There is a lot of talk about look crates recently and I have said my piece about it already. That being said one thing that is brought up from time to time is what is known in psychology as a Skinner Box. This comes from a foundational experiment in operant conditioning performed by B.F. Skinner where we began to learn about conditioning in all animals, humans not exempt. What you find is that the experiment is not only related to just loot boxes but to a lot of mechanics that games have adopted. At its fundamental level, it is what drives us to continue to perform certain actions in the expectation of receiving some reward thus reinforcing that action.
An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior.(Wikipedia) The idea is to train an animal that a certain action will cause a behavior and you can reinforce that response with rewards. For example getting a pigeon to a circle by reinforcing behavior every time it begins to do what you require. By simply reinforcing the actions with a reward you can manipulate a subject to behave in a way you wish.
This effect works on humans as well. As I wrote about in the last time I talked about loot boxes, they are designed to elicit an emotional response that reinforces the action of opening them. The gratification from getting an item, especially those labeled as more valuable than others, gives a sense of accomplishment or pleasure. After a while, you can take away the reward and the subject will behave in the same way as they have been conditioned to it long after the reward is gone. One example of this when people push buttons on elevators. Even when pushing it multiple times it will not cause a different response in the programming or speed of an elevator. This does not matter because to the people doing this are conditioned to the thought "if I press button doors open".
Loot boxes are not the only part of a game that elicits this response. Achievements are being placed in games because they are also reinforcing the behavior. For example, the daily logins that inundate recent games are there to get you to make a habit of logging in. By getting a reward on the simple action of just entering into the game, you are being trained to do just that in the hopes you stay around and play. The idea is to get you to open the app as soon as you see a notification, whether you are actively thinking about it or not.
Outside of video games, you see that the companies that have pulled this off the best are social media. Facebook has designed themselves to be something that people absent-mindedly open. The reward here is likes on our comments. It's knowing that if we say something on the medium we will immediately get validation through social approval, thus it keeps us continuing the action. The best part for Facebook is that not all messages are received the same so you will have randomised rewards, which actually were found to work far better than consistent rewards.(Wikipedia)
There is the argument to that games are simply just designed around this idea of operant conditioning. That we buy these games because we have been trained to the response of success on these games. This to me is too broad because there seems to be much more going on than just a trained reaction. When you look into what pushes video game addiction you find that it has a lot to do with life fulfillment issues. I am not saying we all have this issue but there is pleasure derived from games on more than just repeating some action. While mechanics that illicit conditioning can be put in games themselves, games as a whole are not a conditioned response.
It's important that people know and realize what operant conditioning is and how some developers leverage this to push people to make purchasing decisions. You will hear the idea of a Skinner Box as a shortcut to relay this idea. Good or bad this is something that is growing in the industry. It's also something to be aware of.
An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior.(Wikipedia) The idea is to train an animal that a certain action will cause a behavior and you can reinforce that response with rewards. For example getting a pigeon to a circle by reinforcing behavior every time it begins to do what you require. By simply reinforcing the actions with a reward you can manipulate a subject to behave in a way you wish.
This effect works on humans as well. As I wrote about in the last time I talked about loot boxes, they are designed to elicit an emotional response that reinforces the action of opening them. The gratification from getting an item, especially those labeled as more valuable than others, gives a sense of accomplishment or pleasure. After a while, you can take away the reward and the subject will behave in the same way as they have been conditioned to it long after the reward is gone. One example of this when people push buttons on elevators. Even when pushing it multiple times it will not cause a different response in the programming or speed of an elevator. This does not matter because to the people doing this are conditioned to the thought "if I press button doors open".
Loot boxes are not the only part of a game that elicits this response. Achievements are being placed in games because they are also reinforcing the behavior. For example, the daily logins that inundate recent games are there to get you to make a habit of logging in. By getting a reward on the simple action of just entering into the game, you are being trained to do just that in the hopes you stay around and play. The idea is to get you to open the app as soon as you see a notification, whether you are actively thinking about it or not.
Outside of video games, you see that the companies that have pulled this off the best are social media. Facebook has designed themselves to be something that people absent-mindedly open. The reward here is likes on our comments. It's knowing that if we say something on the medium we will immediately get validation through social approval, thus it keeps us continuing the action. The best part for Facebook is that not all messages are received the same so you will have randomised rewards, which actually were found to work far better than consistent rewards.(Wikipedia)
There is the argument to that games are simply just designed around this idea of operant conditioning. That we buy these games because we have been trained to the response of success on these games. This to me is too broad because there seems to be much more going on than just a trained reaction. When you look into what pushes video game addiction you find that it has a lot to do with life fulfillment issues. I am not saying we all have this issue but there is pleasure derived from games on more than just repeating some action. While mechanics that illicit conditioning can be put in games themselves, games as a whole are not a conditioned response.
It's important that people know and realize what operant conditioning is and how some developers leverage this to push people to make purchasing decisions. You will hear the idea of a Skinner Box as a shortcut to relay this idea. Good or bad this is something that is growing in the industry. It's also something to be aware of.
Comments
Post a Comment