Skinner Box Game Design

I managed to find out about this pretty frightening article about using human psychological behavior as the skeletal structure for designing video games. Studies and experiments have been performed by psychologist B.F. Skinner using a machine he developed called the "Skinner Box" in which an animal was placed in a cage with a lever that would provide the animal a food pellet. The goal of the experiment was to discover what variables would make the animal press on the lever as often and consistently as possible.

I found this to be quite disturbing, as this article is written almost as if video game players are like lab rats, and that games should have features that not only draw players toward the game, but have them refrain from leaving the game by delivering carefully scheduled rewards to the player at times where there interest maybe slipping. Something like this is especially beneficial for subscription-based games (which are also known to be infamously addictive) like Everquest and World of Warcraft where the money lies in how long the player remains playing the game instead of getting players to buy the game once and who cares what happens afterwards. Of course this also applies to the growing number of multiplayer oriented first person shooter call of duty clones that are flooding the market, what with Xbox Live subscriptions and what not.

I feel like this kind of information is rather scary. Implementing near-hypnotic gameplay features to keep players attached to games whether they are literally enjoying the experience or not is like borderline mind-control. What do you think?

i don't really like the thought of being treated as just another collection of brain cells that responds identically to all the same triggers as every other human being, no.

I think you're over exaggerating a tad.

Eh, these sort of tactics are used everywhere. The entire marketing industry is built around human psychology.

40oz discovers that professional game designers don't play fair - <Achievement Unlocked>

Welcome to the last century.

I find it surprising that people find this surprising. :P

These sort of psychological techniques are used in all sorts of areas.

When it comes down to it, we are just another animal with a collection of brain cells and we do respond in very predictable ways at times. This can be, and is, exploited in many ways already. Skinner's information tells me little that I didn't already know. We're really not all that special.



As an aside, I remember attending a psychology lecture years ago where they said that part of the problem with this kind of investigation is that it is easier to look to a simple organism and work out how and why it is responding than it is to look at ourselves to investigate similar things because the investigator and the subject are at the same level. The metaphor they used to illustrate this was a thermostat. If a thermostat had a conscious awareness, it might think that it was deciding when to switch on and off the heating. However, a higher organism could look at the thermostat and realise that it was simply automatically and mechanically responding because the change in temperature had made its bimetalic strip bend enough to make or break and electrical connection. OK, I think it's a flawed metaphor but it does sort of illustrate the point.

Enjay said:

As an aside, I remember attending a psychology lecture years ago where they said that part of the problem with this kind of investigation is that it is easier to look to a simple organism and work out how and why it is responding than it is to look at ourselves to investigate similar things because the investigator and the subject are at the same level.

Or to put it another way - "if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.". A pearl of wisdom from a sidewalk chalkboard.

GreyGhost said:

Or to put it another way - "if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.". A pearl of wisdom from a sidewalk chalkboard.

I like that.

I've seen a youtube video somewhere years ago explaining. Like if we work an hour pushing a button and get paid $10 an hour... it work. Yet having a button to push for 1 hour and you randomly win $1 (10x in one hour) is stimulating to us.

I saw it covered more humorously in a Cracked article.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

As if intense psychological control methods haven't been used in advertising since the 40s.

Also the Agatha Christie novels provide a slow drip of clues that slowly builds up into the full picture, but the drip also gets faster towards the end. And that's why people still read them 80 years later but probably can't name a single contemporary.

Something that I find interesting is that some of the people who show the most self-awareness, or the most awareness of how their own brains work, are people who suffer from addictive or compulsive behaviour. Even when we understand how our base impulses steer our behaviour, we can't control them.

Wow is pretty much virtual heroin. so is farmville, where you also get punished for not shooting up.

Shit like that feels almost criminal.

The only reason I still play Doom is because awesome wads get released every year at a varying rate.

Creaphis said:

Something that I find interesting is that some of the people who show the most self-awareness, or the most awareness of how their own brains work, are people who suffer from addictive or compulsive behaviour. Even when we understand how our base impulses steer our behaviour, we can't control them.

This seems to kind of fit: