The Secret Ingredient Is… Challenge!

It's no secret that the hottest trend in gaming today, and in shooters particularly, is the concept of player progression and development — in layman's terms, I'm talking about level and reward systems. From the mechanic's breakout in the 2007 hit shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to its even more impressive debut in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, it's clear that character persistence is a feature we ought to get used to.

And it's been gravy, both for consumers and the developers behind these titles. Players received a myriad of benefits, including extended time and value propositions to simple feelings of achievement and self-satisfaction. As for the developers, they got a willingly captive audience to push downloadable content upon whom, prior to this, risked the siren calls of freshly baked titles.