One common theme that I return to, time and time again, is that of addictiveness. More specifically, what makes something habit-forming in a bad way? I’ve previously talked about this in the context of Attractors. Lately, my thing to hate on is mobile games, or the thing that they represent. Which, yes, is a little late to the game. And I don’t even play games on my mobile phone, so it seems a little out of place.
But I digress. The point here is to talk about the Skinner Box. Or, the application of the same concept to human things. Gamification and notification spam both fall into this category. But maybe not games. But maybe some games. Definitely mobile games. The point here is that there’s this category I want to get some clarity on, and it’s about these things which seem habit-forming and suck you in.
So, what’s clearly a Skinner Box? I think that clicker games are totally Skinner Boxes. Also Clash of Clans, Farmville (i.e. everything Zynga / Zynga-clones). But this line is often hazy; Candy Box was innovative and exciting in certain ways. There was a game a while back about alpacas eating one another that seemed surprisingly deep for an idle game. It’s one thing to put on a sophisticated veneer on a game, but it still seems fine to critique the underlying mechanics.
What does make a Skinner Box?
Lack of a challenge
Despite having progression, idle and clicker games don’t really have anything that forces the player to do anything strategic. They just...click things, and they get reinforcement.
Instant gratification
Mobile games often leverage this desire by time-locking content, prompting you to pay in order to get something now. The other thing to pay attention here is if the feedback loop is tight.
Incentives to keep going?
Intermittent rewards / reward schedules
What doesn’t make a Skinner Box?
Skill and growth
The more something is like an instrument or a sport, the less it seems like a Skinner Box. Although the many casual LoL players seem to indicate that even something which has a high skill cap can still be addictive.
Meaning
The more you invoke artistic purpose, narrative, or some other agenda, we seem to be a lot more forgiving about the actual mechanics involved.
Instrumentality
When we’re hungry, we eat and eat and eat. And no one bats an eye. The same thing with sleep. Stuff that’s useful isn’t often seen as dangerous.
Sometimes there is more than one way to play a game. For example, I spent a few weeks playing Farmville. I had a spreadsheet with production options, so I could easily choose the best ones. I wrote an AutoIt script that clicked my fields, so instead of clicking 100 times to harvest my fields, I only clicked a button to start the script and left it running for a minute or two. I focused on those types of production that I could automate using the script. So I believe I enjoyed the game on a higher level than usual.
But it still took a lot of time to run the script regularly. And at some moment I ran out of options: the requirements to reach the next level were increasing exponentially, my production capacities linearly. Somewhere around level 100, even using the best available options, it would take a few days of doing exactly the same thing over and over again to reach level 101, and then even more days of the same thing to reach level 102, and it would only keep getting worse. The game was designed so that it was impossible to get more than 2 XP per 1 mouse click; and even with my script it meant at most 200 XP per running the script. My strategy brought me lots of gold and other in-game currency, but it was impossible to trade any of them for XP in a way that didn’t require at least 1 mouse click per 2 XP. And XP was the only way to get higher level and potentially unlock new items. So at this moment the game became pointless.
What I don’t like about most online games is that they are open-ended. There is no incentive for the game author to ever tell you “YOU WON, GAME OVER”. The only ending is that at some moment you become bored and quit; it can happen sooner or later, but it’s the only way the game can end.
One common theme that I return to, time and time again, is that of addictiveness. More specifically, what makes something habit-forming in a bad way? I’ve previously talked about this in the context of Attractors. Lately, my thing to hate on is mobile games, or the thing that they represent. Which, yes, is a little late to the game. And I don’t even play games on my mobile phone, so it seems a little out of place.
But I digress. The point here is to talk about the Skinner Box. Or, the application of the same concept to human things. Gamification and notification spam both fall into this category. But maybe not games. But maybe some games. Definitely mobile games. The point here is that there’s this category I want to get some clarity on, and it’s about these things which seem habit-forming and suck you in.
So, what’s clearly a Skinner Box? I think that clicker games are totally Skinner Boxes. Also Clash of Clans, Farmville (i.e. everything Zynga / Zynga-clones). But this line is often hazy; Candy Box was innovative and exciting in certain ways. There was a game a while back about alpacas eating one another that seemed surprisingly deep for an idle game. It’s one thing to put on a sophisticated veneer on a game, but it still seems fine to critique the underlying mechanics.
What does make a Skinner Box?
Lack of a challenge
Despite having progression, idle and clicker games don’t really have anything that forces the player to do anything strategic. They just...click things, and they get reinforcement.
Instant gratification
Mobile games often leverage this desire by time-locking content, prompting you to pay in order to get something now. The other thing to pay attention here is if the feedback loop is tight.
Incentives to keep going?
Intermittent rewards / reward schedules
What doesn’t make a Skinner Box?
Skill and growth
The more something is like an instrument or a sport, the less it seems like a Skinner Box. Although the many casual LoL players seem to indicate that even something which has a high skill cap can still be addictive.
Meaning
The more you invoke artistic purpose, narrative, or some other agenda, we seem to be a lot more forgiving about the actual mechanics involved.
Instrumentality
When we’re hungry, we eat and eat and eat. And no one bats an eye. The same thing with sleep. Stuff that’s useful isn’t often seen as dangerous.
Sometimes there is more than one way to play a game. For example, I spent a few weeks playing Farmville. I had a spreadsheet with production options, so I could easily choose the best ones. I wrote an AutoIt script that clicked my fields, so instead of clicking 100 times to harvest my fields, I only clicked a button to start the script and left it running for a minute or two. I focused on those types of production that I could automate using the script. So I believe I enjoyed the game on a higher level than usual.
But it still took a lot of time to run the script regularly. And at some moment I ran out of options: the requirements to reach the next level were increasing exponentially, my production capacities linearly. Somewhere around level 100, even using the best available options, it would take a few days of doing exactly the same thing over and over again to reach level 101, and then even more days of the same thing to reach level 102, and it would only keep getting worse. The game was designed so that it was impossible to get more than 2 XP per 1 mouse click; and even with my script it meant at most 200 XP per running the script. My strategy brought me lots of gold and other in-game currency, but it was impossible to trade any of them for XP in a way that didn’t require at least 1 mouse click per 2 XP. And XP was the only way to get higher level and potentially unlock new items. So at this moment the game became pointless.
What I don’t like about most online games is that they are open-ended. There is no incentive for the game author to ever tell you “YOU WON, GAME OVER”. The only ending is that at some moment you become bored and quit; it can happen sooner or later, but it’s the only way the game can end.