http www flickr comphotospeha 451428040407 Achievements Considered Harmful

http: //www. flickr. com/photos/pe_ha 45/1428040407/ Achievements Considered Harmful?

Achievements Considered Harmful?

? Achievements Considered Harmful

1. I am not a psychologist.

2. The psychologists don’t agree. “Despite the seeming objectivity of this technique, these meta-analytic reviews reached markedly different conclusions. ” http: //www. behavior. org/education/bhan-24 -1 -1. pdf

3. There are no direct studies. http: //video. nytimes. com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion. html

Double Header Analysis: Xbox Live Achievement Data and Intellectual Property Trends in Video Games Geoffrey Zatkin and Jesse Divnich, EEDAR Friday 4: 30 pm — 5: 30 pm Room 130, North Hall

Disclaimer: This lecture is not about how to sell more games.

Confession: I ignore achievements while I’m playing games.

Alfie Kohn

Burrhus Frederic Skinner

“Pop Behaviorism”

Daniel Pink @ TED http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=rrkrv. AUb. U 9 Y

numbingly repetitive filled with anecdotes blatantly biased agendas

ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious (tn-dnshs) adj. Marked by a strong implicit point of view; partisan: a tendentious account of the recent elections.

But, they reference a lot of research.

However, it’s psychology research. “On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation. ” http: //xkcd. com/435/

f. MRI

Let’s talk about the research… The research shows that in most cases, extrinsic motivators are ineffective and actually decrease intrinsic motivation on interesting tasks.

Studies covering… drawing puzzles IQ tests wearing seat belts trying new foods commissions & bonuses reading books etc. Even thinking about rewards before task appears to do harm.

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation appears to be superior: creativity problem solving quality speed

Categories tangible verbal symbolic free-choice self-reported informational controlling taskendogenous contingency transitory exogenous nonlong-lasting engagementexpected dull completionunexpected interesting performance-

Deci, Koestner, Ryan 1999

Deci, Koestner, Ryan 1999

Cameron, Banko, Pierce 2001

Skinner, 1953 - Deci, 1971 - 100’s of Others … Rummel and Feinberg, 1988 Wiersma, 1992 Cameron and Pierce, 1994 Tang and Hall, 1995 Eisenberger and Cameron, 1996 Deci, Koestner, Ryan, 1999 Cameron, Banko, Pierce, 2001

Hecker 1999

What they can agree on: For interesting tasks, 1. Tangible, Expected, Contingent Rewards Reduce Free-Choice IM 2. Verbal, Unexpected, Informational Feedback Increases Free-Choice & Self-Reported IM

Even just these two results are huge. How do they extend to games?

“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism” Jesse Schell’s DICE 2010 Talk “We don’t have any issues with rewards that are even more tangible, like giving your kid money for a straight-A report card… as long as we are comfortable with who is setting up the reward and what criteria. ” – Raph Koster

“Gameification” Jane Mc. Gonigal

“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism” “It would be brilliant if you got, say, money credited to your PSN account for finishing games - you know, a real -life reward. That'd get you playing. ” - Mike Jackson, CVG UK

“Gameification” & “Pop Behaviorism”

I’m not saying these people are wrong. I don’t know. I’m saying there is a lot of data out there that implies they might be very wrong, and we need to study this to keep our art form healthy.

Games are the only art and entertainment form where the opportunity and mechanism for feedback is built into the form itself.

Note: These results are for “interesting tasks”. I was going to present the data for “dull tasks”…

Why are you making games? If you’re intentionally making dull games with variable ratio extrinsic motivators to separate people from their money, you have my pity. If you’re making intrinsically interesting games and want to make them even better, be very careful with extrinsic motivators.

Aristotle virtue ergon Rousseau amour-de-soi amour-propre Csikszentmihalyi autotelic

The Nightmare Self-Fulfilling Scenario 1. make an intrinsically interesting game, congratulations! 2. use extrinsic motivators to make your game better 3. destroy intrinsic motivation to play your game 4. metrics fetishism pushes you towards designs where EM works 5. BONUS: women lose even more IM than men do given EM!

Common Buts Players like them! Our data shows they work! We make lots of money! Just ignore them if you don’t like them! They show players different way of playing!

But, Just Ignore Them! But if all this research applies, players who aren’t ignoring them are (unwittingly) being affected by this IM reduction, which changes everything about the play environment.

I used to play Gears of War on-line. That game had a restriction where you couldn't get achievement points for on-line play unless you played ranked matches. I don't give a fuck about achievements, but I had to play ranked matches all the time anyways, because no good players would ever play unranked. But of course, ranked matches don't allow you to play with your friends, because that might aid you in cheating, so, you'd have to do ridiculous machinations to actually play a decent game with your friends (like trying to narrow the possible servers, then joining and unjoining games before they started until you saw your friend pop up on the board). Casey Muratori

But, They Show Different Playstyles! There is nothing that says pointing out a potential alternate playstyle needs to be tied to a reward, and it wasn’t, historically.

So, what’s my plan? 1. Hope somebody publishes a study. 2. Hope they become optional. 3. Follow some guidelines… Spy. Party (prototype)

“Minimizing the Damage” Don’t make a big fuss about them. Use unexpected rewards. Use absolute, not relative measures. Use endogenous rewards. Make them informational, not controlling. Kohn, p. 92

Call to Action! The industry needs to start studying the long term impact of achievements on players. Developers need to be better versed in the literature and more thoughtful about the consequences of extrinsic motivators.

Thank you. http: //chrishecker. com