Rewards and Punishment

This post is a bit behaviouristic oriented to keep it simple. Simplified; to stimulate behaviour you can follow it up with a reward, and if you want to discourage behaviour you can deliver punishment to an actor. One condition is to deliver the reward or punishment directly after the behaviour it is contingent to.



Rewards: Positive Reinforcement; I'll give you Money if you do x
This is one of the most familiar forms of reinforcement in games, rewarding good behaviour. Achievements, unlockables, points, item rewards, temporary boosts are almost always contingent to behaviour desired within a game. Most of the time these rewards are also used to make taking risks more interesting like the bonus point fruits in Pac-Man.Still the most common mistake is not clarifying to a player how they can increase their reward.

Rewards: Negative Reinforcement; I'll take your money till you do x
I never quite know why this is considered a reward, because basically you start with a reward but it diminishes before you perform a certain action. I don't recall this reward being used a lot in games, there must be some time trial fun hiding in this form of reinforcement.

Punishment: Positive Punishment; I will take your Money if you do x
This is the most straightforward form of punishment, obey the rules or be punished. If you're not shooting people in shooters, your punishment is digital death. If you pickpocket someone with witnesses, you'll be fined in some rpg's like Skyrim. Ofcourse there are other forms of punishment like the loss of money after losing a pokemon battle : (  In the end punishment also got to be contingent to behaviour, and clear. Even though you lose half your money if you lose a pokemon battle, the punishment is not clearly visualised and the contingency remains unclear.

Punishment: Negative Punishment; I will not give you money if you do x
This is a fleeting punishment and even seems like a reward with prerequisite. You are promised a reward, but won't get it if you perform a forbidden action. In certain stealth games you might lose the reward for your mission if detected. In an RPG you might break a piece of important armor to be looted from a boss if you are careless in battle. But in the end this form of punishment is not implemented a lot (or is it?).

Well next time I might combine these forms of behaviour reinforcements or speculate on their relation to intrinsic motivation. Game on.

Literature:
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/introopcond.htm

Highscores indepth

Games and education should go together like milk and cookies, maybe demonstrated by the recent buzz on educational games. After White (1959) wrote his piece to reclaim motivation from behavioralists, a lot of research was conducted on motivation in education. One of the media that is researched quite a bit in relation to motivation are (video) games. So a lot of recent work on motivation in video games is actually building on previous education research.

One of the game elements that's often misunderstood is the place of highscores. Ever since 1959 has game theory been rejected as the sole explanator for behavior contingent to points gained after an action.

The problem can be detected easily using a model of limited effects, as used in communication science.

"Who says What to Whom through Which channel with What effect?"

Behavioral psychologists mostly use very simple models that allow them to expect behavior after a certain stimulus. But these models will always fail to predict reactions of first introduction to a stimulus like a game and learning behavior thereafter, because our environment is complex and we don't do everything just for arousal (what use would such a big brain be). Still our social worlds are grey, so even behaviouristic prediction models can predict a percentage of the outcome of actions.

Awarding points to players is one such problem. Mostly points are rewarded after success in a game (task contingent), or after taking a gamble (risk contingent). I will only talk about the task contingent point rewards here. These points add as a player progresses in the game. Some players see these points as rewards for their action and are driven by it to play more and more. A lot of games reward players early on to stimulate playing and make these points harder to get later in the game. Other players see these points as a proof of personal skill and use them to measure their own competence (maybe due to a lack of other feedback). While the first kind of player is theorized to be mostly aroused by the points and gaining points, the second kind of player is not aroused by the points but finds fulfilment in rising above the challenge to their skill. Even though you might think that both these types of players would end up equally skilled, the first type of player uses a lot of shortcuts and other tricks to increase their points without improving skill. The intrinsically motivated player is more likely to attain a higher skill level, and somehow also enjoyment. [Note to self; this enjoyment might be higher because reaffirmation of skill refers back to oneself and might be more fun because of that]


But how do you point your player in a certain direction? Well for a large part you are powerless as game designer, you can't manipulate the tendencies of people to be motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors and you can only try to invoke their interest with a cool demo or trailer. Still there is an important difference between the two kinds of players. Players that relate points to intrinsic motivation see them as informational. This informational character can be emphasized. You can couple points with automated vocal praising to stimulate intrinsic motivation, with quotes like "you're great", "multi-kill", "wow!" Points can also be divided into categories that are related to specific actions in a skill menu and it's also possible to simply award more points to skill related actions like in Skyrim. Anyway, the points have to be related to specific actions while gaining them with clear feedback to stimulate intrinsic motivation. Pinball machines for examples seem to give you points for everything but mostly do not convey specifics, like bumber x is 10 points ans bumber y is 100 points. However some will still remain motivated by the points themselve, humans are not machines. Luckily so, else we wouln't experience the joy of games.


Literature:

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Lepper, M. (1983). Extrinsic Reward and Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for the Classroom. In Levine, J.M. & Wang M.C. (Eds.), Teacher and Students Perceptions: Implications for Learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological review, 66(5), 297.

The gamification thing

Okay, I've been kind of slacking on my posting lately. I've come across Gamification.org once in a while but have never take a good look around. However it looks quite disappointing from my scientific perspective so I think I'll rewrite a large part of it in the coming months.

Let's deal with achievements first:

Achievements are usually locked till a certain action unlocks it, a form of reward. Most often this is used in gamification in the form of a token. You can have multiple kinds of tokens used in the same game like coins, items and abilities. One defining feature of achievements is that they are a reward after fulfilling a fixed criterium. This is opposed to (partly) random token drops or random rewards in any other way.

They may be gained in every form of play like single player, cooperative play, competition or a combination.

However achievements can mean something different for each player for example; some simply want the token, some collect the tokens and some don't even care about the token.

Achievements can be implemented in a myriad of ways most of them are rewards after using a certain skill (task-contingent).
-It may be a reward of the improvement of skill compared to one's previous state.
-It may be a reward of improvement of skill compared to a fixed state.
-It may be a reward after displaying the skill in a certain way (efficiency, frequency etc.).



Other achievements can be linked to behaviour like attendance, performing a certain action (like the finishing the tutorial) and good sportsmanship. However compared to skill display, these behaviours are only displayed little. Behaviour specific achievements may therefore contain very rare achievements.

These achievements can be controlling a player's thoughts, this will decrease the skill of this player and happens mostly in case of harsh direct competition. Achievements can also be used as information by players to measure their skill level. Highly motivated players are theorised not to be under the influence of achievements and might not need them as an information source. This is related to their two main displayed motivation characteristics; desire to be good and the desire to become better.

Adiós, more next time!