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by random9749832
222 days ago
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>Gaming has always been about exploiting human psychology. If you think about it from this perspective than it certainly makes sense to add elements of randomness with intermittent reinforcement (e.g. slot machine) to any game or quick rewards and exponential progression (e.g. Cookie Clicker). Meanwhile you have games like Shenzhen.io which have a PDF that you need to go through to solve programming puzzles and no hints. What part of human psychology is being exploited here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you would naturally always have? Or even look at Shenmue. While every game at the time was a platformer where you collected things, Shenmue made you take on a partime job doing fork lifting, yet it is a cult classic. Did they use a framework to make that decision? Doesn't seem like it when it defied all game design at the time. |
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This and the other scenarios you mention are deliberately created to make the player have fun. They are all engineered to manipulate the player’s emotions, the intention is to trigger dopamine and other neurological reactions. As I said, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!
You don’t have to think about it in terms of chemical reactions, but artificially creating fun is the goal, if you boil it down.
You do get that dopamine hit when you achieve a goal in Shenzen.io, or even a self-directed goal in Shenmue, whether the designers thought that way or not.
As Raph Koster says, fun is linked to progression and learning.
Progression applies to self directed goals too (you’re setting yourself a series of minor goals when driving the forklift in Shenmue).
Ironically, motivation theory tells us that the intrinsic fun of doing undirected chores in Shenmue or mastering facts about the systems in Shenzen.io is stronger than the onslaught of mostly extrinsic rewards generated by Cookie Clicker. You had less fun playing that game, that’s one of many reasons why.