4 ms·

I think the reason is a combination of different aspects, with varying proportions of each for different people. I would agree that one of those aspects is sur

I think the reason is a combination of different aspects, with varying proportions of each for different people. I would agree that one of those aspects is surmounting obstacles. For me, and I would argue for the majority of hardcore Diablo players, the main aspect is market manipulation. It feels GOOD to buy cheap and sell, or find some inefficiency in the market and exploit and profit. Diablo is essentially the free market at its best and worst, and I find it amazingly addicting to go from rags to riches, and the power that comes with that. If you are rich enough, you can essentially create a niche market by yourself. There was this insanely rich guy on d2jsp that offered large amounts of currency for the most ridiculously bad items. This "make people do stuff for me" power is even apparent at lower levels of the heirarchy. I remember finally reaching "middle-class" status and going into trade games and offering somewhat valuable items to new players in exchange for them doing inane things like bringing me tedious (unnecessary) quest items, or answering trivia. Other aspects are pride in skill builds (I want to try this ridiculous skill build and show it's viable), showing off items ( through faster PvE, more wins in PvP, etc )... many more probably.

javajosh 14y ago
Aha! In a word: status. Status is such an interesting, and compelling, enticement for behavior. Even entirely synthetic status, like D3, has it's advocates. In that case, we can say that the dopamine spikes occur during status events. Perhaps that's D3's real problem - the dearth of status events. Perhaps PvP will sove that problem for ActiBlizzard. (Personally, I don't think I'm motivated by status events. I'm more motivated by puzzle solving, and although D3 has some puzzles, particularly in the meta-game, they aren't particularly compelling to me.)
- intended 14y ago
  I doubt status is the correct answer here. Firstly, you can't use a term like status and then apply it across the entire D3 player base. The edge cases here are complete player types which make a sizeable portion of the player base.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    I think that status correctly summarizes the incentive that the grand parent post describes. And from what I know about gamers I think he's onto something. It may be a more local status; e.g. within a close network of friends, but status is potent. If you do not want to apply it across the player base, fine. But one must provide an alternative, perhaps some partition across the base according to motivation. I'd be interested to see that from you.
    - intended 14y ago
      Well instead of seeing that from me, this link may help perhaps - http://chiproject.googlecode.com/files/cpb2E20062E92E772.pdf http://chiproject.googlecode.com/files/cpb2E20062E92E772.pdf Survey results of 3000 mmo gamers on what motivates them, Nick Yee.
      - javajosh 14y ago
        1. I don't see any results. Even the supplamentary link [http://www.nickyee.com/cpb-supp.html http://www.nickyee.com/cpb-supp.html] doesn't break down, say, top responses as fractions. 2. In the list of MMORPGs WoW is not listed. That seems strange, casting doubt on this study. 3. The word "status" is the 5th word in table 1. It's great that there are multiple motivations, but I'd like to see which motivations are most prominent in the sample. That is, are 80% motivated by achievement, 50% by social, and 40% immersion? (And note that in this case, the percentages don't need to add to 100).
        intended 14y ago
        It's an old sampling, and even with or without wow it makes no difference. As I have said elsewhere you can go to the dwarf fortress forums and you will find status to be a far lesser motivator than doing cool stuff. Gaming is studied pretty extensively nowadays, I pulled the first result you get for video games plus motivation. A few further google searches will help illuminate this further for you.
- deleted 14y ago
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javajosh 14y ago

Aha! In a word: status. Status is such an interesting, and compelling, enticement for behavior. Even entirely synthetic status, like D3, has it's advocates. In that case, we can say that the dopamine spikes occur during status events. Perhaps that's D3's real problem - the dearth of status events. Perhaps PvP will sove that problem for ActiBlizzard. (Personally, I don't think I'm motivated by status events. I'm more motivated by puzzle solving, and although D3 has some puzzles, particularly in the meta-game, they aren't particularly compelling to me.)

intended 14y ago
I doubt status is the correct answer here. Firstly, you can't use a term like status and then apply it across the entire D3 player base. The edge cases here are complete player types which make a sizeable portion of the player base.
- javajosh 14y ago
  I think that status correctly summarizes the incentive that the grand parent post describes. And from what I know about gamers I think he's onto something. It may be a more local status; e.g. within a close network of friends, but status is potent. If you do not want to apply it across the player base, fine. But one must provide an alternative, perhaps some partition across the base according to motivation. I'd be interested to see that from you.
  - intended 14y ago
    Well instead of seeing that from me, this link may help perhaps - http://chiproject.googlecode.com/files/cpb2E20062E92E772.pdf http://chiproject.googlecode.com/files/cpb2E20062E92E772.pdf Survey results of 3000 mmo gamers on what motivates them, Nick Yee.
    - javajosh 14y ago
      1. I don't see any results. Even the supplamentary link [http://www.nickyee.com/cpb-supp.html http://www.nickyee.com/cpb-supp.html] doesn't break down, say, top responses as fractions. 2. In the list of MMORPGs WoW is not listed. That seems strange, casting doubt on this study. 3. The word "status" is the 5th word in table 1. It's great that there are multiple motivations, but I'd like to see which motivations are most prominent in the sample. That is, are 80% motivated by achievement, 50% by social, and 40% immersion? (And note that in this case, the percentages don't need to add to 100).
      - intended 14y ago
        It's an old sampling, and even with or without wow it makes no difference. As I have said elsewhere you can go to the dwarf fortress forums and you will find status to be a far lesser motivator than doing cool stuff. Gaming is studied pretty extensively nowadays, I pulled the first result you get for video games plus motivation. A few further google searches will help illuminate this further for you.
deleted 14y ago
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