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Supposedly, if the rewards are randomly reinforced, they will be more addictive. Ie., if the same action sometimes creates positive feedback and sometimes negat
by ssp 17y ago
Supposedly, if the rewards are randomly reinforced, they will be more addictive. Ie., if the same action sometimes creates positive feedback and sometimes negative, people will keep coming back because they are looking forward to the positive ones and can't predict when they will happen.
I don't know whether it works in practice though.
- ElliotH 17y agoYou can see real world examples like slot-machines.
- rubinelli 17y agoI read an article on Gamasutra a long time ago about this kind of experiment with mice (sadly, my google-fu was weak.) The researchers compared how much effort mice would put into pushing a lever N times to get food vs. pushing a lever that had a 1/N chance of giving food. What they saw was that, if they had a fixed goal, their "motivation" would follow a seesaw pattern: right after they got their prize, they would ignore the lever for a while, but when they were a few pushs from getting food, they would go nuts on it. The random lever got constant attention at a higher average. The author translated this to Diablo: the player has leveling up, which is a fixed, visible goal that the player can strive for, and random equipment drops, that keep him hooked even when other incentives are one or two hours away. Another game to consider: Civilization. I know you all experienced the just-one-more-turn, why-are-birds-chirping-outside effect. It does it by interleaving minor and major goals in different areas, so you don't have motivation valleys, only peak after peak.