Be Excellent To Each Other

Interesting article on the "Pull the lever, get a reward" elements written into games we play and how we react to them.

This should have more replies, I've only read the first page of the article, but it's touching on something very important.

Especially as skinner boxes are totally fascinating, and I'm totally with Ponce Mc Braid man in thinking that games that act like them are pretty much exploiting people.

I'm pretty sure the cheevo whores don't enjoy being reminded of the dog-brain psychology that they've been exploited by and prefer to just enjoy their games in ignorance.

Doing something -> get reward - even if reward is just points, is fine.

Doing something -> small random chance of reward, however, is really what skinner boxes are about. That grinding in WoW and the like to get something, is designed to turn a game into something that can be played for years, by making people do the same thing again and again till it pays off. It makes people do things that aren't, on their own 'fun.'

YMMV of course.

Interesting article, that.



Reminds me of Diablo II (I've not played WoW). Some of the drop percentages become so ridiculous as you go through the game, you have to look for ways of improving your chances, by getting other rare items which have their own low drop rates. Personally, I used to play it for fun foremost but with a little of the obsessiveness needed to try and get the more interesting items. If you go too far that way, you just end up grinding the same bosses till they drop what you're after and there's no fun in that for me, regardless of the 'rewards'.

Indeed, when I played EvE, I pretty much did no PVE at all, after figuring that the players would have the shinier stuffs. The bit at the end of the article:



I found especially interesting.

Wow, what an interesting article! Great writing there as well. I found myself reading large parts of that aloud to Jen which is a sure sign I enjoyed it, and even better, she was interested as well!

The Skinner Box - do you get to play Deal Or Baddiel on it?

I'm not going to click on a topic if I think it's likely to include a picture of frank skinner in a box. Multiple times.
I don't know how I ended up in it, I didn't mean to.

Although having read it, it sums up why I want absolutely nothing to do with MMOs.

Equivalent of fruit machines, or maybe the later arcade machines which were designed to kill you quickly, but encourage you to keep putting in money so that the money you'd already put in wasn't wasted.

It's also interesting when talking about gratification and a sense of achievement to see how developers seek to subvert and undermine the very language used as a criticism of their products. Xbox 'achievement' points for example is a cruel label to describe activities that will one day be looked upon as a complete waste of precious time.

Yeah... saying that, I've just spent the morning playing Lips for points when I'm probably in the top 5% of worst singers in the world ever.

Funny you mentioned that. It was the topic of a talk given at GDC last week.

Mmmm, so if you are doing something only for the achievement you begin to hate the activity?

This would make sense looking at my friends list. There are a core group of players who used to be seen playing every new release at the end of each week. They would play it exhaustingly all day and most evenings for a week until the next release day brought another title. I am assuming a large motivator for this was the achievement system, as many of the games, by their own acknowledgment where poor. This has a knock on effect even on those who aren't motivated by achievements; if you want to continue to keep playing with your friends you need to buy the new release although the multiplayer element will only last as long as it takes to unlock the online achievements. As playing online was one of the things I enjoyed, I quickly stopped buying disc based games upon release as they would seem to become quickly redundant as a 'social game'.

How does this apply itself in real life? People work to earn money - they want the money more than the work. Thus because they see work as something they have to do, they begin to expect it to be a chore. Because they expect work be repetitive and in itself unrewarding, they are willing to continue to do jobs that fit that description. Employers would have little impetus to make the work place and the tasks involved interesting, inspiring or in anyway unusual as it is not what employees expect or indeed are being "paid for".

Applying this back to games, why would producers create games that are unusual , emotive or thought provoking? Surely what most players want are a predictable graded game path, with clear predetermined achievements structured around a familiar difficulty ladder? Great for those seeking to play games for their 'achievement's but the antithesis of a culture that is likely to produce fun or original games for what is now the fatally titled 'casual audience'.

A few months ago whilst playing GoW2 a random player sent me a text message. Expecting the usual abuse I was surprised to see it read "LOLZ 3 years and only 5000 achievement". I didn't feel the need to reply.

An excellent article there, cheers for sharing it.

Every time I read something about ZT Online I just can't get over the pure evil of it. Running a virtual casino where you never have to pay out actual money, just shiny little nothings. The management must be sitting in their gilded towers cackling all day long.