Six Ways of Experiencing Gaming Pleasure

Found an awesome post on ihobo called Why You Play Games (via Raph Koster).

Basically, Chris proposes 6 biological reasons that games become addictive, and ties them in to several commonly used player profiles. The article is very interesting and worth a read, but I think that a quick summary is valuable as well:

1. Skinnerian Reward Schedules: Pleasure is caused by working towards and attaining something. "Achiever" (Bartle).
2. Solving a Difficult Challenge (devising strategies, solving puzzles): Pleasure is induced from making a good decision. The harder the decision, the greater the reward.
3. Surviving a Difficult Challenge ("hardcore" gaming): A large pleasure hit when "victory" is achieved. Often accompanied by a kind of pleasureable anger while trying to overcome the challenge. "Hard Fun" (Lazzaro), "Conqueror" (Bateman)
4. Satisfaction of Curiosity (through things such as exploration): Pleasure comes from the sense of wonder of novelty, and from finding things that are 'interesting'. "Easy Fun" (Lazzaro), "Explorer" (Bartle)
5. Inciting Excitement (time pressures, combo chains, extreme speeds and orientations, fear): Is generally pleasureable to experience excitement. Also increases reward from finally achieving victory. "Serious Fun" (Lazzaro)
6. Playing with Trusted Associates: Simply interacting with people we trust (either friends or strangers) causes pleasure. "Socializers" (Bartle)

• The first three are "Big Hits" of pleasure, but generally have more displeasureable penalties or conditions for success (e.g. grinding to achieve a level).
• The last three are "Continuous Hits", easier to achieve as a player but not as powerful overall.

Also, just for the record: Bateman Player Types, Bartle Player Profiles, Lazzaro Player Experiences.

Comments

[Simon Ferrari]

The ones you call the "big hits" are also the ones people usually ascribe to the psychology of flow, too, right? Have you checked out Jesper Juul's summary of his GDC speech for this year? It's about constructive failure in games. Sounds ballin'.