2024/07/24 20:44
Don't put the player in an "addictive" cage
2024/07/24 20:44
Scarce Brain:
"They're just food, not love."
There is a classic scene in the TV series "Friends". Phoebe's boyfriend was a psychiatrist at the time, and when he saw Monica holding a plate of cookies and eating them non-stop, he said to her:
"Monica, don't eat so many cookies, okay? Remember, they are just food, not love. ”
Monica is using food to fill her lack of love.
And this sense of scarcity or "scarcity" of something is an innate physiological setting of our brains.
"Scarcity Brain" [1] mentions that as long as you have a sense of scarcity – no matter what it is, whether it is your own lack of love, whether it is a macroeconomic recession in the news, or whether there is an epidemic epidemic - as long as you feel deprived, you will want to eat more.
Scarcity makes people want.
If you are full, you have to continue to eat, you have to continue to buy a lot, you have to continue to drink when you are already a little drunk, you are already very tired and feel that you don't like it and continue to brush, all these behaviors are chasing something, and what you do for this is not really much good for yourself, and it is likely that there will be great harm, but you have to continue to do it.
It's not that you need to do this, it's that you want to do this. When the want is greater than the need, you have to be alert, which is a symptom of addiction.
Such a scarce brain actually has a set of rules.
02
Cycle of Scarcity:
How addictive Social Casino is
The Scarcity Loop has three steps:
The first step is "Opportunity"
A scene appears in front of your eyes and you feel like you can get something you like. Maybe you see something delicious, maybe it's possible to win money, maybe it's a commodity. You want to act.
The second step is "Unpredictable Rewards"
After taking action, you may or may not get what you want, and you may get something better than you expected.
Various studies have found that a fixed number of returns can make people bored, while unpredictable rewards like gambling can keep our brains hooked. Grabbing food in the cafeteria is much more fun than sitting there waiting for the waiter to give you food, we love suspense so much.
Casino slots have a setting. For example, three numbers can determine whether you win or not, after the first number, the second and third numbers will be deliberately slow, and the music effects will be added while playing, just to let you experience the moment when the suspense is about to be revealed.
About this part can be reviewed: Gacha experience design: everything about blind boxes, gacha, and unboxing.
The third step is "Quick Repeatability"
The next round starts as soon as it ends. For example, if you watch a short video, it doesn't matter if it's good or not, you can swipe your finger and come back to it immediately. Don't shuffle the cards for a minute, don't drink water toilets, and play another game right away.
The cycle of scarcity can lead us to other theories, such as the Skinner box, such as the closer cycle of addiction:
The addictive cycle is divided into four steps:
Trigger → Action→ Variable Rewards→ Inputs.
In fact, the two are very similar, but the scarcity cycle is more instructive and streamlined:
Opportunity → Unpredictable rewards → Rapid repeatability.
This lite version of the loop is a great example of the core loop of most numerical thrill games, and here's an example from Monopoly Go!
The core loop of Monopoly Go is extremely simple: roll the dice → random results to get random rewards such as money→ and spend money to unlock plots and levels to get progress rewards.
And such a core cycle can be looked at with the scarcity cycle like this:
1. Opportunity:
The dice themselves come from time recovery, a bunch of limited-time events to get (and the event itself will also have a power-up loop), and these games can also multiply the dice, with a variety of scenarios that will drive players to roll again.
The game also provides an additional automatic mode, which only requires the player to manually operate the [Bank Robbery] and [Destruction] gameplay that involves social robbery.
2. Unpredictable Rewards
The board body of the game is "Monopoly", the superposition of a huge number of random elements such as dice * a large number of random events * social events * activities, supplemented by the game's multi-fold chip mechanism, so that the random reward is directly full.
At the same time, a large number of plot collections, random events, etc. are packaged from the IP itself, plus a large number of animation feedback as if no money is needed, so that the reward level obtained is directly visualized, which is very refreshing.
Finally, the rewards with the blessing of social elements have the illusion of social currency rewards.
3. Quick Repeatability
The only operation of the game is basically the roll of the dice, plus the auto/multiplier setting, so don't start the next round too quickly.
And the clown card that I talked about before is also a pure dog gambling game, which can be played quickly, so the author deliberately set the price of replay of the game very small.
In fact, the case that best fits the cycle of scarcity is [Douyin]:
Opportunity: You can open Douyin anytime and anywhere.
Unpredictable rewards: Every video that is swiped is unknown, and the algorithm will "trap the user" in the system.
Fast repeatability: This one is not cool, and the next one is coming soon, and the monkeys can see it very well. Often an hour or two passes by accidentally.
In fact, comparing the scarcity cycle (opportunity → unpredictable reward → fast repeatability) with other models can give us a better understanding of design and human nature, such as the Fogg behavior model (behavior = motivation * ability * prompt) to better understand what opportunity is.
For example, compared to the addiction model, I will not expand it here.
03
Don't hide in a cage,
And don't put others in cages
The cycle of scarcity also reminds us of a well-known experiment: the Skinner box.
Skinner found that whether it's a mouse or a pigeon, if you give it an unpredictable reward, it becomes addictive.
This experiment was repeated many times, and the psychologist Thomas ·Zentall asked the pigeons to play two games of pecking the switch with their mouths to get food.
- The first game is to fix 15 units of food every other peck. That is, there is this time, there is no next time, there is another time, and there is no next time, which is completely predictable;
- The second game is a random reward: roughly every time you peck the switch, you have a 20% chance of getting 20 units of food. It's a lot to give at a time, but considering the low probability, this game is not cost-effective.
After several attempts, 96.9% of the pigeons decided to play the second game.
Zantor found that not only pigeons, but other birds, even rats, monkeys, and even cockroaches preferred to play random bonus games. Even in the case of a fixed return that is seven times higher than a random reward, some animals will still choose a random reward, which is still very much in line with Skinner's experiment.
But Zantor took a turn on the experiment:
The Skinner boxes are all carried out in cages, and there is nothing else for the animals to do. Is it because the pigeons have nothing to do in the cage that they become betting pigeons?
So, Zantor let the pigeons live in the wild for a while, and then let them play those two games, and the pigeons returned to their senses, and they all chose the first game - the pigeon quit gambling.
To put it simply, the reason why the pigeons in the cage choose to gamble is just to find an outlet for the dopamine that they have nowhere to release.
Zantor proposed a theory called the "optimal stimulation model": both humans and animals need a certain level of stimulation. If life is too boring and below the necessary level of stimulation, we actively seek out the stimulus. The pigeons in the cage are too boring to gamble. When you have a wild life, there are all kinds of excitement everywhere, and you are psychologically satisfied, so you naturally don't have to play gambling games.
The results of this experiment actually reveal another side of the Skinner box experiment, or the cycle of addiction to scarcity: it has to do with the evolutionary settings of the brain, but the environment also has a big impact.
The way to break the cycle of scarcity (opportunity→ unpredictable rewards, → fast repeatability) lies in these three conditions:
1. Let the opportunity go away:
If the gambler has lost all his money, or for some reason is no longer interested in gambling, the next round is not his chance. In Monopoly Go, I naturally went offline when the dice were gone.
Use the above Fogg behavior model (behavior = motivation * ability * prompt) to increase the ability requirements, reduce the prompts, and reduce the ability: for example, the iOS system sets the daily time of the application, and disabling Douyin after the time is actually a reverse prompt, and going against one's will is a reverse motivation, and disabling it is also a behavior with higher ability requirements - after doing so, it will jump out of the scarcity cycle of brushing TikTok.
Another way is to change the environment. For students who attend classes every day, skipping class and playing games is the thrill of competition, and it is also the only fun of randomness. Therefore, for the student stage, it is necessary to find infinite fun from the study itself, why is the Internet addiction gone after graduation and work? The environment has changed, and the game is not most of the fun and meaning, so naturally it is not addictive.
2. Cancel the random reward:
For example, if the slot machine is not designed well, and you lose money in a row and can't taste the sweetness, then you don't want to play. Changing the environment does something similar, replacing the old one with a new one.
I think the focus of this part is [mobilizing cognition]: putting your rationality online and analyzing the nature of
your addictive behavior
For example, why does self-help always want to vomit: self-help is indeed like a primeval jungle for food grabbing and hunting (chance * random reward), and this dimension is more addictive. You can think of the dangers of overeating like this, which naturally invalidates such a random reward stimulus.
3. Slowed repetition:
If a web novel is only changed once a month, it is difficult for readers to get addicted.
Quick and cheap stuff is addictive, but pleasure is fleeting. When did you not feel remorse after watching a two-hour short video? But if you put a little more effort into going to see a more difficult movie, which doesn't have so many quick repetitions, you'll have a lot of memories.
What we worked so hard to get made us feel more worthwhile.
The cycle of scarcity reminds me of the biggest temptation of gambling consoles or electronic online gambling that I talked about earlier, which is to keep players in a "state of distraction, and maintaining this state can give people great satisfaction".
We unknowingly embarked on this path and unknowingly got this destined result. It's like an ant circling around a place, there is no external force forcing it to do so, it can get out at any time if it wants to, but it is still circling there.
It's a narrowing of mind: if you only have this in your sights, you'll be like the pigeon in a cage, and you'll have to compete with the game.
Don't limit your life, the problem with fat cats is actually to limit your life to your imaginary ideals, so you narrow yourself. (The opportunity is to interact with the woman, such as transferring money, and the unpredictable reward is actually the woman's hot and cold attitude and reply.) Another point that is a bit funny is that if it weren't for the quick checkout mechanism like leveling that allows the fat cat to transfer money every week, if it was a regular monthly salary, the repetition speed of this scarcity cycle would have been reduced a lot).
How pitiful it is that the pigeon in the cage went to play a gambling game because it had nothing to do, and was ridiculed by psychologists for decades as irrational.
Don't hide in a cage, and don't put someone else in a cage.
From the perspective of commercial games, reversing the method of breaking out of the cycle of scarcity seems to be some "tricks" for players to retain and pay:
04
Rich Cycle:
Make the game a long-term secret
On how to deal with the scarcity brain, the authors propose the Abundance Loop as a solution.
Nowadays, many young people are addicted to shopping, looking at shopping websites and live broadcast rooms all day long, and receiving a lot of express delivery at home every day, all of which are worthless and useless small things. What are these people trying to do? Their dopamine secretion point is "discounted":
- Discover a discounted item, that's the opportunity;
- This bag usually sells for $2,000, and this store is getting a 40% discount today! That's the unpredictable reward;
- Hurry up and buy it to get points, and in a blink of an eye, something new will come out in the live broadcast room, which is fast repeatability......
There is a trend of thought for such materialism that is "minimalism", but minimalism and excessive hoarding are two sides of the same coin: both are in pursuit of perfection. Overhoarders are afraid that this thing will be used in the future, so they prefer to keep it; Minimalists are afraid that this thing will mess up my life, so I'd rather throw it away. It's all about being controlled by matter in the pursuit of a sense of control, so it all triggers anxiety.
So how can it be considered not to be controlled? It's about using those things as a means, not as an end. Your focus should not be on "whether you want it or not", but on what you intended to do with it.
About the situation, the author proposes a slogan:
"Gear, not stuff".
Items are things to be hoarded: no matter how many you already have, you can always add another one. Equipment, on the other hand, is something that is used to do things, it is a means to achieve a higher goal, and you don't really care if you use this or that.
For example, many people like fishing, which is supposed to be a relaxing, Buddhist activity, but these middle-aged people have turned fishing into a competition for fishing rod brands. The more I bought the rods, the more expensive they became, and I didn't catch a few fish.
If you're concerned about fishing rather than fishing rods, it doesn't really matter what equipment you use, just have one at hand, the author sums up the "Abundance Loop":
1. Replace chance with meaning: Your fishing skills are obviously more meaningful than owning a high-end fishing rod.
2. Replace instant rewards with in-depth experiences: The dopamine of collecting fishing rods can't be compared to the fun of immersing yourself in fishing;
3. Replace quick repetition with insider judgment: If you're an expert at fishing, you won't be so easily attracted to a new set of fishing rods. Fishing vs fishing rods, reading books vs watching skits, publishing articles vs sending photos, and once you experience the higher meaning and deeper pleasure from the cycle of abundance, you will defy the cycle of scarcity.
There is a question here: where does the meaning of depth come from?
It's a bit fatalistic: the meaning of depth comes precisely from scarcity.
In this game, you can open a cheat and instantly have unlimited resources and an incredibly powerful army, but you'll soon find that there's no point in destroying enemies in that way. To live in the real world is to experience life in constraints, to dance in shackles, to be in the company of scarcity.
It takes a lot of effort to participate, and we will cherish it even more when we are rewarded with time and money. Of course, you can also associate this with the "IKEA effect" and "sunk costs".
There are not so many shortcuts in life, people live in various stories, and the story must have a challenge, a problem, you solve the problem, it becomes a hero's journey. In fact, many stories are also metaphors for the cycle of scarcity:
The brave embarked on an adventurous journey in order to obtain a certain artifact, which is the attraction of scarcity to people.
In the process, the brave man continued to grow, gained friendship and love, gained everyone's recognition, made himself rich, and established a universal connection with the world.
In the end, he realized that this artifact was no longer important to him, and his most precious thing was the process of chasing the artifact.
There is no story without a problem, and it has been solved through experience, so that life can be more meaningful.
After a long story, I finally returned to how to use rich loops to make the game longer online:
1. Replace opportunity with meaning:
In fact, the long-term retention of the game is nothing more than a few points: the game's mastery cycle, such as the strategic and operational dimensions, allows players to continuously improve their abilities and gain a sense of meaning in mastery; Social, social interaction and precipitation between people in games, MMO and SLG are the longest categories; Through the continuous content of the game, a rich game world is built, and a variety of environments, stories, and characters are provided, so that the player's "prediction processing machine" can continue to gain meaning in such content.
And this is actually the reason for the lack of strength in the later stages of many numerical happiness games: players will be short-lived addicted to the cycle of scarcity, and when it goes on like this, it needs more meaning and fun, while Monopoly Go actually uses the last two points mentioned above: building a sense of sociality and building a community through collecting cards; A large number of new boards and cards provide meaning to the content.
2. Replace instant rewards with in-depth experiences:
Actually, I wrote a series before: I wrote a year of experience design finale: game story design.
The definition of gaming experience pretty much makes this clear:
The process of interaction between the player and the game and the feedback obtained in the process of interaction (experiencing the self will bring a lot of interactive feedback, feelings, emotions), and finally the emotion/memory/meaning/(integrating into the narrative self and completing personal growth).
3. Replace rapid repetition with insider judgment:
If you're an expert in fishing, you won't be so easily attracted to a new set of fishing rods. Fishing vs fishing rods, reading books vs watching skits, publishing articles vs sending photos, and once you experience the higher meaning and deeper pleasure from the cycle of abundance, you will defy the cycle of scarcity.
Game designers need to let players establish a new understanding of the game through the scarcity cycle, so that players can experience the mastery, socialization, and content meaning and fun of the game.
For example, Souls-based players already have a [category awareness] of souls-based games for this type of game, and in the face of a new souls-based game, players will focus on the depth of the game's combat or the worldview and story level.
In fact, the point of this article is to provide players with some fun and meaning to explore, discover, and research. Activities such as fishing, tea tasting, and wine tasting are the basis of which a large group of people have built a complex body of knowledge for the exchange and tasting in the circle.
What the game needs to do is to give players the space to explore, play, and create independently. The above mastery is one, but the meaning of mastery actually needs to be presented socially, so it is necessary to guide players to form a community or circle both inside and outside the game, which is one of the points; Provide players with a certain amount of autonomy, such as optional plot lines, optional customs clearance methods, self-dressing, etc., so that players will generate a large number of player self-narrative and sense of substitution during the game; UGC, which has been particularly popular in recent years, is to provide players with the space to create and construct meaning on their own; Finally, in terms of narrative, there are a large number of memes, easter eggs, and various fragmented narratives in the game, which are also provided for players to build their own stories, or to gain self-identity and achieve communication effects through memes and easter eggs.....
05
Say it at the end
Many theories are actually the same, and it's important that we understand, apply, and make these theories our tools (writing this is also an attempt to apply what I've learned and migrate to the game), rather than hoarding a bunch of theories and getting cyberhoarding. This time, I'm trying to make connections through the scarcity cycle with the various theories mentioned before, so that we can better understand design and life.
Resources:
[1] "Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough" & World Wide Steel Elite Day 6, this article makes extensive use of the original text, and is hereby noted.
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