Another big thing to consider here is the verbiage that goes into the rewards, especially for younger players. A study in 2018 suggests that children who are praised for their *effort specifically* ("You worked so hard on that assignment!") as opposed to their abilities ("You are really smart!") will typically grow to believe that success hinges on *effort* rather than *talent*. And I think that probably has some lasting effect in developing a more internal locus of control (i.e. seeing one's self as opposed to luck/outside variables in control of outcomes.) So if you're making a game that gives any kind of verbal feedback, phrases like "You're getting better/Your grinding is paying off!" Should almost always be used instead of "You're a natural/You were born for this". Subtle, but I think it does go a long way. Loved the video Mark! Such a great topic.
That pretty much sums up answering the wrong question. Like here, the answer is about ends, while the question is about means. And also generally, I think the problem with self-improvement, coaching and whatnot is that people come asking how to do a thing, but instead the answers they get are all about why do the thing.
@@Hisu0 yea. they answer nothing you actually asked. if you aren't paying attention, you will be dazzled by the BS the coaches speak and not realise they didn't help you or give you an answer that you could at least consider in your journey to improvement at all
yooo I just play don't starve yesterday after very long time .after get into the world and play for a bit i realize that i don't have any fear for anything because i don't remember why in the old day i fear so much in playing this game but then i look at the belly meter and i be like "ahh fuck it DON'T STARVE ,i'm idiot" and then the memories of dying because i have to find food suddenly flashback in my mind lol
@Tomás Salgado Salinas I mean, by like, day 50 in the base game, I might as well have had enough food to last me forever. In the first expansion, I would usually die trying to not burn to death lol.
Well to be fair, I do genuinely think there is some value to that statement. Adding a carrot to the end of a stick of something you enjoy isn't going to completely kill your motivation, and doing something you love compared to doing something you hate or are ambivalent towards will likely yield better results, but work is still work and when you mix the stress of work with the joy of your activities, well it doesn't always end well. Granted it also depends on the type of work you do and other factors as such.
@@TheGerkuman Started working in a job I really liked and I didn't even care to look at the paycheck anymore, I just enjoyed doing what I was doing. Too bad covid killed my job.
Interestingly, this also happens with *penalties.* I've heard stories indicating that if you have an explicit penalty for something bad, people are more willing to do it, because they see the penalty as a transaction, whereas if you have no explicit penalty, people don't want to know what the unexpected penalty could be, so they behave.
I would constantly skip class because I would calculate the "value" of skipping that class day. When attendance wasn't calculated, and I could learn the information online in a short period of time, or I knew that information wasn't relevant (I can fail that entire section and still pass the class) - all of that would help me justify my wrongdoing.
Society: "I will pay you for doing A" Otherwise it doesn't work. Requesting A without reward only leaves the intrinsic value of being useful and important. (Like what motivates volunteers)
8:39 “How do I decide when I am satisfied?” Is a statement that’s is simultaneously not very deep and deeply tragic. This guy summed up the struggle of human existence without even thinking.
On another level, I think it points at a tragic lack of internal locus of control. This person seems to be unaware that they can choose for themselves what it means to be satisfied. Instead, they seem to expect the world to tell them what their goal should be and can only define their experience of satisfaction by satisfying other people's expectations. This is how people become willful slaves and go their entire lives without experiencing true satisfaction.
I think modern day society points us in the wrong direction. We spend our entire lives trying to get more and more, so we have no time to think about why we need any of it.
They say "Do what you love for a living and you'll never work a day in your life." To which I'd always retort "Do what you love for a living and it'll become a job and you'll grow to hate it." Good to see science is on my side.
It's rather humerous more than "backed by science". I think it's an oversimplification to say, there's plenty of people who do what they love as a profession just out of the enjoyment of the profession itself. Saying that you'll treat it just as any other job and that you'll hate because you're being rewarded for it, well then yes that approach could technically be correct in that regard.
This is ancedotal, but you're cynical... So I'll just say I love what I do, I've been doing it 20 years. I'm still super excited to continue to do it. I'd much rather do it than anything else. I'd happily do it for free if I could. Do some days suck? Sure, of course. But I enjoy it so much those days don't stick around long.
The school system honestly helps proves this. I used to love reading, but being forced to read books i didn't really give a shit about for some stupid assignment killed my interest in it.
Can't wait for all bosses to say: "I don't know what you'll get at the end of the month. Or how much. Or at all. But trust me, you'll be more motivated, because you don't know!"
That would actually work if the rewards stay fair. And if the boss doesn't strive for fairness then he won't know if he has any workers at he start of the next month.
I mean, getting an unexpected bonus at the end of the month would work fairly well, maybe even better than the bonus actually being part of your salary.
It kind of is like that if your hours aren't set in stone. One week you could be doing 34 hours, another week you could sit on OT. You might have put in the same amount of effort both weeks but one week was so slow in volume that labor had to be cut across the board, even the productive workers saw hours cut just because sales were down due to volume.
To be charitable to that person, i think what they meant was that they didn't know what they were looking for. They knew they had to figure something out, but didn't know what it was they were expected to pay attention to.
@@Siegfried5846 im not butthurt lmao, i know how to spell really, my word choice was intentional, and if I believed it was a problem I would've fixed it before you came along
That "how do I know when I am satisfied?" line hit me so hard. It's so short, but accurately portrays a phenomenon where people are so used to spending their time trying to ensure others are satisfied that we never learn how to satisfy ourselves. Even in our spare time, playing video games, are we really satisfying ourselves? Or are we just trying to satisfy the game goals, or perhaps even invisible/theoretical people who would judge our performance in the game should they see us playing it? Yeah, I can see how that question would keep one up at night.
My answer to your comment comes quite late but anyway... It's not exactly what you rhetorically asked for, but I catch myself playing games for the sake of completing them (getting them of my pile of shame, for example) instead of playing a game and immersing myself just to have fun, which is the actual point of a game. I think that's something that is holding me back from enjoying gaming as I used to and that's something I'll have to think about and kind of figure out during the course of the next days.
Satisfaction occurs as a result of meeting your own expectations. If someone's goal is to make 100,000 a year, they will be satisfied when they make it. If someone's goal is to make more money, they will never be satisfied because no matter how much they have they will always want to make more.
Dang, that’s why games like Minecraft can remain popular for so long without any real reason to play except for the sake of it... people learn to enjoy what u can do with it more than depending on arbitrary rewards
That's why Minecraft was so great. There was (originally) no set goal whatsoever, and instead it provided a perfect tool for creativity and set the player loose with it. Mojang would do good to remember that.
@Albert D Well, there's the ender dragon for one thing, which is the "final boss" of minecraft, and implies that the game ends after that, completely overlooking the literal infinite potential of every world.
What I love about Minecraft is that the "game" is created by the whole community. You might just be futzing around breeding cattle for a few days, but then you see a beautiful build or a clever contraption on TH-cam, and you're motivated to do it yourself or even improve on it. There's nothing more wholesome than comments under Minecraft building advice videos. It's a bunch of people trying to get better at something that is 100% intrinsically motivated, and even within the game it's just an aesthetic choice.
minecraft is literally another reality now, they're all living virtual lives, self expression has never been so easy, and now it's pretty much the quintessential imagination game. I would have never imagined a property would become culture like minecraft, it's insane how much that game changed everything.
@@omnitroph1501 but you can still play after you beat the enderdagon you dont even needto baet the enderdagon if you dont want to get the elytra or shulkerboxes
"How do I decide when I'm satisfied?" is some existential shit. I mean, how *do* I decide when I'm satisfied? I've kept playing things I don't even think are all that fun way longer than I should just because of my intrinsic goals of "run around and see stuff and punch monsters". Last night I stayed up for six hours playing Eldritch Horror by myself in Tabletop Simulator. All day I've been playing Age of Conan alone with god mode on. I don't think I've been having actual fun doing either of those, but I'm still driven to keep doing them for whatever reason.
I don't. If there is no goal or challenge i just stop, there doesn't have to be a reward but there has to e at least a finite and reachable goal, hence why games like minecraft (mind you, i only played it when there was only endless survival and creative modes with no netherworld) never hooked me, there's no goal in those games other than "survive", but when do i decide i've survived long enough? My answer to that? "I don't" And thus i only played minecraft once with a friend and then never touched it again.
@@iota-09 Funny, because games with no goal are the ones that suck me in the longest and grant me the most reward when I see what I have achieved in the end (typically speaking).
@@shaynelowe9604 se the problem is that: the end There is no end, and what is it that you truly achieved? Unless i have some guidelines i don't really have anything i consider "achieving" beyond the end of the game, even challenges, unless tbe gane has a lot of variety i rarely will ever make up challenges. Anyway, here, i'll leave you a comment i wrote in another comment section, maybe it'll shine some light on how i view how come different people have different experiences and taste in regards to goals, competition and creativity:
Quote: Completionist VS Competiti...vist VS Creati..vist? You get what i mean, anyway, i feel that's what it comes down to. The way i see it, each person can have an arbitrary number of "points of interest" in any of these categories and the way their "points of interest" are set will dictate how they play games. For example, fully creative people will usually not are about achievements or leaderboards, on the other hand, completionists are interested in game-set goals like achievements but might feel like competition is meh due to it being an infinite goal(unless your goal is to be at the top until the servers die), lastly, mainly competitive players may not be interested in particularly creative ways to play the game, as long as they can win and dominate(anti-scrub mentality) Then again, most people don't fall into just one set category. Personally i like playing creatively and leaderboards interest me when they are small-scale or percentage based but are never something that changes how much i want to play a game; while for trophies it's kinda the same, as long as they are conceivably achievable fkr me they are a decent motivator, but the moment they feel impossible they kill the game for me(the hollow knight pantheon of gods or death's gambit no death speedrun are good examples of this), on the other hand, the opposite is also true, if in a game like minecraft i have no goal, i have no interest in playing because 1: i don't know what to do, and 2: even if i did, i would have no way to know when to stop, and like hell i'm gonna play a single game for the rest of my life, that's just not me. That being said, given all this, I'd probably give myself... 4/5 completionist 2/5 competitive 3/5 creativity Gmtk sounds to me like someone who's more like 1/5 completionist 4/5 competitive 5/5 creative Based on how he talks and his general ideas he tries to push forward with his channel.
P.s.: also looking at the big question about motivation in ye video, one can also decipher it like this: When do i decide I'm satisfied, if i have no idea what i'm working towards? You can't be playing a game without knowing why or what you're doing and still expect to have fun, it might work for some byt, honestly, at least for me it doesn't work, as it might feel akin to button mashing and seeing things happen on screen, i'm not a braindead kid who's happy enough with seeing flashing lights
@@bennemann Sorry, in German that would be a correct sentence structure, I think? Do it all the time out of habit. Or maybe I just do it wrong in both languages hehe
@@remem95 I've heard that it's very common for German speakers to insert unnecessary commas when writing in English, so it's probably just a difference between the two languages.
@@cursorthesecond I still don't think it would be that difficult for an "AI" lol. They could easily *earn* money in numerous ways and all they'd really need is a bit of capital to gamble with or play the stock market and they could be rich in probably literal seconds lol
This is the EXACT issue I have with Animal Crossing. It's supposed to be open-ended, build your world and continue to have fun. But I have way more fun focusing on the goals of completing the museum, upgrading my house to its final size, etc. After all that, the game gets boring.
this is how I feel with open world games. If it's too many options, I feel bored, overwhelmed, scared. Even with don't starve. I don't know why I am like this but I don't have creativity. So I have to plan my actions. If I don't the game immediately becomes boring because I can do whatever I want. I have to make my own goals. and this goes for similar games. smaller goals are a treat. The open ended nature to do other small stuff when you think of it is a bonus.
@@ggundercover3681 The game isn't boring then. You are. You are becoming bored with the game due to your own personal issues. You lack creativity, but within an open world game you sometimes are able to follow a mold, why not just do that? What games DO you like to play? seriously asking
"How do I decide when I'm satisfied" is such a mood for those of us with low executive function/executive dysfunction. It's extremely difficult for me to intrinsically motivate myself which makes the same crafting games you praise quite a bit (not wrongly!) into my least favorite genre. I *want* to like them but I just can't take a wide-open sandbox and build sandcastles in it. I can dig a few holes, maybe make a tower, and then I get bored and move on. Similarly I do find it quite difficult to motivate myself to do anything in games I've "beaten" for example by completing achievements or finishing the stories. I love _Into the Breach_ but once I unlocked all squads and got their achievements, I immediately stopped playing because there just wasn't anything "new" to do. The best motivators for me are things like the koroks in _Breath of the Wild_ , which give a small, *almost* meaningless reward but which still has some value, and I both have to explore to find them and complete a challenge once I do.
Interesting. I have a similar situation but for a totally different reason. I get bored when I do the same thing over-and-over again. So I'm playing this Roguelike, and after two hours of the same thing, I'm bored... but I unlocked a new character. So I play that character for a few hours, and the same thing happens. Every few hours, a new character, a new way to play, and then I'm bored again. I unlock the last character, and after a few runs, I stop playing. There's nothing new for me to unlock. I've seen "everything" (which is conceptually true - some "builds" can be imagined). This is happening in Backpack Battles too. I've played basically every strategy except the meta strategy and I don't need to play that one because I've seen it. I've seen everything that game has to offer. Just keep waiting for the updates. It's similar to your story; I feel like I need something from the devs constantly, like the reward of a quest, to keep playing the game. But for me, the koroks in BotW were pointless and I never liked them. But due to this, I too wasn't motivated once I "beaten" a game.
Same. I never stick with Minecraft for very long bc my favorite part is mining and gathering resources. Once I have a bunch of stuff, it’s like “what’s the point?” Games like factorio on the other hand are very motivating for me, as long as I can keep myself from being overwhelmed.
For me, BOTW hooked me a lot because every time I thought “hey, that hill looks cool, let’s look over there” and then I’d find something. That alone hooked me more than any game has ever done before.
yes! Exploring out of order was hella rewarding. from finding random koroks, to finding the cyclops and taluses. To even finding the extra village. All of it was great. especially when you didn't do things in order.
For me freely exploring the world in BOTW quickly became boring because 9 times out of 10 the only things you find are korok seeds (which become repetitive real quick) and shrines (whose puzzles inside are only fun about half of the time). I often found myself questioning why I even bothered climbing this mountain for 5 minutes only to find a korok puzzle I've already solved a hundred times. The rush you get when you discover something quickly turns into disappointment when you realise that what you found is a "puzzle" that is a slog to solve. I enjoy BOTW much more when focussing on the main quest, with the occasional detour to explore something than the other way around
Keanu Laʻa: I completely agree about breath of the wild and I would throw in that Hollow knight scratched the same itch for me in a similar way. I would highly recommend giving it a try!
My favourite moments in games come, when I can see an alternative solution to a problem and successfully execute it. It is especially exciting, when the solution doesn't seem to be planned by developers.
reminds me of a youtuber that was streaming scribblenauts (rtgames maybe? Irish guy) one of the challenges was first to make an important space for a community/city (like a park or fire station or community center probably) and then advertise it with something related to the building/area (flowers, sprinklers, whatever.) he was taking requests from the twitch chat and someone said to try a cemetery. he didn't expect it to work, but makes sense i suppose, they're common enough across towns for each community to often have their own. no one expected "gun" to work for the second half.
Exactly. This one time I was roleplaying as a starship captain in a tabletop game, and I got tracked by a battle cruiser from an enemy Elite Guard unit. The director of the game expected me to run away, and even I did too, but both my reason and my gut told me I had a very good chance of not only taking the ship, but taking the ship intact. I fought off the ship without deploying my black market weapons and exposing myself to the universe's fun police, gave the enemy ship minimal damage, and took 260 prisoners alive. I was rewarded a 300 billion dollar ship, all of the cargo on it, became the 3rd highest most wanted man in the universe, and the amazement of my game director. THAT is how you make gaming memories.
This gave me flashbacks of K-12 classes that tried to reward candy for every little thing. Especially when the class was a subject I actually liked, the idea of a reward being pushed made me less likely to participate out of resentment for the idea that I wasn't personally motivated enough to participate. And no reward just made everyone else care less about the task after they were accustomed to rewards.
I remember there was a program when I was in school where you would read a book, take a test on said book basically asking about the content to ensure you read it, and would give points. You needed like 50 every semester and said points could also be redeemed for prizes. So what ended up happening was you had an entire class of kids who read the books solely to get the points. They would find the details and remember them but leave the themes of the book behind. And once that test was complete seldom would that book be touched again.
It's why I realized homework didn't matter since most of the time the teacher just threw it away. When you started to get into 2-5 pages and more into one night's worth of work just to be "fodder" that I did it. I stopped the points wasn't worth the work especially when I started to realize I was becoming burned out in other things like really like art and sciences.
I stumbled on this principle when I took a course in college where we studied video games. I often found myself just not enjoying games that I knew I'd probably love otherwise - just because I was told to do it. One time, my homework was to play a specific game and I just didn't do it. That was probably the most important takeaway from the class for me.
I was a real bookworm at school and I still found myself having issues with reading assignments for the same reason. Not as badly as some other classmates for sure but it was still there. I think for me the problem was actually just about the segmentation. If I liked the book I'd much rather just read the whole thing at once but I would have to (re)read individual chapters regardless as they would come up in the classes. Not to mention school edition books with extra commentary that constantly take you out of the actual story.
This reminds me a lot of Hollow Knight. When you beat the "final boss", the game doesn't tell you that you haven't explored a huge chunk of the map ; it's up to you to decide if you are done with the exploration
Hey, new subscripber here. Been binging on your channel's back catalogue since about a week. Just wanted to say that you have some really interesting and informative content which has made me look at the games that I've played in a different light. I am no game dev, but knowing about these things is somewhat intriguing, like a master cook telling explaining why and how they cook what they cook. Thanks for making such good content.
The main thing that popped into my head from this video essay was in relation to D&D, specifically the jump from 3.5e to 5e within my friend group. In 3.5e, you would constantly be bombarded with items and loot. This gradually made players expect loot all the time. When 5e came around, they (WOTC) made it so that magic items were supposed to be rarer in the edition. Thus, people that used loot as a motivator lost their motivation to play. This, in turn, made DM's fundamentally change how the game ran, by bumping up the rewards for combat, to keep those players invested. This video essay was nice to listen to. I really enjoyed it.
There is another layer to that though, at least in the case of D&D. Items were a big part of the character's identity in that edition, and were less something you picked out and planned for and more just found. They represented a growth of your character not only mechanically, but also narratively. Another way to represent their experiences and adventures. 5e's magic items were not only rarer, but also a lot more bland and specific. So people who have fond memories of a character growing into powerful items over their adventures were going to be disappointed with 5e, just as much as the people who were just after raw loot and numerical bonuses.
Video: This is about how rewards in game design can affect personal motivation Me, struggling with artistic burnout after a major commercial project: *OH.*
Lately I've been getting into this little community of stealth gamers here on TH-cam who choreograph and optimize routes through levels. There are various types of runs, but the most popular has to be "Stealth Reaper," which Leo K defines as completing the level without being detected while eliminating every enemy as quickly as possible. But really, there's as unspoken additional criteria for a good Stealth Reaper video - you have to make it look good. That's why Assassin's Creed: Unity is a fan favorite to choreograph. When it works correctly, it's absolutely *gorgeous.* This is where we get more into the art side of game development. Most of the examples in this video were more about technical efficiency, but making actions look, feel, and sound uniquely satisfying when performed correctly is one of the greatest intrinsic ways to encourage mastery. It's why these creators play the same level hundreds of times with admittedly janky controls for that one perfect run
For sure. If your game doesn't feel good to play, it's not going to encourage mastery at all. It's worth noting some of the most popular speedrunning games were created with the concept of "It must be fun to play by itself" in mind, SM64 being the most obvious pick. Mario's movement feels good anyway, so it's a great sweetener that it is also faster and more efficient than regular walking. First frame wallkicks being faster and launching more than regular wallkicks, long jumps into wallkicks preventing the slow bonk animation while looking good, side flips being more technical than backflips, but faster and easier to add into a movement string.
oohh that's right! i also find great pleasure in making things look good. i try to be as precise as possible, playing sloppily sort of ruins my fun... it's not even about performance points but about how smooth and elegant actions look to me. this is why randomly spamming attacks is horrible... why looking for perfect action for the specific situation is great.
This is the exact reason Doom Eternal is such a great game, fighting demons just feels satisfying and fun, which gets you try play risky and try some cool things
punished by rewards is an stunning book on this subject. It's such a radical paradigm shift to how we are brought up in school and work and so helpful for understanding your inner motivation
Wow this video gave me some deep insight into why I love learning things that are 'useless' and sometimes even avoid learning things for school. The interensic vs extrensic rewards are really powerful for me
One thing that stuck to my mind regarding unexpected surprises is that overrelying on them causes similar problems to expected ones, because if you keep searching for them, more often than not you will learn the patterns and what kind of rewards you're getting. Case in point: Korok seeds. I don't think it's accurate to call them unexpected surprises, because while theoretically they are hidden rewards and will surprise you the first few times, the moment you start paying attention you'll notice that there's only like 4 or 5 configurations that lead to them, and they still give the same reward of extended inventory space every time. It's cute the first few dozens of times, but considering that there are 900 of the damned things, they can easily become a nuisance, which happened to me, because they stop being fun rewards. I also do wonder how the concept of rewards applies to gacha games and why we keep rolling on them...
At that point, it makes me feel smart that I AM picking up on these patterns. Not that I care for BOTW anyway, far too open-ended for my tastes. But it's the same logic behind Bonus Areas in the DKCs for me.
The thing about the koroks is that they can be found all throughout any given play through, so they act as a primary reward system within the game all throughout. Breath of the wild “ends” when you run out of stuff to do, and I’ve noticed that it gets more and more boring when there are fewer shrines and koroks to stumble upon. By the time this happens, though, you’ve explored all of the regions to *satisfaction* and are ready to fight Ganon. The 100% completion reward for the shrines is a lame piece of clothing, and the korok reward is literally a giant turd. I think Nintendo is telling its players “stop playing for completion and arbitrary milestones and just have fun with the system we made”. Mario odyssey’s 100% reward is literally just a golden balloon and a postcard. Same thing there
Some Korok seeds are actual mini-puzzles though, so the vast majority of them are kinda just freebies, but a few of them have unique puzzles which in terms of Zelda is a reward in of itself.
For anyone who's gotten burnt out on the new Animal Crossing, it's probably for this reason. For the first month or so you get big new features and objectives every day, but when this stops you're still looking for the same objectives.
I played the game until I had bought all the rooms for my house then stopped playing since that's the major extrinsic goal done. It's only now after taking a break for a few months that I've started doing stuff for it's own sake. Mainly rearranging/redecorating the island.
@@Cleve_Crudgington I'm still playing daily but it's only from intrinsic motivation. My friends and I play together weekly which incentives me to work on a small part of my town each week, and I'm also making a Mario party style board game. It's the same with Minecraft for me, it gets to the point in each world where you're only doing stuff for better decoration. It's the biggest flaw of both games imo.
For me, I felt more intrinsically motivated to make my dream island, which also ties somewhat into extrinsic rewards since you unlock customization tools. But once I got my island to where I wanted it I lost motivation since there’s nothing else to do. I wish there was more room to build stuff, because if I wanted to start a new project I would have to destroy what I’ve made.
In the old animal crossing games, you could play for years, but the new one has no relationship building whatsoever. Also they didn't have to many items in that game (I haven't played it in a while, so maybe there's more items now.)
"Challenges that unlock cosmetics" You mean the challenge of reaching for a credit card? I miss seeing a badass skin and knowing it meant you were a badass in the game.
"I DoNt MiNd As LoNg As It'S oNlY cOsMeTiCs!" I really hate that this has become normalized. I miss the extrinsic rewards being rewards for gameplay, not being rich outside the game. Sadly, it's too easy to monetize and make loads of money selling people the endorphins of the reward directly, and that's the primary reason it's now everywhere.
@@JosephDavies When the Ipod became a thing, I always expected sellers to find a way to bring this 'product that only purpose is to show you are richer' into everything possible. It coming to video game was just a natural consequence of late capitalism
@@JosephDavies I always hated unlocking purely cosmetic things after beating a hard challenge so I have no sympathy for those who keep saying cosmetic DLC is bad.
If I complete a hard challenge in a game, id rather get something that makes the gameplay more fun or makes me more powerfull in game than get a fucking skin
On the topic of goals and rewards, my sister has recently had an increase in her interest in video games. But when I started asking her about what she wants out of a game, she said she wanted a game that very clearly explained what she needed to do. Through a series of events, I introduced her to Breath of the wild, which while it does have goals, those goals are so broad that they give very little direction as to what to do next. I wasn't sure it was the right game for her, since the game does very little hand holding, and expects the player to figure out their own goals find solutions for them. I helped explain some of the systems to her, and helped her get a grasp on the controls, but then after a while, I backed off and let her enjoy the game. What was super interesting was how she came back to me later to talk to me about the game. Instead of being disillusioned by the fact that there were very few explicit goals, she told me how much she was enjoying the game. More than than, she had started forming her own plans and goals as to what she was going to do next, what she still needed to do, and how she was going to accomplish those tasks. So I guess the moral of the story is that an explicitly motivated person can become intrinsically motivated by simply having a broad enough goal to reach.
@Alexander Supertramp How does that make his point? This video was about how getting rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation not how being told there's a reward, and never getting said reward reduces motivation.
@@nekoimouto4639 Curiosity is an intrinsic motivation for the subject of your curiosity. In this case, they were curious about the goat which created extrinsic motivation to watch a video about video games because the video implied it would also talk about the goat. They are now upset that the video misled them which shows that they were extrinsically motivated to watch the video. They probably had multiple intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, but curiosity about the goat was an extrinsic motivation that wasn't fufilled.
10:43 “When they create their games, [Nintendo’s designers] don’t tell you how to play their game in order to achieve some kind of mythical reward. There are things you can do in the game that will result in some sort if reward or unexpected surprise.” - Bill Trinen “No! This isn’t how you’re supposed to play the game!” - Masahiro Sakurai
Rip sakurai, i love that man, but i really wish hed accept and embrace the competitive scene of smash bros, rather than being ashamed of it. I get where hes coming from since it doesnt feel good for both players if one of them absolutely destroys another player in a 1v1 game, which is smth he notes in an interview, but u cant really avoid that situation from happening, no matter how hard u try to otherwise. Ultimate does seem to be a step in the right direction, but i still long for the day when smash bros fully embraces the comp scene and its depth and movement, whether its directed by sakurai or not.
@@moonman4307 Most likely, Sakurai will not make the next Smash game or there will be a Smash Bros reboot a long time from now. At least that is what Sakurai said when Ultimate was in development and announced.
I just realized I've done this to myself with social media and art. I used to do tons of art, but recently I was disappointed by the lack of social reward on social media and I've stopped creating as much art :/
As a person who gave up on Minecraft because I had to create my own fun, this video made me rethink my whole life and future plans. Should I really be going into an industry where I get paid to create games when that might take the fun out of one of my favorite hobbies? Will following my dreams ruin my life?
many years ago i wanted to be a game designer, but then i realize that it will not be fun to play games for me after that and gave up the idea... now i am here many years later thinking on maybe develope a game not for the sake of having fun playing the game, just for the fun of making one.
If doing what you love ruins your life, imagine doing what you don't love. You will grow to 'hate' both, but which makes you more satisfied after a week of overtime? Which will keep you in the job, make you force yourself to work harder, and which will make you desperate for a chance to move away, and loath everything about your job? I chose what I love. It does become a chore, and it's tiring, but sometimes I have my 'Eureka' moments and that motivates me. Had I chosen something else, I don't think I can persevere.
@@amber5675 In my view, doing something you don’t love as a job will make the thing you love in itself a reward for finishing another day on the clock. It can even be set up as a schedule if you’re into schedules - wake up, go to work, get home, then unwind with your hobby. You choose when you do the hobby, if you even do it that day, and how involved with it you are. If the thing you love is something you have to do as a job, you have to be 100% involved when you’re on the clock, and you have to do it every single working day, no matter how flexible the hours are, or you just won’t get paid. Finance is already a struggle for a lot of people nowadays, so they feel as if they have to work themselves to the bone to get somewhat decent income. In short, no matter what you do as a job, you get burnt out from doing it constantly. It’s so much more unpleasant and horrible when the burnout is from doing what you used to love.
Ask any successful streamer who started on Twitch (or other site) because they loved playing video games how they're feeling about video games lately. They all feel like a chore. It's a job, it's something they have to do to pay for their house and food and stuff. It makes them miserable. It's very rare that someone turning their passion into a profession works the way they expect it to.
i think its very important when doing something you enjoyed before to really try to look back and see why you enjoyed what you were doing. why did you enjoy making games in the first place? i think you can keep a healthy balance by continuing to do your passion for work while also maybe start a project for fun.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually hate leaderboards and love (good) achievements. When I find my game is scored-based with leaderboards, I become LESS motivated and pretty quickly lose interest, but if I beat a game and see I'm still missing some achievements, I will gladly hop back into to scrounge for them. Bonus feel-good points when you get an achievement only 0.5% other players have gotten.
Good point and steam, achivements are rarer than they are classified because of the people that cheated them. Also It is very demotivating when you see some person with so high score that you know it had to be cheated.
Exactly! An added motivator is in retroachievements.org, where getting ALL the cheevs for a given game will add an icon on your user page. And because the main leaderboard is for such a broad subject (mastery of all cheevs on the site), it really doesn't register unless you notice you're in the Top 100 or so. And at that point, it's just another motivator.
There are two reactions to comparing peoples performance that both stem from the same problem. 1. A lack of self-confidence that creates the urge to avoid the comparison outright. A flight response. 2. a lack of self-confidence that creates a need to 'prove' oneself. A fight response. (That will not go away once at the top because the position must be held).
I dislike both, they almost make me less likely to play the game. Best reward for playing a game is, in my eyes, more of the game to play (as long as it's interesting)
I personally love easter eggs achievements,you never know what you gonna find and it's satisfying as well. 10 min ago i did the chimp achievements in Halo 3 and was so hilarious
Did you press the like button? It has been demonstrated there is a strong correlation between experiencing satisfaction and pressing like buttons, so there might be a clue there.
I'm still a teen, but I understand what you're talking about. I'm full time at a university and on and off with work, I don't have the time to dump 200 hours into Breath of the Wild trying to make my own fun out of the same korok seeds every time. Having set goals and achievements helps give me direction so that if I'm spending time away from homework, I can say "I'm working towards this other goal." It also gives a point (All/most goals achieved) where I can stop the game for the last time and say I enjoyed the time I spent. I ground every 999 moons in Odyssey, and I had fun, but now it's time to be done.
This might have to do with your time and income. As a kid I found my own fun in games more than I do now but part of it was that I had a crazy amount of free time and I didn't feel like each game "session" had to have some kind of meaning or goal completed because of it. And I usually only got new games as gifts and couldn't just go out and get more so the games I played were my only options for things to play for months at a time so I would play them a lot and dive deep into them. But now when I can easily buy my own games I find myself less willing to stick with any single game because I can move on to experience something new in another game.
@@VonZuben to touch on this point, as soon as I started pirating games I noticed I would never complete them. If I look back to my PS2 collection there is probably not one game that I never finished, nowadays it's hard to find a recent game that I HAVE finished.
When I try to play Don't Starve, I always lose my direction after the first year. I started making goals to motivate my self: "build a fortress in the caves", "explore the whole map", "create a death trap for the hounds", etc. but the problem still persists. Generally, I don't even fulfill such goals before I quit. That game benefits a lot from goals, like the adventure mode. I spent much more time and had much more fun in it, than outside it. The rest of the game simply feels like it lacks a gameplay loop. Without goals it doesn't seem like a sandbox where you can do whatever you want, but rather an entropic slog towards the inevitable death. I disagree with the implication that extrinsic motivation excludes intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic goals come from the outside and is used to prove your worth to the outside. Intrinsic goals are made by yourself to prove your worth to mainly yourself, or just to have fun. There is no reason for a person to avoid making up their own goals while trying to achieve goals set by others. Since the two aren't mutually exclusive, why bother forcing a comparison between the two? After all, I didn't say that I didn't stop along the way to build a doom fortress in adventure mode.
Yup. Youre right about Dont Starve. The game should have clear goals or all the information is given and not hidden. The design by the developer was stupid because in the end Dont starve players mostly just look at guides and youtube videos to learn instead of just exploring. And mod such as crockpot recipe or health bar are made and used by players. The dev should just make all information available from the start and the game will be much more enjoyable.
Youre so, so right. Open world games are fun, until you dont know where to go next and just quit. Playing a RPG and getting hooked up by levelling is fun until you get maxed, but it wont stop you from getting back and trying new ways to reach max, see how far you can get limiting yourself.
@@caiobotelho8528 Funny you should say that, given that I'm currently playing Kenshi and even after what was essentially over a hundred hours grinding stats, I'm still in the process of planning out my next playthrough. Those stats aren't even maxed yet!
He didnt necesarilly say that those two are exclusive. He basically just said that games shouldnt hold your hand, there should be room for intrinsic motivation meanwhile providing an overarching goal, which further gives you ideas as you go along. I personally dont agree with this as I think that the only form of exclusing extrinsic motivation should be to not hand hold the player. Terraria for example is almost entirely an extrinsically driven game and it was one of the most fun games Ive ever played
Well done with this video Mark! I’m reflecting on my repressed memories of childhood in school. How unmotivated I was. This has helped me realize I need to keep learning for my own sake goddamnit. Thank you. Keep thinking outside the box with topics like these. You’re hard work is paying off!
The real kicker here is, that it's not just science that burns those kids. It's school itself. The whole grade system in schools is completely extrinsic.
@@GayFroge haven't read the paper, but the fact that is mentioned that they were already interested in drawings I'll say it might indicated that they based the quality compared with older drawings of the children
@@GayFroge If i understand correctly. The studies tracked the time they spent on drawing , that represents their interest, rather than judging the quality of drawing.
It has been shown that "variable ratio reinforcement schedules," giving rewards at unexpected numbers of actions, is most effective at encouraging players to play more than "fixed ratio reinforcement schedules," giving rewards every time a player performs a fixed number of actions. (but is it ethical...?) example: slot machines (or reward chests) vs giving a reward for every 5 enemies killed
This part really made me go "huh, so that's why I like games like Warframe so much?" Like, for an incredibly grindy game that demands a ridiculous dedication of time and effort over *years* to get access to all the content, it still feels rewarding on my... 7th year of playing the game? Christ. Anyway, the mix between these random rewards (item drops at stated RNG chances from specific enemies/objectives) and a select few stated, guaranteed rewards just works out really well for me personally. I truly loved the design and feel of Destiny 2, but the way that literally all of the grinding was just "do x with y for z amount of times" burned me out on that game in just a few months.
So in Bloodborne I find that Lamps arent nearly as "cozy" as rhe bonfires from Dark Souls and a lot of that is how predictable they are. You dont ever feel that breath of fresh air near the lamp because there's always one at the beginning of the level and after that boss. Whereas in Dark Souls you have to rely on shortcuts a lot more and you dont really know when the next bonfire is.
@@hohohoupufuru That's one mechanic to enforce that kind of reward system. Basically anything that's desirable but unexpected fit the category, most notably mob drops or hidden achievements. It could also take the shape of "area opening up unexpectedly" by having areas cordoned off until the player obtains an item or power, which they don't know about yet. The promise of reward at an unexpected moment in the future is powerfully motivating. That's also why "future faking" in interpersonal relationships is like crack to a lot of people.
I think I much prefer the idea of hidden goals or broad ones rather than comparative ones, I honestly find leaderboards incredibly demotivating, why would I ever want to know that Im awful compared to x number of people? unless its a competitive game and I want to play it competitivly telling me how i compare to others is a sure fire way to make me lose interest if im not good, which most people arent when starting a game, personal scores are much better, they show your improvement relative to yourself rather than relative to people who are likely on average better than you unless your playing a game soon after release.
I like uncharteds hidden trackers that pop up during gameplay when you've achieved a higher score in a certain area from your friends. Like it'll show when you've gotten more headshots or something.
I find leaderboards to be entirely meaningless unless I know the people on them. And since it's rare that I find my friends on leaderboards (I think the only games that I found anybody I knew were those of Race the Sun and Super Meat Boy), I mostly don't really care. The only exception to that rule are Zachtronics' games since the data is actually presented in a meaningful way rather than just a list of names, but mere lists aren't really interesting.
Takeaway: give players rewards, but as surprises and not as a pre-presented checklist of goals. As for me, I'm with the dude asking about when he's satisfied. If I don't have goals when I play a game, I quit pretty quickly. If you give me goals and rewards to stay focused on, I'll play until I accomplish those goals. I also suspect that in the drawing experiment, if you kept giving those kids rewards, they would keep drawing, and probably improve much more quickly than those kids not given any rewards. It's just a matter of keeping those rewards constant.
He didnt really say that. He said that you should be encouraging intrinsic motivation meanwhile having an overarching goal while making some unexpected rewards. I personally also dont entirely agree with this as doing something in game is not doing something intrinsic for a reward but doing something you wouldnt do at all for a reward. That and the fact that nearly everything in a game is extrinsic motivation
You know mark brown? I have always had this feeling when my family told me to make my hobbies the job I do. Ever since that day I couldn't enjoy all of my hobbies, like even tho I play games exactly as I used to do when I was younger I just lost that sense of happiness and satisfaction. I just couldn't tolerate the idea of comparing my hobbies with a dull job. Hobbies are meant to be exciting and fulfilling. But here I am now as a college student without a job or a hobbies. Feeling empty, no motivation or goals. And I just question why am I still alive
So... Games with lineal designs and without too much for experimentation are better when giving goals and rewards. Games with experimentation potential can be harmed by preestablished goals with rewards limiting the player's creativity and curiosity.
Depending on the type of goals and rewards, how much they are and how they are given, yes. The best example of this for me it's dark souls: there are clear goals(trophies, endings, covenants) and less clear rewards(quest rewards, ng+, player and game-imposed challanges) a player can choose to play the gane through one/all the endings, or doing things more specifically, like doing an SL1 run or using the calamity ring, maybe playing with a very specific build etc... The only thing i don't get is(at least if we don't count the +1,2 and 3 rings) why someone would go for ng+, maybe once, twice, but i know people who do infinitely many ng+ and i don't get why; when will they decide to stop? When a new game comes out? It's not like they're adding challenges to themselves when doing ng+20, also because the increase in difficulty caps at ng+6...
even linear games can be hurt by adding goals. In general a linear game has a clear structure and a clear goal which is to beat the game adding more to that like steam achievements or other explicit goals like do X thing X amount of times to get a badge can definitely detract from the experience but linearity is not a binary thing so it's usually not straightforward. In some cases i think goals can even be used to encourage experimentation but usually that means creating smaller sub goals for example encouraging a player to make use of a certain mechanic to beat a level with a goal can be effective.
Don't draw too many final conclusions from this video.. it's very beginner level. If you wanna know more, look up individual topics and read up. Mark presents his stuff in a very well written and neat package, but never goes in the nitty gritty nuances.
@@idunno402 well of course, it's a 15-ish minutes video after all, not a video essay on objectives in gaming and how the affect each category(creative, competitibe, complete) of player, that would take at minimum an hour and even then it probably wouldn't be enough.
I see a microcosm of this in my experience of notoriously complex grand strategy game Europa Universalis 4 which gives players so few overt goals that it's actually an obstacle to teaching the already incredibly difficult interconnected systems. I found this very annoying as a new player and often when teaching the game, I go out of my way to tell new players very discrete goals, or tell them that in truth, the goals are the hundreds of achievements in game. But interestingly enough, for the most part, my most memorable moments are not so much the achievement of those achievements. My most upvoted reddit post of all time was playing during a game when I tried to conquer the world as Joseon (midieval) Korea. I became the emperor of China (long story), turned most of my neighboring nations into my tributaries, and allied the powerful Ottoman Empire and we attacked Russia together. We rolled over them and just as I was ready to take some land, my allies ended the war and gave me nothing... it seemed. When I read the fine print, I realized they'd made the Russian empire, a nation almost as big as me, into my tributary, giving me so many power projection points for defeating my rival that the number appeared over the point-cap. The funniest thing is that the rest of the campaign was a failure by the standards of the achievement - but I view it as one of my finest moments because of the reception that hilarious screenshot got. There is surely a fine balance to be had, but this video is such a wonderful reminder of what it means to seek happiness in life and in game. AND WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE GOAT?!
Grand strategy games are for sure a great example of this goal-and-reward issue. I find EU4 experience amazing for the very reason that you should set your own goals and choose your playstyle accordingly. I still enjoy playing majors and minors alike, because it's obviously different circumstances that make it re-playable. If it were that the goal was to become the greatest power, everyone would pick Russia or the Turks -- yet, you are free to envision your own type of challenge (achievements aside), which is much more rewarding to face. Also, there is a kind of unexpected rewards in flavour events and in random (but oftentimes structured and somewhat guided) situations the different countries get themselves into. That said, EU4 as a grand strategy game does have its own problems when it comes to achieving something. You have highlighted one aspect -- complex nature of the game makes it hard for new players to both grasp the mechanics and set their goals at the same time. For experienced players there's the other issue. The sandbox aspect of the game lets you set your own goals, sure. But it also makes so that, once you figure out the min-maxing, you find out that the proper way to achieve anything is to simply blob out (yes they have implemented many features to mitigate this, but in the core it's still the same). With that, the game seems more and more grindy. So you have to choose more challenging starts, but everyone has done Byzantium by now, right?
I remember the tutorial of Crusader Kings telling me, as the king of León, to declare war on the pagan chief holding the Canaries islands. After losing most of my men to attrition and the strong defenders, I decided to retreat, end the war, flip the bird, and do whatever I wanted instead. That is to say, kill my brothers to grab their respective kingdoms, and start an early Reconquista. The game is still going, with me trying to find a way to take back Navarre from the HRE without having to go to war with the bloody invincible behemoth it became.
It is interesting because i feel like leveling in RPGs can give me some intrinsic rewards, because i like to experiment and try out new classes, so im intrinsically motivated to play, but the levels are there as benchmarks for my progress
I think thats part of why I love the job system in some of the Final Fantasy games. Its not like the game requires you to use or even unlock all of them, so there is still some wiggle room for players to choose what they want to do. Although then again all RPGs also just automatically appeal perfectly to the completionist mindset with the leveling system, sidequests, rare drops etc.
On Mini Metro: I play that game all the time, I’ve been playing it for three years, and I only ever play the first level. For me, the fun is derived from the decision that comes from learning something deeply instead of broadly. And this game offers that in spades! (Also, my personal record is 3400.)
I had a similar experience with Satisfactory. I found the need to move my resource gathering conveyor belts frustrating. Frostpunk has a similar mechanic but in that instance I found it to be rewarding. And I’m not sure what made the difference.
Yep, that's why I stopped playing Blizzard games years ago: they actually started feeling like jobs. Almost every Blizz game has a grinding element to it. Daily quests, weekly quests, mandatory logins (not just WoW... Diablo 3, Hearthstone has it as well).
I think this is why so many people drop out of the latest expansions in World of Warcraft within a few months. People get to experience the story and see the new sights then when they reach the level cap everything changes. Your journey becomes that of steady progression of equipment you may not care about because the challenges that remain require such an obvious time investment.
Same. I was real into hearthstone for like a year, but then as soon as I realized I was having thoughts like “ugh, I gotta log in today to get those quests or I’ll miss out.” I had to call it quits.
Yup. I do art for a living, but I find that my best works are always the ones I just want to do for myself, not the commissions people ask of me. Not that I don't do hard work on commissions, of course, but that's what it is: Work. Luckily, I've found a way to compartmentalize monetary artwork vs. personal artwork, so that I don't get dissatisfied with either.
One of my favorite unexpected surprises is probably is the portal achievement where you take all the radios to this one specific place in each room until they fuzz out, something you are never asked to do and probably wouldn't know you could do it unless you scrolled through the games achievement section, or your friend told you about it only to discover that you get to see a secret room containing lore. This lore doesn't really give you much, practically the only thing it does is give you a clue that Glados ain't very nice, it's just there as a gift. I just liked how neat and completely optional it was.
This one is far deeper AND more apt an example than you've indicated here - in Portal 1, they added the achievement "transmission received" years after release with 0 other info. The radio signals are codes that led to other places like old BBS boards and eventually the players themselves revealed Portal 2. It was a beautiful ARG
This concept can be applied to so many areas. I worked with someone on some of my music projects for a time and he was doing it for free and for his own enjoyment. After awhile I felt guilty that he was doing so much work for no pay. So I started paying him a bit randomly here and there. It didn't ruin our relationship or anything but it did completely change the dynamic. The concept you're teaching here really illustrates what happened in my situation and why.
This is why i could never get into destiny, even though i literally got destiny 2 for free. "Do this mission, and you'll get this loot, which will allow you to do this harder mission, for more loot!" CoD and HALO were the giants of FPS when i grew up in the early 2000s, they didn't have thousands of bits of loot to pick up after every mission, you played the games because the levels were fun to beat and shooting your friends in the face was fun.
Not to oppose you at all, just a kind of funny comparison, but I've had the exact opposite experience. I played halo and gears of war and such when i was younger, (though I imagine I'm a bit younger than you cause man, I sucked at them), but none of them ever stuck. I played, but as soon as my friends left there was nothing left. I wasn't unlocking new things, there were no goals to work towards besides personal improvement, and I KNEW that no matter how hard I tried I wouldn't even be that good, and certainly not the best, so I just couldn't invest myself. And then I got Destiny, and I stayed with it. Well, I got Destiny and Terraria, tried Destiny, left, beat Terraria, and then stuck with Destiny (and Terraria too, but to a lesser degree). With Destiny, I had goals. Sure, I'd never be a PvP pro, but I could unlock a cool new weapon that would give me a bit of an edge. I may never get a worlds first raid, or even first week (or month), but if I go in anyways I might get a special exotic that would let me use the meta strategy. I HATE Gambit, but if I go in I can grind out some pinnacle weapons (and maybe even have fun doing it). In a more modern example, Titanfall 2 is an amazing game. I would say it's one of the best movement shooters ever, maybe even one of the best shooters at all. I adore it. It's campaign was amazing, it's PvP was compelling, and I maybe played it for a few months. Occasionally I come back for a week or two. I just... Didn't feel like I was getting anything done. I would unlock cosmetics, but other people were so far ahead of me that I couldn't even show them off. It just felt like a waste, even when I was having fun, and eventually I left because every game felt the same. I was getting better, sure, but it would never matter because I could never really feel it, it was too slow and I couldn't tell if I was improving or getting worse. It was the same problem that I had with Overwatch, and with Apex Legends, and the reason I never stuck with them either. Just a different personal response to games, I think, but it's kinda neat.
It wasn't that way for me. I had a lot of intrinsic motivation going to school, so I actually really enjoyed it. I suppose the main problem is that teachers fail to grow that intrinsic motivation in their student and (depending on the education system) assign too much value to tests.
When Hitman (2016) was released as episodes, I enjoyed playing the same location over and over trying to find better ways to complete the main objectives. Now, I find myself just hunting for challenges to cross them off the list and move on to the next location
YES. This is something I've been trying to explain to people for ages. It's crazy how goals and achievements, when left unchecked, can trick us into wasting loads of time doing something not fun.
I think replay value is also an important factor here. Replaying a game after beating it seems like a wholly intrinsic action, especially of its a linear game with very clear and outlined goals. Its more about enjoying the experience of play and story over getting all the trophies and such. Even if a game is extrinsicly motivating, if you enjoy playing it that becomes an intrinsic motivation.
I wonder if this same idea applies to Game Developers as well? That once monetary concerns become a thing, they, for example, suffer creative burnout at a higher rate?
There's plenty of cult-classics-turned-generic-shit series out there that shows this. Early fallout was renowned for storytelling and importance of RPG elements. New fallout is basically borderlands style looter shooter with practically no story. Hell, borderlands. The first one had a lot of dark comedy, and while it leant on the 4th wall, it generally wasn't too much. Borderlands 3 is packed full of memes, 4th wall breaks, cliche catchphrases/characters. Dead Rising, heavy character emphasis in the first game, interesting setting, tons of little secrets that you were never extrinsically rewarded for. Maybe you found the hidden weapons, maybe you don't, no-ones gonna give you hints. Dead Rising 4, everything has a collectibles counter, interesting time mechanic was stripped to make the game appeal to more people, dark, gritty story of people going crazy trying to survive was stripped to a goofy over the top story of WaCkY characters wearing themed outfits and a zombie in power armor. Sure, these games all have some creativity in there, and they aren't necessarily bad games, but it's clear to see that many of them had their creative and unique elements removed in future titles in order to make them do better financially by appealing to more people.
@@Winasaurus BL3's balancing is also very thoroughly screwed. It has the most refined and polished core mechanics, but none of the content is able to back it up.
i'm not a game dev but a professional creative as well, and i think it's great to try to reframe your work to think of it in terms "maybe what i make will be the highlight of someone's day/week/month/year(yeah that can happen!), maybe it will inspire them to pursue their goals etc etc" not "how much can i make off of this" because how it influences people is totally unpredictable... i'm a graphic designer and i saw my younger sibling's scrapbook where among many things, there was some paper box because the design was impressive enough to put there... like thinking someone might do the same with something i make is truly wonderful
Opened my eyes to why I'm growing less interested with some live-games / GAAS. The reward system is about "when am I going to get the next thing?" and less about player expression/agency. Guess that's why I love stealth games. They give you tools and you figure out how to use them best even if you have an overall objective, and maybe optional ones. I need to rethink some stuff though... that forum post was heavy
This makes me think a lot about how I played Stardew Valley. I had my brother beside me telling me how to do things. He essentially acted as a goal-setting system, which totally ruined the discovery aspect of the game. Once he left, I had no impulse to play the game because I wasn't used to thinking for myself and doing what I wanted to do. Anyone else had this experience with that type of game? I wonder if I should go back with a more curious mindset...
You should. Games like Stardew Valley ( Terraria, Minecraft, etc) have their own objectives and rules but you don't need to do them if you don't want. The experience of the game itself is how yourself play the game and not how you should be playing (at least, it's how i see it). By the way, i have a friend that plays Terraria with me. He likes more to focus in boss fights while i like to build things. It's a matter of you playing on your time and enjoying the game. Have fun!
Man that is absolutely brutal because Stardew’s most appealing quality is its dripfeed of surprises. I’d tell your brother to never do that again if you can do so in a polite way
I'd go play a similar but different game in the genre instead. Something fresh. For PC, I'd consider My Time At Portia, while on Switch I'd suggest Rune Factory IV.
I used to play harvest moon when i was a kid. But when im older now... i only play difficult games with clear objectives. Can no longer enjoy games like Harvest Moon or stardew valley.
Something to also keep track of is how rewards are framed. Progression systems, especially due to leveling up and the like, tend not to cause the same reward behaviour, as many players come to expect it rather that pay attention to it. They see it as less a reward for actions and more a predetermined expansion of ability. In my testing, players that get rewards that are referred to as 'Unlocks' have statistically significant less trouble with reward-pattern gameplay then referring to those same rewards as 'Bonuses'. As with many things in life, framing can often matter more than what is being framed.
This makes me think of school. If the goal is learning, then homework that you're being forced to do for a grade won't give you the motivation to learn, just to finish the task, get reward. That's why learning at your own pace works so much better.
Ooh this was a really good video! I super liked how you kept looping back to the classroom experiement, each time with more and more detail revealed about how it went and what it means for human reward systems. :D
I recently got into Age of Empires 2 as my first RTS game and fell in love with the game simply because it's lots of fun. There's absolutely no rewards or unlock system, but learning new civs and build orders has engaged me way more than games with persistent reward structures.
This is a really interesting topic that I'd like to explore more. I'm a cognitive scientist with a heavy interest in learning and education. I'd never considered rewards from this perspective but I can even see how in my personal life these rules generally hold true. It would be interesting to explore more ways to combine intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. I feel like in some games like Hitman, the objectives are balanced out by the freeform approach to assassination. And it was always cool to go out of bounds in Halo to find skulls or secrets. Bungie knew you would go out there. All the more reason to boot up Unity and keep making things!
Don’t Starve Together and Outer Wilds are two of the best games I’ve ever played. I love how strange they both are and the gorgeous art styles. Plus I love the challenge of Don’t Starve.
I've never really been shown this angle on how extrinsic rewards can negatively affect our interest in things that we were previously intrinsically motivated to do. I've noticed this effect before myself in my experience with online multiplayer games. It's happened to me a few times where I play a game I enjoy for hundreds of hours without getting bored, and eventually I begin to approach a competitive skill level. The competition and drive to be good completely drains the fun out of the game, and I get bored of it and quit it for a long time before I might regain interest. This was a fantastic video, both very educational and entertaining. Thank you for providing such amazing content!
This was really helpful...I've been demotivated to work on my drawings ever since my economical situation got worrying and I had the potential to get payed for my stuff -- somehow that pressure just made me freeze and never attempt to go back.
Feels like school in a way. Everytime someone saw me writing for fun, the first respond was always some variant of "You doing homework?". It's like the concept of doing things for it's own sake was some foreign concept. On a slightly related note, did you do a video on motivation based on other factors (exploration, challenge, sense of superiority, etc)? It seems like a lot of videos on motivation focus on rewards like achievements and in game loot. Edit: Spelling.
I agree with you... assuming everyone's goal in a game is to better themselves. My preference in games is similar to my preferences in TV shows or film: it tells a story and although I enjoy it I do eventually want the story to finish so that I can move onto another story. In my case, I enjoy having goals and rewards and I look forward to having a game end once the goal is achieved. Thought I'd put it out there as I got the impression that you were putting down people who need/like having extrinsic rewards
Minecraft, in my opinion, is the quintessential example of what you said in this video. There are zero quests or challenges to complete (unless you care about achievements that have nothing to do with progression in the game). Sure, you can kill the ender dragon to "beat the game", but as someone who has played this game for years and countless hours, I have yet to defeat the ender dragon. Instead, I made my own challenge. I found a little island and decided I would build a castle. That castle turned into a colossal four story ziggurat with a miniature city inside it. A massive auto farm also sits adjacent to it. I cleared out deserts worth of sand to build it. The great thing is is that my castle does nothing a small dirt shack cannot. You can build a tiny dirt cube, put chests, an enchanting table, a crafting table, etc., and that's it. That's all you need to survive and beat the game. However, instead of doing this, I decided for myself I would build a castle. Notch didnt tell me to, I just felt like doing it, and in doing so I have poured countless hours into this game. If I had an objective in a game that was like "mine a ridiculous amount of blocks for hours so that you can spend hours placing them" I would never play that game. Nobody would. However, because it was my decision to build that castle, I painstakingly spent dozens of hours breaking and placing blocks. And in the end, what did I get for grinding other than bragging rights? Pretty much nothing. The game gives you zero rewards for anything you build. And yet completing that castle was honestly one of the most incredible things I have done in gaming. It is still not done over a year later, and I dont know if it will ever be. This immense self reward following an immense challenge posed by myself is endlessly more satisfying than receiving xp for killing a certain amount of enemies. It's because of this that I can never get bored of minecraft. There is always something to create, design, mine, improve, and absolutely nothing is told to you by the game. The devs drop you in an immense sandbox with countless tools to play with and just let us go crazy with our imaginations. And, as a result, minecraft is one of if not the best selling game of all time.
7:21 that's probably why I can enjoy playing a game, enjoy writing about a game, enjoy making a video about a game - but hate playing the game to get footage even though I am still just playing the game with OBS turned on.. Somehow something just changes and I don't really want to do it, even though it's something I'll enjoy
This is so accurate. I often abandon my minecraft worlds after defeating the dragon. Nothing else to do, at least in my mind. I've caught myself actively avoiding and putting off the dragon fight because I *know* that that'll make me stop playing
Accurate. I stopped my plans of building a giant colloseum half way through because I ended up beating the dragon first and it felt pointless to put any time into it.
Wow, just read about the drawing experiment this morning in the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink. Interesting how intrinsic motivation is often the most satisfying reward for creative or heuristic tasks. Great video as always!
4:15 WOOOOW, that's EXACTLY what happened between me and the gym. When i used to do it for is own sake, i used to have much more pleasure in working out even in periods where i was having ZERO progress. But now that i do it for the sake of the results (making my lifts grow) i discovered that i've lost the interest in working out completely!! Even though i'm making a lot of progress - maybe even faster than before. All because my training feels robotic and without life. Now i only do for other goals and for my mental and physical health.
Thank you thank you thank you for talking about the tragically underrated Don't Starve. An additional point about the rewards in game is that Don't Starve has no score other than the number of days you survive, no character-leveling, and the only substantial goal of "escaping" is buried deep in the mythology and crafting menus. The lack of direction makes it one of the freest experiences you can have. You play until your overconfidence kills you, sometimes after dozens and dozens hours in a single game. Then the world is gone forever.
This helps explain why I love the golden poop you get as a reward for finding all 900 korok seeds. The korok seeds exist to encourage exploration, so they put a ton of them in to ensure plenty were found, no matter the player's playstyle. But they also didn't want it to turn into a chore like Assassin's Creed 2's feathers. So you get a reward if you find them all! But it's a poop. But it's a golden poop! It's a reward, and clearly a reward, but of little value except as acknowledgment of what you completed..
Yeah it would be great if you specified what type of game. If it’s a shooter or something than unlock-able items that help you get further in the game (last longer, progress to further areas, etc.) could be interesting, but if it’s just a casual game (like color switch or geometry dash ig) than maybe unlock-able skins? If it’s a competitive game than leaderboards and stuff can be a good motivator, but plz be more specific so we can help you!! :>
I've worked in the same field as my main passion for a couple of years, and lately I've been in a rut where I don't really get a lot of hobby stuff done because I don't really feel like it... I never realized that those two could have a deeper connection. I know it's not the main point of the video, but it still was a great eye-opener!
It's definitely a hard problem to solve, especially because not everyone is going to feel the same way. I personally get no real motivation or satisfaction from leaderboards or beating my own high score, and completely open-ended games with no goals whatsoever tend to lose their appeal to me very fast. But I also find shallow goals or checklists like achievements pretty unrewarding. The most satisfying games fall somewhere between those extremes.
7:11 This is why I stopped enjoying doing 3D animation and I'm now lost on what I want to do with my life. I loved it, until it became a job. Now I'm afraid of turning any other of my passions into my job, but, at the same time, I don't want to work a job I don't like. I might just leave the game industry behind and look for something else.
Holy, I feel exactly like this with trophies. I play on ps4, and love getting all trophies (platnium) Then, after I get the platnium, I drop the game. Almost always forever. After watching this, I feel as though it's chasing a high, not actual fun. I strive for the achievement, not the experience. When I get my next singleplayer game, I am not going to look at the achievement list. At all. As in, breaking a nigh permanent habit. I want to play games for the game, not the trophies anymore.
It's always struck me as odd how so many people cared so much about achievements. For me, unless it gives me something in game (or even if it's just something like concept art) I don't care about getting the achievement at all. I'm guessing it's just about bragging rights, and I don't care to brag.
Anyone else begin thinking of their life through school with the classroom experiment explanation lol "the constant rewards decreased motivation and even creativity" woops that's me
In school grades are what measure achievement rather than genuine knowledge, which is why some people don't even feel motivated to try to learn, and rather simply do their work for the good of their grades. This probably also results in cheating. I just wish the education system was more about learning than competing.
@@wakkjobbwizard yeah, the school system is ultimately pretty broken. those who "succeed" have likely only been taught how to memorize things and regurgitate them on command, and those who fail are basically being told that they're Not Good Enough, for reasons likely outside their control. and people are _surprised_ when children come out of this as an absolute mess? like... neither group is benefitting from this. one is confused and lost, and the other has had their self-worth destroyed. It's Bad!!!
Alexander Supertramp I think assessing knowledge is very important but my point is that it treats some people who didn’t understand some stuff like they’re dumb, rather than taking a step back and trying to solve the problem. Also I feel like the way high school is structured makes people want to focus more on the classes that boost their GPA rather than the ones they enjoy and genuinely want to explore. I’m in high school and personally I only choose the classes that give me what I want, and not the ones that make my good boy number go up.
@Alexander Supertramp i'm glad you haven't experienced these problems with the system. unfortunately, your experience is not universal, and you seem to be under the impression that framing learning as a pass/fail contest is anything but counter-productive. (also, way to brush aside literally every developmentally disabled kid who wants to learn but is literally incapable of functioning properly in the school system!)
Besides the korok seeds counting as an "unexpected" reward, I really resonated with this video. I never really knew why I would grind through games with achievements as fast as I could, while I could spend days on end playing Don't Starve, but now I feel like I do. Very informative and satisfying. Thank you.
For narrative drive people a perfect reward is audio logs. They give insight into the story beyond what is immediately seen, driving the person to explore so they get the most of the story, like brush strokes on a painting.
Hey, TH-cam is just trying to avoid giving creators the overjustification effect. They should do it out of passion, not for money! (I mean seriously, who needs money?)
Great video. Here are some additional thoughts of mine about achievements. I love the concept of achievements and always check on Steam if there are any for a game before buying (I still buy games without them). But they are hard to generalize. Some are just usefull as a guide what to do or like a checklist what the game still has to offer. For example after finishing the main part do it again without a specific ability, when not to tedious an opportunity for replayablity. Some force you to be creative with vague descriptions or encourage you to do something silly (riding a unicorn while shooting the rainbow gun, take a cow with you into space). Hidden achievements can surprise you and are just there to tell you you can still find something in the game, but I have to admit that soemtimes I give up and look them up. For me completing a game with 100% is defintely something nice. But that being said achievements can be implemented badly in a lot of ways: for buying a DLC, just mindless grind (look up Shell shock live on Steam it has a "earn X amount of XP" with a global 0% completion ratio) or being completly uncreative and worst timed stuff (will never get my last medal in Pokemon black 2 :() They can also add to the whole stlye a game is presented in on a meta level just look at the stupid things to do in the Stanley Parable. Earning them can also be quite memorable. In Jotun I sat like 2 hours on a misson to kill a specific boss in 25 seconds and everytime I got one second closer it was just pure joy. Icarus Kid Uprising on the 3DS also had great achivments, because they force you out of your comfort zone and make you try our all weapon types. (curse me for missing like 5 remaining ones) sry for my english
I viewed this video when it came out on the 13th. On the 14th one of my university courses heavily featured intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (in regards to second language learning) and now it's revisiting the topic again in this next chapter. Thanks for giving me a head start :)
Another big thing to consider here is the verbiage that goes into the rewards, especially for younger players. A study in 2018 suggests that children who are praised for their *effort specifically* ("You worked so hard on that assignment!") as opposed to their abilities ("You are really smart!") will typically grow to believe that success hinges on *effort* rather than *talent*. And I think that probably has some lasting effect in developing a more internal locus of control (i.e. seeing one's self as opposed to luck/outside variables in control of outcomes.)
So if you're making a game that gives any kind of verbal feedback, phrases like "You're getting better/Your grinding is paying off!" Should almost always be used instead of "You're a natural/You were born for this". Subtle, but I think it does go a long way.
Loved the video Mark! Such a great topic.
Great comment Daryl!
@@Not_Aaron_ great reply aaron
Thought it was Mark that posted this for a hot second.
I can confirm as someone who was constantly praised for having talent as a kid I now have a terrible work ethic.
Aaron Loosen , hey man I’m just trying to get daddy Mark to notice me 😂
Dang, this explains why turning a creative hobby into a job is so difficult.
Yeah, it also risks losing the joy and fun you had when it was simply a hobby.
or that there is no demand for your hobby and you therefore make no money
i did that mistake
It also explains why typical career advice usually includes: do what you're good at, *not* what you're interested in.
@@greylithwolf and in the case that both are one in the same, you better hope you live in a society that values art.
"So, how do I play this game again?"
"Uh...Don't...starve?"
"Woah, woah, slow down."
That pretty much sums up answering the wrong question. Like here, the answer is about ends, while the question is about means. And also generally, I think the problem with self-improvement, coaching and whatnot is that people come asking how to do a thing, but instead the answers they get are all about why do the thing.
@@Hisu0 yea. they answer nothing you actually asked. if you aren't paying attention, you will be dazzled by the BS the coaches speak and not realise they didn't help you or give you an answer that you could at least consider in your journey to improvement at all
yooo I just play don't starve yesterday after very long time .after get into the world and play for a bit i realize that i don't have any fear for anything because i don't remember why in the old day i fear so much in playing this game but then i look at the belly meter and i be like "ahh fuck it DON'T STARVE ,i'm idiot" and then the memories of dying because i have to find food suddenly flashback in my mind lol
Hilariously, I think starving is like the least likely way to kill you by far once you learn anything about the game
@Tomás Salgado Salinas I mean, by like, day 50 in the base game, I might as well have had enough food to last me forever.
In the first expansion, I would usually die trying to not burn to death lol.
The next time I see someone saying “do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,” I am showing them this video
Well to be fair, I do genuinely think there is some value to that statement.
Adding a carrot to the end of a stick of something you enjoy isn't going to completely kill your motivation, and doing something you love compared to doing something you hate or are ambivalent towards will likely yield better results, but work is still work and when you mix the stress of work with the joy of your activities, well it doesn't always end well.
Granted it also depends on the type of work you do and other factors as such.
If you find a job you love, the money means less. We can zero-in into that feeling to keep ourselves motivated.
@@TheGerkuman Started working in a job I really liked and I didn't even care to look at the paycheck anymore, I just enjoyed doing what I was doing.
Too bad covid killed my job.
@@toupeiragamer8564 focus on things you can change :)
“do what you love to work for” should be the expression. some things make great hobbies while other things make great jobs
Interestingly, this also happens with *penalties.* I've heard stories indicating that if you have an explicit penalty for something bad, people are more willing to do it, because they see the penalty as a transaction, whereas if you have no explicit penalty, people don't want to know what the unexpected penalty could be, so they behave.
I would constantly skip class because I would calculate the "value" of skipping that class day. When attendance wasn't calculated, and I could learn the information online in a short period of time, or I knew that information wasn't relevant (I can fail that entire section and still pass the class) - all of that would help me justify my wrongdoing.
So basically:
Bloke: I love doing A
Society: Please do A, we'll pay you for it
Bloke: *Well now I'm not doing it*
Society: "I will pay you for doing A"
Otherwise it doesn't work. Requesting A without reward only leaves the intrinsic value of being useful and important. (Like what motivates volunteers)
@@remem95 you're right, edited post
"never do something for free if you could get payed for it"
@@keeparguing611 see video above for why that doesn't work
@@endermage77 i was highlighting that exact mentality
8:39
“How do I decide when I am satisfied?” Is a statement that’s is simultaneously not very deep and deeply tragic. This guy summed up the struggle of human existence without even thinking.
"If I achieved all of my goals tomorrow, would I be satisfied? No, I'd just find something else to chase." -Kliksphillip
I don't think I've found a satisfactory answer, but I'm not sure.
On another level, I think it points at a tragic lack of internal locus of control. This person seems to be unaware that they can choose for themselves what it means to be satisfied. Instead, they seem to expect the world to tell them what their goal should be and can only define their experience of satisfaction by satisfying other people's expectations. This is how people become willful slaves and go their entire lives without experiencing true satisfaction.
He said it in the first part of the comment, (It's up to you)
I think modern day society points us in the wrong direction. We spend our entire lives trying to get more and more, so we have no time to think about why we need any of it.
They say "Do what you love for a living and you'll never work a day in your life." To which I'd always retort "Do what you love for a living and it'll become a job and you'll grow to hate it." Good to see science is on my side.
It is interesting because the ,,and you'll never work a day in your life" has two meanings
@@teo-kk7zk i never thought of it like that
It's rather humerous more than "backed by science". I think it's an oversimplification to say, there's plenty of people who do what they love as a profession just out of the enjoyment of the profession itself.
Saying that you'll treat it just as any other job and that you'll hate because you're being rewarded for it, well then yes that approach could technically be correct in that regard.
This is ancedotal, but you're cynical... So I'll just say I love what I do, I've been doing it 20 years. I'm still super excited to continue to do it. I'd much rather do it than anything else. I'd happily do it for free if I could. Do some days suck? Sure, of course. But I enjoy it so much those days don't stick around long.
@@VeriStrawberi sure you do. that's why you're here justifying your enjoyment of it rather than just enjoying it.
The school system honestly helps proves this. I used to love reading, but being forced to read books i didn't really give a shit about for some stupid assignment killed my interest in it.
Same I used to love reading until they made it a chore to do
same
Same with learning in general, learning can be so much fun but they make it feel like hell.
Same thing happened to me with art school. I probably paint once a year if that.
same ! the system of grades just keeps me hating more and more my passions and I can see my creativity decline
Can't wait for all bosses to say: "I don't know what you'll get at the end of the month. Or how much. Or at all. But trust me, you'll be more motivated, because you don't know!"
to be honest that's probably more of a thing to do with gambling
That would actually work if the rewards stay fair. And if the boss doesn't strive for fairness then he won't know if he has any workers at he start of the next month.
I mean, getting an unexpected bonus at the end of the month would work fairly well, maybe even better than the bonus actually being part of your salary.
It kind of is like that if your hours aren't set in stone. One week you could be doing 34 hours, another week you could sit on OT. You might have put in the same amount of effort both weeks but one week was so slow in volume that labor had to be cut across the board, even the productive workers saw hours cut just because sales were down due to volume.
Ironically that may be the only way for workers to enjoy their daily 9 to 5.
Ending this video with the surprise reward that they are now add-free is genius.
omg
I wonder if he did that on purpose.
CMIIW, I thought these videos have always been ad-free
It did make me feel quite satisfied.
I feel like a rat in a lab.
He did that according to a different study. Not this one but declaring it in this one could be a part of in-topic easter.
“How do I decide when I’m satisfied?” Christ, sounds like a AI from a scifi flick
To be charitable to that person, i think what they meant was that they didn't know what they were looking for. They knew they had to figure something out, but didn't know what it was they were expected to pay attention to.
That feels like me lmao
that comment was cursed ö
Well the dude is right. You cant decide if you are satisfied or not - you are or you are not. There is no deciding involved.
@@alexforce9 While I am satisfied with this comment section, I have decided that I am not. Please improve it.
"Unanticipated arrival of a goat" is just hood talk for "this one kid was real good at drawing"
Eeeey, slugcat
@@Siegfried5846 if you could tell that I meant really I dont see why I need to spell it that way
@@Siegfried5846 I prefer it how it is tbh
@@Siegfried5846 im not butthurt lmao, i know how to spell really, my word choice was intentional, and if I believed it was a problem I would've fixed it before you came along
@@Siegfried5846 "This one kid real at drawing"
That "how do I know when I am satisfied?" line hit me so hard. It's so short, but accurately portrays a phenomenon where people are so used to spending their time trying to ensure others are satisfied that we never learn how to satisfy ourselves. Even in our spare time, playing video games, are we really satisfying ourselves? Or are we just trying to satisfy the game goals, or perhaps even invisible/theoretical people who would judge our performance in the game should they see us playing it?
Yeah, I can see how that question would keep one up at night.
My answer to your comment comes quite late but anyway...
It's not exactly what you rhetorically asked for, but I catch myself playing games for the sake of completing them (getting them of my pile of shame, for example) instead of playing a game and immersing myself just to have fun, which is the actual point of a game. I think that's something that is holding me back from enjoying gaming as I used to and that's something I'll have to think about and kind of figure out during the course of the next days.
Satisfaction occurs as a result of meeting your own expectations. If someone's goal is to make 100,000 a year, they will be satisfied when they make it. If someone's goal is to make more money, they will never be satisfied because no matter how much they have they will always want to make more.
bro must 100% be an English teacher
Dang, that’s why games like Minecraft can remain popular for so long without any real reason to play except for the sake of it... people learn to enjoy what u can do with it more than depending on arbitrary rewards
That's why Minecraft was so great. There was (originally) no set goal whatsoever, and instead it provided a perfect tool for creativity and set the player loose with it. Mojang would do good to remember that.
@Albert D Well, there's the ender dragon for one thing, which is the "final boss" of minecraft, and implies that the game ends after that, completely overlooking the literal infinite potential of every world.
What I love about Minecraft is that the "game" is created by the whole community. You might just be futzing around breeding cattle for a few days, but then you see a beautiful build or a clever contraption on TH-cam, and you're motivated to do it yourself or even improve on it. There's nothing more wholesome than comments under Minecraft building advice videos. It's a bunch of people trying to get better at something that is 100% intrinsically motivated, and even within the game it's just an aesthetic choice.
minecraft is literally another reality now, they're all living virtual lives, self expression has never been so easy, and now it's pretty much the quintessential imagination game. I would have never imagined a property would become culture like minecraft, it's insane how much that game changed everything.
@@omnitroph1501 but you can still play after you beat the enderdagon you dont even needto baet the enderdagon if you dont want to get the elytra or shulkerboxes
"How do I decide when I'm satisfied?" is some existential shit. I mean, how *do* I decide when I'm satisfied?
I've kept playing things I don't even think are all that fun way longer than I should just because of my intrinsic goals of "run around and see stuff and punch monsters".
Last night I stayed up for six hours playing Eldritch Horror by myself in Tabletop Simulator. All day I've been playing Age of Conan alone with god mode on.
I don't think I've been having actual fun doing either of those, but I'm still driven to keep doing them for whatever reason.
I don't.
If there is no goal or challenge i just stop, there doesn't have to be a reward but there has to e at least a finite and reachable goal, hence why games like minecraft (mind you, i only played it when there was only endless survival and creative modes with no netherworld) never hooked me, there's no goal in those games other than "survive", but when do i decide i've survived long enough?
My answer to that?
"I don't"
And thus i only played minecraft once with a friend and then never touched it again.
@@iota-09 Funny, because games with no goal are the ones that suck me in the longest and grant me the most reward when I see what I have achieved in the end (typically speaking).
@@shaynelowe9604 se the problem is that: the end
There is no end, and what is it that you truly achieved? Unless i have some guidelines i don't really have anything i consider "achieving" beyond the end of the game, even challenges, unless tbe gane has a lot of variety i rarely will ever make up challenges.
Anyway, here, i'll leave you a comment i wrote in another comment section, maybe it'll shine some light on how i view how come different people have different experiences and taste in regards to goals, competition and creativity:
Quote:
Completionist VS Competiti...vist VS Creati..vist?
You get what i mean, anyway, i feel that's what it comes down to.
The way i see it, each person can have an arbitrary number of "points of interest" in any of these categories and the way their "points of interest" are set will dictate how they play games.
For example, fully creative people will usually not are about achievements or leaderboards, on the other hand, completionists are interested in game-set goals like achievements but might feel like competition is meh due to it being an infinite goal(unless your goal is to be at the top until the servers die), lastly, mainly competitive players may not be interested in particularly creative ways to play the game, as long as they can win and dominate(anti-scrub mentality)
Then again, most people don't fall into just one set category.
Personally i like playing creatively and leaderboards interest me when they are small-scale or percentage based but are never something that changes how much i want to play a game; while for trophies it's kinda the same, as long as they are conceivably achievable fkr me they are a decent motivator, but the moment they feel impossible they kill the game for me(the hollow knight pantheon of gods or death's gambit no death speedrun are good examples of this), on the other hand, the opposite is also true, if in a game like minecraft i have no goal, i have no interest in playing because 1: i don't know what to do, and 2: even if i did, i would have no way to know when to stop, and like hell i'm gonna play a single game for the rest of my life, that's just not me.
That being said, given all this, I'd probably give myself...
4/5 completionist
2/5 competitive
3/5 creativity
Gmtk sounds to me like someone who's more like
1/5 completionist
4/5 competitive
5/5 creative
Based on how he talks and his general ideas he tries to push forward with his channel.
P.s.: also looking at the big question about motivation in ye video, one can also decipher it like this:
When do i decide I'm satisfied, if i have no idea what i'm working towards?
You can't be playing a game without knowing why or what you're doing and still expect to have fun, it might work for some byt, honestly, at least for me it doesn't work, as it might feel akin to button mashing and seeing things happen on screen, i'm not a braindead kid who's happy enough with seeing flashing lights
"How do I decide when I am satisfied?"
Same dude, same.
Am i really satisfied and stopped because of that, or did I suddenly get bored of it and couldn't find a desire to play anymore ?
"How do I decide, when I am satisfied?" that unwarranted comma is the death of a Grammar Nazi like me. Damn, dude!
@@bennemann Sorry, in German that would be a correct sentence structure, I think? Do it all the time out of habit. Or maybe I just do it wrong in both languages hehe
@@remem95 I've heard that it's very common for German speakers to insert unnecessary commas when writing in English, so it's probably just a difference between the two languages.
"How do I decide when I am satisfied?"
Hey Google? I think one of your AIs escaped onto the Steam forums.
It even managed to legally purchase a game and operate it.
@@reduceparticles876 I don't really think that would be all that difficult for "AI" lol
@@3nertia *legally*
@@cursorthesecond I still don't think it would be that difficult for an "AI" lol. They could easily *earn* money in numerous ways and all they'd really need is a bit of capital to gamble with or play the stock market and they could be rich in probably literal seconds lol
This is the EXACT issue I have with Animal Crossing. It's supposed to be open-ended, build your world and continue to have fun. But I have way more fun focusing on the goals of completing the museum, upgrading my house to its final size, etc. After all that, the game gets boring.
this is how I feel with open world games. If it's too many options, I feel bored, overwhelmed, scared. Even with don't starve. I don't know why I am like this but I don't have creativity. So I have to plan my actions. If I don't the game immediately becomes boring because I can do whatever I want. I have to make my own goals. and this goes for similar games. smaller goals are a treat. The open ended nature to do other small stuff when you think of it is a bonus.
spent 10 minutes writing a comment to a comment then scrap it fun, also mood
@@Markuseki haha I know the pain. But sometimes it's best when I'm mad or something
I only have this issue with New Horizons. At some point I'm just playing to get new recipes or trying to get animal photos.
@@ggundercover3681 The game isn't boring then. You are. You are becoming bored with the game due to your own personal issues. You lack creativity, but within an open world game you sometimes are able to follow a mold, why not just do that? What games DO you like to play? seriously asking
"How do I decide when I'm satisfied" is such a mood for those of us with low executive function/executive dysfunction. It's extremely difficult for me to intrinsically motivate myself which makes the same crafting games you praise quite a bit (not wrongly!) into my least favorite genre. I *want* to like them but I just can't take a wide-open sandbox and build sandcastles in it. I can dig a few holes, maybe make a tower, and then I get bored and move on.
Similarly I do find it quite difficult to motivate myself to do anything in games I've "beaten" for example by completing achievements or finishing the stories. I love _Into the Breach_ but once I unlocked all squads and got their achievements, I immediately stopped playing because there just wasn't anything "new" to do.
The best motivators for me are things like the koroks in _Breath of the Wild_ , which give a small, *almost* meaningless reward but which still has some value, and I both have to explore to find them and complete a challenge once I do.
Interesting. I have a similar situation but for a totally different reason. I get bored when I do the same thing over-and-over again. So I'm playing this Roguelike, and after two hours of the same thing, I'm bored... but I unlocked a new character. So I play that character for a few hours, and the same thing happens.
Every few hours, a new character, a new way to play, and then I'm bored again. I unlock the last character, and after a few runs, I stop playing. There's nothing new for me to unlock. I've seen "everything" (which is conceptually true - some "builds" can be imagined).
This is happening in Backpack Battles too. I've played basically every strategy except the meta strategy and I don't need to play that one because I've seen it. I've seen everything that game has to offer. Just keep waiting for the updates.
It's similar to your story; I feel like I need something from the devs constantly, like the reward of a quest, to keep playing the game. But for me, the koroks in BotW were pointless and I never liked them. But due to this, I too wasn't motivated once I "beaten" a game.
Same. I never stick with Minecraft for very long bc my favorite part is mining and gathering resources. Once I have a bunch of stuff, it’s like “what’s the point?” Games like factorio on the other hand are very motivating for me, as long as I can keep myself from being overwhelmed.
For me, BOTW hooked me a lot because every time I thought “hey, that hill looks cool, let’s look over there” and then I’d find something. That alone hooked me more than any game has ever done before.
yes! Exploring out of order was hella rewarding. from finding random koroks, to finding the cyclops and taluses. To even finding the extra village. All of it was great. especially when you didn't do things in order.
For me freely exploring the world in BOTW quickly became boring because 9 times out of 10 the only things you find are korok seeds (which become repetitive real quick) and shrines (whose puzzles inside are only fun about half of the time). I often found myself questioning why I even bothered climbing this mountain for 5 minutes only to find a korok puzzle I've already solved a hundred times. The rush you get when you discover something quickly turns into disappointment when you realise that what you found is a "puzzle" that is a slog to solve. I enjoy BOTW much more when focussing on the main quest, with the occasional detour to explore something than the other way around
Keanu Laʻa: I completely agree about breath of the wild and I would throw in that Hollow knight scratched the same itch for me in a similar way. I would highly recommend giving it a try!
If only it were different things and not the same shrine or throwaway stuff or pretty location you care about once
Something being either a korok, shrine or monster camp -_-
My favourite moments in games come, when I can see an alternative solution to a problem and successfully execute it. It is especially exciting, when the solution doesn't seem to be planned by developers.
reminds me of a youtuber that was streaming scribblenauts (rtgames maybe? Irish guy)
one of the challenges was first to make an important space for a community/city (like a park or fire station or community center probably) and then advertise it with something related to the building/area (flowers, sprinklers, whatever.)
he was taking requests from the twitch chat and someone said to try a cemetery. he didn't expect it to work, but makes sense i suppose, they're common enough across towns for each community to often have their own.
no one expected "gun" to work for the second half.
same, it feels like you cheated the game, but did so by using its own rules against it as opposed to just using some external thing like a gameshark
Exactly. This one time I was roleplaying as a starship captain in a tabletop game, and I got tracked by a battle cruiser from an enemy Elite Guard unit. The director of the game expected me to run away, and even I did too, but both my reason and my gut told me I had a very good chance of not only taking the ship, but taking the ship intact. I fought off the ship without deploying my black market weapons and exposing myself to the universe's fun police, gave the enemy ship minimal damage, and took 260 prisoners alive. I was rewarded a 300 billion dollar ship, all of the cargo on it, became the 3rd highest most wanted man in the universe, and the amazement of my game director. THAT is how you make gaming memories.
This gave me flashbacks of K-12 classes that tried to reward candy for every little thing. Especially when the class was a subject I actually liked, the idea of a reward being pushed made me less likely to participate out of resentment for the idea that I wasn't personally motivated enough to participate. And no reward just made everyone else care less about the task after they were accustomed to rewards.
I remember there was a program when I was in school where you would read a book, take a test on said book basically asking about the content to ensure you read it, and would give points. You needed like 50 every semester and said points could also be redeemed for prizes.
So what ended up happening was you had an entire class of kids who read the books solely to get the points. They would find the details and remember them but leave the themes of the book behind. And once that test was complete seldom would that book be touched again.
It's why I realized homework didn't matter since most of the time the teacher just threw it away. When you started to get into 2-5 pages and more into one night's worth of work just to be "fodder" that I did it. I stopped the points wasn't worth the work especially when I started to realize I was becoming burned out in other things like really like art and sciences.
I stumbled on this principle when I took a course in college where we studied video games. I often found myself just not enjoying games that I knew I'd probably love otherwise - just because I was told to do it. One time, my homework was to play a specific game and I just didn't do it. That was probably the most important takeaway from the class for me.
I was a real bookworm at school and I still found myself having issues with reading assignments for the same reason. Not as badly as some other classmates for sure but it was still there. I think for me the problem was actually just about the segmentation. If I liked the book I'd much rather just read the whole thing at once but I would have to (re)read individual chapters regardless as they would come up in the classes. Not to mention school edition books with extra commentary that constantly take you out of the actual story.
This reminds me a lot of Hollow Knight.
When you beat the "final boss", the game doesn't tell you that you haven't explored a huge chunk of the map ; it's up to you to decide if you are done with the exploration
Hey, new subscripber here. Been binging on your channel's back catalogue since about a week. Just wanted to say that you have some really interesting and informative content which has made me look at the games that I've played in a different light. I am no game dev, but knowing about these things is somewhat intriguing, like a master cook telling explaining why and how they cook what they cook. Thanks for making such good content.
Welcome to the "Shoot2Move" Cult. Care for some dual purpose design?
Welcome!
The main thing that popped into my head from this video essay was in relation to D&D, specifically the jump from 3.5e to 5e within my friend group.
In 3.5e, you would constantly be bombarded with items and loot. This gradually made players expect loot all the time. When 5e came around, they (WOTC) made it so that magic items were supposed to be rarer in the edition. Thus, people that used loot as a motivator lost their motivation to play.
This, in turn, made DM's fundamentally change how the game ran, by bumping up the rewards for combat, to keep those players invested.
This video essay was nice to listen to. I really enjoyed it.
There is another layer to that though, at least in the case of D&D. Items were a big part of the character's identity in that edition, and were less something you picked out and planned for and more just found. They represented a growth of your character not only mechanically, but also narratively. Another way to represent their experiences and adventures. 5e's magic items were not only rarer, but also a lot more bland and specific. So people who have fond memories of a character growing into powerful items over their adventures were going to be disappointed with 5e, just as much as the people who were just after raw loot and numerical bonuses.
Video: This is about how rewards in game design can affect personal motivation
Me, struggling with artistic burnout after a major commercial project: *OH.*
F
what was the project
Lately I've been getting into this little community of stealth gamers here on TH-cam who choreograph and optimize routes through levels. There are various types of runs, but the most popular has to be "Stealth Reaper," which Leo K defines as completing the level without being detected while eliminating every enemy as quickly as possible. But really, there's as unspoken additional criteria for a good Stealth Reaper video - you have to make it look good. That's why Assassin's Creed: Unity is a fan favorite to choreograph. When it works correctly, it's absolutely *gorgeous.* This is where we get more into the art side of game development. Most of the examples in this video were more about technical efficiency, but making actions look, feel, and sound uniquely satisfying when performed correctly is one of the greatest intrinsic ways to encourage mastery. It's why these creators play the same level hundreds of times with admittedly janky controls for that one perfect run
For sure. If your game doesn't feel good to play, it's not going to encourage mastery at all. It's worth noting some of the most popular speedrunning games were created with the concept of "It must be fun to play by itself" in mind, SM64 being the most obvious pick. Mario's movement feels good anyway, so it's a great sweetener that it is also faster and more efficient than regular walking. First frame wallkicks being faster and launching more than regular wallkicks, long jumps into wallkicks preventing the slow bonk animation while looking good, side flips being more technical than backflips, but faster and easier to add into a movement string.
oohh that's right! i also find great pleasure in making things look good. i try to be as precise as possible, playing sloppily sort of ruins my fun... it's not even about performance points but about how smooth and elegant actions look to me. this is why randomly spamming attacks is horrible... why looking for perfect action for the specific situation is great.
This is the exact reason Doom Eternal is such a great game, fighting demons just feels satisfying and fun, which gets you try play risky and try some cool things
punished by rewards is an stunning book on this subject. It's such a radical paradigm shift to how we are brought up in school and work and so helpful for understanding your inner motivation
Wow this video gave me some deep insight into why I love learning things that are 'useless' and sometimes even avoid learning things for school. The interensic vs extrensic rewards are really powerful for me
One thing that stuck to my mind regarding unexpected surprises is that overrelying on them causes similar problems to expected ones, because if you keep searching for them, more often than not you will learn the patterns and what kind of rewards you're getting. Case in point: Korok seeds. I don't think it's accurate to call them unexpected surprises, because while theoretically they are hidden rewards and will surprise you the first few times, the moment you start paying attention you'll notice that there's only like 4 or 5 configurations that lead to them, and they still give the same reward of extended inventory space every time. It's cute the first few dozens of times, but considering that there are 900 of the damned things, they can easily become a nuisance, which happened to me, because they stop being fun rewards.
I also do wonder how the concept of rewards applies to gacha games and why we keep rolling on them...
At that point, it makes me feel smart that I AM picking up on these patterns. Not that I care for BOTW anyway, far too open-ended for my tastes. But it's the same logic behind Bonus Areas in the DKCs for me.
It reminds me of searching for secrets on every tile of the walls in some games. XD
The thing about the koroks is that they can be found all throughout any given play through, so they act as a primary reward system within the game all throughout. Breath of the wild “ends” when you run out of stuff to do, and I’ve noticed that it gets more and more boring when there are fewer shrines and koroks to stumble upon. By the time this happens, though, you’ve explored all of the regions to *satisfaction* and are ready to fight Ganon. The 100% completion reward for the shrines is a lame piece of clothing, and the korok reward is literally a giant turd. I think Nintendo is telling its players “stop playing for completion and arbitrary milestones and just have fun with the system we made”. Mario odyssey’s 100% reward is literally just a golden balloon and a postcard. Same thing there
Some Korok seeds are actual mini-puzzles though, so the vast majority of them are kinda just freebies, but a few of them have unique puzzles which in terms of Zelda is a reward in of itself.
I think there is more like 15-20 types...
what ev tho
For anyone who's gotten burnt out on the new Animal Crossing, it's probably for this reason. For the first month or so you get big new features and objectives every day, but when this stops you're still looking for the same objectives.
I played the game until I had bought all the rooms for my house then stopped playing since that's the major extrinsic goal done. It's only now after taking a break for a few months that I've started doing stuff for it's own sake. Mainly rearranging/redecorating the island.
@@Cleve_Crudgington I'm still playing daily but it's only from intrinsic motivation. My friends and I play together weekly which incentives me to work on a small part of my town each week, and I'm also making a Mario party style board game. It's the same with Minecraft for me, it gets to the point in each world where you're only doing stuff for better decoration. It's the biggest flaw of both games imo.
For me, I felt more intrinsically motivated to make my dream island, which also ties somewhat into extrinsic rewards since you unlock customization tools. But once I got my island to where I wanted it I lost motivation since there’s nothing else to do. I wish there was more room to build stuff, because if I wanted to start a new project I would have to destroy what I’ve made.
In the old animal crossing games, you could play for years, but the new one has no relationship building whatsoever. Also they didn't have to many items in that game (I haven't played it in a while, so maybe there's more items now.)
Does that make stardew better. It does have goals but they're not the emphasis of the game.
"Challenges that unlock cosmetics" You mean the challenge of reaching for a credit card? I miss seeing a badass skin and knowing it meant you were a badass in the game.
true, but its better than having game-breaking items behind a paywall
"I DoNt MiNd As LoNg As It'S oNlY cOsMeTiCs!"
I really hate that this has become normalized.
I miss the extrinsic rewards being rewards for gameplay, not being rich outside the game.
Sadly, it's too easy to monetize and make loads of money selling people the endorphins of the reward directly, and that's the primary reason it's now everywhere.
@@JosephDavies When the Ipod became a thing, I always expected sellers to find a way to bring this 'product that only purpose is to show you are richer' into everything possible. It coming to video game was just a natural consequence of late capitalism
@@JosephDavies I always hated unlocking purely cosmetic things after beating a hard challenge so I have no sympathy for those who keep saying cosmetic DLC is bad.
If I complete a hard challenge in a game, id rather get something that makes the gameplay more fun or makes me more powerfull in game than get a fucking skin
On the topic of goals and rewards, my sister has recently had an increase in her interest in video games. But when I started asking her about what she wants out of a game, she said she wanted a game that very clearly explained what she needed to do. Through a series of events, I introduced her to Breath of the wild, which while it does have goals, those goals are so broad that they give very little direction as to what to do next. I wasn't sure it was the right game for her, since the game does very little hand holding, and expects the player to figure out their own goals find solutions for them. I helped explain some of the systems to her, and helped her get a grasp on the controls, but then after a while, I backed off and let her enjoy the game.
What was super interesting was how she came back to me later to talk to me about the game. Instead of being disillusioned by the fact that there were very few explicit goals, she told me how much she was enjoying the game. More than than, she had started forming her own plans and goals as to what she was going to do next, what she still needed to do, and how she was going to accomplish those tasks. So I guess the moral of the story is that an explicitly motivated person can become intrinsically motivated by simply having a broad enough goal to reach.
A goat story got hyped up then didn't happen. I feel cheated and demoralised.
came here to say this.
@Alexander Supertramp How does that make his point? This video was about how getting rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation not how being told there's a reward, and never getting said reward reduces motivation.
@@nahometesfay1112 Is curiosity not an intrinsic motivation?
@@nekoimouto4639 Curiosity is an intrinsic motivation for the subject of your curiosity. In this case, they were curious about the goat which created extrinsic motivation to watch a video about video games because the video implied it would also talk about the goat. They are now upset that the video misled them which shows that they were extrinsically motivated to watch the video. They probably had multiple intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, but curiosity about the goat was an extrinsic motivation that wasn't fufilled.
We're the 4th group of kids - promised a reward and then not rewarded.
10:43 “When they create their games, [Nintendo’s designers] don’t tell you how to play their game in order to achieve some kind of mythical reward. There are things you can do in the game that will result in some sort if reward or unexpected surprise.” - Bill Trinen
“No! This isn’t how you’re supposed to play the game!” - Masahiro Sakurai
Rip sakurai, i love that man, but i really wish hed accept and embrace the competitive scene of smash bros, rather than being ashamed of it. I get where hes coming from since it doesnt feel good for both players if one of them absolutely destroys another player in a 1v1 game, which is smth he notes in an interview, but u cant really avoid that situation from happening, no matter how hard u try to otherwise.
Ultimate does seem to be a step in the right direction, but i still long for the day when smash bros fully embraces the comp scene and its depth and movement, whether its directed by sakurai or not.
@@moonman4307 Most likely, Sakurai will not make the next Smash game or there will be a Smash Bros reboot a long time from now. At least that is what Sakurai said when Ultimate was in development and announced.
Wasn't that quote for when he was fighting himself with one controller in one hand and one in the other? It's another context...
I just realized I've done this to myself with social media and art. I used to do tons of art, but recently I was disappointed by the lack of social reward on social media and I've stopped creating as much art :/
As a person who gave up on Minecraft because I had to create my own fun, this video made me rethink my whole life and future plans. Should I really be going into an industry where I get paid to create games when that might take the fun out of one of my favorite hobbies? Will following my dreams ruin my life?
many years ago i wanted to be a game designer, but then i realize that it will not be fun to play games for me after that and gave up the idea... now i am here many years later thinking on maybe develope a game not for the sake of having fun playing the game, just for the fun of making one.
If doing what you love ruins your life, imagine doing what you don't love.
You will grow to 'hate' both, but which makes you more satisfied after a week of overtime? Which will keep you in the job, make you force yourself to work harder, and which will make you desperate for a chance to move away, and loath everything about your job?
I chose what I love. It does become a chore, and it's tiring, but sometimes I have my 'Eureka' moments and that motivates me. Had I chosen something else, I don't think I can persevere.
@@amber5675 In my view, doing something you don’t love as a job will make the thing you love in itself a reward for finishing another day on the clock. It can even be set up as a schedule if you’re into schedules - wake up, go to work, get home, then unwind with your hobby. You choose when you do the hobby, if you even do it that day, and how involved with it you are.
If the thing you love is something you have to do as a job, you have to be 100% involved when you’re on the clock, and you have to do it every single working day, no matter how flexible the hours are, or you just won’t get paid. Finance is already a struggle for a lot of people nowadays, so they feel as if they have to work themselves to the bone to get somewhat decent income.
In short, no matter what you do as a job, you get burnt out from doing it constantly. It’s so much more unpleasant and horrible when the burnout is from doing what you used to love.
Ask any successful streamer who started on Twitch (or other site) because they loved playing video games how they're feeling about video games lately. They all feel like a chore. It's a job, it's something they have to do to pay for their house and food and stuff. It makes them miserable. It's very rare that someone turning their passion into a profession works the way they expect it to.
i think its very important when doing something you enjoyed before to really try to look back and see why you enjoyed what you were doing. why did you enjoy making games in the first place? i think you can keep a healthy balance by continuing to do your passion for work while also maybe start a project for fun.
"How do I decide when I am satisfied?" There's something poetic about that statement.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually hate leaderboards and love (good) achievements. When I find my game is scored-based with leaderboards, I become LESS motivated and pretty quickly lose interest, but if I beat a game and see I'm still missing some achievements, I will gladly hop back into to scrounge for them. Bonus feel-good points when you get an achievement only 0.5% other players have gotten.
Good point and steam, achivements are rarer than they are classified because of the people that cheated them. Also It is very demotivating when you see some person with so high score that you know it had to be cheated.
Exactly! An added motivator is in retroachievements.org, where getting ALL the cheevs for a given game will add an icon on your user page. And because the main leaderboard is for such a broad subject (mastery of all cheevs on the site), it really doesn't register unless you notice you're in the Top 100 or so. And at that point, it's just another motivator.
There are two reactions to comparing peoples performance that both stem from the same problem.
1. A lack of self-confidence that creates the urge to avoid the comparison outright. A flight response.
2. a lack of self-confidence that creates a need to 'prove' oneself. A fight response. (That will not go away once at the top because the position must be held).
I dislike both, they almost make me less likely to play the game. Best reward for playing a game is, in my eyes, more of the game to play (as long as it's interesting)
I personally love easter eggs achievements,you never know what you gonna find and it's satisfying as well. 10 min ago i did the chimp achievements in Halo 3 and was so hilarious
Ok, but can someone explain to me if I'm satisfied by this video or not? How will I know?
Here, describe to us how the video made you feel.
Did you press the like button? It has been demonstrated there is a strong correlation between experiencing satisfaction and pressing like buttons, so there might be a clue there.
The answer is in your heart
@@Maxell512 So I need to find a cardiologist?
You are. :)
I’m really bad about being able to find my own fun in games. I could when I was a teenager but now I have to have clear goals.
I'm still a teen, but I understand what you're talking about. I'm full time at a university and on and off with work, I don't have the time to dump 200 hours into Breath of the Wild trying to make my own fun out of the same korok seeds every time. Having set goals and achievements helps give me direction so that if I'm spending time away from homework, I can say "I'm working towards this other goal." It also gives a point (All/most goals achieved) where I can stop the game for the last time and say I enjoyed the time I spent. I ground every 999 moons in Odyssey, and I had fun, but now it's time to be done.
This might have to do with your time and income. As a kid I found my own fun in games more than I do now but part of it was that I had a crazy amount of free time and I didn't feel like each game "session" had to have some kind of meaning or goal completed because of it.
And I usually only got new games as gifts and couldn't just go out and get more so the games I played were my only options for things to play for months at a time so I would play them a lot and dive deep into them. But now when I can easily buy my own games I find myself less willing to stick with any single game because I can move on to experience something new in another game.
@@SquidsTv That... is a good point. Maybe I should do the same
@@VonZuben to touch on this point, as soon as I started pirating games I noticed I would never complete them. If I look back to my PS2 collection there is probably not one game that I never finished, nowadays it's hard to find a recent game that I HAVE finished.
Yup. When we were kids... even a box can be a lot of fun.
When I try to play Don't Starve, I always lose my direction after the first year. I started making goals to motivate my self: "build a fortress in the caves", "explore the whole map", "create a death trap for the hounds", etc. but the problem still persists. Generally, I don't even fulfill such goals before I quit. That game benefits a lot from goals, like the adventure mode. I spent much more time and had much more fun in it, than outside it. The rest of the game simply feels like it lacks a gameplay loop. Without goals it doesn't seem like a sandbox where you can do whatever you want, but rather an entropic slog towards the inevitable death.
I disagree with the implication that extrinsic motivation excludes intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic goals come from the outside and is used to prove your worth to the outside. Intrinsic goals are made by yourself to prove your worth to mainly yourself, or just to have fun. There is no reason for a person to avoid making up their own goals while trying to achieve goals set by others. Since the two aren't mutually exclusive, why bother forcing a comparison between the two? After all, I didn't say that I didn't stop along the way to build a doom fortress in adventure mode.
Yup. Youre right about Dont Starve. The game should have clear goals or all the information is given and not hidden. The design by the developer was stupid because in the end Dont starve players mostly just look at guides and youtube videos to learn instead of just exploring. And mod such as crockpot recipe or health bar are made and used by players. The dev should just make all information available from the start and the game will be much more enjoyable.
Youre so, so right. Open world games are fun, until you dont know where to go next and just quit. Playing a RPG and getting hooked up by levelling is fun until you get maxed, but it wont stop you from getting back and trying new ways to reach max, see how far you can get limiting yourself.
@@caiobotelho8528 Funny you should say that, given that I'm currently playing Kenshi and even after what was essentially over a hundred hours grinding stats, I'm still in the process of planning out my next playthrough. Those stats aren't even maxed yet!
It was a lot more fun in multiplayer for this reason. As the video mentions, social aspects can provide motivation.
He didnt necesarilly say that those two are exclusive. He basically just said that games shouldnt hold your hand, there should be room for intrinsic motivation meanwhile providing an overarching goal, which further gives you ideas as you go along. I personally dont agree with this as I think that the only form of exclusing extrinsic motivation should be to not hand hold the player. Terraria for example is almost entirely an extrinsically driven game and it was one of the most fun games Ive ever played
Well done with this video Mark! I’m reflecting on my repressed memories of childhood in school. How unmotivated I was. This has helped me realize I need to keep learning for my own sake goddamnit.
Thank you.
Keep thinking outside the box with topics like these. You’re hard work is paying off!
“Way to burn a bunch of kids, science” LOL
*_Bunsen Is A Burner_*
The real kicker here is, that it's not just science that burns those kids. It's school itself. The whole grade system in schools is completely extrinsic.
How did they evaluate the quality of their drawings? lol
@@GayFroge haven't read the paper, but the fact that is mentioned that they were already interested in drawings I'll say it might indicated that they based the quality compared with older drawings of the children
@@GayFroge If i understand correctly. The studies tracked the time they spent on drawing , that represents their interest, rather than judging the quality of drawing.
It has been shown that "variable ratio reinforcement schedules," giving rewards at unexpected numbers of actions, is most effective at encouraging players to play more than "fixed ratio reinforcement schedules," giving rewards every time a player performs a fixed number of actions. (but is it ethical...?)
example: slot machines (or reward chests) vs giving a reward for every 5 enemies killed
This part really made me go "huh, so that's why I like games like Warframe so much?"
Like, for an incredibly grindy game that demands a ridiculous dedication of time and effort over *years* to get access to all the content, it still feels rewarding on my... 7th year of playing the game? Christ.
Anyway, the mix between these random rewards (item drops at stated RNG chances from specific enemies/objectives) and a select few stated, guaranteed rewards just works out really well for me personally. I truly loved the design and feel of Destiny 2, but the way that literally all of the grinding was just "do x with y for z amount of times" burned me out on that game in just a few months.
So in Bloodborne I find that Lamps arent nearly as "cozy" as rhe bonfires from Dark Souls and a lot of that is how predictable they are. You dont ever feel that breath of fresh air near the lamp because there's always one at the beginning of the level and after that boss.
Whereas in Dark Souls you have to rely on shortcuts a lot more and you dont really know when the next bonfire is.
@@Fiendir *gets flashbacks from grinding extensively*
Loot boxes.
@@hohohoupufuru That's one mechanic to enforce that kind of reward system.
Basically anything that's desirable but unexpected fit the category, most notably mob drops or hidden achievements. It could also take the shape of "area opening up unexpectedly" by having areas cordoned off until the player obtains an item or power, which they don't know about yet.
The promise of reward at an unexpected moment in the future is powerfully motivating. That's also why "future faking" in interpersonal relationships is like crack to a lot of people.
I think I much prefer the idea of hidden goals or broad ones rather than comparative ones, I honestly find leaderboards incredibly demotivating, why would I ever want to know that Im awful compared to x number of people? unless its a competitive game and I want to play it competitivly telling me how i compare to others is a sure fire way to make me lose interest if im not good, which most people arent when starting a game, personal scores are much better, they show your improvement relative to yourself rather than relative to people who are likely on average better than you unless your playing a game soon after release.
Yes I was going to say the same thing about leaderboards, I just get demotivated because of them
I like uncharteds hidden trackers that pop up during gameplay when you've achieved a higher score in a certain area from your friends. Like it'll show when you've gotten more headshots or something.
By the way, the games shown as an example in this video have the option to turn off leaderboards
I find leaderboards to be entirely meaningless unless I know the people on them. And since it's rare that I find my friends on leaderboards (I think the only games that I found anybody I knew were those of Race the Sun and Super Meat Boy), I mostly don't really care. The only exception to that rule are Zachtronics' games since the data is actually presented in a meaningful way rather than just a list of names, but mere lists aren't really interesting.
This is very true for me. Having a leaderboard just tells me "These people have way more time to spend on this game than you do."
Takeaway: give players rewards, but as surprises and not as a pre-presented checklist of goals.
As for me, I'm with the dude asking about when he's satisfied. If I don't have goals when I play a game, I quit pretty quickly. If you give me goals and rewards to stay focused on, I'll play until I accomplish those goals. I also suspect that in the drawing experiment, if you kept giving those kids rewards, they would keep drawing, and probably improve much more quickly than those kids not given any rewards. It's just a matter of keeping those rewards constant.
He didnt really say that. He said that you should be encouraging intrinsic motivation meanwhile having an overarching goal while making some unexpected rewards. I personally also dont entirely agree with this as doing something in game is not doing something intrinsic for a reward but doing something you wouldnt do at all for a reward. That and the fact that nearly everything in a game is extrinsic motivation
You know mark brown?
I have always had this feeling when my family told me to make my hobbies the job I do. Ever since that day I couldn't enjoy all of my hobbies, like even tho I play games exactly as I used to do when I was younger I just lost that sense of happiness and satisfaction.
I just couldn't tolerate the idea of comparing my hobbies with a dull job. Hobbies are meant to be exciting and fulfilling.
But here I am now as a college student without a job or a hobbies. Feeling empty, no motivation or goals. And I just question why am I still alive
You are alive to see tomorrow, even if you dont feel motivated rigth now, what will happend tomorrow maybe will change your life for good.
So...
Games with lineal designs and without too much for experimentation are better when giving goals and rewards.
Games with experimentation potential can be harmed by preestablished goals with rewards limiting the player's creativity and curiosity.
I believe the content in the video can also apply to linear games, not just open-ended games
Depending on the type of goals and rewards, how much they are and how they are given, yes.
The best example of this for me it's dark souls: there are clear goals(trophies, endings, covenants) and less clear rewards(quest rewards, ng+, player and game-imposed challanges) a player can choose to play the gane through one/all the endings, or doing things more specifically, like doing an SL1 run or using the calamity ring, maybe playing with a very specific build etc...
The only thing i don't get is(at least if we don't count the +1,2 and 3 rings) why someone would go for ng+, maybe once, twice, but i know people who do infinitely many ng+ and i don't get why; when will they decide to stop? When a new game comes out? It's not like they're adding challenges to themselves when doing ng+20, also because the increase in difficulty caps at ng+6...
even linear games can be hurt by adding goals.
In general a linear game has a clear structure and a clear goal which is to beat the game
adding more to that like steam achievements or other explicit goals like do X thing X amount of times to get a badge can definitely detract from the experience
but linearity is not a binary thing so it's usually not straightforward.
In some cases i think goals can even be used to encourage experimentation but usually that means creating smaller sub goals for example encouraging a player to make use of a certain mechanic to beat a level with a goal can be effective.
Don't draw too many final conclusions from this video.. it's very beginner level. If you wanna know more, look up individual topics and read up. Mark presents his stuff in a very well written and neat package, but never goes in the nitty gritty nuances.
@@idunno402 well of course, it's a 15-ish minutes video after all, not a video essay on objectives in gaming and how the affect each category(creative, competitibe, complete) of player, that would take at minimum an hour and even then it probably wouldn't be enough.
I see a microcosm of this in my experience of notoriously complex grand strategy game Europa Universalis 4 which gives players so few overt goals that it's actually an obstacle to teaching the already incredibly difficult interconnected systems. I found this very annoying as a new player and often when teaching the game, I go out of my way to tell new players very discrete goals, or tell them that in truth, the goals are the hundreds of achievements in game. But interestingly enough, for the most part, my most memorable moments are not so much the achievement of those achievements.
My most upvoted reddit post of all time was playing during a game when I tried to conquer the world as Joseon (midieval) Korea. I became the emperor of China (long story), turned most of my neighboring nations into my tributaries, and allied the powerful Ottoman Empire and we attacked Russia together. We rolled over them and just as I was ready to take some land, my allies ended the war and gave me nothing... it seemed. When I read the fine print, I realized they'd made the Russian empire, a nation almost as big as me, into my tributary, giving me so many power projection points for defeating my rival that the number appeared over the point-cap. The funniest thing is that the rest of the campaign was a failure by the standards of the achievement - but I view it as one of my finest moments because of the reception that hilarious screenshot got.
There is surely a fine balance to be had, but this video is such a wonderful reminder of what it means to seek happiness in life and in game.
AND WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE GOAT?!
Grand strategy games are for sure a great example of this goal-and-reward issue.
I find EU4 experience amazing for the very reason that you should set your own goals and choose your playstyle accordingly. I still enjoy playing majors and minors alike, because it's obviously different circumstances that make it re-playable. If it were that the goal was to become the greatest power, everyone would pick Russia or the Turks -- yet, you are free to envision your own type of challenge (achievements aside), which is much more rewarding to face. Also, there is a kind of unexpected rewards in flavour events and in random (but oftentimes structured and somewhat guided) situations the different countries get themselves into.
That said, EU4 as a grand strategy game does have its own problems when it comes to achieving something. You have highlighted one aspect -- complex nature of the game makes it hard for new players to both grasp the mechanics and set their goals at the same time. For experienced players there's the other issue. The sandbox aspect of the game lets you set your own goals, sure. But it also makes so that, once you figure out the min-maxing, you find out that the proper way to achieve anything is to simply blob out (yes they have implemented many features to mitigate this, but in the core it's still the same). With that, the game seems more and more grindy. So you have to choose more challenging starts, but everyone has done Byzantium by now, right?
The formable nation kinda acts like a goal. Example like Castille to Spain, Muscovy to Russia, etc.
Oh shit, yeah! I forgot about the goat. Shit's gonna keep me up at night.
I remember the tutorial of Crusader Kings telling me, as the king of León, to declare war on the pagan chief holding the Canaries islands.
After losing most of my men to attrition and the strong defenders, I decided to retreat, end the war, flip the bird, and do whatever I wanted instead. That is to say, kill my brothers to grab their respective kingdoms, and start an early Reconquista.
The game is still going, with me trying to find a way to take back Navarre from the HRE without having to go to war with the bloody invincible behemoth it became.
Read “Drive” by Daniel Pink. A whole book explaining motivation and arguing, at points, against extrinsic motivators. Great read.
“How do I decide when I am satisfied?”
Holy hell, that cuts deep.
It is interesting because i feel like leveling in RPGs can give me some intrinsic rewards, because i like to experiment and try out new classes, so im intrinsically motivated to play, but the levels are there as benchmarks for my progress
I think thats part of why I love the job system in some of the Final Fantasy games. Its not like the game requires you to use or even unlock all of them, so there is still some wiggle room for players to choose what they want to do. Although then again all RPGs also just automatically appeal perfectly to the completionist mindset with the leveling system, sidequests, rare drops etc.
On Mini Metro: I play that game all the time, I’ve been playing it for three years, and I only ever play the first level. For me, the fun is derived from the decision that comes from learning something deeply instead of broadly. And this game offers that in spades! (Also, my personal record is 3400.)
Yeah, I had that game for two months, played less that an hour in total, tried every few days, would get too annoyed and would close it
I had a similar experience with Satisfactory. I found the need to move my resource gathering conveyor belts frustrating. Frostpunk has a similar mechanic but in that instance I found it to be rewarding. And I’m not sure what made the difference.
You are the same type of player that plays only "dust_2" :P
@@bemo_10 You might be right! I don’t play CSGO, but The Last of Us multiplayer I always voted for The Dam.
I play just the first level too! Manhattan is a fun map too. The rest are just too stressful.
Yep, that's why I stopped playing Blizzard games years ago: they actually started feeling like jobs. Almost every Blizz game has a grinding element to it. Daily quests, weekly quests, mandatory logins (not just WoW... Diablo 3, Hearthstone has it as well).
Jobs YOU pay for to work!
@@hyperteleXii Yes even worse :/
Just play sc2 the only game they have that has 0 paywall and endless skill caps
I think this is why so many people drop out of the latest expansions in World of Warcraft within a few months. People get to experience the story and see the new sights then when they reach the level cap everything changes. Your journey becomes that of steady progression of equipment you may not care about because the challenges that remain require such an obvious time investment.
Same. I was real into hearthstone for like a year, but then as soon as I realized I was having thoughts like “ugh, I gotta log in today to get those quests or I’ll miss out.” I had to call it quits.
Yup. I do art for a living, but I find that my best works are always the ones I just want to do for myself, not the commissions people ask of me.
Not that I don't do hard work on commissions, of course, but that's what it is: Work.
Luckily, I've found a way to compartmentalize monetary artwork vs. personal artwork, so that I don't get dissatisfied with either.
One of my favorite unexpected surprises is probably is the portal achievement where you take all the radios to this one specific place in each room until they fuzz out, something you are never asked to do and probably wouldn't know you could do it unless you scrolled through the games achievement section, or your friend told you about it only to discover that you get to see a secret room containing lore. This lore doesn't really give you much, practically the only thing it does is give you a clue that Glados ain't very nice, it's just there as a gift. I just liked how neat and completely optional it was.
This one is far deeper AND more apt an example than you've indicated here - in Portal 1, they added the achievement "transmission received" years after release with 0 other info. The radio signals are codes that led to other places like old BBS boards and eventually the players themselves revealed Portal 2. It was a beautiful ARG
This concept can be applied to so many areas. I worked with someone on some of my music projects for a time and he was doing it for free and for his own enjoyment. After awhile I felt guilty that he was doing so much work for no pay. So I started paying him a bit randomly here and there. It didn't ruin our relationship or anything but it did completely change the dynamic.
The concept you're teaching here really illustrates what happened in my situation and why.
This is why i could never get into destiny, even though i literally got destiny 2 for free. "Do this mission, and you'll get this loot, which will allow you to do this harder mission, for more loot!"
CoD and HALO were the giants of FPS when i grew up in the early 2000s, they didn't have thousands of bits of loot to pick up after every mission, you played the games because the levels were fun to beat and shooting your friends in the face was fun.
Not to oppose you at all, just a kind of funny comparison, but I've had the exact opposite experience.
I played halo and gears of war and such when i was younger, (though I imagine I'm a bit younger than you cause man, I sucked at them), but none of them ever stuck. I played, but as soon as my friends left there was nothing left. I wasn't unlocking new things, there were no goals to work towards besides personal improvement, and I KNEW that no matter how hard I tried I wouldn't even be that good, and certainly not the best, so I just couldn't invest myself.
And then I got Destiny, and I stayed with it. Well, I got Destiny and Terraria, tried Destiny, left, beat Terraria, and then stuck with Destiny (and Terraria too, but to a lesser degree). With Destiny, I had goals. Sure, I'd never be a PvP pro, but I could unlock a cool new weapon that would give me a bit of an edge. I may never get a worlds first raid, or even first week (or month), but if I go in anyways I might get a special exotic that would let me use the meta strategy. I HATE Gambit, but if I go in I can grind out some pinnacle weapons (and maybe even have fun doing it).
In a more modern example, Titanfall 2 is an amazing game. I would say it's one of the best movement shooters ever, maybe even one of the best shooters at all. I adore it. It's campaign was amazing, it's PvP was compelling, and I maybe played it for a few months. Occasionally I come back for a week or two. I just... Didn't feel like I was getting anything done. I would unlock cosmetics, but other people were so far ahead of me that I couldn't even show them off. It just felt like a waste, even when I was having fun, and eventually I left because every game felt the same. I was getting better, sure, but it would never matter because I could never really feel it, it was too slow and I couldn't tell if I was improving or getting worse. It was the same problem that I had with Overwatch, and with Apex Legends, and the reason I never stuck with them either.
Just a different personal response to games, I think, but it's kinda neat.
So we just learned why school sucks!
You only care about knowledge to get a good grade at the end.
It's been shown several times that the classroom is the worst possible learning environment
yes, I barely remeber anything I learned from school, but I still remember everything that I thought myself through research and online courses
And they called me crazy when I proclaimed this as a teenager...
Woah
It wasn't that way for me. I had a lot of intrinsic motivation going to school, so I actually really enjoyed it. I suppose the main problem is that teachers fail to grow that intrinsic motivation in their student and (depending on the education system) assign too much value to tests.
When Hitman (2016) was released as episodes, I enjoyed playing the same location over and over trying to find better ways to complete the main objectives. Now, I find myself just hunting for challenges to cross them off the list and move on to the next location
YES. This is something I've been trying to explain to people for ages. It's crazy how goals and achievements, when left unchecked, can trick us into wasting loads of time doing something not fun.
I think replay value is also an important factor here. Replaying a game after beating it seems like a wholly intrinsic action, especially of its a linear game with very clear and outlined goals. Its more about enjoying the experience of play and story over getting all the trophies and such. Even if a game is extrinsicly motivating, if you enjoy playing it that becomes an intrinsic motivation.
I wonder if this same idea applies to Game Developers as well? That once monetary concerns become a thing, they, for example, suffer creative burnout at a higher rate?
ask Alexander Bruce - this is absolutely a real thing and it can be destructive to your mental health.
There's plenty of cult-classics-turned-generic-shit series out there that shows this. Early fallout was renowned for storytelling and importance of RPG elements. New fallout is basically borderlands style looter shooter with practically no story. Hell, borderlands. The first one had a lot of dark comedy, and while it leant on the 4th wall, it generally wasn't too much. Borderlands 3 is packed full of memes, 4th wall breaks, cliche catchphrases/characters. Dead Rising, heavy character emphasis in the first game, interesting setting, tons of little secrets that you were never extrinsically rewarded for. Maybe you found the hidden weapons, maybe you don't, no-ones gonna give you hints. Dead Rising 4, everything has a collectibles counter, interesting time mechanic was stripped to make the game appeal to more people, dark, gritty story of people going crazy trying to survive was stripped to a goofy over the top story of WaCkY characters wearing themed outfits and a zombie in power armor.
Sure, these games all have some creativity in there, and they aren't necessarily bad games, but it's clear to see that many of them had their creative and unique elements removed in future titles in order to make them do better financially by appealing to more people.
@@Winasaurus BL3's balancing is also very thoroughly screwed. It has the most refined and polished core mechanics, but none of the content is able to back it up.
i'm not a game dev but a professional creative as well, and i think it's great to try to reframe your work to think of it in terms "maybe what i make will be the highlight of someone's day/week/month/year(yeah that can happen!), maybe it will inspire them to pursue their goals etc etc" not "how much can i make off of this" because how it influences people is totally unpredictable... i'm a graphic designer and i saw my younger sibling's scrapbook where among many things, there was some paper box because the design was impressive enough to put there... like thinking someone might do the same with something i make is truly wonderful
Opened my eyes to why I'm growing less interested with some live-games / GAAS. The reward system is about "when am I going to get the next thing?" and less about player expression/agency.
Guess that's why I love stealth games. They give you tools and you figure out how to use them best even if you have an overall objective, and maybe optional ones.
I need to rethink some stuff though... that forum post was heavy
This makes me think a lot about how I played Stardew Valley. I had my brother beside me telling me how to do things. He essentially acted as a goal-setting system, which totally ruined the discovery aspect of the game. Once he left, I had no impulse to play the game because I wasn't used to thinking for myself and doing what I wanted to do. Anyone else had this experience with that type of game? I wonder if I should go back with a more curious mindset...
You should. Games like Stardew Valley ( Terraria, Minecraft, etc) have their own objectives and rules but you don't need to do them if you don't want. The experience of the game itself is how yourself play the game and not how you should be playing (at least, it's how i see it). By the way, i have a friend that plays Terraria with me. He likes more to focus in boss fights while i like to build things.
It's a matter of you playing on your time and enjoying the game. Have fun!
Man that is absolutely brutal because Stardew’s most appealing quality is its dripfeed of surprises. I’d tell your brother to never do that again if you can do so in a polite way
I'd go play a similar but different game in the genre instead. Something fresh. For PC, I'd consider My Time At Portia, while on Switch I'd suggest Rune Factory IV.
I used to play harvest moon when i was a kid. But when im older now... i only play difficult games with clear objectives. Can no longer enjoy games like Harvest Moon or stardew valley.
Something to also keep track of is how rewards are framed. Progression systems, especially due to leveling up and the like, tend not to cause the same reward behaviour, as many players come to expect it rather that pay attention to it. They see it as less a reward for actions and more a predetermined expansion of ability.
In my testing, players that get rewards that are referred to as 'Unlocks' have statistically significant less trouble with reward-pattern gameplay then referring to those same rewards as 'Bonuses'. As with many things in life, framing can often matter more than what is being framed.
This makes me think of school. If the goal is learning, then homework that you're being forced to do for a grade won't give you the motivation to learn, just to finish the task, get reward. That's why learning at your own pace works so much better.
Ooh this was a really good video! I super liked how you kept looping back to the classroom experiement, each time with more and more detail revealed about how it went and what it means for human reward systems. :D
Probably unlisted and Patreon supporters get early access
@@Obeu magic. But no, the video was link only before and he got a hang of a link
@SheepDog Probably a supporter who gets early access to videos
1 day ago? Why u cheatin :(
getting more and more snippets of the story was a reward!
I recently got into Age of Empires 2 as my first RTS game and fell in love with the game simply because it's lots of fun. There's absolutely no rewards or unlock system, but learning new civs and build orders has engaged me way more than games with persistent reward structures.
This is a really interesting topic that I'd like to explore more. I'm a cognitive scientist with a heavy interest in learning and education. I'd never considered rewards from this perspective but I can even see how in my personal life these rules generally hold true. It would be interesting to explore more ways to combine intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. I feel like in some games like Hitman, the objectives are balanced out by the freeform approach to assassination. And it was always cool to go out of bounds in Halo to find skulls or secrets. Bungie knew you would go out there. All the more reason to boot up Unity and keep making things!
Don’t Starve Together and Outer Wilds are two of the best games I’ve ever played. I love how strange they both are and the gorgeous art styles. Plus I love the challenge of Don’t Starve.
I've never really been shown this angle on how extrinsic rewards can negatively affect our interest in things that we were previously intrinsically motivated to do. I've noticed this effect before myself in my experience with online multiplayer games. It's happened to me a few times where I play a game I enjoy for hundreds of hours without getting bored, and eventually I begin to approach a competitive skill level. The competition and drive to be good completely drains the fun out of the game, and I get bored of it and quit it for a long time before I might regain interest.
This was a fantastic video, both very educational and entertaining. Thank you for providing such amazing content!
This hit hard having just come from grinding on Destiny 2
I feel you brother
Came from warframe here
Idk how anybody players that. The core loop is so boring.
This was really helpful...I've been demotivated to work on my drawings ever since my economical situation got worrying and I had the potential to get payed for my stuff -- somehow that pressure just made me freeze and never attempt to go back.
Feels like school in a way. Everytime someone saw me writing for fun, the first respond was always some variant of "You doing homework?". It's like the concept of doing things for it's own sake was some foreign concept.
On a slightly related note, did you do a video on motivation based on other factors (exploration, challenge, sense of superiority, etc)? It seems like a lot of videos on motivation focus on rewards like achievements and in game loot.
Edit: Spelling.
Statistically speaking, a kid writing probably is doing homework.
very similar to reading. i honestly feel educators should put time into figuring out how to get people to enjoy reading
@@CarrotConsumer True, but the perception that no one would write unless it was for school does more harm than good.
@@omnitroph1501
True, but it is also correct. So what you have here is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
@@Hisu0 It is not correct. Many people enjoy writing, or just have more purpose for it than increasing a meaningless number.
I agree with you... assuming everyone's goal in a game is to better themselves. My preference in games is similar to my preferences in TV shows or film: it tells a story and although I enjoy it I do eventually want the story to finish so that I can move onto another story. In my case, I enjoy having goals and rewards and I look forward to having a game end once the goal is achieved. Thought I'd put it out there as I got the impression that you were putting down people who need/like having extrinsic rewards
Minecraft, in my opinion, is the quintessential example of what you said in this video. There are zero quests or challenges to complete (unless you care about achievements that have nothing to do with progression in the game). Sure, you can kill the ender dragon to "beat the game", but as someone who has played this game for years and countless hours, I have yet to defeat the ender dragon.
Instead, I made my own challenge. I found a little island and decided I would build a castle. That castle turned into a colossal four story ziggurat with a miniature city inside it. A massive auto farm also sits adjacent to it. I cleared out deserts worth of sand to build it.
The great thing is is that my castle does nothing a small dirt shack cannot. You can build a tiny dirt cube, put chests, an enchanting table, a crafting table, etc., and that's it. That's all you need to survive and beat the game. However, instead of doing this, I decided for myself I would build a castle. Notch didnt tell me to, I just felt like doing it, and in doing so I have poured countless hours into this game.
If I had an objective in a game that was like "mine a ridiculous amount of blocks for hours so that you can spend hours placing them" I would never play that game. Nobody would. However, because it was my decision to build that castle, I painstakingly spent dozens of hours breaking and placing blocks.
And in the end, what did I get for grinding other than bragging rights? Pretty much nothing. The game gives you zero rewards for anything you build. And yet completing that castle was honestly one of the most incredible things I have done in gaming. It is still not done over a year later, and I dont know if it will ever be.
This immense self reward following an immense challenge posed by myself is endlessly more satisfying than receiving xp for killing a certain amount of enemies. It's because of this that I can never get bored of minecraft. There is always something to create, design, mine, improve, and absolutely nothing is told to you by the game. The devs drop you in an immense sandbox with countless tools to play with and just let us go crazy with our imaginations. And, as a result, minecraft is one of if not the best selling game of all time.
7:21 that's probably why I can enjoy playing a game, enjoy writing about a game, enjoy making a video about a game - but hate playing the game to get footage even though I am still just playing the game with OBS turned on.. Somehow something just changes and I don't really want to do it, even though it's something I'll enjoy
this
why is this true i hate it
This is so accurate. I often abandon my minecraft worlds after defeating the dragon. Nothing else to do, at least in my mind. I've caught myself actively avoiding and putting off the dragon fight because I *know* that that'll make me stop playing
Pfft, you beat the dragon? I can't keep playing after my first diamonds
Accurate. I stopped my plans of building a giant colloseum half way through because I ended up beating the dragon first and it felt pointless to put any time into it.
@@coltonbates629 indeed.. I think of a huge structure but then think what's the point... What's at the end of that... And just lose all motivation
In my case when I played Minecraft I didn't even kill the dragon because I wanted to do other things XD
Lol, how is beating the dragon even close to the end goal of the game for you, don't you wanna get an elytra?
Wow, just read about the drawing experiment this morning in the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink. Interesting how intrinsic motivation is often the most satisfying reward for creative or heuristic tasks. Great video as always!
okay, but the question we all need the answer to: *does it explain the goat* ? ? ?
@@3possumsinatrenchcoat The goat was a red herring (with a bad cold, making it sound like a goat).
Was there more to that study? The way its show here, it was just one class of about 50-60 kids, all from pretty much the same culture and age group.
4:15 WOOOOW, that's EXACTLY what happened between me and the gym. When i used to do it for is own sake, i used to have much more pleasure in working out even in periods where i was having ZERO progress. But now that i do it for the sake of the results (making my lifts grow) i discovered that i've lost the interest in working out completely!! Even though i'm making a lot of progress - maybe even faster than before. All because my training feels robotic and without life.
Now i only do for other goals and for my mental and physical health.
Thank you thank you thank you for talking about the tragically underrated Don't Starve. An additional point about the rewards in game is that Don't Starve has no score other than the number of days you survive, no character-leveling, and the only substantial goal of "escaping" is buried deep in the mythology and crafting menus. The lack of direction makes it one of the freest experiences you can have. You play until your overconfidence kills you, sometimes after dozens and dozens hours in a single game. Then the world is gone forever.
This helps explain why I love the golden poop you get as a reward for finding all 900 korok seeds. The korok seeds exist to encourage exploration, so they put a ton of them in to ensure plenty were found, no matter the player's playstyle. But they also didn't want it to turn into a chore like Assassin's Creed 2's feathers. So you get a reward if you find them all! But it's a poop. But it's a golden poop! It's a reward, and clearly a reward, but of little value except as acknowledgment of what you completed..
Something I'm trying to figure out is how to properly reward and motivate in a game with no end. Any ideas?
This is so broad... it's hard to answer
Depends what type of game it is.
This question is too broad as we have to know what genre of game you are trying to make and the intended experience you want your players to have.
Yeah it would be great if you specified what type of game. If it’s a shooter or something than unlock-able items that help you get further in the game (last longer, progress to further areas, etc.) could be interesting, but if it’s just a casual game (like color switch or geometry dash ig) than maybe unlock-able skins? If it’s a competitive game than leaderboards and stuff can be a good motivator, but plz be more specific so we can help you!! :>
Powerups
I've worked in the same field as my main passion for a couple of years, and lately I've been in a rut where I don't really get a lot of hobby stuff done because I don't really feel like it... I never realized that those two could have a deeper connection. I know it's not the main point of the video, but it still was a great eye-opener!
It's definitely a hard problem to solve, especially because not everyone is going to feel the same way. I personally get no real motivation or satisfaction from leaderboards or beating my own high score, and completely open-ended games with no goals whatsoever tend to lose their appeal to me very fast. But I also find shallow goals or checklists like achievements pretty unrewarding. The most satisfying games fall somewhere between those extremes.
7:11 This is why I stopped enjoying doing 3D animation and I'm now lost on what I want to do with my life. I loved it, until it became a job. Now I'm afraid of turning any other of my passions into my job, but, at the same time, I don't want to work a job I don't like.
I might just leave the game industry behind and look for something else.
just be a stripper
@@Chocolatnave123 why do morally depraved people like you exist? My life was much better seconds ago before knowing you.
@@SignificantPressure100 you could just ignore them
@@commanderleo true
Holy, I feel exactly like this with trophies.
I play on ps4, and love getting all trophies (platnium)
Then, after I get the platnium, I drop the game. Almost always forever.
After watching this, I feel as though it's chasing a high, not actual fun. I strive for the achievement, not the experience. When I get my next singleplayer game, I am not going to look at the achievement list. At all. As in, breaking a nigh permanent habit.
I want to play games for the game, not the trophies anymore.
Good luck. Sounds like a genuinely good goal to set for yourself for your own enjoyment.
It's always struck me as odd how so many people cared so much about achievements. For me, unless it gives me something in game (or even if it's just something like concept art) I don't care about getting the achievement at all. I'm guessing it's just about bragging rights, and I don't care to brag.
Anyone else begin thinking of their life through school with the classroom experiment explanation lol
"the constant rewards decreased motivation and even creativity"
woops that's me
Holy shit. My whole life... Oh my god.
In school grades are what measure achievement rather than genuine knowledge, which is why some people don't even feel motivated to try to learn, and rather simply do their work for the good of their grades. This probably also results in cheating. I just wish the education system was more about learning than competing.
@@wakkjobbwizard yeah, the school system is ultimately pretty broken. those who "succeed" have likely only been taught how to memorize things and regurgitate them on command, and those who fail are basically being told that they're Not Good Enough, for reasons likely outside their control. and people are _surprised_ when children come out of this as an absolute mess? like... neither group is benefitting from this. one is confused and lost, and the other has had their self-worth destroyed. It's Bad!!!
Alexander Supertramp I think assessing knowledge is very important but my point is that it treats some people who didn’t understand some stuff like they’re dumb, rather than taking a step back and trying to solve the problem. Also I feel like the way high school is structured makes people want to focus more on the classes that boost their GPA rather than the ones they enjoy and genuinely want to explore. I’m in high school and personally I only choose the classes that give me what I want, and not the ones that make my good boy number go up.
@Alexander Supertramp i'm glad you haven't experienced these problems with the system. unfortunately, your experience is not universal, and you seem to be under the impression that framing learning as a pass/fail contest is anything but counter-productive.
(also, way to brush aside literally every developmentally disabled kid who wants to learn but is literally incapable of functioning properly in the school system!)
“How do I decide when I am satisfied?”
Besides the korok seeds counting as an "unexpected" reward, I really resonated with this video. I never really knew why I would grind through games with achievements as fast as I could, while I could spend days on end playing Don't Starve, but now I feel like I do. Very informative and satisfying. Thank you.
For narrative drive people a perfect reward is audio logs. They give insight into the story beyond what is immediately seen, driving the person to explore so they get the most of the story, like brush strokes on a painting.
Ad-free videos are the best, youtube is literaaly forcing people to buy that premium. Ty patreons :)
Hey, TH-cam is just trying to avoid giving creators the overjustification effect. They should do it out of passion, not for money! (I mean seriously, who needs money?)
Imagine not using an adblocker in the current year
@@eneco3965 You can't use adblocker in the mobile youtube app.
@@fiQmeister So just use youtube vanced
@@eneco3965 didnt know about that
"goals and rewards have an end"
battle pass: let me introduce myself
Great video. Here are some additional thoughts of mine about achievements.
I love the concept of achievements and always check on Steam if there are any for a game before buying (I still buy games without them).
But they are hard to generalize. Some are just usefull as a guide what to do or like a checklist what the game still has to offer. For example after finishing the main part do it again without a specific ability, when not to tedious an opportunity for replayablity. Some force you to be creative with vague descriptions or encourage you to do something silly (riding a unicorn while shooting the rainbow gun, take a cow with you into space). Hidden achievements can surprise you and are just there to tell you you can still find something in the game, but I have to admit that soemtimes I give up and look them up. For me completing a game with 100% is defintely something nice.
But that being said achievements can be implemented badly in a lot of ways: for buying a DLC, just mindless grind (look up Shell shock live on Steam it has a "earn X amount of XP" with a global 0% completion ratio) or being completly uncreative and worst timed stuff (will never get my last medal in Pokemon black 2 :()
They can also add to the whole stlye a game is presented in on a meta level just look at the stupid things to do in the Stanley Parable.
Earning them can also be quite memorable. In Jotun I sat like 2 hours on a misson to kill a specific boss in 25 seconds and everytime I got one second closer it was just pure joy.
Icarus Kid Uprising on the 3DS also had great achivments, because they force you out of your comfort zone and make you try our all weapon types. (curse me for missing like 5 remaining ones)
sry for my english
I viewed this video when it came out on the 13th. On the 14th one of my university courses heavily featured intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (in regards to second language learning) and now it's revisiting the topic again in this next chapter. Thanks for giving me a head start :)