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I've played mobile games where the option to pay just gets your through the game faster, and in my experience, if the game is any fun, why would I want to spend

I've played mobile games where the option to pay just gets your through the game faster, and in my experience, if the game is any fun, why would I want to spend money to be able to play it less? But if people want that, I guess it's OK. On the other hand, if the game requires endless grinding, and let's face it, a lot of these games are really just tedious work with a reward system built in, with little or no strategy or even decision making (beyond to play or not play), and you are literally paying to avoid drudgery. I've tried plenty of games where I soon realized it was nothing more than working towards a reward, and there was literally no "game" to it. Well, if playing the game is drudgery, then it's not a good game. At this point, I would say the market should sort things out, but that doesn't appear to be working. People are clearly playing these games and getting hooked on them. So, yeah, I agree with you... it's the Skinner box we need to discourage, but that's not always a black-and-white thing, because hard work and accomplishment, with the rewards that provide, are very similar in many ways. Ultimately, the Skinner box is an attempt to simulate the process of working hard to accomplish something and receiving the rewards for it without the whole "providing an engaging and challenging experience" aspect. It's exploiting a human instinct and subverting it in a harmful way.

naravara 8y ago
>So, yeah, I agree with you... it's the Skinner box we need to discourage, but that's not always a black-and-white thing, because hard work and accomplishment, with the rewards that provide, are very similar in many ways. Ultimately, the Skinner box is an attempt to simulate the process of working hard to accomplish something and receiving the rewards for it without the whole "providing an engaging and challenging experience" aspect. It's exploiting a human instinct and subverting it in a harmful way. Yeah it's a tough issue to handle. The Spider-Man PS4 game, for example, uses the "here's a checklist, go do the thing and get a reward" model too. But I hesitate to call it a "skinner-box" because usually the goal is just an excuse to have fun web-slinging across the city and to play with the combat, which is the actual rewarding thing about the game. The gratification, in that case, comes from performing the task rather than from having finished it. So it really does come down to how you implement it. Whether the goals and rewards are there as a framework to have fun in, or whether they're presented as a barrier you need to clear to find fun on the other side.

naravara 8y ago

>So, yeah, I agree with you... it's the Skinner box we need to discourage, but that's not always a black-and-white thing, because hard work and accomplishment, with the rewards that provide, are very similar in many ways. Ultimately, the Skinner box is an attempt to simulate the process of working hard to accomplish something and receiving the rewards for it without the whole "providing an engaging and challenging experience" aspect. It's exploiting a human instinct and subverting it in a harmful way. Yeah it's a tough issue to handle. The Spider-Man PS4 game, for example, uses the "here's a checklist, go do the thing and get a reward" model too. But I hesitate to call it a "skinner-box" because usually the goal is just an excuse to have fun web-slinging across the city and to play with the combat, which is the actual rewarding thing about the game. The gratification, in that case, comes from performing the task rather than from having finished it. So it really does come down to how you implement it. Whether the goals and rewards are there as a framework to have fun in, or whether they're presented as a barrier you need to clear to find fun on the other side.