Gameify

How Blippy used BJ Fogg's Behaviour Change grid to make Blippy more sticky. That was a very lazy para-rhyme rather than an accurate description of the deck - and now I've had to write this disclaimer.

VR stands for 'variable reinforcement'. It means that in experiments by behaviourists the most effective way of conditioning animals was to introduce an element of randomness into their condition/reward experiments. Like one-armed bandits.

It comes from this post on how this might spoil games (and game players).

Timbuktu is a game of loss management. Players start the game as rich as they are ever going to be.  Each turn, players are likely to lose a token or two to the robbers, or sacrifice a token to make a special move that will hopefully prevent bigger loses. 

I think the reason the game generates so much suspense is that psychologists tell us that most people feel the pain of loss more than they feel the joy of an equal gain.  If many people were given the opportunity to flip a coin, and win $100 if the coin lands heads up – and lose $25 if the coin lands tails up – many people would forego the opportunity because they could not stand the emotional pain of losing $25.  Even though the payout more than justifies the risk, the bet would be too emotionally stressful for many folks.  In Timbuktu, players are faced with loss every turn of the game, and it can be emotionally painful.  Of course, it also feels good when you escape from a turn with little or no losses. 

Game design is – among other things – emotional management.  The designer hopes his game will stimulate the emotions as well as the reasoning abilities of his players.  By this standard, Timbuktu succeeds.  I spent the game dreading big losses that never actually materialized.  In fact, I won the game.  But the final feeling wasn’t so much one of triumph as simple relief

Kris Hall describes the game as generating tension, due to its loss avoidance mechanic, and it's interesting to note where 'tension' comes in Nicole Lazarro's typology of fun:

It doesn't. Can a game be driven by pure tension? Films can, sort of, occasionally. But games?

I suppose this was inevitable. It's interesting. But not much fun if you're on social media a fair bit.

Strictly for the 'data-driven examined life' crowd.

So what do rats have to do with loyalty programs? Well, back in the 1930s, researchers made an interesting discovery: rats running a maze to reach food ran faster as they got closer to the food. This finding led to the “goal gradient hypothesis,” which states that the tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal. Simply put, the closer the goal, the more effort you expend to get there.

So what does this have with loyalty programs? A few years ago, Columbia University researchers examined the goal gradient hypothesis using unwitting human subjects, and found that people behave a lot like rats. Give them a coffee punch card that rewards them with a free coffee when full, and they will drink coffee more frequently as they approach a fully stamped card

Not hard to see why games designers are so hooked on the idea of levels.

This is why people buy virtual goods. Is this the same as why people want them? Where does the sale of virtual goods become more crop-withering anti-fun?

His theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets. Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box.

This sort of thing caused games researcher Nick Yee to once call Everquest a "Virtual Skinner Box."

Predator drones are so accurate that they can kill specific people in far-away countries even though they're controlled by kids barely out of high school in Virginia.

This means that they are, in effect, tools for assassination not war. And we don't assassinate people.

War is not mean to be precise.

Games aren't either. When they're too precise, too fine-tuned they become something else. What that is, I don't know.

This excellent article comes via 'usablelearning on the Twitter.