Designing Game Addiction in the 21st Century
In a recent interview with The Escapist, Andy Collins and Liz Schuh from Wizards of the Coast talked a bit about how their game designers looked at a variety of other types of games for lessons, the “most obvious” being online games like World of Warcraft.
This seemed like a reasonable approach to take, after all a lot of people who’re playing a D&Desque MMORPGs might enjoy a D&D RPG as well. Doing things to make the game more familiar to someone with a background in playing online games would seem like a good idea.
The trends does seem to be taking game settings or design patterns from the screen and bringing them to the tabletop. Bioware released it’s new MMO alongside a pen-and-paper version by Green Ronin.
But while I generally think game designers should look at other types of games and think about lessons they can learn from them, I also think game players should be cautious about what lessons the designers and publishers are learning and what affect their being added to a game might have.
I’m not sure when the world went topsy turvy, but when I was a kid Cracked Magazine was more about cheap laughs than thought provoking articles. Now that we’re all living in the Future, Cracked.com has been publishing a number of rather good articles. The most recent one to catch my attention is about Ways Video Games Are Designed to Get You Addicted. This is a great article for anyone interested in game design.
This isn’t the “so much fun, I want to keep playing” sort of addiction – this is about getting you addicted to repetitive activities that aren’t really that much fun. The kind of addiction that for some people can actually be damaging, or even life destroying.
Gaming has changed. It used to be that once they sold us a $50 game, they didn’t particularly care how long we played. The big thing was making sure we liked it enough to buy the next one. But the industry is moving toward subscription-based games like MMO’s that need the subject to keep playing–and paying–until the sun goes supernova.
Now, there’s no way they can create enough exploration or story to keep you playing for thousands of hours, so they had to change the mechanics of the game, so players would instead keep doing the same actions over and over and over, whether they liked it or not. So game developers turned to Skinner’s techniques.
This is a big source of controversy in the world of game design right now. Braid creator Jonathan Blow said Skinnerian game mechanics are a form of “exploitation.” It’s not that these games can’t be fun. But they’re designed to keep gamers subscribing during the periods when it’s not fun, locking them into a repetitive slog using Skinner’s manipulative system of carefully scheduled rewards.
Some of the elements from addictive MMOs that could find their way across to tabletop gaming include:
- subscription models over stand-alone games
- encouraging obsessive collecting
- variable ratio rewards
- easy initial rewards and levelling
- eliminating stopping points
- play it or lose it
Which might seem like familiar game patterns to people who spend their time with FarmVille or WoW, but were introduced into those games for reasons other than fun in and of itself.
Should a publisher want to include those things in a tabletop game? More importantly, is that something current tabletop gaming hobbyists should want?
Erik Mona from Paizo Publishing recently gave a talk on Pen & Paper Gaming in the 21st Century. He focused a lot on technology and bringing together Pen & Paper with the world of digital gaming. I agree that there’s a lot of potential here, and I’m certainly not opposed to things like iPhone apps for Pen & Paper games, but I’m thinking we need to start giving more thought to what elements from other media like MMOs we want to add to our tabletop games – particularly if they’re of the DIY variety and we’re building them ourselves. Game mechanics that encourage harmful addictive behaviour isn’t something I’d want to add to my own games that I play with my friends.
What are your thoughts? Is this the way tabletop gaming will inevitably move in the 21st century? Are Pen & Paper gamers immune to the addictive elements of MMO gameplay if it’s taken out of the original context?
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On the one hand there’s the MMO-style D&D stuff I don’t like, and on the other the TV-style Doctor Who RPG stuff I love. It all depends on the media where you learn your lessons.
I’d argue tabletop gaming is already addictive on the marketing level. At least, that’s what I gather from my large collection of unplayed games. Lines that offer a lot of sourcebooks, gazeteers and scenarios are trying to make you collect them as if they were comics or trading cards. Businesswise, we’ve already seen game worlds that hinge on an evolving arc that is pushed in every product. Get them all, or you won’t know WHAT’S going on!
But we’ll never make repetitive tasks interesting in a tabletop game. Those are fine when you’re alone, but in a group? Not so much. Unless they somehow change the 1 GM to 5+ players ratio. And since GMs buy the bulk of the product, maybe you WANT more GMs. But I don’t know how that could be achieved.
Online solutions could implement some of the models you mention, but are no longer tabletop games at that point.
Thanks for posting this. The source article is excellent and you pose an interesting question.
Missing from the article is some consideration about what addiction is and also the difference between rats and people.
The term addiction gets thrown around a lot (e.g. sex addict, shopping addict) but this is not addiction. It might be flawed personal behavior and signs of a mental illness but it is not in the same category as heroin addiction or nicotine addiction.
Talk of addiction with subjects such as gaming, is often related to puritanical ideals and negative views of the activity concerned – Gaming and internet activity is being targeted because large sections of the media / older generations do not approve of it. It is seen as a frivolous activity. No one is ever describe as a religion addict despite many fundamentalist spending more time and money on that activity than gamers do on their hobby.
Skinner’s work was primarily on pigeons and rats and in both he found remarkable consistency in behavior. e.g. feed any pigeon on a variable reward schedule and it will become ‘addicted’. Clearly this not the same as people.
Some people, even most people, can play slot machines for hours without getting addicted to gambling. The factors involved in human behavior are vastly more complicated than in rats and pigeons. Just because a game involves skinner techniques does not mean people will play it longer.
Ultimately it is very hard to tell a pleasurable activity from an addictive activity. The techniques used in WoW demonstrably make people play longer but is that because they are addictive or simply because they make the game more fun?
No, games designers should not attempt to design addiction into their games.
That is at first glance going to sound like something any successful games designer would ignore and rubbish; but consider this: getting someone addicted to something is unethical.
Design games to be fun and people will return to them because they /like them/ and not because they are compelled to through their biology.
Designing games for addiction could possibly one day land you in prison if you were successful in that endeavour and, like drugs, games of that ilk became illegal, so consider carefully the path you walk down and where it might lead.
@Siskoid: Yes, I think there’s was a deliberate change to how some tabletop RPGs were designed in the 80s/90s to follow the comics and cards model of collectibility. I’m not sure that all games are modelled on the “GMs buy the bulk of the product” anymore. That used to be the case, but I think some games are looking at getting more purchases from all of the players.
@Chris: I agree that there’s a difference between physical addiction and psychological addiction, but it’s generally accepted that you *can* become addicted to some activities like gambling, or even using the internet. I’d say the important dividing line is whether it’s interfering with your daily life.
I think it goes farther than just a “young people like it, old people don’t” dichotomy. Although your point that it’s hard to tell how much is good and how much is “too much” is a really good one.
The major difference here is that an MMO is available at any hour of the day. You feel like playing, hop on your computer and go. The content is all waiting for you. You feel like doing something, you go there and do it. If a part of the game doesn’t interest you, you can ignore it and focus on the parts that do.
You want to play a table-top game? You’ve got to contact the other players, find a time that fits all of their schedules, then get together and play. At least one of those people had to spend a little time generating content (or interpreting already-generated content, like modules, by reading them through.) Once you actually start playing, everyone is somewhat beholden (via social contract) to play the game in such a way that the other players also enjoy it. This leads to moments where one or more players are suffering through something they don’t enjoy to give other players a few moments of joy.
I could see situations where a crazy GM who is constantly pumping out new content, and a host of players that live with or near each other (say, in a college dorm situation,) that might be able to get the kind of play out of a table-top that is similar to an MMO. Even in this situation, you still have to share the spotlight with other players.
Another big point to make here is that MMOs are a bit like more traditional media outlets. The content is already there. You can’t really change it, you are only afforded an opportunity to experience it. (You might be able to control the form in which you experience it, through race/class/skill choices, but you are still experiencing the same content.) It is akin to watching TV. You sit down, turn most of your brain off, and experience the content. You might be able to change the channel, but you are stuck with whatever is being broadcast at the time. That is not a bad thing–it is just a more passive form of recreation than table-top gaming, and I think that passivity is a big part of “MMO Addiction”.
@Stuart
it’s generally accepted that you *can* become addicted to some activities like gambling, or even using the internet.
No, that it is far from accepted that internet, games, sex etc are addictive – see http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/12/the_addiction_afflic.html amongst many many dissenting voices.
Gambling is generally considered addictive, with good evidence to support this view.
One critical impact on the addictiveness of a substance / behaviour is how quickly the reward comes. With addiction, the high of the win is generally only seconds or minutes after the gamble is made. The same fast payback works with drugs like cocaine etc. The same was also true of Skinner’s experiments, all the rewards for a behaviour came very quickly after doing it.
With WoW grind activities, the reward for doing this comes hours, or days, later when you got that extra level or purchased the magic item. It is a very different feedback loop to Skinners experiment and classic addiction.
I’d say the important dividing line is whether it’s interfering with your daily life.
It is impossible to define a mental illness with such simple statements.
If I get sacked from a dead-end job that makes me unhappy because I called in sick to play WoW, has that interfered with my daily life? Am I worse or better off because of WoW?
Playing WoW 10 hours a day may lead to strong friendships (important for mental health), learning new social and communication skills (useful in the job market), it may even inspire me to start gold farming or running some other spin-off enterprise.
It is very easy to point at some people and say “[insert game / social scare of your choice] ruined their life” but it is very hard to prove cause and effect. That person might well of had mental health problems before and the game is just how it manifested.
Only at a statistical level can the addictiveness of an activity be measured and there is no consensus this evidence has been found for vague ideas like the internet or online games.
I don’t think it is completely possible to do this sort of thing with pen and paper w/o having a a digital environment that the game relies upon, and so it falls to repackaging old/new content in a similar scheme.
This is something that the new companies already recognize and are doing. Pathfinder has their subscription models which are basically repackaged splat books. and wotc has their online magazines and tools. Both games can be played without it, but for some consumers they just NEED the new releases so the incremental releases are the masters of their wallets.
I can see in the future more companies doing what wotc are currently doing which is using the subscription model to feed their company while they continue to design, playtest, expand, and improve on their current rules set. They have in a sense been doing this for years with splat books, updates, and revisions. It’s all a question of whether or not you want to contribute to their “research” by buying their stuff.
With the release of pathfinder after over ten years of development time behind it, I can’t wait to see what 4th edition is going to be like after the same amount of time.
@The Recursion King: I think this is another place where we need to be aware of differences between “The Hobby” and “The Industry” and that they aren’t the same thing. My Hobby has no requirement for a sustainable business model.
I think you make a good point about it being possible games could one day be monitored by government agencies in the same way that alcohol and tobacco is today. I think I remember reading that some governments have required MMO manufacturers to build a way to encourage players from not playing for 72 hours straight and dying.
@DeadGod: I can’t imagine any game on my shelf making me play in a manner similar to an MMO. Even when we ran 4e, there wasn’t anything that different from other games that I’ve played. However if I had a DDI subscription and played multiple times a week as part of an organized play group, maybe it would feel different.
@Chris: Whether you want to call it addiction or not, there are elements designed into those games that are about making you play longer, and keep subscribing rather than the focus being on just making the game “fun” which is what game designers used to do.
Maybe quitting your job to play WoW is a net positive in your life, but there are lots of stories where there’s just no way you can see encouraging someone to spend LONGER with these games to be a positive thing.
(Eg. from yesterday )
Again, regardless of how we label it, is it a good thing to bring these elements over to the tabletop gaming environment? Or does tabletop gaming preclude the negative aspects of these activities because of the specifics of tabletop gaming?
@Mike: I don’t think my opinion would change the paths the bigger publishers are going to take, but it does make me think about what I want to do myself. I have a number of digital gaming hybrid projects in various stages of completion, including one that runs via Facebook. This gives me cause to stop and consider what things I want to focus on and perhaps encourage.
I guess you could look at the bluebook.pdf (ICD10) and you’ll find no mention of internet or game addiction. The closes you’ll get is this:
The subcategories listed are pathological gambling, pyromania, kleptomania, trichotillomania, and “other habit and impulse disorders” — I’m not sure “Internet addiction” would be used in a clinical sense.
Irrespective of that, however, I can say for myself that games designed to entertain perpetually are something I enjoy. So that in itself is not a good argument. There are other media products that seem to be designed to keep me perpetually mesmerized — I consider most TV stations to be in that category. I used to switch the TV on, spend a few hours there, switch it off, and wonder how I could have wasted so much time. It’s not addiction; I didn’t suffer a disorder. But it was a waste of time.
I strongly with the general point that making me spend more time for decreasing entertainment is a lousy proposition.
I think we need to look at games individually. I happen to like G.R.A.W. — so when the sequel came out, I bought it.
But not only that. There’s an intermediary step: more missions, more maps? I bought them. I felt that the entertainment offered was commensurate to the time it took to play. I preferred spending my gaming dollars here instead of spending them on a movie because I expected a better return on my investment.
And my take on subscription based services is that these are just further intermediary steps: more levels, more items, more maps, more quests, in ever smaller increments, for ever smaller fees such that a subscription makes more sense compared to a micropayment system (the kind of thing some people have been telling us was sure to come for many years).
So, my position is this: I’m not buying the pathology angle (for the mentally stable people I know) and instead I’m extrapolating from sequels to map packs to subscription services, and it seems to flow naturally. The thing to consider is entertainment per dollar. If you feel like you’re being cheated, don’t buy it.
As for claiming that designers are building temptation into their games: isn’t that what entertainment is all about? These designers are doing their job by making us want to play their game. They can’t be blamed for unstable people taking their offering and exhibiting pathological behaviour. The pathology could have manifested in any other sort of entertainment. These days we here more about it in relation to computer games just because that’s what a lot of people do. I don’t believe that a causality can be claimed.
@Alex: I think that category covers it. It’s not like they’ve had a long time to study the phenomenon. When a guy in South Korea died when he played online games for 50 hours everyone sort of went “huh. didn’t know that would happen, or that people would do that.”
From the Cracked.com article, the girl spending all evening clicking repeatedly on that chest hoping to win the “most chest opening” prize… that is not game design where the focus is on making something more fun, or providing more missions or more maps. That’s like Jack Nicholson typing furiously away in The Shining.
Edit:
As for claiming that designers are building temptation into their games: isn’t that what entertainment is all about? These designers are doing their job by making us want to play their game.
Are you saying you think tabletop game designers should build temptation elements like the ones discussed in the various articles into their games? If it makes people want to play the game more, it’s always a good thing?
(I’m still not 100% sure what to make of this topic, so I appreciate everyone’s comments!)
Great post Stuart.
There needs to be more critical reflection like this.
My take is a sub/cultural one.
Consider the binary of work and play. Most people view their “work” as, at least in part, a vehicle for them to do what they want in their “play” time. So people perform their daily, routine, mundane tasks of widget-making. They insert Tab A into slot B over, and over, and over with the idea of “play” as their reward for work. The repetition is part of our workplace everyday (regardless of whether the job is blue collar or white collar).
When “play” assumes the form of our “work” it isn’t play anymore. Play as an independant activity disappears. The mind-numbing, spirit-crushing repetition of play is just another form of work. Ironically, we will even pay to perform this form of work!
I’m reminded of a game like Rockband – where the “steams” of music and the repetitious nature of the activity seem to me like standing at a industrial conveyor belt in the midst of mass factory production.
That’s a really interesting way of looking at it!
When we ran 4e last year we enjoyed the first part of the battles when it was a new tactical situation and we had to make meaningful tactical decisions. Once the battle had been “decided” and we were just mopping up the opposition we all seemed to agree it wasn’t as much fun as the first part. The first part had more discovery (new situation) and problem solving (tactical battle). The second part was just repetition to wipe out the stragglers.
A Choose Your Own Adventure book (which I think is more similar in spirit to my approach to RPGs than wargaming) is all about discovery (the emerging story) and meaningful decisions (what branching path to take). I like that format a lot.
Unless I’m playing with my kids, a simple board game of the “roll the dice and move your mice” variety isn’t very engaging. It’s very repetitive and there isn’t any meaningful choices to make. I wouldn’t choose to play a game like that for my own enjoyment.
A common complaint about “old school” D&D is that without creative descriptions the combats are just “hit. miss. hit. miss. etc” which is very repetitive. What people tend to say they like about old D&D is that it’s more freeform, rules light, and focuses more on all the other stuff besides combat. Again repetition – no so good, discovery + problem solving – very good.
thanks for mentioning this.
Hm, reading the last few comments I’m starting to wonder if this addictive game design is really about addiction and more about just zoning out and turning off your brain.
Life is stressful and when you’re stressed you need to relax. What’s the best way to relax? By getting comfortable and turning off your brain. I suppose these repetitive time wasters sort of serves a purpose for many in that it allows you to turn off your brain, hit the feeder and get a pellet. It get’s habitual for some who get addicted to the form of escapism the experience provides and well, it can get unhealthy.
So I guess rpgs are in fact immune to this, even if the mechanics fully support it. You still need your imagination as a bare minimum, which is applied to any rpg, and so long as you have a good dm who will challenge your imagination, and encourage your thinking and decision making your good.
The dangers of rpgs and the digital age is when the rpg requires a digital environment in order to function, and automation becomes a must. But at that point it just becomes an mmorpg, so I guess the point is moot. So rpgs are immune no matter what haha.
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