The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at the Trope Launch Pad.
Being rewarded for challenge is Hard Mode Perks and Bragging Rights Reward.
Earn Your Fun is "no tech tree for you until you beat the first five missions using guys armed with pointy sticks" and "you don't get that shiny ubertank the enemy forces are using until halfway through the game."
Earn Your Fun is the mentality that is depicted on the picture, that mentality being, well, that you need to earn your fun.
Now look at the actual examples of Earn Your Fun.
AVP: cheat mode is inferior
Enchanter: bypassing a puzzle makes the game unwinnable
Everquest: you need to grind a lot
Nethack: it is almost impossible to win the game and you're not expected to
Pokemon: legendary pokemon are hard to catch
yadda yadda level grinding
yadda yadda beat on the hardest difficulty to earn the real ending
It is not a trope in itself: it is an audience reaction and a type of mentality.
The thing I am talking about is a trope in the same way that "Risk"-Style Map is a trope.
Edited by lazybanshee I joined the police just to kill people.It's not a mentality or an Audience Reaction. It's any game that requires time and effort in order to unlock or obtain things that ostensibly make the game more fun or entertaining.
Requiring the player to advance to later levels before using better equipment or abilities, which is exactly what you're describing, is a type of Earn Your Fun. Presumably, the better items on the tech tree are more fun. You have to earn the ability to use them.
EDIT: Also, at least some of those examples are misuse, thus not good precedent for decisions. Net Hack is just Nintendo Hard, which is explicitly stated on Earn Your Fun to not be an example.
After reading the example, it's also a terrible ZCE.
Edited by SolipSchismLiterally the first paragraph of the description says "The concept that a game should require some kind of dedication from its players before giving them anything."
It is not a trope. It is a concept of restricting content as requiring time and dedication. Are you perhaps stating that every single game ever released that features any sort of a somewhat linear mission progression falls under Earn Your Fun as you cannot access the last mission before finishing the first ones? Is that what counts as "restricting content" perhaps? I sure as barnacles hope not.
You're generally not restricted from any content in these games. You just start a skirmish game and all these shiny tanks are avaliable to you. Not because you need to overcome some challenge to be able to use them, but for pacing purposes.
Unless you need to finish the campaign to unlock multiplayer content. Then you might have a point. As of now you do not. The examples to the page prove mine, however, and the description also does.
Edited by lazybanshee I joined the police just to kill people.I think you're fixating on a poorly chosen word, concept. There is no YMMV in Earn Your Fun. The more accurate phrase is "design precept". Fixing that.
And yes, restricting content would include things like having to beat prior levels to reach the final level. You have to earn your way to playing the final level. Tropes Are Not Bad, and it is an Omnipresent Trope.
Edited by Scorpion451

Is there a trope that describes standard strategy game campaign structure?
In the first mission you're typically only allowed to build basic infantry and barracks, or some other sort of first level of the tech tree.
Further levels of the tree get unlocked further into the game, last mission always allows you to use the entire tech tree, including superweapons, most powerful and expensive units in the game, maybe capture and use other race's base and units if such a thing is a game mechanic at all.
The pace gets occasionally interrupted by stock missions of another type like the Baseless Mission.