http://www.flickr.com/photos/pe_ha45/1428040407/
Achievements
Achievements
Considered
Considered
Harmful?
Harmful?
Achievements Considered Harmful?
?
Achievements Considered Harmful
1. I am not a psychologist.
2. The psychologists don’t agree.
“Despite the seeming
objectivity of this technique,
these meta-analytic reviews
reached markedly different
conclusions.”
http://www.behavior.org/education/bhan-24-1-1.pdf
3. There are no direct studies.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion.html
Double Header Analysis: Xbox Live
Achievement Data and Intellectual
Property Trends in Video Games
Geoffrey Zatkin and Jesse Divnich, EEDAR
Friday 4:30pm — 5:30pm
Room 130, North Hall
Disclaimer: This lecture
is not about how to sell
more games.
Confession: I ignore
achievements while I’m
playing games.
Alfie Kohn
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
“Pop Behaviorism”
Daniel Pink @ TED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
numbingly repetitive
filled with anecdotes
blatantly biased agendas
ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious
(tn-dnshs)
adj.
Marked by a strong implicit point of
view; partisan: a tendentious account
of the recent elections.
But, they reference a lot of research.
However, it’s psychology research.
“On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is
to math as sex is to masturbation.”
http://xkcd.com/435/
fMRI
Let’s talk about the research…
The research shows that in
most cases, extrinsic
motivators are ineffective and
actually decrease intrinsic
motivation on interesting
tasks.
Studies covering…
drawing
puzzles
IQ tests
wearing seat belts
trying new foods
commissions & bonuses
reading books
etc.
Even thinking about rewards before task appears to do harm.
Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation
appears to be superior:
creativity
problem solving
quality
speed
Categories
tangible
verbal
symbolic
endogenous
exogenous
expected
unexpected
free-choice
self-reported
informational
controlling
taskcontingency
transitory
nonlong-lasting
engagementdull
completioninteresting performance-
Deci, Koestner, Ryan 1999
Deci, Koestner, Ryan 1999
Cameron, Banko, Pierce 2001
Skinner, 1953 - Deci, 1971 - 100’s of Others
…
Rummel and Feinberg, 1988
Wiersma, 1992
Cameron and Pierce, 1994
Tang and Hall, 1995
Eisenberger and Cameron, 1996
Deci, Koestner, Ryan, 1999
Cameron, Banko, Pierce, 2001
Hecker 1999
What they can agree on:
For interesting tasks,
1. Tangible, Expected,
Contingent Rewards
Reduce Free-Choice IM
2. Verbal, Unexpected,
Informational Feedback
Increases Free-Choice &
Self-Reported IM
Even just these two
results are huge.
How do they extend to games?
“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism”
Jesse Schell’s DICE 2010 Talk
“We don’t have any issues with rewards
that are even more tangible, like giving
your kid money for a straight-A report
card… as long as we are comfortable with
who is setting up the reward and what
criteria.” – Raph Koster
“Gameification”
Jane McGonigal
“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism”
“It would be brilliant if you got, say,
money credited to your PSN account
for finishing games - you know, a
real-life reward. That'd get you
playing.”
- Mike Jackson, CVG UK
“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism”
I’m not saying these people
are wrong. I don’t know.
I’m saying there is a lot of
data out there that implies
they might be very wrong,
and we need to study this to
keep our art form healthy.
Games are the only art and
entertainment form where
the opportunity and
mechanism for feedback is
built into the form itself.
Note: These results are for
“interesting tasks”.
I was going to present
the data for “dull tasks”…
Why are you making games?
If you’re intentionally making dull games with
variable ratio extrinsic motivators to separate
people from their money, you have my pity.
If you’re making intrinsically interesting games
and want to make them even better, be very
careful with extrinsic motivators.
Aristotle
virtue
ergon
Rousseau
amour-de-soi
amour-propre
Csikszentmihalyi
autotelic
The Nightmare Self-Fulfilling Scenario
1. make an intrinsically interesting
game, congratulations!
2. use extrinsic motivators to make
your game better
3. destroy intrinsic motivation to
play your game
4. metrics fetishism pushes you
towards designs where EM works
5. BONUS: women lose even more
IM than men do given EM!
Common Buts
Players like them!
Our data shows they work!
We make lots of money!
Just ignore them if you don’t
like them!
They show players different
way of playing!
But, Just Ignore Them!
But if all this research applies,
players who aren’t ignoring them
are (unwittingly) being affected
by this IM reduction, which
changes everything about the
play environment.
I used to play Gears of War on-line. That game had
a restriction where you couldn't get achievement
points for on-line play unless you played ranked
matches. I don't give a fuck about achievements,
but I had to play ranked matches all the time
anyways, because no good players would ever play
unranked. But of course, ranked matches don't
allow you to play with your friends, because that
might aid you in cheating, so, you'd have to do
ridiculous machinations to actually play a decent
game with your friends (like trying to narrow the
possible servers, then joining and unjoining games
before they started until you saw your friend pop up
on the board).
Casey Muratori
But, They Show Different Playstyles!
There is nothing that says
pointing out a potential
alternate playstyle needs
to be tied to a reward, and
it wasn’t, historically.
So, what’s my plan?
1. Hope somebody
publishes a study.
2. Hope they become
optional.
3. Follow some
guidelines…
SpyParty (prototype)
“Minimizing the Damage”
Don’t make a big fuss about them.
Use unexpected rewards.
Use absolute, not relative measures.
Use endogenous rewards.
Make them informational, not
controlling.
Kohn, p. 92
Call to Action!
The industry needs to start
studying the long term impact
of achievements on players.
Developers need to be better
versed in the literature and more
thoughtful about the consequences
of extrinsic motivators.
Thank you.
http://chrishecker.com