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So, the headlines say somebody else has died due to video game addiction. Yes, it's Korea again. What the hell? Look, I'm not saying video games are heroin. I totally get that the victims had other shit going on in their lives. But, half of you reading this know a World of Warcraft addict and experts say video game addiction is a thing. So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it? Oh, hell yes. And their methods are downright creepy. #5.
Putting You in a Skinner Box
If you've ever been addicted to a game or known someone who was, this article is really freaking disturbing. It's written by a games researcher at Microsoft on how to make video games that hook players, whether they like it or not. He has a doctorate in behavioral and brain sciences. Quote: "Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players." Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."
His theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets. Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box.
This sort of thing caused games researcher Nick Yee to once call Everquest a "Virtual Skinner Box." So What's The Problem? Gaming has changed. It used to be that once they sold us a $50 game, they didn't particularly care how long we played. The big thing was making sure we liked it enough to buy the next one. But the industry is moving toward subscription-based games like MMO's that need the subject to keep playing--and paying--until the sun goes supernova.
Now, there's no way they can create enough exploration or story to keep you playing for thousands of hours, so they had to change the mechanics of the game, so players would instead keep doing the same actions over and over and over, whether they liked it or not. So game developers turned to Skinner's techniques. This is a big source of controversy in the world of game design right now. Braid creator Jonathan Blow said Skinnerian game mechanics are a form of "exploitation." It's not that these games can't be fun. But they're designed to keep gamers subscribing during the periods when it's not fun, locking them into a repetitive slog using Skinner's manipulative system of carefully scheduled rewards. Why would this work, when the "rewards" are just digital objects that don't actually exist? Well... #4.
Creating Virtual Food Pellets For You To Eat
Most addiction-based game elements are based on this fact: Your brain treats items and goods in the video game world as if they are real. Because they are. People scoff at this idea all the time ("You spent all that time working for a sword that doesn't even exist?") and those people are stupid. If it takes time, effort and skill to obtain an item, that item has value, whether it's made of diamonds, binary code or beef jerky.
That's why the highest court in South Korea ruled that virtual goods are to be legally treated the same as real goods. And virtual goods are now a $5 billion industry worldwide. There's nothing crazy about it. After all, people pay thousands of dollars for diamonds, even though diamonds do nothing but look pretty. A video game suit of armor looks pretty and protects you from video game orcs. In both cases you're paying for an idea.
So What's The Problem? Of course, virtually every game of the last 25 years has included items you can collect in the course of defeating the game--there's nothing new or evil about that. But because gamers regard in-game items as real and valuable on their own, addiction-based games send you running around endlessly collecting them even if they have nothing to do with the game's objective. It is very much intentional on the developers' part, an appeal to our natural hoarding and gathering instincts, collecting for the sake of collecting. It works, too, just ask the guy who kept collecting items even while naked boobies sat just feet away. Boobies. As the article from the Microsoft guy proves, developers know they're using these objects as pellets in a Skinner box. At that point it's all about... #3.
Making You Press the Lever
So picture the rat in his box. Or, since I'm one of these gamers and don't like to think of myself as a rat, picture an adorable hamster. Maybe he can talk, and is voiced by Chris Rock.
If you want to make him press the lever as fast as possible, how would you do it? Not by giving him a pellet with every press--he'll soon relax, knowing the pellets are there when he needs them. No, the best way is to set up the machine so that it drops the pellets at random intervals of lever pressing. He'll soon start pumping that thing as fast as he can. Experiments prove it.
They call these "Variable Ratio Rewards" in Skinner land and this is the reason many enemies "drop" valuable items totally at random in WoW. This is addictive in exactly the same way a slot machine is addictive. You can't quit now because the very next one could be a winner. Or the next. Or the next.
The Chinese MMO ZT Online has the most devious implementation of this I've ever seen. The game is full of these treasure chests that may or may not contain a random item and to open them, you need a key. How do you get the keys? Why, you buy them with real-world money, of course. Like coins in a slot machine. Wait, that's not the best part. ZT Online does something even the casinos never dreamed up: They award a special item at the end of the day to the player who opens the most chests.
Now, in addition to the gambling element, you have thousands of players in competition with each other, to see who can be the most obsessive about opening the chests. One woman tells of how she spent her entire evening opening chests--over a thousand--to try to win the daily prize. She didn't. There was always someone else more obsessed. So What's The Problem? Are you picturing her sitting there, watching her little character in front of the chest, clicking dialogue boxes over and over, watching the same animation over and over, for hour after hour?
If you didn't know any better, you'd think she had a crippling mental illness. How could she possibly get from her rational self to that Rain Man-esque compulsion? BF Skinner knew. He called that training process "shaping." Little rewards, step by step, like links in a chain. In WoW you decide you want the super cool Tier 10 armor. You need five separate pieces. To get the full set, you need more than 400 Frost Emblems, which are earned a couple at a time, from certain enemies. Then you need to upgrade each piece of armor with Marks of Sanctification. Then again with Heroic Marks of Sanctification. To get all that you must re-run repetitive missions and sit, clicking your mouse, for days and days and days. Boobies be damned.
Once it gets to that point, can you even call that activity a "game" anymore? It's more like scratching a rash. And it gets worse... |
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At least Garry's Mod doesn't have an "instant gratification" system, you just get to build stuff.
What is a game?
A miserable pile of secrets!
....I am 100% positive i'm not the first person to say this, but it's the first thing i thought of when I read that.
I can find alot of truth in this article. When i was still in school, i played video games for at least three hours a day. Hell, I did anything i could to distract myself from Elementary School and High School (middle school was actually okay for me). After I graduated, I got a landscaping job. I CONSTANTLY had my game boy with me to play in between lawns. The job was repetitive, but paid well enough.
Then, i got a job at my mall selling smoothies. The job was great at first, but about three months in, it started getting to me. Perhaps my small pay had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was my 55 hour work week. Either way, I used video games to fill a void; to "distract" me so to speak.
After a year of working in the mall, I got a new job pushing carts at Food Lion. About five months in, I read this article and realized how correct it is. I haven't played video games as often as I used to; about three days a week tops. This is because my job satisfies:
Autonomy (I don't always do the same things every day nor do I do them in the same order every day)
Complexity (I look at every day as a challenge; some days are busy and some are not)
Connection between effort and reward (I clean the floors on most of my shifts thus get to admire my work)
Conclusion: this is hands down one of THE best articles on Cracked. great analysis and disturbingly true.
The social aspect is also important to WoW and actually reinforces the Skinner box side. Why would you grind hours for a prize or a fancy piece of armor if you have no friends to show it off to, or guildmates that set high gear requirements for raids?
Great Article. I noticed this since I started playing my first MMO, but I dont fall for the BS. I play while its fun, then im gone until I feel like playing again. My rule of thumb is if a game starts to feel like work, then its time to stop playing, I simply refuse to grind. Some might say I want my reward right away but the fact is games should be played for fun, not for being a second full time job.
Im always amazed at what I term the 'weak minded fools' who fall for this and let it consume their lives to such a degree they forget it is a game and even get upset at the people who just want to kick back and have fun instead of taking it as seriously as them.
Its really sad you have people stuck in the skinner box, and to make it worse defend it as if they were defending Jesus (aka Fanbots).
ok i get it but what seems to be the problem. take it out of gaming. thats how society is built.
best part about Wong's articles, is they all convey a deeper truth than just being funny. every time i read one, i take a step back and say, holy f**k, that was some real s**t. then i laugh, because his name is so close to wang.
pretty much any mmorpg is just a game of virtual scavenger hunt. thats pretty much what it all boils down to. if you like spending hours finding random s**t based on sheer luck, then games like WOW are for you.
I never got chronically addicted to WoW. I bought prepaid game cards never sustained my account for more than two months in a row, after which I'd leave it for six months or more before picking it up again.
I never played with a guild. Perhaps that's the real reason. There's no point trying to earn that fancy armor if you have no guildmates to show it off to, or raids with stringent gear requirements.
When will we see a good MMO that embraces mucking around a lot? I get more fun out of Just Cause 2 and GTA4 than WoW.
Well, what can I say. I tried to play mmorpg, I immediately saw what was behind them (which is what this article describes), I found them extremely boring, and I left.
This article explains the mechanism, which I had already guessed myself... but it doesn't explain how can some people REALLY fall for it.
This was an eye-opener. I myself play MMO's, and admit to having a tendency to hoard-I'm glad to know that it's simply a natural human tendency at least. I quit WoW for several of the reasons above-I could never bring myself to grind for levels. I could sometimes farm for gold, but I had far more fun researching the best way of doing it at my (low) level and making a lot of it quickly. Once I realized that I was going nowhere fast, I quit-I haven't looked back once.
I play RuneScape (have for seven years) and EVE Online now. I play EVE for the company, since the gameplay isn't the greatest-I rather like my corporation. That, combined with the ability to raise skills without being logged in (I haven't logged in in three days and have almost finished training shield operations to level 5), makes it worthwhile to me. RuneScape is more typical as an MMO, but, unlike WoW, it lets you do whatever you please, whenever you please (no professions). This element of choice is primarily what's kept me playing that game.
In short: I recognize that I'm in a cage, but accept it, and just play with moderation. I think a lot of people feel obligated to play some games because they're paying for them already-it's a vicious cycle. You want to get the most for your money, so you play for hours each night, which then makes you more involved in the game come the next payment period.
really got me thinking...been lucky enough not to get on WOW, but still play some of those dumb zynga games...real time suck, but no real benefit.
I like Aendil's suggestion to replace the addiction with something else worthwhile like sports. I wouldn't actually call a healthy interest in sports an addiction, if you're making friends and building a team. I think that's what makes it different from being addicted to anything - addictions will bust your friendships up.
People are just naturally prone to addiction. It should be pretty obvious that a game developer does anything in their power to keep you playing, but it's not like they're forcing a game unto you, they're simply filling a void in you that you let them fill out of convenience.
If you aren't playing a game, you'll be collecting stamps, or watching TV, or following a sport religiously, or collecting dolls, or sewing a quilt, or doing drugs, or going to the bar. If it isn't one thing, it WILL be another.
I cant beleive it, pokemon is my favorite game of all time, I didnt want to believe it, but this article does apply to the entire series. Now I'll never look at a pokemon game the same way again.
Here's a bit of instant gratification for you, David Wong. I simply admire this article. You have no idea what how it just changed me. I expected this to be mildly entertaining, poking fun at the world of gamers... but it's actually a eye-opener. I play treasure isle on facebook. The other day, while playing, I asked myself why I was playing it. It was pointless opening treasure chest to get items to trade in for cash to decorate an island with stupid little virtual items. It's the addictive tactics you mention. I don't enjoy it at all... it's the reward portion. I'm deleting the app as soon as I'm done with this comment.
Bravo, I highly commend you for this article.
Also the graphics look retarded
I have several friends who play WoW pretty regularly, and they eventually wore me down enough to actually start playing. I had the included 30 or whatever days, plus my cousin gave me a card for another 60 that he had. I played a few times a week for those three months, and haven't played it since then. I know what games are doing to make me want to play them, but the whole reward scheme isn't enough for me if what I'm doing for the reward is not fun in and of itself. The entire time I felt more like a spectator than a player, and it really wasn't worth paying to keep playing.
i like how there is an add for a "social strategy game" at the end of the article. the monkeys at zynga must have to read these doctrines daily to keep us clicking away constantly in mafia wars. i think my gaming days are over! well, over until the Star Wars Old Republic MMO comes out!
#3 I think the addictiveness of random rewards is actually related to skill mastery.
To master a skill, we must practice the task, which means "try, try again" after every screw-up. Once you can produce a good result reliably, it means you've mastered the skill and don't need to practice anymore. You're brain picks up on this and cuts off the reward flow.
Or maybe it's related to hoarding? Psychologists have noticed that taxi drivers display similar behavior. The set themselves daily quotas. When passengers are hard to come by, they will work overtime to make their quota. When passengers are easy to come by, they will go home early once they've met their quota. The rational response would be the opposite: quit early on a slow day, work overtime on a fast day. I've also heard that Eskimos will force their children to eat up whatever food is presented to them, even going to far as to physically push food down the throats off reluctant youngsters, because the next meal could be days away.
...as much as I hate to say it, this article may have just changed my life.
Lol, it's a guinea Pig... Oh yeah
@AgnosticBaptist, YOU RACIST BASTARDS!!! STOP SAYING THAT JAPANESE HAVE SHITTY EYESIGHT!!! YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT CHINA!!! JUST INFORMING YOU THAT THERE ARE MORE OPEN-EYED JAPANESE PEOPLE THAN SINKIT (As we Filipinos call it) JAPANESE PEOPLE!!!
Japanese or not, the guy who wrote this was a genius... except for mistaking a hamster for a guinea Pig... But that's not the point. But being a gamer myself, I don't really see these elements in myself, but rather on my addicted classmates. But this article ain't gonna stop me from gaming. And I doubt anyone will stop. This guy is just informing that gaming is like this or that. And I agree with him. But it's not like I'm gonna follow him. ^^
He's a troll, don't mind him. He's writing that comment to make sure that someone screams at him, because for some insane reason it makes him feel smart. And David Wong is neither David nor Wong, that's his artistic name. He's actually named Jason Pargin.