

Exposing Social Gaming's Hidden Lever - chgriffin
http://blog.betable.com/exposing-social-gamings-hidden-lever

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munificent
"To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob
and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a
cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of
currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal.
You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of
significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to
play the game."

A while back when I was working on a roguelike (i.e. dungeon crawl RPG) I
stumbled onto the same realization: assured incremental improvement + random
chance for something awesome = addictive gameplay.

This is how almost every RPG works at its core: every battle ends with a
little guaranteed experience and gold plus a small random chance of an awesome
loot drop.

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hugh3
Y'know, I think most roguelikes are a bit more respectable than the pure
super-optimized Skinner boxes that Zynga and Blizzard produce.

Why? Because you die. A lot. And when you die, you need to start all over
again. And you make progress further and further into the dungeon on
successive games, by learning from your mistakes and honing your strategy. And
if you don't learn, you don't progress.

Contrast to WoW, where (as I understand it without having ever played it)
death is merely a mild inconvenience, and you forever level up and up and up
just by grinding away at it -- getting to the highest level is largely just a
matter of being patient.

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davidtyleryork
Well look at both Zynga and Blizzard games. They are super accessible and
casual friendly. Dying is an inconvenience in Blizzard games, as you said, or
isn't even possible in Zynga's games (even the competitive ones like Empires &
Allies)

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hugh3
Sorry, I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me anywhere?

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davidtyleryork
No, I didnt :)

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dcadenas
Very interesting, it's the same mechanism behind email/Twitter addiction:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addic...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addiction)

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stephth
Nice catch.

"Random Reward Schedule" and "variable interval reinforcement schedule" look
like different names for the same concept, but looking closer the former seems
to cover both time and reward, and the latter focuses on the time component.
Am I reading this correctly?

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steve8918
I think this article is ridiculous.

"The biggest thing that unequivocally separates social gaming from gambling is
that the players have no ability to tangibly recoup the money put into the
game."

Oh you mean like the video games I used to play in arcades? Like Gauntlet,
which was one of the first quarter suckers? How many days did I go without a
lunch so that I could play Spyhunter, Elevator Action, or Gauntlet? But I had
fun. That's the whole point of gaming, isn't it?

When you buy a video game like Doom, Call of Duty, etc, aren't those same
elements present? The only difference is that there is a front-loaded payment
as opposed to something like Farmville where there are micropayments, which,
by the way, you don't even have to pay if you don't want to!!

The comparison to gambling is a complete stretch. Sure they may use similar
tactics, but so what? There's no gambling element in the sense that there
there is risk vs reward. That's like saying that in Plants Vs. Zombies, when I
buy a "mystery plant" for my zen garden, it's some form of gambling. It's not!

With games like Farmville, you are paying to play, like old school arcades. To
compare "social" gaming to gambling is just wrong. (Even the term "social"
gaming to Farmville is misplaced, there's nothing social about it except the
ability to visit other people's farms. Nothing about the game is enhanced via
the social aspect.)

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Androsynth
The difference is that one type of game has mechanics and the other doesn't.
Social games are like gambling in that they both strictly put you in a
Skinner's box, and there is no game-loop. Traditional video games have strong
game-loops and this is a different kind of enjoyment.

There is overlap, especially in RPG's, but the big difference is that you can
enjoy traditional games without the rewards.

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hugh3
What do you mean by "game loop"?

Surely something like Farmville has _some_ gameplay elements, right? I've
never played it, but there are _some_ choices to be made (shall I get chickens
or cows), right?

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Androsynth
this is what I meant by game loop: [http://whatgamesare.com/2010/12/functions-
vs-loops-finding-f...](http://whatgamesare.com/2010/12/functions-vs-loops-
finding-fun.html)

'strong game loop' was vague, what I meant was what I said in the last
sentence, that you can enjoy playing a traditional game without rewards. It is
fun to play on its own merit. If you take away the rewards from a social game,
it can't stand up on it's own as a 'fun game'.

In Farmville, there are gameplay elements, but its very minimal. In Cow
Clicker, another social game, there are no game mechanics at all. There are
some 'hardcore' social game companies, like Kabam, but they end up just having
more elaborate reward feedback mechanisms.

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username3
What's VR, FR, VI, FI? Variable/Fixed ratio/interval
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_rein...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_reinforcement)

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davidtyleryork
Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I added it to the post.

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davidtyleryork
Wow article got knocked from 3rd to 35th instantly. Downvotes are incredibly
overpowered

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chgriffin
Yeah, WTF?

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zerostar07
Happily implementing the intermittent rewards pattern in my games too.

