General News - 5 Creepy Ways to Addiction
 

Cracked.com has an editorial on 5 creepy ways used by game developers to get us addicted to their games. Here is number 5: Putting you in a skinner box.
Thanks Zahratustra.
More information.

It's almost starting to resemble… television. Oh, the humanity.

People play subscription based games for the sake of acquiring an ever larger E-penis.

Shove that in your doctorate, Mr brain science

"We have reason to believe they use scanning techniques."

Isn't the whole concept of an RPG a Skinner's box? You're weak —> need to level up —> level up —> YES! I HAVE POWER!! —> your enemies scale —> you're weak —> need to level up …….

This sounds like rehashed material - there was a vid on the escapist about this very subject - fun vs addiction - about 2 years ago. It also talked about Skinner's box a lot.

The point of moving the whole industry into subscription model is plain wrong assumption. The industry just wishes to do that, consumers however refuse to accept. Once burned with wow, now everyone is careful with other subscription titles. Because the model worked for only a few games, today we have two other scandals - facebook grinding games with microtransactions and abusing your friendlist is one and another are so called free to play games in iPhone appstore that will strip hundreds of dollars from you if you're not careful what are you touching deliberately made that way so you can never give your smartphone to your kid unless you just want to get bankrupt.

No, I don't think the whole concept of an RPG is a skinner box. A skinner box is created for study of animals.

The RPG - originally - was about playing a role in a fantasy environment, where you could explore the world and yourself. Beyond that, it has elements of several genres. A good RPG tells a good story - with an outcome you can change according to your actions. It has both strategic and tactical gameplay - in the form of character development and combat. They also tend to include secrets and puzzles to challenge the mind in other ways.

Calling them skinner boxes is to misunderstand the genre and focus exclusively on those elements.

That said, we can agree that too many modern RPGs (MMORPGs specifically) tend to focus on "skinner box elements" more than the story or the roleplaying aspects. I think that's really sad - but it has nothing to do with the genre in itself.

As for modern developers in charge of big projects - they're not so much developers as they're publisher extensions. They're just working in a professional capacity to accomplish the goals set by the people who carry the investment.

The skinner box design blueprint is not created to get us addicted, it's nothing quite so malicious. It's there because it works and - primarily - because it's a very cheap way of extending the lifetime of a game. You don't have to invest much beyond the initial platform, which is why the model is so popular and widespread. I don't think publishers are cruel or that they really want to hypnotize us. They're just doing the human thing - which is to take the path of least resistance. They're businessmen, so they minimise effort and maxmise profit - and that's where the skinner box excels.

I repeat :
If games are Art,
then why do publishers treat them as Wares ?

Alrik, who ever said all games are art?
I find very hard to accept that DA2 is an art. Or Farmville. Or, if it matters, Angry Birds.
Hell, I'd say there is more art in Sven games than those I numbered. Hopefully, dartagnan will check at least this one:



;)

Because these publishers don't care for art, they just want to sell.

The same goes for their equivalents in all other arts: film corporations, record companies, tv channels, book publishers, galleries etc… some care to offer art, some only care to sell.


Base your perception of a work of art not on the person that sells it, but rather on its creator's intent, its audience's reaction and, above all of course, on the work itself.

—-

I found this article surprisingly interesting by the way.

This article only shows what's known for several years know. I'm not surprised at all.
"Cold coffee", (meaning : "old news"), as we say here in Germany.

art is being done by a handful of ppl, when you require millions budget to make art.. things get complicated

I played my share of EQ1, EQ2, and WoW. For me, the thrill of those games mostly came from the idea that I was in the same game world as thousands of other people. Particularly with EQ1… it was a massive novelty (to me) to be in a game world with thousands of other people, most strangers and a few actual real life friends.

But after about a decade of playing these kinds of games (moderatley) I've returned to my 'first love.' Single player RPGs. Less Grind, more story, more narrative, the absence of chat boxes filled with filthy nasty comments. And oh yes, the BIG one, I can save and stop whenever I want (for most single player RPGs anyway) without losing anything in-game or letting other people down. The whole idea that I can start and stop as I choose is HUGE for me.

Questing for power is an antithesis of role playing. Additionnally, players tasting to quest for power love that for the secure environment. The output's relation to input is safe and triggers anytime the player meets the requirements. It is transparent and the causation between effort and reward fully reliable.

In a RPG, this does not work this way: efforts are not forcefully rewarded. It is not transparent to the player. You cant compute your way up.

Maybe one cause players do not like to play RPGs. The environment is unsecure and you might spend hours without reaping anything else by the pleasure of roleplaying (which players do not like)

Not buying this article. He seems to be making a LOT of assumptions…. A game has one and only one objective. Doing something dull now to have more fun later is always bad. People can't possibly have fun doing the same thing more than once (so, if you run a dungeon more than once, you MUST be completely bored). Levelling up in MMOs gets slower at higher levels because they want you to become addicted (never mind that Dungeons & Dragons did the same thing).

He's got some good points in there regarding some of those Facebook "games" which are more of a psychology experiment than a game but he tries to generalize that to all MMOs - and that fails. Hard.

Building power is the fun players questing for power look for. The prospect of being powerful is fun. The security between effort and reward is also a guarantee that the fun to come exist.
Probably not.

A levelling up system is non essential to a a RPG.

It was introduced in the first RPGs to solve certain immediate issues.

Most RPGs of those days happened in a fictional world. Which were introduced for the first time.

The player, who lives in the real world, plays through an avatar who lives in the fictional world.

Immediate issue: how to close on the gap that exists between a player and her avatar?
By living in the fictional world, the avatar is expected to know of his own world while the player probably knows nothing of it.
How to get them to converge as the projection of the player into his avatar is required to get a good game experience?

One solution: get the avatar to be a full rookie in all terms possible. The farm boy who never left his farm and barely know who is the lord of his county.

As the avatar evolves in the world exterior to his farm, he is discovering it. Which is fine because the player's discovery parallels it and the player does the same through his avatar. Commonality of experience which makes it easier for the player to appropriate the avatar.
The gap is closed and the divergent situations erased.

Series like TES or TW have a similar introduction, prisoner or loss of memory. Everything to get the avatar on par with the player in terms of knowledge of the game world.

As to levelling up slower toward the end, simply mirroring what happens elsewhere. The first stages are fast progress while the latter stages are very slow or even decline (not well accepted by players seeking power and now nearly non existent in video gaming)

Author never says that all (or any) MMO try to fully implement Skinner's findings about behavioral controls but that most (if not all) MMOs use some of them.