Game and Happiness
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Zan
Oct 14, 2010, 9:49:10 PM10/14/10
to Happiness
Game Designer’s Point of View
It is our implicit goal, as game designers, to create addictive games
that by definition hook our players on pleasure. Games are used as
pleasure delivery vehicles. A tremendous amount of research has come
out in recent years to address the issue of human happiness, and I
think we sometimes need to take a step back from pleasure and address
gamer happiness, which is a more "wholesome," long-lasting experience
of which pleasure is just a small part.
Some major findings of recent happiness research to help us understand
how and why some people are happier, barring socio-economic factors.
Among these findings, to be focused on decisions and expectations that
the gaming experience shares with life experience, it is necessary to
define happiness from pleasure.
Happiness comes from the resolution of anger, ennui, fear,
frustration, insecurities, and unimportance. Pleasure is an immediate,
short-term rush, often visceral, and game designers usually to call it
"fun." You can have one without the other.
Finding #1: Happiness is relative.
Reason: Would you rather earn $100,000 while your co-workers earned
$200,000, or would you rather earn $50,000 while your co-workers
earned $20,000? Most choose the latter. The things that make us
happiest in life address secondary emotions, the ones that come after
hunger, shelter, and sex. This means that after those primal needs are
satisfied, we have no way to classify how happy our circumstances make
us except by comparing with others.
It turns out that both lottery winners and prisoners return to their
original level of happiness quite soon after their respective life-
changing events. Psychologists call this setpoint theory. While the
wealthier people in the world are happier overall, the effects of
affluence diminish sharply.
Application : keep rewards roughly equal across players, especially in
multiplayer games. Fairness, or at least the impression of fairness,
is extremely important to generating player trust in the complicit
agreement to play that we call a game.
Studies have also shown a strong correlation between trust levels and
national prosperity. Particularly in MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer
online role-playing game), trust in the fairness of a virtual world is
instrumental in the players' willingness to indulge in its fantasy, as
well as being productive, well-behaved gamers. They will expect
equitable happiness.
Secondly, in single-player components, you should provide a "social"
context for a reward, where society means either the player culture,
the developer, or the in-game virtual culture.
Finding #2: People suck at predicting their future enjoyment.
Reason: Humans have very subjective memories great at recalling
essential information quickly, but at the expense of retrieving
unreliable details. Studies have shown that a person's feelings
greatly influenced by both faultily recalled memories, and also their
current state (known as presentism).
For example, people asked about how their overall life happiness was
tended to respond positively on days their city had good weather, and
negatively on days when the weather was bad. People displace their
happiness estimates into their present state.
Applications: Actively predict and meet your players' expectations.
The reward you dole out will be interpreted relative to the player's
state at the time you hand it out. Giving an amazing reward when they
least expect it will blow them away, but giving them pittance after
defeating Beelzebub himself is a good way to earn the player's
disgust.
Also, try to predict what kind of reward your player expects.
Finding #3: People rationalize their happiness.
Reasons: Studies indicate we hate to regret our decisions, and regret
inaction more than poor actions. We are good at rationalizing reasons
for the latter to make ourselves feel better.
Application: While the lesson here seems similar to the last one,
exceeding player expectations is slightly more interesting.
Finding #4: People tend to experience loss twice intensely as gain.
Reason: Scientists believe we are biologically primed to have greater
loss aversion than a desire for gains. Why do we hold on to losing
stocks, telling ourselves it's not a loss until you sell it?
Application: Ameliorate and justify punishments. Similar to the
presentism finding, people tend to remember their recent experiences
more strongly, and that affects their happiness more. Filmmakers
discovered that whether or not someone liked the last scene of a film
is highly influential in how much they liked the whole film in
retrospect.
Finding #5: Feeling in control is a significant predictor of
happiness.
Reason: Ex-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan points out that the
success of capitalism is almost entirely beholden to one innovation:
property rights. When people feel they can trust the system and the
reliability of their own actions to safely produce lasting results,
they engage life much more positively. The simple word for this is
"hope."
Optimism has powerful effects on our mental well-being, and since
humans are ordering, rationalizing beings, we need to know that we can
safely pursue an objective without being tossed around by capricious
and arbitrary consequences. Studies show people are willing to pay a
premium for the ability to have more choices, regardless of whether
those choices result in better actual gains.
Application: Great game mechanics give us hope, even when we fail.
Remember how some games keep you thinking of new strategies and
tactics long after you've stopped playing? Emergent gameplay evolves
from optimistic problem solving.
Finding #6: Happiness is a perspective.
Reason: A recent study explained that the mid-life crisis happens when
it does because at that point in life, people have to face giving up
their dreams. After and before that happens, people are happiest in
life. Before mid-life crisis, people have hope. Why are they happy
after giving that up? Because they reach acceptance and appreciation
of what they do have.
Application: How can hardcore players pore countless hours into the
same game? Designers who want happy gamers should see if their work is
conducive to appreciation.
In Conclusion
From all these findings, we can distill the most important
contributors to game-related happiness, which are in no way mutually-
exclusive:
Trust (between player and designer/system)
Agency
Acknowledgment
Importance (of player, within "social" context)
Fairness
These are not just generalities of gamer happiness, but of human
happiness in general. The only factor completely missing here is
physical health, and while I want to say that's really not our
problem, hit games like Guitar Hero, Wii Fit, and Dance Dance
Revolution made it their problem.
Enjoy the full article at http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3675/the_pursuit_of_games_designing_.php
It is our implicit goal, as game designers, to create addictive games
that by definition hook our players on pleasure. Games are used as
pleasure delivery vehicles. A tremendous amount of research has come
out in recent years to address the issue of human happiness, and I
think we sometimes need to take a step back from pleasure and address
gamer happiness, which is a more "wholesome," long-lasting experience
of which pleasure is just a small part.
Some major findings of recent happiness research to help us understand
how and why some people are happier, barring socio-economic factors.
Among these findings, to be focused on decisions and expectations that
the gaming experience shares with life experience, it is necessary to
define happiness from pleasure.
Happiness comes from the resolution of anger, ennui, fear,
frustration, insecurities, and unimportance. Pleasure is an immediate,
short-term rush, often visceral, and game designers usually to call it
"fun." You can have one without the other.
Finding #1: Happiness is relative.
Reason: Would you rather earn $100,000 while your co-workers earned
$200,000, or would you rather earn $50,000 while your co-workers
earned $20,000? Most choose the latter. The things that make us
happiest in life address secondary emotions, the ones that come after
hunger, shelter, and sex. This means that after those primal needs are
satisfied, we have no way to classify how happy our circumstances make
us except by comparing with others.
It turns out that both lottery winners and prisoners return to their
original level of happiness quite soon after their respective life-
changing events. Psychologists call this setpoint theory. While the
wealthier people in the world are happier overall, the effects of
affluence diminish sharply.
Application : keep rewards roughly equal across players, especially in
multiplayer games. Fairness, or at least the impression of fairness,
is extremely important to generating player trust in the complicit
agreement to play that we call a game.
Studies have also shown a strong correlation between trust levels and
national prosperity. Particularly in MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer
online role-playing game), trust in the fairness of a virtual world is
instrumental in the players' willingness to indulge in its fantasy, as
well as being productive, well-behaved gamers. They will expect
equitable happiness.
Secondly, in single-player components, you should provide a "social"
context for a reward, where society means either the player culture,
the developer, or the in-game virtual culture.
Finding #2: People suck at predicting their future enjoyment.
Reason: Humans have very subjective memories great at recalling
essential information quickly, but at the expense of retrieving
unreliable details. Studies have shown that a person's feelings
greatly influenced by both faultily recalled memories, and also their
current state (known as presentism).
For example, people asked about how their overall life happiness was
tended to respond positively on days their city had good weather, and
negatively on days when the weather was bad. People displace their
happiness estimates into their present state.
Applications: Actively predict and meet your players' expectations.
The reward you dole out will be interpreted relative to the player's
state at the time you hand it out. Giving an amazing reward when they
least expect it will blow them away, but giving them pittance after
defeating Beelzebub himself is a good way to earn the player's
disgust.
Also, try to predict what kind of reward your player expects.
Finding #3: People rationalize their happiness.
Reasons: Studies indicate we hate to regret our decisions, and regret
inaction more than poor actions. We are good at rationalizing reasons
for the latter to make ourselves feel better.
Application: While the lesson here seems similar to the last one,
exceeding player expectations is slightly more interesting.
Finding #4: People tend to experience loss twice intensely as gain.
Reason: Scientists believe we are biologically primed to have greater
loss aversion than a desire for gains. Why do we hold on to losing
stocks, telling ourselves it's not a loss until you sell it?
Application: Ameliorate and justify punishments. Similar to the
presentism finding, people tend to remember their recent experiences
more strongly, and that affects their happiness more. Filmmakers
discovered that whether or not someone liked the last scene of a film
is highly influential in how much they liked the whole film in
retrospect.
Finding #5: Feeling in control is a significant predictor of
happiness.
Reason: Ex-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan points out that the
success of capitalism is almost entirely beholden to one innovation:
property rights. When people feel they can trust the system and the
reliability of their own actions to safely produce lasting results,
they engage life much more positively. The simple word for this is
"hope."
Optimism has powerful effects on our mental well-being, and since
humans are ordering, rationalizing beings, we need to know that we can
safely pursue an objective without being tossed around by capricious
and arbitrary consequences. Studies show people are willing to pay a
premium for the ability to have more choices, regardless of whether
those choices result in better actual gains.
Application: Great game mechanics give us hope, even when we fail.
Remember how some games keep you thinking of new strategies and
tactics long after you've stopped playing? Emergent gameplay evolves
from optimistic problem solving.
Finding #6: Happiness is a perspective.
Reason: A recent study explained that the mid-life crisis happens when
it does because at that point in life, people have to face giving up
their dreams. After and before that happens, people are happiest in
life. Before mid-life crisis, people have hope. Why are they happy
after giving that up? Because they reach acceptance and appreciation
of what they do have.
Application: How can hardcore players pore countless hours into the
same game? Designers who want happy gamers should see if their work is
conducive to appreciation.
In Conclusion
From all these findings, we can distill the most important
contributors to game-related happiness, which are in no way mutually-
exclusive:
Trust (between player and designer/system)
Agency
Acknowledgment
Importance (of player, within "social" context)
Fairness
These are not just generalities of gamer happiness, but of human
happiness in general. The only factor completely missing here is
physical health, and while I want to say that's really not our
problem, hit games like Guitar Hero, Wii Fit, and Dance Dance
Revolution made it their problem.
Enjoy the full article at http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3675/the_pursuit_of_games_designing_.php
siuyuin
Oct 19, 2010, 7:31:32 AM10/19/10
to Happiness
This posting struck a chord with me as I am a hopeless FV addict. (A
habit I hope to kick sometime...and I have been saying this for a long
time now.)
(FV is short for Farmville, arguably the most popular game on
Facebook.)
No matter your opinion on gaming, it is an activity that causes
psychological changes for better or for worse. Gaming (especially in
the form of FV) is manipulative and does for the brain what fast food
is to one's mealtime cravings.
Here's an article that discusses the FV and what it means for
democracy.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville
Democracy might seem like a big word, the article does not address
happiness per se, but I think for those who play FV or any of the FB
games, you will have sufficient understanding of the context to draw
your own conclusions.
cheers,
siu yuin
On Oct 15, 9:49 am, Zan <rylaic...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Game Designer’s Point of View
> It is our implicit goal, as game designers, to create addictive games
> that by definition hook our players on pleasure. Games are used as
> pleasure delivery vehicles. A tremendous amount of research has come
> out in recent years to address the issue of human happiness, and I
> think we sometimes need to take a step back from pleasure and address
> gamer happiness, which is a more "wholesome," long-lasting experience
> of which pleasure is just a small part.
> Some major findings of recent happiness research to help us understand
> how and why some people are happier, barring socio-economic factors.
> Among these findings, to be focused on decisions and expectations that
> the gaming experience shares with life experience, it is necessary to
> define happiness from pleasure.
>
> Happiness comes from the resolution of anger, ennui, fear,
> frustration, insecurities, and unimportance. Pleasure is an immediate,
> short-term rush, often visceral, and game designers usually to call it
> "fun." You can have one without the other.
>
>
> Enjoy the full article athttp://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3675/the_pursuit_of_games_desig...
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