Compulsion Engineer

An interesting and long editorial from Gamasutra discusses the way games manipulate a person’s tendency towards compulsive behaviour, something MMOs get accused of but which the author claims is applicable in a wider sense.

At first, I agreed with Sirlin — that’s how WoW made so much money! Those devious Blizzard guys were preying on people’s compulsions. The game just baits people along with a condensed stream of awards and an artificial, easy-to-climb social ladder. Damn those evil Blizzard devs!

Then I started thinking about just why people play other games, and I realized I was being hypocritical, because all game-playing is compulsive on some level. To understand this, we need to look at the concept of motivation itself, starting right at the bottom: just why does anyone do anything?
(…)
Material wealth and social status are closely connected. As a result, we are compelled to acquire things.

A long time ago, I played the original NES. There were lots of beat-em-up games for this system. There was one game called River City Ransom. The combat in this game was not that great. I became hooked on it not because the combat was interesting, but because it was possible to acquire stuff. I kept coming back to the game so I could feel the emotional rewards of buying new things — even though those things did not physically exist.

This compulsion shows up in any game with an inventory or array of stuff. The obvious examples are RPGs like Diablo. These games are very carefully tuned to constantly dangle new and better loot in front of the player, never frustrating them with slow progress, but never allowing them to get all the items and finish, either. By keeping the player in a middle ground, they maintain the compulsion to acquire almost indefinitely.

The compulsion can be amplified when other players are involved. Games like World of Warcraft are based on this. Other players provide a social ladder to climb, and associate positive social reactions with the acquisition of new items. This amplifies the compulsion.