Tom Chatfield, writer of the book Fun Inc, gave a talk on the TED conference on how we can learn from the way video games reward players and use them for real life applications. There’s some really interesting insight into how some of the mechanics in games tap into the built in neurological constructs of the evolutionary human brain. Video after the jump…
I have to point out he uses MMORPG’s as the central pillar for his arguments. Yes, a lot of the reward systems carry onto other genre’s as well but not necessarily in exactly the same way. On his point that games rewarding player effort even if they fail, that's not something I see in every game. Maybe MMO’s do this, but not games such as Stalker, or even strategy games. Perhaps these ‘rewards’ are more of a stimulus that is emergent such as learning from your mistakes rather than an actual reward mechanic in a game.
There’s the bit about how players do all these nice and really cool things. Cooperation and collaboration amongst player in a virtual world is an astonishing feat. I do think we could learn from them and on how game developers can build games that promote cooperation(Valve does this pretty well with Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead).
But nothing on how players can also destroy their experience in a game? Griefing, breaking a game, cheating, these are all also part of the gaming psychology. The question is, are these things inherently caused by the games or the psychology of specific players. Can certain games promote more negative player behavior? Sid Meier certainly thinks so.
Just to add to one more thing which I was thinking about quite recent. Achievements! Games do that really well. Wouldn’t it be cool if such achievements we implemented for other applications. Stuff that you use for work. Having something pop up and say you’ve done a good job(perhaps humans don’t do this enough) is a nice little motivational nugget. Could be cool… Just putting this out there to all you software developers and managers.
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