Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Saeviomagy]

Morrus is saying, "Status's suck and they make the game unfun for the players because they force the player to actually or effectively lose a turn (extending the wait between action and reward).

According to your own argument, there's no difference in the action reward cycle for recovering from a save-ends stun and attacking a foe. Removing them from the game doesn't change the cycle at all, and does, in fact, simply add more non-pavlovian enjoyment: the enjoyment of taking meaningful choices.

I know I keep coming back to this one, but so do you, and it's really not fitting in with the rest of your argument.

 

[amysrevenge]

Whew! Just read the whole thread to here in one go (and have delayed bedtime by about an hour to do so!)

It took about half the thread, but I think I understand the premise of the OP, and can see where some people are arguing things that are not quite what is being aimed at here.

Looking at it from a scientist/engineer perspetive, my biggest problem is with the way that the trend of shorter-cycle gratification has been extrapolated.

The argument seems to me to be thus: the reward cycle is shorter now than is was before, ergo it will continue to get shorter until it is effectively infinitely short, or at least is so short as to lose value to a large number of participants (ie. shorter besomes shortest, and shortest is too short).

To my eye, that is only one way of extrapolating "shorter".

For poops and chuckles I whipped out a fancy graph to show what I mean. I realize that this is quantifying what is ultimately a qualitative factor, but humour me - I'm not assuming any sort of actual units here, only a sort of relative measure. I literally fudged with numbers until I found lines that looked how I liked.

The blue line represents the "shorter -> shortest -> too short" line of reasoning.

The red line, however, represents a sort of "diminishing returns" sort of decay in the duration of the reward cycle. Sure it's always getting shorter, but the incremental decay is smaller each time, until, if designed well, it reaches a stable "shorter" that might actually result in a fun and marketable game.

 

[Celebrim]

According to your own argument, there's no difference in the action reward cycle for recovering from a save-ends stun and attacking a foe.

Ok, first of all no. According to my argument there is no difference in the action/reward cycle between failing to recover from a debilitating status that forces you to lose a turn and taking an action which results in failure. In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player. In both cases, the ego gamer likely does it unhappily.

Removing them from the game doesn't change the cycle at all, and does, in fact, simply add more non-pavlovian enjoyment: the enjoyment of taking meaningful choices.

I basically agree. Removing both status effects that debilitated a character and misses from the game would in fact add more immediate gratification to the ego gamer. Both are sources of irritation and frustration. He doesn't like to miss. He doesn't like to be stunned. Both 'suck'.

My point in comparing the situation where you are stunned to the situation where your turn was pointless because you accomplished nothing was to bring up the fact that you couldn't solve the problem by simply getting rid of 'stunned', because there would be similar situations that would annoy the sort of player who was particularly annoyed by being stunned. I predicted that it wouldn't stop at 'getting rid of statuses'. I predicted that quite quickly there would be a demand for 'getting rid of misses', and that prediction was born out very quickly when someone pointed out a thread where they were discussing that very thing.

In fact, my assertion is that where all of this ends is 'getting rid of failure'. The only way to tie the action/reward system tightly enough to satisfy the ego gamer is to make every action give a reward. In a video game, at some level thats easy enough. Every action is accompanied by satisfying sounds, bells, flashing lights, and so forth. When the player is playing a game like Diablo II, he plays for hours on end, perhaps for days of time, usually with no chance of meaningful failure at all. In fact, in a game like Diablo II, failure is defined down to a less than perfectly satisfying reward of treasure. All that activity on the screen gives a small mental reward for the action and keeps the player engaged despite the repetitiveness of the activity. Eventually though, by defining failure down far enough, you can destroy your illusion of accomplishment.

 

[amysrevenge]

The only way to tie the action/reward system tightly enough to satisfy the ego gamer is to make every action give a reward.

Press the button, get a food pellet.

 

[Garthanos]

Ok, first of all no. According to my argument there is no difference in the action/reward cycle between failing to recover from a debilitating status that forces you to lose a turn and taking an action which results in failure. In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player. In both cases, the ego gamer likely does it unhappily.

Somebody can very much dislike the feel of choiceless-ness of the first without disliking the second at all...people rejecting the choiceless non-participation does not make them insisting on success... and from what I can tell feel insulted that you imply they are your "ego-gamers"

Note its possible to have your character be in a disabled state without being as a player disabled(lacking choices) for instance via meta tools the player may have a choice to play an Action Point or Karma/Fate point to influence the action. They might be able to spend it to improve there characters recovery or influence the action via luck so that an ally can safely reach them or similar things.

 

[SKyOdin]

You know, most of this thread's argument is based on the assumption that there are gamers out there who only play in order to experience a constant barrage of instant gratification and immediate rewards in terms of victories and loot. But do those gamers actually exist? So far, this is all empty theorizing based on assumptions that merely sound like they could be true. Numerous people, most notably Freud, have created theories about human psychology that have sounded good, but were simply wrong. A psychological theory needs some kind of evidence in order to be validated, and I don't think many of the people in this thread actually have any scientific evidence to base their theorizing on.

Let's look at the XEODesign study I linked to earlier in the thread. For the sake of convience, you can find it here. The study focused on videogames, but since we are talking about instant gratification in videogames, it is completely relevent. In that study, they found four main reasons that gamers play videogames. These are:

1) Hard Difficulty
Overcoming challenges and Frustration in order to experience Fiero, the pride of achievement.
2) Easy Difficulty
Becoming immersed in a world or story. Associated with the emotions Wonder, Awe, and Mystery.
3) Altered States
Playing games in order to relax or to enjoy tan adrenaline rush. Characterized by Relief and Excitement.
4) The People Factor
Playing games in order to partake in social experiences. This can include joking with friends, watching someone you taught how to play do well, or gloating over defeated rivals.

Nowhere in the study did they mention people playing in order to receive some kind of instant gratification or something as nebulous as "the illusion of achievement". I think both of those concepts are just things people have made up in order to justify the behavior of other people that they don't like or understand.

 

[Ariosto]

What Garthanos mentioned -- simply switching to a different but no smaller set of options when a PC is indisposed -- might well suffice, I think, for players who see a critical distinction between the one situation and the other.

To keep suggesting that a demographic that sees them as the same, and can be satisfied only with abolition of "failure" in every sense, is driving game design appears to me so far unwarranted.

It does not follow that such a demographic is nonexistent. I wonder, though, with what frequency it has appeared in this very thread, and what that might suggest?

 

[Fifth Element]

In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player.

Dude, you let other players touch your dice? Wow.

 

[Starfox]

Somebody can very much dislike the feel of choiceless-ness of the first without disliking the second at all...people rejecting the choiceless non-participation does not make them insisting on success... and from what I can tell feel insulted that you imply they are your "ego-gamers"

Give the thesis a break. The thread is about a theorized "ego gamer" that reacts in certain way and claims that this playstyle is on the rise and getting attention from gamemakers. Of course there are still many players that are not "ego gamer", or are so to a lesser degree. That does not disprove the thesis.

I suppose that in a fluid market, an identified target group can be pretty small and it can still be worth pandering to, because customer types are so difficult to pin down. The sales people at WotC have to try and identify trends and play by them, even if they are seemingly weak, because a weak trend still gives better direction than no trend analysis at all.

 

[Starfox]

Let's look at the XEODesign study [...] Nowhere in the study did they mention people playing in order to receive some kind of instant gratification or something as nebulous as "the illusion of achievement". I think both of those concepts are just things people have made up in order to justify the behavior of other people that they don't like or understand.

A good read on this topic: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com