I was away on vacation and had a life event right after and, on top of that, there is another reason I haven't been keeping up on my three-a-week blog posts. I am still playing Black Ops 4 as my mainstay game and recently they have unleashed their version of the season pass. Even more so is an even shorter timer on the Halloween event. It's time limit like these that build scarcity and is a strong influence on decision making.
Scarcity is defined as the quality or state of being scarce (www.merriam-webster.com). Since humans place more value on things that are scarce rather then abundant it used in social influence and engineering. The mental shortcut of placing a high value on rare things is also called the scarcity heuristic (wikipedia.com). Games like Call of Duty, PUBG, and Fortnite have learned to take advantage of this scarcity heuristic with the season pass.
Even though they are just skins in a game, they carry a social value. The worth is gained by being able to display something other players cannot and so these companies have created their own scarcity with season passes that make some of these skins only available for a limited of time and then they are gone. The value of the skins further in the pass are then placed higher and the created value will compel the player to play more, in order to earn it. If you don't believe me, take a look at the skins people start using as soon as they can in Fortnite. The issue is most players don't have time to work through the whole pass.
Since the game developers created a problem they can create a solution. In Fortnite, and I am sure Call of Duty soon, you will be able to spend even more money to get these, because they are rare, and your mind says rare is worth it. Even outside of monetization Call of Duty is offering double points this weekend, which should inflate their player count.
I find it interesting just because I am knowledge and understand these manipulation principles but I still fall for them. It is absolutely compelling to play the game enough to keep up so then I can get all the unlocks, even though you have to average 4 tiers a day to do this, which can take me around an hour to an hour and a half to unlock a single tier. From what I am reading this is not out of the norm. This amount of time for anyone, save people working a 9-5 is ridiculous and obviously not meant to be attainable by the majority.
The best thing to remember is that these things, even if rare in-game, are just not that important. How far has your Halo 2 ranking gotten you in life? How often do you talk about it? Take this all with a grain of salt as I am most likely going to try to unlock all 200 tiers. Its an effective use of social manipulation.
Scarcity is defined as the quality or state of being scarce (www.merriam-webster.com). Since humans place more value on things that are scarce rather then abundant it used in social influence and engineering. The mental shortcut of placing a high value on rare things is also called the scarcity heuristic (wikipedia.com). Games like Call of Duty, PUBG, and Fortnite have learned to take advantage of this scarcity heuristic with the season pass.
Even though they are just skins in a game, they carry a social value. The worth is gained by being able to display something other players cannot and so these companies have created their own scarcity with season passes that make some of these skins only available for a limited of time and then they are gone. The value of the skins further in the pass are then placed higher and the created value will compel the player to play more, in order to earn it. If you don't believe me, take a look at the skins people start using as soon as they can in Fortnite. The issue is most players don't have time to work through the whole pass.
Since the game developers created a problem they can create a solution. In Fortnite, and I am sure Call of Duty soon, you will be able to spend even more money to get these, because they are rare, and your mind says rare is worth it. Even outside of monetization Call of Duty is offering double points this weekend, which should inflate their player count.
I find it interesting just because I am knowledge and understand these manipulation principles but I still fall for them. It is absolutely compelling to play the game enough to keep up so then I can get all the unlocks, even though you have to average 4 tiers a day to do this, which can take me around an hour to an hour and a half to unlock a single tier. From what I am reading this is not out of the norm. This amount of time for anyone, save people working a 9-5 is ridiculous and obviously not meant to be attainable by the majority.
The best thing to remember is that these things, even if rare in-game, are just not that important. How far has your Halo 2 ranking gotten you in life? How often do you talk about it? Take this all with a grain of salt as I am most likely going to try to unlock all 200 tiers. Its an effective use of social manipulation.
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