Yeah, really. Not kidding.
I’m currently attending Illinois State University working on a degree in Public Relations. The school work by itself takes a decent amount of time, but if my gaming habit weren’t deprived enough of this precious commodity I devote just as much time participating in a student organization dedicated to aspiring spin artists like me, the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA).
I won’t go much into what all I do with it since it has nothing to do with gaming. I didn’t start this blog to tell the world about my life, as if that would be more interesting than anything else the internet could possibly be bringing to your screen at this moment. But for the sake of backstory, I’ll tell you that I’ve been put in charge of a rather work-intensive public relations campaign aimed at building relationships with alumni of our chapter. A lot of the work has been very interesting, but all the cool strategic and tactical stuff finally gave way to the beast of the clerical task of addressing 340 separate envelopes with which to mail our campaign materials.
So think about what that kind of work does to the mental state of a person: Signing envelope after envelope, with nothing but a tasty beverage and some aural comfort to help me cling to my sanity. After addressing 50 envelopes or so I knew I had to find some way to relieve myself from all the stress of this endless grind.
…grind. Hmm. Endless grind. Where have I experienced that before? Oh, that’s right, during the five years I’ve played the soul-sucking World of Warcraft. The several hours I figured this task would take are nothing compared to the days and days I’d spend throwing myself before my keyboard and mouse, grabbing those precious purple bars to fill the line on the bottom of my screen. And if I tired, all it took to keep me going was a level up-a sudden bright light and the glorious sound of having bumped up your stats and bringing you that much closer to the level cap.
Put in that perspective, it’s amazing anyone could stay amused for long at all. Leveling a character in World of Warcraft is just about the most mind-numbing pastime members of the developed world partake in. You click, and press a few buttons. Your actions must be done slowly, being bound by a global cooldown, and the mobs you hunt down are about as brainless as, well, I won’t get any more political than I did with that link just now.
And yet, we grind away. Millions of us pick up this game and only put it down long enough to run out and buy a new subscription card or the occasional expansion pack. How does a game that incredibly simple keep people like me so hooked?
To try and answer this, I recalled some Skinner, Pavlov and other nuggets of psych I picked up earlier in my college career. I recalled some video somewhere of veterinarians using behaviorism to get an orangutan to lay still for vaccinations. They had it perform simple tasks which were then rewarded with a noise and some tasty soda. His caretakers increased the complexity of the tasks and the effort needed to complete them. Though the reward didn’t increase at all, the fuzzball had no problem doing tasks it didn’t exactly care for. Eventually they got it to stay still during a needle to the arm. Normally they had to fight and restrain him; this time it just took some tasty soda.
That scenario is so familiar it’s embarrassing. Steadily increased workloads for the same rewards? Every level you grind through in WoW takes more experience points than the last one, and at the end of each set of bars comes the same flash of light and pleasant sound, and you’re given stats to your character proportional to the gains you got the level before. If you’re much of an MMO gamer, you’re probably feeling a bit like a monkey right now.
But this susceptibility to simple rewards system does not have to be a bad thing-especially if you have 340 envelopes to fill out. Keeping this in mind, I set up a table for filling out these envelopes designed around the idea of turning myself into a stimulus-response, reward-seeking Pavlovian lab rat.
I had the envelopes yet to be filled out to the left and a stack of completed ones to the right. I had some work space in front of me, and behind that I had my laptop with an Excel sheet open that listed the recipient’s names and emails. While I was filling out each address, I would have the recipient’s name selected on the Excel sheet. After filling out each address, I would triumphantly hit the Down key on my laptop and watch as the little Excel selector box moved down a name, slightly closer to the end of the document. The names were mobs to grind. Finishing a mob earned me experience points. Getting enough experience points meant “Ding!” Job was done.
Strangely enough, this setup worked well. Unlike before, I felt no strain in sitting down and writing name after name, after name, after name. If my wrist hurt and I needed a break, I got a thought: “Just after this one.” I would interlace other little rewards with performance, such as putting on a new song or taking a sip of my version of the chimp’s tasty soda. But even if I, say, decided on blaring some sweet music after 10 names, I would usually fill out two or three more names than planned before letting myself enjoy my reward. I got all my work done long before I had expected to.
Many people complain that putting such incentives in video games is a cheap way to keep people playing. But honestly, should we complain? “Addictiveness” has long been a term of endearment given to games that keep us hooked. It means greater replay value, more bang for your buck, even. I won’t complain that a constantly thrilling experience or a beautifully told storyline aren't a better way to keep a player in a game’s grip; it results in a greater aesthetic experience than a completed experience bar. But to own a game that can keep you playing for hours, weeks and months is worth something.
For this reason, I’m hesitant to complain when other games like shooters and strategies borrow these incentives from their distant MMO cousins. It’s hard to mind Starcraft II’s achievements when my infestor antics award me a sweet new bragging right, even if I don’t actually ever go brag about it. And when you’ve knifed a total of 100 poor bastards, it’s nice to be recognized for it.
There are further uses for such visual feedback outside of the games themselves. Wouldn’t it be cool if your account at your local LAN center had something on the desktop that kept track of your play time and rewarded you every so often with something like game time, future discounts or a free can of your favorite caffeine-infused lifeblood? Or what if factory workers had a monitor at their workstation with an interface to tell them how many parts they had left to crank out before getting a small bonus?
It can be a little degrading to know that your entertainment results from a reptilian response to positive stimulus, but it’s not like such archaic behaviors don’t permeate other parts of our lives. People are prone to paying a higher price for something if a salesman has anchored their minds higher with an unreasonable suggestion. Conversely, the salesman is prone to accepting a lower price if the customer is a pretty girl. And whether or not we buy a game is largely connected to the size of the title’s advertising budget.
But honestly, I don’t even need to think about all that. A few stacks of stamped, addressed envelopes is enough to placate me.
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