I wonder if anyone in front of the screen has ever had this experience. I know I have more important things to do, but I still can’t control my hands and open the game on my phone/computer. There are even times when the holidays are coming up, and the first reaction is not, “Great, I can have a rest.” It’s: “Great, I can be happy.”
Why do we spend so much time and energy in the virtual world when achievements in the game do so little to improve us in the real world? Game designers are masters of psychology, and there are many ways they can engage us.
01.
Just the right amount of difficulty
Will you enjoy the sense of accomplishment as you level up? Anyway, I am like this, who doesn’t like to see their once feared bosses fall at their feet one by one? In fact, many games are designed to take advantage of our psychology. Of these three games, which are you more likely to keep playing?
There is no change in the difficulty of the game levels, always easy to pass.
Just ENTERING THE GAME, AS a small white you will always meet the big guy, either on the opposite side of you to blow up or as a teammate, passion to the line.
It starts out simple, and then the game becomes progressively more difficult, so that you always feel like you can win if you work hard, and that you’re not out of your depth.
I believe that most people will choose the third option. The first kind may have a lot of people like at the beginning, and play for a long time will have a kind of “invincibility is how lonely” boredom, there is no challenge. The second is a perfect illustration of what it means to “get started and quit.” After all, no one wants to play games and feel miserable! The third mode is the one that most people like, and when we feel like we can beat it if we work hard, we’re more likely to take the time to break through.
In fact, the same is true when you study, when you are faced with very simple problems, you will feel that you don’t need to do any more. And if the problem is too difficult, too much out of our range, we just throw it away. It is only when we solve problems that we cannot solve at first, but can solve with careful thinking, that we feel refreshed. This is probably why single-player games tend to increase in difficulty gradually, while online games tend to match people according to their level of play.
A lot of people think, sometimes I just play one game, how much can I improve my ability? In fact, this reflects the wisdom of the game designer, even if the ability is not good, there are still props! I think we have had the operation is not as delicate as each other, but with the equipment turned over the experience.
02.
Delayed gratification
In fact, many people will think that we learn knowledge, constantly to solve the more difficult problems in life, is not also a lot like fighting monsters to upgrade? Why do we still dislike study and work? It has to do with how long the reward lasts. Although the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment demonstrated to us early on that children who are adept at Delayed gratification generally do better in life. But let’s ask ourselves, who doesn’t want to put in the effort and see immediate results? What’s more, in our life, we have 15 minutes of waiting time than usually experiment much longer, waiting for a tree blooms may need a year, try to practice a skill may be in three to five years later can clearly feel his superior, even took the whole childhood learning knowledge is likely to feel return in more than ten years on the job. Such long waits often cause us to underestimate the impact of our current actions on the future and lose our motivation to do things.
Games, no matter what, are good at instant gratification. When you win a rank, you will see an immediate increase in your rank score. When you beat a level of Plants vs. Zombies, you immediately get a new plant or a reward from Dave (although most of them are weird). Even if you’re just playing the costume game, the task of becoming beautiful and having more and more beautiful clothes will give you instant gratification. When you can clearly see the rewards of your actions, your motivation to continue will increase. This is actually why many people choose to procrastinate: Although I know it is wrong to check my phone before a test, I can immediately feel happy! We’ll talk about it later!
03.
Uncertainty in the reward system
At this point, I can’t help but sigh that game designers are really the masters of psychology per capita! They know exactly what makes us most addicted, and they use it to their advantage. Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner once did a famous experiment. He placed a mouse in a box that contained a button that triggered a food reward each time it was pressed. When the mouse found that the food dropped every time it pressed the button, it quickly learned to press the button to get the food, but it didn’t get excited or addicted. It is interesting to note that when this kind of reward Skinner convert into random, the toggle button is likely to bring food, may also be nothing at all, little mouse like crazy crazy, press the button, presents the addictive behavior, it also don’t know this time touch will bring food, then give it a try, a no, next time maybe have to eat?
The same is true for us, where random rewards get us more excited than fixed ones. It’s not hard to understand why some people indulge in seemingly unbreakable hobbies like gambling and drawing blind boxes (with the exception of Euro). It’s also why we’re constantly checking our phones in case something important comes up. What if someone I care about calls me?
The most exciting thing about the game is that you don’t know if it’s going to win or not. A small mistake or a dramatic move can instantly lead to a different outcome. I have to mention one of the most popular games: Travel Frog. At a time when most people are experiencing the joys of raising a frog in the cloud, the best part of the game’s design is that you don’t know what your rebellious frog son will bring you after each trip. This uncertainty gives us expectations and addictions.
04.
Conscientiousness and Stickiness
In addition to these points, some games use our conscientiousness to create our stickiness with a game. Previously there was a cloud pet game called Neo Pet popular abroad. The game’s premise is that players must care for and feed their pets. They can fight each other in the arena, as well as get new pet playmates. But ignoring Neo pets can make them unhappy and may lead to depression and depression in pets. Therefore, many players at that time were used to constantly open the game to check the status of their pets, after all, no one wanted to be a derelict owner, no one wanted to see their pets unhappy.
Since then, many have accused Neo Pet’s designers of exploiting other people’s sense of responsibility for their own profit. Although Neo Pet’s designer later explained in an interview that he had no intention of doing so. But there’s no denying that the game ended up doing just that. Speaking of here, you have not thought of childhood qq pet?
05.
Violence and escapism
Others believe that games help us vent the violence in our lives that has nowhere else to go. There will inevitably be some disappointments in this life. No matter how peaceful we are, it is inevitable that sometimes we will have conflicts with the people around us. Violence and aggression are hardwired into our genes, and such behavior is frowned upon in today’s civilized society. As a result, the virtual world of games provides a place where we can vent our frustrations without violating social standards.
In addition, many people may not normally like to play games, but when the deadline is met or when they are stressed, they suddenly play games like crazy, because games give us the right to escape reality for a while. When we’re immersed in a game, it’s hard to remember the challenges and problems we face in the real world. If it helps us get a temporary respite from stress, it can be a good way to adjust. However, it is important to note that if this delays the original plan, it is not worth the loss.
06.
What to do after addiction?
With these patterns in mind, it’s not hard to understand why we waste so much energy on games. For game companies, what they want most is to get the money to spend, and the time and attention of people who don’t want to spend. If we know we’re addicted to games and want to change that, what should we do?
First of all, we need to realize that this is a common affliction for many people. We don’t have to criticize or belittle ourselves for it. It’s hard to fight our nature with willpower. Games are not all bad. They can help us manage our stress, improve our thinking and reaction speed, and make us have more conversations with others when we socialize.
So we can be more planned in life to arrange things every day, and then set a good time, appropriate to play a few games as a reward for themselves. In this way, we will not delay our own activities because we are addicted to the game, and we will not be unable to adapt to the withdrawal.
At the same time, we can also cultivate some other hobbies which are more conducive to our self-improvement, such as dancing, playing ball, drawing and so on. When it’s easier to get pleasure from different things, we’re less likely to be addicted to a single game! In setting up your own study/work task, we can learn the game setting mechanism, from the field he is good at first, then gradually to do the oneself’s efforts can challenge the success of the task, in order to gain a sense of achievement and motivation, if I had set difficult tasks to complete for yourself, so after the big probability before long and then open place!
Finally, I hope everyone can get some useful knowledge from this article! If you have the experience, then hopefully this article will help you in some way. If you have never been addicted to a game, I hope you can understand the mechanism behind it, and don’t look at people who are addicted to games with colored glasses. Hopefully, we can all enjoy playing games without becoming addicted to them