Time limits are not common anymore
Similar to all creative productions, games are heavily influenced by the common perspective of the time in which they are created, the Zeitgeist. At the peak of the arcade video games around 1980, games were expected to be highly challenging, short and competitive. This norm did not change directly when games transitioned to the living room. The games and their creators evolved very slowly. An example is the presence of an explicit time limit for completing a level. This was introduced on arcade machines to boost profit by limiting the duration of a play session. This artificial restriction was not necessary when games moved to the living room, but games (such as the Super Mario franchise) kept using it for more than ten years.
While explicit time limits are not common anymore, other relics of the arcade machine age are still dominant in modern games. My disagreement with the mainstream perspective regards one of the most fundamental aspects of the current Zeitgeist, namely the emphasis on the task-reward paradigm. (Yes, I just invented that term. Let me know if you there’s a better one.)
Task-Reward Paradigm
Most games require the player to perform a task. Upon completion the player receives a reward in the form of a compliment, a high score and/or the advancement to the next level. The reward feels nice. It is a confirmation that you are competent. The problem for me is that I’m becoming numb for the rewards. This is caused by the large emphasis nearly every game puts on the reward. After the thousandth game rewarding me for my fictional awesomeness, I don’t really care anymore. Some games try to increase the value of the rewards by increasing the difficulty, but this doesn’t seem to have much effect on me.
What should change about games for them to regain my interest? Get rid of the task-reward paradigm? I don’t think that’s theoretically possible. One of the fundamental ingredients of a game is interactivity (which includes action and feedback). Any type of action the player performs can be seen as a task, and any kind of non-negative feedback can be seen as a reward. To fully remove tasks and rewards, we would have to eliminate interactivity (and thus the game). But instead of removing tasks and rewards altogether, we could try to minimize the focus on the rewards. In this approach, receiving an extrinsic reward should not be the main incentive to play.
Minecraft
With the importance of rewards removed, what’s left of the game? Well, the tasks. They should provide the incentive to play. I find it hard to define how exactly tasks can accomplish this. Some examples will have to suffice for now. Journey features anonymous cooperative multiplayer. The friendly contact with other people is an experience worth having, which has nothing to do with any kind of explicit reward. Minecraft is an entirely different experience. The task of creating your own structures in a world can be deeply addictive, but the game never gives an explicit reward. (So far I’ve been ignoring narrative, but that could also provide an incentive to play.)
Over the last few years more game developers have been moving away from the explicit rewards which are dominating the mainstream games. The conditions might be right to shake off the final legacy constraints of the arcade gaming era. The Zeitgeist is moving…
Somehow, somewhere, I think your issue with rewardnumbness has less to do with the Task-Reward paradigm, and more with you being way to smart. Social acceptance is a reward in Journey. Accomplishment is a reward in Minecraft. You’re still looking for a reward. The point is that you don’t know how it will turn out. You’re getting more or less surprised by your reward.
For example, after a time playing Minecraft, you sure have some awesome building ideas left. However, the task is suddenly not interesting enough to actually do them. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that you know you can pull it off and make it. You wouldn’t surprise yourself anymore with your accomplishment. When a new patch arrives with new possibilities and systems (the player is given more power) you suddenly feel the urge to express yourself again. Also, as soon as a social protocol is created in Journey, and everybody reacts the same, Journey also loses a lot of it’s charm.
In most games, you just know what your reward is going to be, especially if you limit yourself to proven concepts and genres. If you’re meta-gaming enough (because you play the game ‘too critically’), you’re going to end up feeling entitled to those rewards, and the rewards lose their value. Not having the rewards suddenly feels like a penalty than the other way around. I still think rewards following tasks are very plausible. Power, spectacle, narrative, speed, competition, mastery, social dominance, creation, rhythm etc. have very high intrinsic human values. I think the delivery of those rewards just stagnate often, removing the element of surprise, and creating an air of entitlement.
Thanks for your reply!
I had some trouble figuring out which points you’re exactly trying to make, so please correct me if I misunderstood something.
Your first point is that there are still rewards in the games I mention. First of all, every type of non-negative feedback can be seen as a reward, so of course there are rewards. But the rewards in Journey/Minecraft are different, they are not tangible, not explicit. The game does not give you these rewards, instead you perceive them internally. You can call this an intrinsic reward, but I try to avoid that word. “Reward” implies (for me, at least) that someone gives it, while this is not the case with intrinsic rewards.
Your second point seems to be that my lack of interest in rewards is caused by the absence of surprise (of completion). It is certainly true that I know that I can complete nearly every game, as long as I put enough time in it (just like everyone else in the world). But that would mean that I should be attracted by very hard games, because their completion would be a surprise to me. This is not the case. I do get a little bit of satisfaction from completing a hard game, but this is by far not worth the time I have to spend.
You apply your point of surprise on Minecraft, but I don’t think this is valid. Minecraft is not a game about challenge (at least creative mode), so you always know beforehand that you can accomplish your goal. It is the creativity (and seeing it realized) which is fun, not the challenge of the thousands of mouse clicks you need for the construction.
I think your third point is that rewards are not satisfying if you already feel entitled to them. Entitlement is a consequence of the lack of surprise, so the argument of the very hard games still applies here.
This is complicated matter, so I really appreciate your thoughts!
Wow, this article conveys your thoughts really well: http://www.alexc.me/a-scientific-explanation-why-diablo-3-is-less-addictive-than-diablo-2/417/
In those terms, my point is that I’m saturated by the juice. The “spike” in my brain activity is lowered. Perhaps it has always been lower for me than for others, but the constant overstimulation made it even less.
You got my first point right, with one addition. I think your “intrinsic rewards” are just as intrinsic as me getting a power up from the game. As you say, any non-negative feedback can be seen as a reward. I think your point has more to do with an oversaturation of a certain form of stimulation/reward. Let’s analyse this backwards. I’m enjoying one, thing, you’re enjoying the other.
In the end, we both have received a certain, pleasure, a certain reward. It’s not exactly the same feeling, but it’s basically a happy feeling. Now we look at the intrinsic value of that reward: Why did we enjoy this? I enjoyed it because I was given power. You enjoyed it because you expressed your creativity. Power and Creativity. Note that these are still intrensic feelings! Basically, you could just have created the Mona Lisa, and I could just have conquered Germany. We did not talk about the way we got these feelings yet.
Now comes an important point for you. How did we aquire this feeling. I got this pleasure because power was TAKEN by me. You acieved this pleasure because you CREATED something (you passed the challenge of translating your ideas into reality).
Next important part is the delivery. Here we split ways and go awry. Both games we’re playing could still be very intrinsic in your definition. I could be playing a game in which I’m only expressing my power (which I love to do) like GTA or Saints Row. You could be playing something you find incredibly boring but could still hold that pleasure, like I don’t know, you created the perfect strategy for the EC football in Football Manager.
However, I’m playing Diablo and just found an item after defeating a boss, and you’re playing Minecraft. For me everything seems to be intrinsic and implicit. Your distilling input into pleasure. Explicit rewards only exists because you got the feeling that you’re “getting stuff and are being played” by the game designer. You think Minecraft is different, but how does gaining items really differ from getting the right tools/right piece of land in minecraft? Obviously Notch is baiting you to express your creativity, like Diablo is baiting me to impose power/growth! But why does it feel so different?
This comes to my second part, which I’m afraid was not so clear as I wished it to be. You are suprised by the delivery. Suprise can be taken very, very broadly here. Surprise doesn’t have to be mapped on challenge (Can I do it?), which I implied. You know you can pull it off, but you do it anyways. The reason you give is that it’s intrinsicly fun is creativity (and realization). I think the emphasis should be on the realization. Realization of your ideas to me is a form of surprise:”So this is how my idea really looks like.” That’s why you don’t express the same idea twice or make something marginally different for creative funz, while you’re technically still creating. The intrinsic fun of creating goes away with the surprise of realization.
And that brings me to my third point: You’re not fed up with any type of rewards, be it power, expression, anticipation, flow or whatsoever. You’re too smart, and you can see the delivery everywhere, which conflicts with your need for “real” feelings. You’re fed up with being baited around. “Go here because it looks shiny”. “Get this item, it makes you faster!”
You just want a really subtle dilevery that does not seem to bait you. That can be something that triggers something really close to your emotions. like being able to walk through your building in minecraft enforces your feel of creative expression. You don’t want to feel like Julio the monkey doing heinious tasks to get blueberry juice. However, because you’re so damn smart, and because you’re a critic, everytime you see blueberry juice, you start to ponder over your previous tasks and start to see them as heinious. That’s why you won’t accept any blueberry juice anymore. Not because you don’t like blueberry juice. You have the anti-Julio effect.
Right, so you say that basically every game has intrinsic rewards. (Where reward is defined as “fun” or “pleasure”.) I agree with you on that. I’ve had some thoughts, and I think I have it more clear now. Any (good) game has intrinsic fun/rewards. The extrinsic rewards I was talking about are something different, and are present in games besides the intrinsic fun. The extrinsic rewards are explicitly present in the presentation of the game (for example a message stating you are awesome). This kind of reward by itself is worthless to me, and probably to you too.
I just figured out that something went wrong in my argumentation. I assumed that the extrinsic rewards were the primary reason to play these games, but this is (obviously) wrong. Those games are played because of the intrinsic rewards as the result of a challenge. The problem is that most types of challenges in games do not interest me (anymore), and therefore the intrinsic rewards are not obvious to me anymore. The extrinsic rewards were clear to me because they are explicitly present.
The obsessive focus on challenge in games is what I see as a relic of the arcade machine era.
You try to explain the rewarding thing of games as “surprise”, but I think your definition of surprise is so wide that it is no longer useful. Your very broad definition of surprise covers basically everything that is new to the player. This is always present in every interactive application!
Your third point is that I look through the system in games, which makes me lose interest. While it is true that systems can be interesting when I don’t really understand how they work, this does not necessarily works the other way around. There are still a lot of games which I see through, but still enjoy very much. You are right that obvious baiting is annoying, but as long as the intrinsic fun of the game is good enough I’ll happily ignore the baiting.
Wow, this article seems to suggest that my loss of intrinsic enjoyment might be caused by the extrinsic rewards!