqualified from an award farther down the line.

Tension is subjective. Results are absolute. Which is better or worse? Depends who you talk to, what goal(s) they're aiming for, what sort of experience they value more when they play. Functionally, comparing positive and negative results, per examples illustrated above, are the same.

Cumulative results toward a consequence (good or bad) in which you can't lose by failing the condition, only get closer by being fulfilling it; and exclusive results that require only fulfillment in order to be complete, else you fail. (perhaps even a mix of both)

Seems like you were comparing cumulative success (there's no tension in missing a shot because you're not aiming for a goal which penalizes you for missing), with exclusive success (in which there's an element of "tension" NOW because if you lose, you FAIL).

You can have both types of results, rewards and penalties, being cumulative and exclusive. Drop your subjective opinion about which you think is better, and it comes down to how the developer decides to build win and fail scenarios, and what type of emotion they want to draw out of someone while playing.

If they want to attract a Cody, they need to not include cumulative rewards, and only include rewards and/or penalties that occur immediately.
If they want to attract the mainstream gaming crowd, as seems to be the trend these days, they'll include both types of rewards and maybe penalties, but definitely nothing bad that happens immediately (like, die and OMG start the level over?! Moar checkpointz!)

I see your logic, Cody, but you're riddling your arguments with capitals and your opinion as objective truth, and THAT PISSES PEOPLE OFF ;) (also sparks huge, ranting, and sometimes interesting, discussion threads :P)