5 ms·

Exposing Social Gaming's Hidden Lever

55 points by chgriffin 15y ago

munificent 15y ago
"To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game." A while back when I was working on a roguelike (i.e. dungeon crawl RPG) I stumbled onto the same realization: assured incremental improvement + random chance for something awesome = addictive gameplay. This is how almost every RPG works at its core: every battle ends with a little guaranteed experience and gold plus a small random chance of an awesome loot drop.
- davidtyleryork 15y ago
  Nice comment, this is almost exactly how World of Warcraft works as well. There's always some awesomely epic item that rarely drops from even the easiest of raid bosses
- Natsu 15y ago
  Yeah, that wand of wishing that drops off of some random orc is always fun. Though things get a little bit easy once you get your two blessed scrolls of charging, blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card, blessed Orb of Fate, blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail, and whatever else you can wish up from the remaining charges.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Y'know, I think most roguelikes are a bit more respectable than the pure super-optimized Skinner boxes that Zynga and Blizzard produce. Why? Because you die. A lot. And when you die, you need to start all over again. And you make progress further and further into the dungeon on successive games, by learning from your mistakes and honing your strategy. And if you don't learn, you don't progress. Contrast to WoW, where (as I understand it without having ever played it) death is merely a mild inconvenience, and you forever level up and up and up just by grinding away at it -- getting to the highest level is largely just a matter of being patient.
  - davidtyleryork 15y ago
    Well look at both Zynga and Blizzard games. They are super accessible and casual friendly. Dying is an inconvenience in Blizzard games, as you said, or isn't even possible in Zynga's games (even the competitive ones like Empires & Allies)
    - hugh3 15y ago
      Sorry, I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me anywhere?
      - davidtyleryork 15y ago
        No, I didnt :)
- Androsynth 15y ago
  In MMORPG's the rewards are a big motivating factor for playing, but they're not the only factor. WoW still has very well designed game mechanics that are fun on their own. Learning (ie advancing up the learning curve) and decision making play a big role in having fun in RPG's. These are also true game mechanics (meaning they're fun without reward mechanisms). On one end of the spectrum would be a game like Team Fortress 2, which is fun because of it's mechanics; on the other end of the spectrum is a Zynga game that is fun for the reward mechanisms. WoW, and other RPG's would be somewhere in the middle.
  - sbov 15y ago
    There's even a range within RPGs itself. E.g. I would say that Diablo is about at the same spot in that scale as Zynga games are.
dcadenas 15y ago
Very interesting, it's the same mechanism behind email/Twitter addiction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addiction http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addic...
- chgriffin 15y ago
  And Facebook's wall
- stephth 15y ago
  Nice catch. "Random Reward Schedule" and "variable interval reinforcement schedule" look like different names for the same concept, but looking closer the former seems to cover both time and reward, and the latter focuses on the time component. Am I reading this correctly?
zerostar07 15y ago
Happily implementing the intermittent rewards pattern in my games too.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
username3 15y ago
What's VR, FR, VI, FI? Variable/Fixed ratio/interval http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_reinforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_rein...
- davidtyleryork 15y ago
  Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I added it to the post.
steve8918 15y ago
I think this article is ridiculous. "The biggest thing that unequivocally separates social gaming from gambling is that the players have no ability to tangibly recoup the money put into the game." Oh you mean like the video games I used to play in arcades? Like Gauntlet, which was one of the first quarter suckers? How many days did I go without a lunch so that I could play Spyhunter, Elevator Action, or Gauntlet? But I had fun. That's the whole point of gaming, isn't it? When you buy a video game like Doom, Call of Duty, etc, aren't those same elements present? The only difference is that there is a front-loaded payment as opposed to something like Farmville where there are micropayments, which, by the way, you don't even have to pay if you don't want to!! The comparison to gambling is a complete stretch. Sure they may use similar tactics, but so what? There's no gambling element in the sense that there there is risk vs reward. That's like saying that in Plants Vs. Zombies, when I buy a "mystery plant" for my zen garden, it's some form of gambling. It's not! With games like Farmville, you are paying to play, like old school arcades. To compare "social" gaming to gambling is just wrong. (Even the term "social" gaming to Farmville is misplaced, there's nothing social about it except the ability to visit other people's farms. Nothing about the game is enhanced via the social aspect.)
- jeffreyk 15y ago
  I think you're missing the point here. I sank tons of money into arcade games just as you did, however neither one of us needed to add quarters during gameplay to get new items to use. You also can't compare purchasing a console game to the money that gets used in social games. Your points of comparison are apples and oranges. I can respect that you feel comparing social games to gambling is wrong, but it's purely subjective. Gambling and gaming are both forms of entertainment that cost money. If you set aside your bias and look at the facts of the game mechanics, you'll see that the comparison is actually spot on.
  - steve8918 15y ago
    I disagree with you. What is the difference between buying a new type of crop vs. getting 3 more lives so that you can explore deeper down the dungeon? The only difference is that in Farmville it's a bit lazier because they enhance the speed of the items. You don't think that back in 1985 when we were playing Gauntlet that if you paid $0.50 to get an invincible player vs the regular $0.25, that it would be considered gambling? No way, it's enhancing the gaming experience. That's it. In both cases, you are enhancing the gaming experience by paying more money. This is entirely different from a slot machine where "if I just do 10 more pulls, I might win $1MM! My luck is bound to turn sooner or later!" It's a completely different mentality. You put money in slot machines because you consider it an investment in hopes that you will make back more money than you put in. If you removed the ability for people to win money, the casinos would probably be empty, despite how many blips and bloops you put into the game.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jxcole 15y ago
This is also the type of psychology that keeps me coming back to hacker news. I keep returning on the off chance that someone will post a good article even though the chance that the reward is present is random.
davidtyleryork 15y ago
Wow article got knocked from 3rd to 35th instantly. Downvotes are incredibly overpowered
- chgriffin 15y ago
  Yeah, WTF?

55 points by chgriffin 15y ago

"To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game." A while back when I was working on a roguelike (i.e. dungeon crawl RPG) I stumbled onto the same realization: assured incremental improvement + random chance for something awesome = addictive gameplay. This is how almost every RPG works at its core: every battle ends with a little guaranteed experience and gold plus a small random chance of an awesome loot drop.

davidtyleryork 15y ago
Nice comment, this is almost exactly how World of Warcraft works as well. There's always some awesomely epic item that rarely drops from even the easiest of raid bosses
Natsu 15y ago
Yeah, that wand of wishing that drops off of some random orc is always fun. Though things get a little bit easy once you get your two blessed scrolls of charging, blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card, blessed Orb of Fate, blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail, and whatever else you can wish up from the remaining charges.
hugh3 15y ago
Y'know, I think most roguelikes are a bit more respectable than the pure super-optimized Skinner boxes that Zynga and Blizzard produce. Why? Because you die. A lot. And when you die, you need to start all over again. And you make progress further and further into the dungeon on successive games, by learning from your mistakes and honing your strategy. And if you don't learn, you don't progress. Contrast to WoW, where (as I understand it without having ever played it) death is merely a mild inconvenience, and you forever level up and up and up just by grinding away at it -- getting to the highest level is largely just a matter of being patient.
- davidtyleryork 15y ago
  Well look at both Zynga and Blizzard games. They are super accessible and casual friendly. Dying is an inconvenience in Blizzard games, as you said, or isn't even possible in Zynga's games (even the competitive ones like Empires & Allies)
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Sorry, I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me anywhere?
    - davidtyleryork 15y ago
      No, I didnt :)
Androsynth 15y ago
In MMORPG's the rewards are a big motivating factor for playing, but they're not the only factor. WoW still has very well designed game mechanics that are fun on their own. Learning (ie advancing up the learning curve) and decision making play a big role in having fun in RPG's. These are also true game mechanics (meaning they're fun without reward mechanisms). On one end of the spectrum would be a game like Team Fortress 2, which is fun because of it's mechanics; on the other end of the spectrum is a Zynga game that is fun for the reward mechanisms. WoW, and other RPG's would be somewhere in the middle.
- sbov 15y ago
  There's even a range within RPGs itself. E.g. I would say that Diablo is about at the same spot in that scale as Zynga games are.

dcadenas 15y ago

Very interesting, it's the same mechanism behind email/Twitter addiction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addiction http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addic...

chgriffin 15y ago
And Facebook's wall
stephth 15y ago
Nice catch. "Random Reward Schedule" and "variable interval reinforcement schedule" look like different names for the same concept, but looking closer the former seems to cover both time and reward, and the latter focuses on the time component. Am I reading this correctly?

zerostar07 15y ago

Happily implementing the intermittent rewards pattern in my games too.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

username3 15y ago

What's VR, FR, VI, FI? Variable/Fixed ratio/interval http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_reinforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_rein...

davidtyleryork 15y ago
Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I added it to the post.

steve8918 15y ago

I think this article is ridiculous. "The biggest thing that unequivocally separates social gaming from gambling is that the players have no ability to tangibly recoup the money put into the game." Oh you mean like the video games I used to play in arcades? Like Gauntlet, which was one of the first quarter suckers? How many days did I go without a lunch so that I could play Spyhunter, Elevator Action, or Gauntlet? But I had fun. That's the whole point of gaming, isn't it? When you buy a video game like Doom, Call of Duty, etc, aren't those same elements present? The only difference is that there is a front-loaded payment as opposed to something like Farmville where there are micropayments, which, by the way, you don't even have to pay if you don't want to!! The comparison to gambling is a complete stretch. Sure they may use similar tactics, but so what? There's no gambling element in the sense that there there is risk vs reward. That's like saying that in Plants Vs. Zombies, when I buy a "mystery plant" for my zen garden, it's some form of gambling. It's not! With games like Farmville, you are paying to play, like old school arcades. To compare "social" gaming to gambling is just wrong. (Even the term "social" gaming to Farmville is misplaced, there's nothing social about it except the ability to visit other people's farms. Nothing about the game is enhanced via the social aspect.)

jeffreyk 15y ago
I think you're missing the point here. I sank tons of money into arcade games just as you did, however neither one of us needed to add quarters during gameplay to get new items to use. You also can't compare purchasing a console game to the money that gets used in social games. Your points of comparison are apples and oranges. I can respect that you feel comparing social games to gambling is wrong, but it's purely subjective. Gambling and gaming are both forms of entertainment that cost money. If you set aside your bias and look at the facts of the game mechanics, you'll see that the comparison is actually spot on.
- steve8918 15y ago
  I disagree with you. What is the difference between buying a new type of crop vs. getting 3 more lives so that you can explore deeper down the dungeon? The only difference is that in Farmville it's a bit lazier because they enhance the speed of the items. You don't think that back in 1985 when we were playing Gauntlet that if you paid $0.50 to get an invincible player vs the regular $0.25, that it would be considered gambling? No way, it's enhancing the gaming experience. That's it. In both cases, you are enhancing the gaming experience by paying more money. This is entirely different from a slot machine where "if I just do 10 more pulls, I might win $1MM! My luck is bound to turn sooner or later!" It's a completely different mentality. You put money in slot machines because you consider it an investment in hopes that you will make back more money than you put in. If you removed the ability for people to win money, the casinos would probably be empty, despite how many blips and bloops you put into the game.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jxcole 15y ago

This is also the type of psychology that keeps me coming back to hacker news. I keep returning on the off chance that someone will post a good article even though the chance that the reward is present is random.

davidtyleryork 15y ago

Wow article got knocked from 3rd to 35th instantly. Downvotes are incredibly overpowered

chgriffin 15y ago
Yeah, WTF?