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I found this article to be an incredible read:
As a social science professor (and former psychotherapist), I can vouch for the science as well.
Very, very enlightening--and disturbing.
Comments
Exactly why I felt WoW and Diablo disgusting. Happen to both be from Blizzard. Blizzard knows how to make people addicted with instant rewards from repetitive actions. Reduces their need to create new content and increases players' playing hours. In my favorite MMORPG at the moment, EVE Online, I'm afraid they've come up with even possibly more intelligent system. People pay even when they don't play, we can't unsubscribe when we are taking a break from the game as our skills stop advancing. The ultimate example of this in my gaming career was when I played Runescape. I sat several hours straight at computer just making very simple actions, like click on water to start fishing or click on tree to start logging. This is why I left Darkfall pretty quickly. Do boring and repetitive tasks to become better at mindless PvP, which is based on FFA PvP reward mechanism, kill and you get rewards or die and lose everything. These are what some freethinkers would say, non-mindful actions.
Any kind of advancement and reward systems annoy me these days. Is it because I've come to better realization of my actions or am I just burned out by doing this stuff for thousands and thousands of hours? Bit of both, I guess.
Waiting on Xsyon & betaing stuff
I seriously hate grinding, I want my game to be fun, challenging, not a grind or clickfest, the truth is i dont mind if there isnt any real reward at the end of the mission. I play games to relax, to be part of the world community as i see it in these strange times. I am a techno geek in my RL, but i have served in war, i have seen real blood and death, I dont need to kill thousands of virtual creatures for a nebulous reward. I play simply because it relaxes me. Games that rely on trying to suck you in for hours of mindless grinding are not games, but some sort of wierd science experiment about mind control. Really if that is how wow works then i am glad i never played it. I do play SWG, even though i know it created grinding. Now it has tons of different things to do, so for now i am enjoying it.
repeated thread. and yeah, thats why I favour twitch based combat over standard RPG combat.
In the end the carrots might be the same, but as the article points people find pleasure in mastering something
twitch based lets you improve (and you notice it)
typical point-click-and-press-a-key is always, invariably, exactly the same.
For those of you who don’t have to time to read it all let me summarise.
In the old days they had to put you in a box:
Now you sit in front of the box and play it:
I have long been convinced that if a game maker included a brick in the game box, and awarded the best gear in their game for whoever cracked themselves in the skull with that brick 5,000 times, people would do it. Not only would they do it, some guy would boast of having done it first.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Rofl! Yeah, I'm sure you're right. Someone mentioned this is a repeat thread. Sorry for missing the other one. Gonna go look for it
Btw, I'm sure this doesn't just apply to the games referred to in the article. I'm thinking of others that have collections and a chance to win uber loot for an MMO every time you buy a booster pack for a related Trading Card Game. The booster pack uses the most powerful form of reinforcement (intermitent) and you have to pay real cash every time you try for the loot. It's kind of like a slot machine. People report pumping hundreds of dollars into this, just in the hope of winning a new vehicle. Nasty stuff.
I thought that was pretty blatant tbh. This article highlighted a much more widespread use of psychology to get at people's wallets.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/272034