I discuss Shopping Cart Theory, and how this simple philosophical test can inform how you create motivations for NPCs in your games or how you reward players for quests.
me, not looting Doc Mitchell's house (even tho the items inside can be taken for free) because he is a good man who saved my life and he's just trying to live peacefully after his wife died.
I once saw a guy just leave the cart next to his car and try to back up. It slowly rolled into his way and his bumper. He gets out and adjusts it again; then gets back in his car...the cart slowly slides into his bumper. He gets out cursing, grabs the cart and SHOVES it hard...up the hill. The cart gains quite a bit of speed, SLAMMING into the car and visibly scratches his rear left door. He doesn't even stop. He just backs out and with it scraping his car. I just stood there in awe.
@@benhickson6149 Well put! Ironic part is he punished himself and three times over no less. Case in point, put the cart in the corral so at minimum you don't damage your car. 😉
There's a twist on this: I know of a lot of parents who will put the coin in the trolley lock and leave it up to their kids to bring the trolley back. The kid gets to keep the coin while the parent incentives prosocial behaviour.
There's also a problem: this can incentivize the same behavior Tim was talking about. When a person always does something good just for a reward, there can be no reason to act good in a situation where morality would be the only motive.
As a German my brain goes "there's the option not to return it?" :D (Ok, to be fair most carts use the put coin in and get it back on return, but more and more go back to no coin carts, or some people have a tool to open it without the coin and leave them that way, but still it's extremely rare to find a cart outside the coral)
@@Glimmlampe1982 I have german ancestry so this was either passed to me genetically or subtly through my parents but: It drives me absolutely insane that people don't return the carts. I feel compelled to do so. If I was the last man on earth I'd still do it, LOL.
There's a quote from Tucholsky about Germans along the line: Revolution in Germany? Never. When they want to storm a train station, they buy a ticket first. So I guess it's probably genetic:D
He should fundraise for charity, with the 'prize' being bought just time Tim has to spend in a grocery store parking lot, miserable and nonverbally mean mugging everyone that doesn't return their cart, for hours at a time. Side note, there's a good chance that his personal hell consists of that, people arguing with him over the correct definition of a word, and emails with the money people, formatted at about a 4th grade reading level, over some new and reprehensible industry practice that is now mandatory
If you're one of those people that do things because it's the right thing to do you have to be careful around the people that only do things for rewards. They will use your sense of right and wrong to take advantage of you. I'm not sure if this is intentional or subconscious (I think most of them are unaware of it) but it's something you have to be aware of and watch out for. Took me a long time to learn this.
Hmm, plenty of ppl need extrinsic motivation (reward or punishment), that's fine. What you have to watch for are the narcissists and users - the ones who will manipulate you into thinking that what they want = your idea of "good". That way lies pain, heartache, and in extreme cases, cults.
I often tell people that because this theory has become so widely aware, even though people might not call it “shopping cart theory”, people understand that they will be privately ridiculed for it. I live in NoVA with some of the rudest, apathetic people I’ve ever seen and/or met. I’ve never seen a single cart not returned to a corral. It’s like we’ve collectively recognized that it is sociopathic behavior, and now they realize it and have conformed to it. Like I actually unironically think that if a major party candidate… at least for one of the parties… was actively caught not returning a shopping cart, they would lose votes.
Doesn't matter if it's a Whole Foods or a Safeway, people just leave the damn carts in the parking spot or wherever in NoVA. It's the sense of privilege there.
@@crust9889It's the anonymity of the suburbs. Folks don't really know their neighbors / co-users of the supermarket, so there's an entitlement combined with relative anonymity. Any internet user of the post-Y2K era knows that's a recipe for shitty behavior. In places where you are likely to be known by the shop staff and/or the other patrons, you see people at least going through the motions, so as to avoid gossip (doesn't work LOL).
It's all about maintaining order for me. Such institutions are systems that our communities rely on - each customer is a cog in the system. I do it for the next person, just as the previous person did it for me. One thing I'd like to mention is a notable pitfall of having a reasonable/justified villain: Often, the player will want to side with them rather than whatever milquetoast "good" side they're railroaded into. A series that is infamous for this is Far Cry - people always want to side with Hoyt and Pagan Min, because they're just far more reasonable than your allies, and far more ambitious and charismatic. Now, let's think about Fallout 1: What if the super mutants *weren't* infertile? How many players would instead want to side with the super mutants, with the "bad end" where you join them instead being seen as a potential good ending?
Hi Tim, as a British person, can I just say what a lovely and unexpected outing that was for the word "trolley"? Also, as a budding videogame developer, your channel has been a constant source of information and inspiration. Thank you for all you have done in your career and continue to do. ETA: For cart/trolley enthusiasts; in the UK it is standard for trolleys to require a £1 coin to unlock, which you get back when you return the trolley. It seems to be a very effective system.
The not-returning-shopping-carts phenomenon seems to be mostly American - I don't think I've ever heard anyone else complain about it. I've got a keychain that saves me having to keep coins on me, but I still return the trolley because I'm not a bellend.
Here in Canada, they're $1 or $2 coins being used. Amusingly, when I lived in a very working class city (oil sands), it was exceedingly common to find the shopping carts still abandoned around the cart corral. So, friends and I, on our days off, would put the carts back and get a pizza or something with the proceeds. My local grocer doesn't use this system (though they used to!), and I see the odd cart get stolen and left sitting in some random places in town occasionally.
Having the material rewards for being good be better than the rewards for being bad never made any sense. This can suck the fun out of evil playthroughs. The “I don’t care” expedient shopping cart dumper would be a paladin of good if it paid the most. I thought Infamous for the ps3 handled this well. Good playthroughs felt like making a sacrifice to save those characters who you care about. Evil playthroughs were about getting drunk on power.
the rewards for being evil are always better if you can kill the characters and loot them, but in a short term, since you lose access to those characters, dark souls let you kill shopkeepers and loot their items, but then there is no restock anymore, i killed the arrow merchant by accident on my first playthrough and i thought bows were just useless because i never found arrows anywhere
I honestly never liked evil playthroughs in games. It felt like I was missing the fun in an evil playthrough, missing content, interactions, missing the world basically.
I remember the tower scene in Infamous and already knew I didn't really have a choice. It's either: My character feels bad, or everyone makes my character feel bad. I think most of the Good side powers were better than the Evil powers right? Maybe it was just my playstyle. Though, I think I remember wanting to mix the two at one point. As far as the shopping carts go, I see people return them, but they just get them in the aisle, not caring how they're arranged, or even if they're with the same size cart. Bugs me enough to sort them myself.
Working in retail for over a decade, i see this almost every single day, and the shopping cart example doesnt even scratch the surface of how petty, lazy or malicious people can be. Its really quite fascinating from a sociological perspective! Over the last two years, we've had three fights in my store, in the exact same location, and all for the same reason: someone blocked the aisle with their cart, and instead of taking half a second to move, they started arguing about it. Last time was just a couple weeks ago, and the offending person threw a glass jar of salsa that almost hit someone else. It's incredible how people will risk physical harm instead lifting even a finger to avoid inconveniencing someone else. Like you said, this can teach narrative designers a lot about behavior. Not everything needs to have some structured, lore-based reason, or clear and logical cause or purpose. Without some direct benefit, people will do whatever they feel like doing, consequences be damned. Sometimes, people are just dicks.
Also "they pay someone to do it, so why should I?" Is something I've not just heard, but been directly told as an employee. I have watched people casually dump trash and food on the floor and use that mindset as an excuse. Ironically, I see this attitude among players in games. We get used to the idea that everything is gonna be okay, because it's a narrative with a predetermined ending. We don't have to worry about saving the world, because the game will make sure it turns out okay anyway. I think it's a fascinating challenge for game designers to try and subvert that.
A discussion on returning shopping carts is not something I ever expected. But this is why this channel is so fantastic, how many other designers can tie shopping carts into game design morality for characters?
Hi Tim! Thank you for all of your videos sharing your stories and extensive knowledge on game production. I appreciate the time you have put into making these videos- I hope you keep it up, as your insight is priceless!
The coins in the trolley thing is pretty rare in Australia, mostly the ALDI chain do it but few other places do. For the most part, depending upon region, Aussies will simply return the trolley to the corral (or coral to my adult children; they get a giggle) but there are always some that 'just want to watch the world burn'. But having said that, there are near whole suburbs Downunder where only a handful of shoppers return their trolleys and yeah, because they 'can't be arsed' or 'they pay people to collect them' (I should add that here they pay people to collect the trolleys FROM the corrals to take back to the stores where they are kept outside and those people are then forced to go and collect the trolleys from wherever they are left to roam wild). On the other side of the coin to be sure, there are some centre car parks that are designed terribly for returning trolleys where there may be few trolley corrals and trying to put another one into the 'stack' that already blocks most of the carriageway will completely make it impassable to cars so it is actually a better option to just leave it somewhere not in the way. Other carparks as long as you get in the row that has the corral is fine as a rule, but for some elderly (who nearly always return their trolleys) can't make it up the bloody hill to do so! And others you have to dodge motorist looking for a park to take it several rows over (NOT 10ft/3.04m) some 50-100 metres... and don't get me started on the whole 'park next to the corral' thing which is often impossible unless you are the first to arrive or after that, just lucky, and when you do you find it is on the line of the marked parking bay and can't open your door! *For the record, my wife and I always grab a trolley from the corral in the car park and put our shopping bags (most Aussies are being trained slowly to bring your own--it's that reward thing Tim speaks of where you are punished/charged per bag for the store having to supply you with bags) and then return it to the corral when we load the car.
Thank you Tim. I'm not involved in game design, but I am involved in a creative writing project. I find that your advice consistently translates into more robust world, plot and character development.
Tim, I hope you're watching Cart Narc. Absolute gold content! The length people go to not put it back go far beyond the effort of putting it back, it's very insightful about human nature haha
It is actually not gold content at all. It is a guy who obviously gets off on insulting people choosing targets that he thinks he can get away with being openly shitty towards without being called out himself. I’m convinced that guy is a way worse person than any of the people he has harassed and posted online. He isn’t doing anything to make anything better.
“The length people go to not put it back” is just so profoundly disingenuous, I’ve seen the stupid videos. Going around brow beating and insulting people does not mean that they have to do what you say. If some random asshole shoves a camera in my face unprovoked and starts mocking me I’m not exactly going to bend over backwards to make sure that I am a saint in THAT lunatics’ mind.
Now I wanna see an RPG about a single trip to the grocery store, where small actions like taking/leaving the last name brand item, greeting/ignoring the cashier, spending too much money or buying too cheap of food, taking too much time in the store, etc. all have an impact on the end slides. And of course, one of the decisions is whether or not you return the shopping cart.
7:02 Philosophical: there is a great video by Veritasium on Game Theory ("What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything") which was an eye opener on human interactions.
9:07 btw I loved those types of quests in Bloodlines & Elder Scrolls. My justification is: that those are fun quests. The dark brotherhood one in Oblivion where you are at a party is pure genius. Before you judge me: I return my shopping carts (in real life that is :D)
@@UlissesSampaio There should be no judgement. Roleplaying an evil (or not-the-best) character in a game doesn't make someone remotely evil IRL. I mean, even playing "good" characters, most of us aren't going around IRL killing bandits, blowing up evil lairs, or negotiating peace between political leaders to begin with (and we wouldn't if we could).
@@TristenSarelvun I agree. I like to do things in games that are pretty much the opposite of what I would do in real life. Also, seems to me that most games railroad you to "playing nice". Thus it's refreshing to see games like Bloodlines and Elder Scrolls depart a bit from the norm. It's fun to see how far you can push a game to its limits.
@@UlissesSampaio Yeah. It's a bit disappointing to see series like Dragon Age allow less and less bad or even gray choices as the series goes on, and I'm the person who feels too sympathetic towards these virtual NPCs to make said "bad" choices (if I can help it). Even just knowing you have the option of playing nearly anybody you want and of really exploring the nuances of this fictional world enhances the experience, even if I rarely take those options. It also be argued that having bad choices available makes doing the right thing more fulfilling or genuine.
@@TristenSarelvun Indeed: you do good even though it will be worse for you. Btw, the ideal game for me is one that has a positive feedback loop: you are rewarded for playing the playstyle you want to play with. And the best reward imo is *content. This is why the games I mentioned above were great: you get quality content* (i.e. great side-stories) for doing those quests. Most other games will cut you off from content if you took the evil route, which railroads people for making the good choice.
As someone whose job was grocery store maintenance for four years, the majority of my job consisted of grabbing shopping carts from corrals and bringing them into the store. Without the apathy of those who leave carts unattended I would've been out of a job long ago. Kudos to the apathetic
I've never heard of this problem before today, because you had to insert a euro where I live to get the cart, which unlocks a chain from the next cart. You get the euro back when you rehook the chain into the slot... so you have a financial reason to return it (it's been like this for 35 years)
We do that in Canada too and I'm sure they do it in the states. Some people just don't give a fuck even if they lose out on a quarter (which is what it is here)
It's more of a US thing. Americans have a different service philosophy compared to us in Europe. In the US, the customer is supposed to be treated as a god among mortals, service staff doing everything for them (why Tim mentions the "there are people paid to put the cart back", as in "if I pay for something, whatever I don't like doing should be done by others"). They operate on the assumption that paying and tipping for a service means others should do it. Throw money at a problem to make it go away. In Europe, we tend to treat service staff as equals and we apply the normal social rules in our interactions with them. We don't have a god complex as customers (it's why Karens are common in the US, they think that normal social rules don't apply in a customer-service staff interaction). For us it's normal to bag your own groceries and not have someone do it for you, it's normal not to have greeters when entering a story, it's normal for a waiter not to ask you how you are every 2 minutes, it's why we don't expect service staff to smile all the time and why it's normal to return your own cart instead of expecting others to do it for you (coin or not, I return it even without coins). We have different interpretations of what service staff should do as part of their interactions with customers and frequently Europeans going to the US and Americans coming here complain about these things, expecting to see the same things they're familiar/comfortable with.
@@octavianpopescu4776 There's an amazing doc about Walmart's failed push in to Germany, the locals relay did not like being greeted going in to the shop. It was an almost hostile conflict in service culture, workers where forced to 'smile' at people even!
Whenever I watch Tim's videos, I always wish I could give multiple likes to the video. So much wisdom, such eloquent presentation, and I always learn something. Thank you Tim
I just want to say thanks for doing all these videos, its so great to hear from someone who's been there & done it. I'm 61 but i still remember playing Fallout for the first time. All the best from Yorkshire
I love this. Thank you for sharing. I always love when an RPG doesn't just let you "be" good, it makes you put in effort to be good. Meanwhile the bad route always looks easier, or faster, or more rewarding up front so it's always tempting. I can think of maybe less than 10 games I've played that really nail this.
I reject your premise that returning the cart is a good. I had the job of getting the carts from the parking lot, and let me tell you, getting out, away from the managers and customers and piped in music, that was the best part of my day. Returning a cart to a corral is not necessarily a Good Thing.
Hi tim! Great video topic! I am not a dev, but lifelong gamer for 20+ years now. The problem with shopping cart theory being put inside a game is a lot of players think the act of consuming a game's content is a reward of itself. Sometimes doing the "good choice" is a more satisfying character arc for the player character/overal story theme/ or the quest NPCs. For example red dead redemption 1/2 or disco elysium. While games and trick or incentives players by giving them better rewards when they do the not moral choice, but at the same time these evil choices can conflict with the overall game's theme or character arc. Sure you can play Arthur morgan as murdering psycho arsehat but playing as good arthur is more satisfying because it completes his overall character development that fully support the redemption title. The same with games like disco elysium while you can play harry as fuckjob drunk 24/7 detective, having him heal and rediscover his purpose is more satisfying that leaving harry in the mire of depression and darkness.
The trolley problem is something very different, haha. The trolley problem involves the sort of trolley that moves on tracks, i.e. a carriage of a train. It's a "sacrifice one or many" scenario, which some people have added a twist to, where they ensure there's a loop at the end of the railway so both parties get hit...
The soda pop bottling company I worked for in the 80's used to have machines that would serve the old 6.5 and 10 oz. bottles for free. People would grab one and leave them all around about 2/3 full in the break room. The company started charging a nickel, and people started appreciating them.
One thing that I have thought about a lot in RPGs is that the bad options should be much more rewarding, at least occasionally. I like to play good and moral characters, but I don't really ever feel tempted to try the bad options. The good option is usually also the best option.
Has Tim done a video on hidden quests? Tasks to do from talking to an NPC, but not logged into a journal, therefore communicating to the player it's unimportant? I guess it's related to secrets or easter eggs in a way. This just made me think of random NPC's who say things like, "Winter's're getting colder. Wish I were younger or my axe were sharper." Then you go and bring them a new Axe.
Rasczak: Tell me the moral difference, if any, between the Citizen & the Civilian? Rico: A Citizen returns the shopping cart, a civilian does not. Rasczak: The exact words of the text.
A big concern I have with rewarding morality choices in games is that it kind of "gamifies" morality. The people focused on experiencing all the content will then pick good or bad options specifically to "experience all the content" or "complete the collection". The games with moral choices that hit the hardest seem to be when you have zero incentive either way (shopping cart situation), and the player gets to live with the ramifications of what they chose to do. You actually feel bad about abandoning someone to save your own skin, while in another game you might think "that's 5 more points down the Evil Path, 10 more and I can use the purple lightning skill".
Lots of other european here explaining how it works here. But there's not only the need to put 1€ to get the cart, most stores give plastic coin designed just for that so you can get around this. And even in store without this system (like ikea), nobody never leave the cart around and they're always returned. It baffled me when i learned how it works in the US and somehow, it didn't surprised me seeing how the "customer is king" mentality is so present. As a french, you tend to not want to be treated as a king. It's a head loosing interaction in our book.
The problem with the Necropolis callout is that the majority of players will never see it since the town gets invaded after 110 days and you'd see the negative ending in any case.
Another way to approach it is to offer no immediate reward (or at least a lesser reward) for doing the good action, but have it subtly adjust the attitudes of the recipient(s) and/or onlookers in your favor in the long term. Yes, reputation increases are a form of reward, but rather than having the immediate dopamine hit of a karma/rep meter ticking up, keep the response/indicator more organic (i.e. gain rep with people and they will generally react to you more favorably, and it takes time for that improvement to propagate within a group). I know this isn't exactly an innovative idea, but I prefer it to an instant notification and everyone being telepathically informed of your good deeds. 😉
I'd always heard the theory discussed in relation to self-governance, but applying it to narrative design is definitely a cool idea. I especially like the point about multiple NPCs providing different excuses for the same wrongdoing only to have the last one be the only one who just straightforwardly says that it's because of knowing there's no punishment.
In the middle of a snow storm, it's reasonable because they push the snow into the cart corral. I put the cart back in the cart corral. Or take it back into the store.
This is fascinating, and there are videos where people confront those who don't return carts. I still remember when I was a kid when me and my mom went shopping. There were always carts left abandoned right after the cashiers. I would assemble as many as I could and return them. I remember one time, the entrance was completely filled with carts, and I got to work.. thinking back, the staff must have been so appreciative of these silly kids coming in and doing "their" jobs. These days of course, there is a monetary incentive to return the carts. I never understood - and still don't- why people just couldn't return the carts. Well, time to watch the video!
I work at a convenience store and i think there is at least one psychology study worth doing on the people who will just keep adding to the pile of dubious-probably-dirty self-serve drink cups ON TOP of the table which literally has a labelled trash bin underneath. The only vaguely reasonable possibility is they didnt see it because its at knee height but its not like its the only trash in the store. The amount that this happens is absurd. This is my shopping cart theory and possibly my villain origin story
What's amazing is that when the quarter is introduced, tons of people will return the cart, and leave the quarter. moreso seemingly than people who don't even return the free cart.
I was thinking exactly this. I use a walker and am often totally thrashed after walking the store and loading the car. Sometimes I will return a cart still but there are times where chronic pain makes it unbearable.
I think a good way games can handle this, at least for some quest lines is to either make the material reward for good and bad outcomes equal or at least unknown to the player when they encounter it for the first time
Thats a weird one. Here in germany if you dont return your shopping cart people won't kindly on that and I have never seen parking lots where one cart isn't returned.
I think this idea actually applies across the board. Even if you do good without consciously expecting a reward the fact that you feel good about yourself by doing good is in itself a reward.
When I was younger, people where complete savages with their shopping carts, leaving them everywhere, then like in many places the token/quarter/dollar deposit system was introduced and it solved the problem pretty well and it remained that way for years. Then when the pandemic happened, they temporarily removed that requirement and shopping carts were free to take without any coin. Surprisingly everything remained organized and people remained civil. I haven't seen a single place who activated it again since then and it's not an issue. So I believe there is other nuances to that behavior, once people get use for years to act civilized, even if you remove the punishment/reward then people continue to do the good behavior just by habit.
As someone who used to be paid to gather shopping carts, people can do some really heinous stuff to those carts. 😂 I had a lady stare me in the eye while she dropped an entire small trashbag full of dirty diapers into her cart AND leave it behind someone else's car so that if I didn't get it, that car owner would. Gonna need to make that kind of logic process into a video game villain one day.
What I feel almost every game does not manage to do is to make declining the rewards for quests for either good/bad/neutral whatever side, meaningful. All games will end up flooding the player with resources, so it's a reward you never need. I have real hard time thinking of a single game where by the midgame most "material" goods aren't rather irrelevant either because I already have tons of them or have the means to get tons of them, or the growth of my characters power means I don't need them. You can't really bribe me to do the evil thing for 1000 gold, if after an hour or 2 I have 20 000 gold in the bank. But things like the end slides being affected is a prime motivator for me.
Tim, it'd be awesome if you started an ethics channel. ^^ You may not be a professional philosopher, but you got a good pro-social instinct and an advanced common sense to go with that, and a lot of experience to make it grounded with examples and observations. And you could make a lot of connections to RPGs. It would be a new completely unexpected adventure. ”Be good with Tim Cain”. ^^ Not a joke, I think that would be awesome, and educational for a lot of people.
I wonder if all the rewards and perks throughout the whole game were inherently better for the bad side, would majority pick the good or bad? I mean a game where people would be literally punished/crippled for trying to act decent. Makes you think about life morality, because, that how it feels sometimes - there are situations one knows there will be consequences, but the individual still decides to do the right thing in spite of the consequences. This falls on the spectrum and can be about small things or big matters. I think about most persecuted individuals who oppose power structure for example (plenty of examples in both recent and distant history) - what is driving those people if both, reward or punishment is insufficient to influence their behaviour? Fascinating stuff.
Thank you for great video as always. Just my five cents on it -- All those action can be placed in one of two categories: required and optional. Getting the cart before going shopping is a required (you just don't have enough hands to hold all you need, and you don't have time to go shopping multiple times a day). Returning the cart after you used it is an optional action. I think it's a main reason why people act like that. If you can come up with the way to make returning a cart a required act somehow, it would be all different. For example, just imagine, when you get the cart, you have to leave a key to your car (or some other important item) in exchange. So you can get it back only when you return the cart.
The Quarter thing Tim brought up actually works they don't have workers to get the carts and only have the carts in the front of the store and I've never seen a single cart in the parking lot... The only thing stopping people from being lazy is losing a quarter it's crazy but it actually works...
As an European, I can't believe what I'm hearing. You mean that people DO NOT TAKE THE CART BACK TO THE PLACE!!!! I think this isn't a morality issue. It's a sociology issue.
See, I KNOW that this is a good mindset to carry through game development. But I'd love to think that Tim just came back from the grocery store and couldn't find any shopping carts in the corral
There's one important thing that must be mentioned, I believe. There's a big chance people are not bad because of their nature - its just how the capitalistic world we live in, works. People, who are ready to do bad things to other people, are most likely to climb on top. And when it goes on generation by generation, it becomes more and more convincing for next generations that being good is mostly bad.
So someone too lazy to return the cart is neutral evil, someone who just pushes the cart away without looking is chaotic evil, and someone placing the car between two other cars is lawful evil?
I think this is an interesting cultural difference. In the UK it is VERY rare to see someone just dump a trolley. Obviously shops do make it easier by having areas in the car parks but i could probably count on two hands the number of times ive seen an abandoned trolley actually at a shop in my 40 odd years of life. That applies to before you had to put money in them too. That said its not that unusual for people to just walk off with them. Most supermarkets have to put money in nowadays (only a £1 but i guess its a psychological thing). Its not because people left them, its that people just wander off with them sometimes full of shopping or because they are students or whatever. Just to be clear im not saying that discounts what Tim is saying about games.
All of this implies 'doing the right thing' = 'being a good person,' which is why most game morality feels so performative - morality being shown by a meter or pop-up notice Morality is also relative, so it's hard to judge what is 'right' all the time. I thought gamers learned this during that famous conversation with Kreia(sp?) from Knight of the Old Empire 2 about this very thing
I just finished Project Gorgon DLC and felt it did a great job of representing this exact scenario. Doing the right thing didn’t necessarily lead to the best reward, but my character couldn’t justify the bad actions.
I'm 37 years old and have never thought about parking next to the corral to make putting the cart back easier. Thanks for that. 😅 I have always parked as close to the entrance as I could find. For the record, I usually put the cart back in the corral, typically by seeing from how far away I can push it and get it in the corral. I may be 37, but I haven't grown up much.
I remember I once left an IKEA shopping cart on the loading area. I think there's usually some place to return it nearby but I couldn't find it. Looking for it would have meant I would maybe inconvenience someone that wanted to use the spot my car was in. I still have nightmares about it.
In Europe, at least my country, you pay money/insert coin to get them so there is incentive to return them :P I was expecting Shopping Cart Theory to be something like, you put many products into the shopping cart but then you have pay for the products and then put them in the basket/shopping bag and deal with the consequences of you filling up shopping cart :P
Here's a wild idea, make it so they return it as part of checkout for payment, now you've solved the problem but I'm sure it comes with it's own set of issues.
I literally today was playing through nuka world and was in kiddy kingdom talking to Oswald when I googled whether or not I should kill him and expected everyone to say kill him for his unique outfit and weapon but was surprised to see a lot of people sticking up for him and saying he was just trying to protect his people now immediately after I'm listening to Tim Cain explaining how people will often attempt to explain their strange behaviors haha!
lol I've been the guy getting the carts before. It is a hassle to grab all the stragglers people didn't put in the corral. Not to mention that walmart parking lot was huge. So I can attest that your anonymous good deed really helped me out. Not to sound holier than thou, but I've never understood not putting the cart back. Since I was a child I always wanted to help even if I wasn't seen doing it. Drive me crazy when my mom is shopping and decides she doesn't want something and just puts it on the shelf whereever we are at in the store lol Especially now since I've been a stocker
Worked in retail, always bugged me when mum - years ago and even now - puts the random *single item* on a random shelf, no more than one item, just the one. I'm like "for goodness sake we both work in retail." XD
@dragontear1638 lol Mine is the same way and also has worked retail. She at least never puts frozen stuff on a random shelf. She finds the closest freezer door hahaha
Everyone returns them here as you have to put a coin in to use them and you get it back when you return it. I've never seen anyone not return them in 30+ years.
I think immaterial rewards that still have tangible benefit to you as a player are a great way to handle good acts. I very distinctly remember the starport visa sidequest in Knights of the Old Republic II, where people are desperately looking to get off a planet that's on the cusp of civil war. You can find visas to give to people who want them, but you only get two, and there are several more than that. The best rewards by far are the ones that give you dark side points: a very powerful lightsaber crystal and tons of money. On the other end, you get nothing material at all for helping the poor and desperate single mother and her two children. But you DO get light side points and build trust with your light side companions. When you reach the point when you are fully light or dark in Kotor, you gain a pretty strong attribute bonus (wisdom for light and strength for dark), and when you build your companions' trust, you can further their stories and see growth in them and their abilities. There are reasons that help you to do the selfless act, represented in a way that's (somewhat) true to life. Although outside of a clear cut world like star wars, there's definitely some possibility for nuance there too. I don't think there are enough RPGs that explore the idea of the player performing selfless acts for selfish, hidden reasons enough. Maybe someone out there will!
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 72 วันนี้!! คู่เอก "ก้องศึก vs โจอาคิม"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hT1EOSsRPac/mqdefault.jpg)
me, not looting Doc Mitchell's house (even tho the items inside can be taken for free) because he is a good man who saved my life and he's just trying to live peacefully after his wife died.
but do you fix his 9mmsub then leave it because thats true good
You’re a better man than I.
Not taking the platter from the census office in seyda neen is the biggest moral choice in video games ever.
What game is that from? @@TourFaint
@@ShapeshiftergreenMorrowind : )
I once saw a guy just leave the cart next to his car and try to back up. It slowly rolled into his way and his bumper.
He gets out and adjusts it again; then gets back in his car...the cart slowly slides into his bumper.
He gets out cursing, grabs the cart and SHOVES it hard...up the hill. The cart gains quite a bit of speed, SLAMMING into the car and visibly scratches his rear left door.
He doesn't even stop. He just backs out and with it scraping his car. I just stood there in awe.
Smartest lazybones
Sunk cost, he had already committed to not putting it away and so couldn't do the right thing
@@benhickson6149 Well put!
Ironic part is he punished himself and three times over no less. Case in point, put the cart in the corral so at minimum you don't damage your car. 😉
having a person on your team like this in a multiplayer game is a nightmare, they will destroy themselves and everyone with them on principle.
I've witnessed similar before. May either of these people have learned a lesson (though I doubt they did).
Never underestimate a player's desire to do good for no reason.
The Dog: "Who are you always talking to...?? 🤨"
Tim starts off like everybody's favorite Grandpa but then slowly descends down the spiral to the dark side of game development
So true
After all, he is a game man.
Anything involving returning shopping carts was bound to get dark. 😀
My grandpa taught US History, so "most ppl are not inherently good" & "good intentions to bad outcomes" are just normal grandpa-wisdom to me 😅
There's a twist on this: I know of a lot of parents who will put the coin in the trolley lock and leave it up to their kids to bring the trolley back. The kid gets to keep the coin while the parent incentives prosocial behaviour.
There's also a problem: this can incentivize the same behavior Tim was talking about. When a person always does something good just for a reward, there can be no reason to act good in a situation where morality would be the only motive.
All I can throughout this video is is Tim questioning everyone whom he sees not returning the shopping cart.
As a German my brain goes "there's the option not to return it?" :D
(Ok, to be fair most carts use the put coin in and get it back on return, but more and more go back to no coin carts, or some people have a tool to open it without the coin and leave them that way, but still it's extremely rare to find a cart outside the coral)
@@Glimmlampe1982 I have german ancestry so this was either passed to me genetically or subtly through my parents but: It drives me absolutely insane that people don't return the carts. I feel compelled to do so. If I was the last man on earth I'd still do it, LOL.
There's a quote from Tucholsky about Germans along the line:
Revolution in Germany? Never. When they want to storm a train station, they buy a ticket first.
So I guess it's probably genetic:D
I love your ghost in the shell pfp
He should fundraise for charity, with the 'prize' being bought just time Tim has to spend in a grocery store parking lot, miserable and nonverbally mean mugging everyone that doesn't return their cart, for hours at a time.
Side note, there's a good chance that his personal hell consists of that, people arguing with him over the correct definition of a word, and emails with the money people, formatted at about a 4th grade reading level, over some new and reprehensible industry practice that is now mandatory
If you're one of those people that do things because it's the right thing to do you have to be careful around the people that only do things for rewards. They will use your sense of right and wrong to take advantage of you. I'm not sure if this is intentional or subconscious (I think most of them are unaware of it) but it's something you have to be aware of and watch out for. Took me a long time to learn this.
Hmm, plenty of ppl need extrinsic motivation (reward or punishment), that's fine. What you have to watch for are the narcissists and users - the ones who will manipulate you into thinking that what they want = your idea of "good". That way lies pain, heartache, and in extreme cases, cults.
I often tell people that because this theory has become so widely aware, even though people might not call it “shopping cart theory”, people understand that they will be privately ridiculed for it. I live in NoVA with some of the rudest, apathetic people I’ve ever seen and/or met. I’ve never seen a single cart not returned to a corral. It’s like we’ve collectively recognized that it is sociopathic behavior, and now they realize it and have conformed to it.
Like I actually unironically think that if a major party candidate… at least for one of the parties… was actively caught not returning a shopping cart, they would lose votes.
This is why we need to make popular theories for all the other antisocial behaviors
Doesn't matter if it's a Whole Foods or a Safeway, people just leave the damn carts in the parking spot or wherever in NoVA. It's the sense of privilege there.
@@crust9889It's the anonymity of the suburbs. Folks don't really know their neighbors / co-users of the supermarket, so there's an entitlement combined with relative anonymity. Any internet user of the post-Y2K era knows that's a recipe for shitty behavior.
In places where you are likely to be known by the shop staff and/or the other patrons, you see people at least going through the motions, so as to avoid gossip (doesn't work LOL).
It's all about maintaining order for me. Such institutions are systems that our communities rely on - each customer is a cog in the system. I do it for the next person, just as the previous person did it for me.
One thing I'd like to mention is a notable pitfall of having a reasonable/justified villain: Often, the player will want to side with them rather than whatever milquetoast "good" side they're railroaded into. A series that is infamous for this is Far Cry - people always want to side with Hoyt and Pagan Min, because they're just far more reasonable than your allies, and far more ambitious and charismatic.
Now, let's think about Fallout 1: What if the super mutants *weren't* infertile? How many players would instead want to side with the super mutants, with the "bad end" where you join them instead being seen as a potential good ending?
In the case of Pagan Min the objective best ending for the setting is the one Ajay sits at the table in the start of the game
Yeah, it's not good vs evil, it's lawful vs chaos
Hi Tim, as a British person, can I just say what a lovely and unexpected outing that was for the word "trolley"? Also, as a budding videogame developer, your channel has been a constant source of information and inspiration. Thank you for all you have done in your career and continue to do.
ETA: For cart/trolley enthusiasts; in the UK it is standard for trolleys to require a £1 coin to unlock, which you get back when you return the trolley. It seems to be a very effective system.
The not-returning-shopping-carts phenomenon seems to be mostly American - I don't think I've ever heard anyone else complain about it. I've got a keychain that saves me having to keep coins on me, but I still return the trolley because I'm not a bellend.
@@President_Dave Some Sainsbury’s have trolleys that don’t require a coin and they don’t get returned frequently.
Here in Canada, they're $1 or $2 coins being used. Amusingly, when I lived in a very working class city (oil sands), it was exceedingly common to find the shopping carts still abandoned around the cart corral. So, friends and I, on our days off, would put the carts back and get a pizza or something with the proceeds. My local grocer doesn't use this system (though they used to!), and I see the odd cart get stolen and left sitting in some random places in town occasionally.
If you don't have a pound coin the "key" from a corned beef tin works just as well.
Having the material rewards for being good be better than the rewards for being bad never made any sense. This can suck the fun out of evil playthroughs. The “I don’t care” expedient shopping cart dumper would be a paladin of good if it paid the most. I thought Infamous for the ps3 handled this well. Good playthroughs felt like making a sacrifice to save those characters who you care about. Evil playthroughs were about getting drunk on power.
the rewards for being evil are always better if you can kill the characters and loot them, but in a short term, since you lose access to those characters, dark souls let you kill shopkeepers and loot their items, but then there is no restock anymore, i killed the arrow merchant by accident on my first playthrough and i thought bows were just useless because i never found arrows anywhere
I honestly never liked evil playthroughs in games. It felt like I was missing the fun in an evil playthrough, missing content, interactions, missing the world basically.
I remember the tower scene in Infamous and already knew I didn't really have a choice. It's either: My character feels bad, or everyone makes my character feel bad.
I think most of the Good side powers were better than the Evil powers right? Maybe it was just my playstyle. Though, I think I remember wanting to mix the two at one point.
As far as the shopping carts go, I see people return them, but they just get them in the aisle, not caring how they're arranged, or even if they're with the same size cart. Bugs me enough to sort them myself.
Compassion begins when you can see yourself as the cart deserter and redemption begins when you can see yourself as the cart returner.
Chaotic neutral: always get a loose cart and put it back (to the wrong place) when you’re done.
As A chaotic neutral internet entity I can confirm this is the Is officially endorsed method... We decided on a whim
I saw this yesterday and put it in the right spot out of anger lol. *Shakes fist at those damn Chaotic neutral kids
would chaotic evil be returning a cart to a different store?
@@daminit6it would be taking all of the carts out of the corral and spreading them across the parking lot
I appreciate the subtlety with which you delivered the classic “I took an arrow to the knee” 😂❤
Working in retail for over a decade, i see this almost every single day, and the shopping cart example doesnt even scratch the surface of how petty, lazy or malicious people can be. Its really quite fascinating from a sociological perspective!
Over the last two years, we've had three fights in my store, in the exact same location, and all for the same reason: someone blocked the aisle with their cart, and instead of taking half a second to move, they started arguing about it.
Last time was just a couple weeks ago, and the offending person threw a glass jar of salsa that almost hit someone else. It's incredible how people will risk physical harm instead lifting even a finger to avoid inconveniencing someone else.
Like you said, this can teach narrative designers a lot about behavior. Not everything needs to have some structured, lore-based reason, or clear and logical cause or purpose. Without some direct benefit, people will do whatever they feel like doing, consequences be damned.
Sometimes, people are just dicks.
Also "they pay someone to do it, so why should I?" Is something I've not just heard, but been directly told as an employee.
I have watched people casually dump trash and food on the floor and use that mindset as an excuse.
Ironically, I see this attitude among players in games. We get used to the idea that everything is gonna be okay, because it's a narrative with a predetermined ending. We don't have to worry about saving the world, because the game will make sure it turns out okay anyway.
I think it's a fascinating challenge for game designers to try and subvert that.
A discussion on returning shopping carts is not something I ever expected. But this is why this channel is so fantastic, how many other designers can tie shopping carts into game design morality for characters?
Hi Tim! Thank you for all of your videos sharing your stories and extensive knowledge on game production. I appreciate the time you have put into making these videos- I hope you keep it up, as your insight is priceless!
The coins in the trolley thing is pretty rare in Australia, mostly the ALDI chain do it but few other places do. For the most part, depending upon region, Aussies will simply return the trolley to the corral (or coral to my adult children; they get a giggle) but there are always some that 'just want to watch the world burn'.
But having said that, there are near whole suburbs Downunder where only a handful of shoppers return their trolleys and yeah, because they 'can't be arsed' or 'they pay people to collect them' (I should add that here they pay people to collect the trolleys FROM the corrals to take back to the stores where they are kept outside and those people are then forced to go and collect the trolleys from wherever they are left to roam wild).
On the other side of the coin to be sure, there are some centre car parks that are designed terribly for returning trolleys where there may be few trolley corrals and trying to put another one into the 'stack' that already blocks most of the carriageway will completely make it impassable to cars so it is actually a better option to just leave it somewhere not in the way. Other carparks as long as you get in the row that has the corral is fine as a rule, but for some elderly (who nearly always return their trolleys) can't make it up the bloody hill to do so! And others you have to dodge motorist looking for a park to take it several rows over (NOT 10ft/3.04m) some 50-100 metres... and don't get me started on the whole 'park next to the corral' thing which is often impossible unless you are the first to arrive or after that, just lucky, and when you do you find it is on the line of the marked parking bay and can't open your door!
*For the record, my wife and I always grab a trolley from the corral in the car park and put our shopping bags (most Aussies are being trained slowly to bring your own--it's that reward thing Tim speaks of where you are punished/charged per bag for the store having to supply you with bags) and then return it to the corral when we load the car.
Did not expect Tim to go off on 'Lazybones' as part of the videogame design channel.
Thank you Tim. I'm not involved in game design, but I am involved in a creative writing project. I find that your advice consistently translates into more robust world, plot and character development.
Tim, I hope you're watching Cart Narc. Absolute gold content! The length people go to not put it back go far beyond the effort of putting it back, it's very insightful about human nature haha
It is actually not gold content at all. It is a guy who obviously gets off on insulting people choosing targets that he thinks he can get away with being openly shitty towards without being called out himself. I’m convinced that guy is a way worse person than any of the people he has harassed and posted online. He isn’t doing anything to make anything better.
“The length people go to not put it back” is just so profoundly disingenuous, I’ve seen the stupid videos. Going around brow beating and insulting people does not mean that they have to do what you say. If some random asshole shoves a camera in my face unprovoked and starts mocking me I’m not exactly going to bend over backwards to make sure that I am a saint in THAT lunatics’ mind.
Tim you are awesome. Going to try to apply this in my classroom
Now I wanna see an RPG about a single trip to the grocery store, where small actions like taking/leaving the last name brand item, greeting/ignoring the cashier, spending too much money or buying too cheap of food, taking too much time in the store, etc. all have an impact on the end slides. And of course, one of the decisions is whether or not you return the shopping cart.
Postal 2 will suit your needs greatly, I am sure. Few complete the game with the good ending.
7:02 Philosophical: there is a great video by Veritasium on Game Theory ("What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything") which was an eye opener on human interactions.
9:07 btw I loved those types of quests in Bloodlines & Elder Scrolls. My justification is: that those are fun quests. The dark brotherhood one in Oblivion where you are at a party is pure genius. Before you judge me: I return my shopping carts (in real life that is :D)
@@UlissesSampaio There should be no judgement. Roleplaying an evil (or not-the-best) character in a game doesn't make someone remotely evil IRL. I mean, even playing "good" characters, most of us aren't going around IRL killing bandits, blowing up evil lairs, or negotiating peace between political leaders to begin with (and we wouldn't if we could).
@@TristenSarelvun I agree. I like to do things in games that are pretty much the opposite of what I would do in real life. Also, seems to me that most games railroad you to "playing nice". Thus it's refreshing to see games like Bloodlines and Elder Scrolls depart a bit from the norm. It's fun to see how far you can push a game to its limits.
@@UlissesSampaio Yeah. It's a bit disappointing to see series like Dragon Age allow less and less bad or even gray choices as the series goes on, and I'm the person who feels too sympathetic towards these virtual NPCs to make said "bad" choices (if I can help it).
Even just knowing you have the option of playing nearly anybody you want and of really exploring the nuances of this fictional world enhances the experience, even if I rarely take those options.
It also be argued that having bad choices available makes doing the right thing more fulfilling or genuine.
@@TristenSarelvun Indeed: you do good even though it will be worse for you. Btw, the ideal game for me is one that has a positive feedback loop: you are rewarded for playing the playstyle you want to play with. And the best reward imo is *content. This is why the games I mentioned above were great: you get quality content* (i.e. great side-stories) for doing those quests. Most other games will cut you off from content if you took the evil route, which railroads people for making the good choice.
As someone whose job was grocery store maintenance for four years, the majority of my job consisted of grabbing shopping carts from corrals and bringing them into the store. Without the apathy of those who leave carts unattended I would've been out of a job long ago. Kudos to the apathetic
I've never heard of this problem before today, because you had to insert a euro where I live to get the cart, which unlocks a chain from the next cart. You get the euro back when you rehook the chain into the slot... so you have a financial reason to return it (it's been like this for 35 years)
We do that in Canada too and I'm sure they do it in the states. Some people just don't give a fuck even if they lose out on a quarter (which is what it is here)
It's more of a US thing. Americans have a different service philosophy compared to us in Europe. In the US, the customer is supposed to be treated as a god among mortals, service staff doing everything for them (why Tim mentions the "there are people paid to put the cart back", as in "if I pay for something, whatever I don't like doing should be done by others"). They operate on the assumption that paying and tipping for a service means others should do it. Throw money at a problem to make it go away.
In Europe, we tend to treat service staff as equals and we apply the normal social rules in our interactions with them. We don't have a god complex as customers (it's why Karens are common in the US, they think that normal social rules don't apply in a customer-service staff interaction). For us it's normal to bag your own groceries and not have someone do it for you, it's normal not to have greeters when entering a story, it's normal for a waiter not to ask you how you are every 2 minutes, it's why we don't expect service staff to smile all the time and why it's normal to return your own cart instead of expecting others to do it for you (coin or not, I return it even without coins). We have different interpretations of what service staff should do as part of their interactions with customers and frequently Europeans going to the US and Americans coming here complain about these things, expecting to see the same things they're familiar/comfortable with.
@@mohawkloganI know Aldi's does, but they are an exception not the norm here in Pittsburgh.
@@octavianpopescu4776 There's an amazing doc about Walmart's failed push in to Germany, the locals relay did not like being greeted going in to the shop. It was an almost hostile conflict in service culture, workers where forced to 'smile' at people even!
Sounds like communism. Here in America Freedom land we leave all public spaces disorganized and blame our problems on someone else 🦅🇺🇲
Good morning, Tim! Thank you for another video. These start my morning and help start my mindset to make time after work for my game!!
The Tim Cain / Cart Narcs crossover I didn't know I needed
Whenever I watch Tim's videos, I always wish I could give multiple likes to the video. So much wisdom, such eloquent presentation, and I always learn something. Thank you Tim
I had a white chocolate ad before this video
I just want to say thanks for doing all these videos, its so great to hear from someone who's been there & done it. I'm 61 but i still remember playing Fallout for the first time. All the best from Yorkshire
I love this. Thank you for sharing.
I always love when an RPG doesn't just let you "be" good, it makes you put in effort to be good. Meanwhile the bad route always looks easier, or faster, or more rewarding up front so it's always tempting.
I can think of maybe less than 10 games I've played that really nail this.
I reject your premise that returning the cart is a good. I had the job of getting the carts from the parking lot, and let me tell you, getting out, away from the managers and customers and piped in music, that was the best part of my day.
Returning a cart to a corral is not necessarily a Good Thing.
Today I learned I'm inherently good. Thanks, Tim!
That depends. Did you also like and subscribe!?
Hi tim! Great video topic! I am not a dev, but lifelong gamer for 20+ years now. The problem with shopping cart theory being put inside a game is a lot of players think the act of consuming a game's content is a reward of itself. Sometimes doing the "good choice" is a more satisfying character arc for the player character/overal story theme/ or the quest NPCs.
For example red dead redemption 1/2 or disco elysium. While games and trick or incentives players by giving them better rewards when they do the not moral choice, but at the same time these evil choices can conflict with the overall game's theme or character arc.
Sure you can play Arthur morgan as murdering psycho arsehat but playing as good arthur is more satisfying because it completes his overall character development that fully support the redemption title.
The same with games like disco elysium while you can play harry as fuckjob drunk 24/7 detective, having him heal and rediscover his purpose is more satisfying that leaving harry in the mire of depression and darkness.
I never thought of shopping cart theory as a character writing question before, love this
In the UK this is known as the trolley problem. Wait…
The trolley problem is something very different, haha. The trolley problem involves the sort of trolley that moves on tracks, i.e. a carriage of a train. It's a "sacrifice one or many" scenario, which some people have added a twist to, where they ensure there's a loop at the end of the railway so both parties get hit...
Heheheh.
The soda pop bottling company I worked for in the 80's used to have machines that would serve the old 6.5 and 10 oz. bottles for free. People would grab one and leave them all around about 2/3 full in the break room. The company started charging a nickel, and people started appreciating them.
Great theory and video. I wouldn't mind if it was illegal to not retrieve the shopping cart to the queue, but then the theory wouldn't exist
One thing that I have thought about a lot in RPGs is that the bad options should be much more rewarding, at least occasionally.
I like to play good and moral characters, but I don't really ever feel tempted to try the bad options.
The good option is usually also the best option.
This made me think of the Diablo 4 story, and how a bunch of people actually fell for the villains "I'm the good guy" rhetoric.
i feel like a good example of the right way it was done was with choosing whether or not to harvest the little sisters in Bioshock
I cannot agree harder than a like and a comment, Tim. Definitely a good lesson to put out there.
Has Tim done a video on hidden quests? Tasks to do from talking to an NPC, but not logged into a journal, therefore communicating to the player it's unimportant? I guess it's related to secrets or easter eggs in a way. This just made me think of random NPC's who say things like, "Winter's're getting colder. Wish I were younger or my axe were sharper." Then you go and bring them a new Axe.
Rasczak: Tell me the moral difference, if any, between the Citizen & the Civilian?
Rico: A Citizen returns the shopping cart, a civilian does not.
Rasczak: The exact words of the text.
Thank you for making these videos! They feel like bite size college lectures.
A big concern I have with rewarding morality choices in games is that it kind of "gamifies" morality.
The people focused on experiencing all the content will then pick good or bad options specifically to "experience all the content" or "complete the collection".
The games with moral choices that hit the hardest seem to be when you have zero incentive either way (shopping cart situation), and the player gets to live with the ramifications of what they chose to do.
You actually feel bad about abandoning someone to save your own skin, while in another game you might think "that's 5 more points down the Evil Path, 10 more and I can use the purple lightning skill".
Lots of other european here explaining how it works here. But there's not only the need to put 1€ to get the cart, most stores give plastic coin designed just for that so you can get around this. And even in store without this system (like ikea), nobody never leave the cart around and they're always returned. It baffled me when i learned how it works in the US and somehow, it didn't surprised me seeing how the "customer is king" mentality is so present.
As a french, you tend to not want to be treated as a king. It's a head loosing interaction in our book.
The problem with the Necropolis callout is that the majority of players will never see it since the town gets invaded after 110 days and you'd see the negative ending in any case.
...and return your damn shopping carts
Another way to approach it is to offer no immediate reward (or at least a lesser reward) for doing the good action, but have it subtly adjust the attitudes of the recipient(s) and/or onlookers in your favor in the long term. Yes, reputation increases are a form of reward, but rather than having the immediate dopamine hit of a karma/rep meter ticking up, keep the response/indicator more organic (i.e. gain rep with people and they will generally react to you more favorably, and it takes time for that improvement to propagate within a group). I know this isn't exactly an innovative idea, but I prefer it to an instant notification and everyone being telepathically informed of your good deeds. 😉
I'd always heard the theory discussed in relation to self-governance, but applying it to narrative design is definitely a cool idea. I especially like the point about multiple NPCs providing different excuses for the same wrongdoing only to have the last one be the only one who just straightforwardly says that it's because of knowing there's no punishment.
You love to see a Subject Matter Expert elaborate on supererogatory vs. obligatory behavior. Thanks Tim!
In the middle of a snow storm, it's reasonable because they push the snow into the cart corral.
I put the cart back in the cart corral. Or take it back into the store.
This is fascinating, and there are videos where people confront those who don't return carts.
I still remember when I was a kid when me and my mom went shopping. There were always carts left abandoned right after the cashiers. I would assemble as many as I could and return them. I remember one time, the entrance was completely filled with carts, and I got to work.. thinking back, the staff must have been so appreciative of these silly kids coming in and doing "their" jobs.
These days of course, there is a monetary incentive to return the carts.
I never understood - and still don't- why people just couldn't return the carts. Well, time to watch the video!
I work at a convenience store and i think there is at least one psychology study worth doing on the people who will just keep adding to the pile of dubious-probably-dirty self-serve drink cups ON TOP of the table which literally has a labelled trash bin underneath. The only vaguely reasonable possibility is they didnt see it because its at knee height but its not like its the only trash in the store. The amount that this happens is absurd. This is my shopping cart theory and possibly my villain origin story
What's amazing is that when the quarter is introduced, tons of people will return the cart, and leave the quarter. moreso seemingly than people who don't even return the free cart.
I'm disabled and I find it helpful when someone leaves a cart next to the handicap parking spot.
I was thinking exactly this. I use a walker and am often totally thrashed after walking the store and loading the car. Sometimes I will return a cart still but there are times where chronic pain makes it unbearable.
I think a good way games can handle this, at least for some quest lines is to either make the material reward for good and bad outcomes equal or at least unknown to the player when they encounter it for the first time
Then there are those people at Aldi who give you their shipping cart without requesting a quarter from you.
I had a cute girl talk to me, because of the cart.
It was a good day.
You made me feel a lot better that I return my shopping cart thank you, Tim
Thats a weird one. Here in germany if you dont return your shopping cart people won't kindly on that and I have never seen parking lots where one cart isn't returned.
I think this idea actually applies across the board. Even if you do good without consciously expecting a reward the fact that you feel good about yourself by doing good is in itself a reward.
When I was younger, people where complete savages with their shopping carts, leaving them everywhere, then like in many places the token/quarter/dollar deposit system was introduced and it solved the problem pretty well and it remained that way for years. Then when the pandemic happened, they temporarily removed that requirement and shopping carts were free to take without any coin. Surprisingly everything remained organized and people remained civil. I haven't seen a single place who activated it again since then and it's not an issue. So I believe there is other nuances to that behavior, once people get use for years to act civilized, even if you remove the punishment/reward then people continue to do the good behavior just by habit.
Outer worlds 2 should have a shopping cart return quest. If you don't return it the cart narc shows up and berates you
And 3 - 5 companion quests
Pick up that can.
As someone who used to be paid to gather shopping carts, people can do some really heinous stuff to those carts. 😂
I had a lady stare me in the eye while she dropped an entire small trashbag full of dirty diapers into her cart AND leave it behind someone else's car so that if I didn't get it, that car owner would. Gonna need to make that kind of logic process into a video game villain one day.
What I feel almost every game does not manage to do is to make declining the rewards for quests for either good/bad/neutral whatever side, meaningful. All games will end up flooding the player with resources, so it's a reward you never need. I have real hard time thinking of a single game where by the midgame most "material" goods aren't rather irrelevant either because I already have tons of them or have the means to get tons of them, or the growth of my characters power means I don't need them. You can't really bribe me to do the evil thing for 1000 gold, if after an hour or 2 I have 20 000 gold in the bank. But things like the end slides being affected is a prime motivator for me.
Tim, it'd be awesome if you started an ethics channel. ^^ You may not be a professional philosopher, but you got a good pro-social instinct and an advanced common sense to go with that, and a lot of experience to make it grounded with examples and observations. And you could make a lot of connections to RPGs. It would be a new completely unexpected adventure. ”Be good with Tim Cain”. ^^ Not a joke, I think that would be awesome, and educational for a lot of people.
I wonder if all the rewards and perks throughout the whole game were inherently better for the bad side, would majority pick the good or bad? I mean a game where people would be literally punished/crippled for trying to act decent. Makes you think about life morality, because, that how it feels sometimes - there are situations one knows there will be consequences, but the individual still decides to do the right thing in spite of the consequences. This falls on the spectrum and can be about small things or big matters. I think about most persecuted individuals who oppose power structure for example (plenty of examples in both recent and distant history) - what is driving those people if both, reward or punishment is insufficient to influence their behaviour? Fascinating stuff.
Thank you for great video as always. Just my five cents on it -- All those action can be placed in one of two categories: required and optional. Getting the cart before going shopping is a required (you just don't have enough hands to hold all you need, and you don't have time to go shopping multiple times a day). Returning the cart after you used it is an optional action. I think it's a main reason why people act like that. If you can come up with the way to make returning a cart a required act somehow, it would be all different. For example, just imagine, when you get the cart, you have to leave a key to your car (or some other important item) in exchange. So you can get it back only when you return the cart.
The Quarter thing Tim brought up actually works they don't have workers to get the carts and only have the carts in the front of the store and I've never seen a single cart in the parking lot... The only thing stopping people from being lazy is losing a quarter it's crazy but it actually works...
I won't shop at grocery stores that use the quarters because I never have one. I am, however, the kind of person who puts the cart back every time.
As an European, I can't believe what I'm hearing.
You mean that people DO NOT TAKE THE CART BACK TO THE PLACE!!!!
I think this isn't a morality issue.
It's a sociology issue.
I noticed your dog sitting by you in the glass case reflection he's a good boy who would definitely return the shopping cart
See, I KNOW that this is a good mindset to carry through game development.
But I'd love to think that Tim just came back from the grocery store and couldn't find any shopping carts in the corral
There's one important thing that must be mentioned, I believe. There's a big chance people are not bad because of their nature - its just how the capitalistic world we live in, works. People, who are ready to do bad things to other people, are most likely to climb on top. And when it goes on generation by generation, it becomes more and more convincing for next generations that being good is mostly bad.
So someone too lazy to return the cart is neutral evil, someone who just pushes the cart away without looking is chaotic evil, and someone placing the car between two other cars is lawful evil?
I had no idea these cart coin unlocks things existed! I’ve never seen that before, neat.
I thought this was going to be about why online stores make you put things in your cart to see the price. But this is better.
I think this is an interesting cultural difference. In the UK it is VERY rare to see someone just dump a trolley. Obviously shops do make it easier by having areas in the car parks but i could probably count on two hands the number of times ive seen an abandoned trolley actually at a shop in my 40 odd years of life. That applies to before you had to put money in them too.
That said its not that unusual for people to just walk off with them. Most supermarkets have to put money in nowadays (only a £1 but i guess its a psychological thing). Its not because people left them, its that people just wander off with them sometimes full of shopping or because they are students or whatever.
Just to be clear im not saying that discounts what Tim is saying about games.
All of this implies 'doing the right thing' = 'being a good person,' which is why most game morality feels so performative - morality being shown by a meter or pop-up notice
Morality is also relative, so it's hard to judge what is 'right' all the time. I thought gamers learned this during that famous conversation with Kreia(sp?) from Knight of the Old Empire 2 about this very thing
I just finished Project Gorgon DLC and felt it did a great job of representing this exact scenario. Doing the right thing didn’t necessarily lead to the best reward, but my character couldn’t justify the bad actions.
I'm 37 years old and have never thought about parking next to the corral to make putting the cart back easier. Thanks for that. 😅
I have always parked as close to the entrance as I could find. For the record, I usually put the cart back in the corral, typically by seeing from how far away I can push it and get it in the corral. I may be 37, but I haven't grown up much.
Thank you for returning your cart Tim.
All I have to say about this, is that Al Capone ran a soup kitchen.
I remember I once left an IKEA shopping cart on the loading area. I think there's usually some place to return it nearby but I couldn't find it. Looking for it would have meant I would maybe inconvenience someone that wanted to use the spot my car was in. I still have nightmares about it.
In Europe, at least my country, you pay money/insert coin to get them so there is incentive to return them :P
I was expecting Shopping Cart Theory to be something like, you put many products into the shopping cart but then you have pay for the products and then put them in the basket/shopping bag and deal with the consequences of you filling up shopping cart :P
I used to shop at a grocery store like that in the US.
Tim we love you. Thank you for being you and existing.🙏
Or there's those people that take the shopping cart home and respond with "you can bring it back if it bothers you so much."
The exact phrase of the lady that abandons it on the apartment's lawn here.
"You drive that thing like a fuckin' shopping cart."
cart narcs got ur back
Here's a wild idea, make it so they return it as part of checkout for payment, now you've solved the problem but I'm sure it comes with it's own set of issues.
People will, normally, choose the option that produces the greatest reward with the smallest amount of pain.
I literally today was playing through nuka world and was in kiddy kingdom talking to Oswald when I googled whether or not I should kill him and expected everyone to say kill him for his unique outfit and weapon but was surprised to see a lot of people sticking up for him and saying he was just trying to protect his people now immediately after I'm listening to Tim Cain explaining how people will often attempt to explain their strange behaviors haha!
lol I've been the guy getting the carts before. It is a hassle to grab all the stragglers people didn't put in the corral. Not to mention that walmart parking lot was huge. So I can attest that your anonymous good deed really helped me out. Not to sound holier than thou, but I've never understood not putting the cart back. Since I was a child I always wanted to help even if I wasn't seen doing it. Drive me crazy when my mom is shopping and decides she doesn't want something and just puts it on the shelf whereever we are at in the store lol Especially now since I've been a stocker
Worked in retail, always bugged me when mum - years ago and even now - puts the random *single item* on a random shelf, no more than one item, just the one.
I'm like "for goodness sake we both work in retail." XD
@dragontear1638 lol Mine is the same way and also has worked retail. She at least never puts frozen stuff on a random shelf. She finds the closest freezer door hahaha
@@Nlwalker487 *Heavy breathing when seeing this happen.*
If I returned it I would be putting the cart collector out of a job!
It’s an interesting idea that they could not be inherently good in the same way. I bet this also applies to people who litter.
Everyone returns them here as you have to put a coin in to use them and you get it back when you return it. I've never seen anyone not return them in 30+ years.
"Logical" emphasized with a perfect Vulcan 🖖. Respect! 😊
I think immaterial rewards that still have tangible benefit to you as a player are a great way to handle good acts. I very distinctly remember the starport visa sidequest in Knights of the Old Republic II, where people are desperately looking to get off a planet that's on the cusp of civil war. You can find visas to give to people who want them, but you only get two, and there are several more than that. The best rewards by far are the ones that give you dark side points: a very powerful lightsaber crystal and tons of money.
On the other end, you get nothing material at all for helping the poor and desperate single mother and her two children. But you DO get light side points and build trust with your light side companions. When you reach the point when you are fully light or dark in Kotor, you gain a pretty strong attribute bonus (wisdom for light and strength for dark), and when you build your companions' trust, you can further their stories and see growth in them and their abilities. There are reasons that help you to do the selfless act, represented in a way that's (somewhat) true to life. Although outside of a clear cut world like star wars, there's definitely some possibility for nuance there too. I don't think there are enough RPGs that explore the idea of the player performing selfless acts for selfish, hidden reasons enough. Maybe someone out there will!