I did my behavioral psych homework for this, so that I might try to dissect why League of Legends is so addicting (other than it being awesome) and how sometimes that's not a good thing. I flirted with this topic on the review, but chose not to dive into it so that I could avoid being a huge downer. But when you get to games like League of Legends or any MMO in general, there tends to be widespread addiction. Now I'm not going to pass judgement on whether being addicted to a MMO is good or bad. My only hope is that by dissecting League of Legends, using my rudimentary understanding of behavioral psych in video games and by throwing out some other possible factors, a more substantive conversation on video game addiction could be had. At the end I'll give my opinion on addiction and share a little bit of my experience with game addiction, but nothing to heavy handed or damning.
Note: If you want to read the experts on this subject I would suggest you look up the "Skinner's Box experiment" and also read this article from Gamasutra.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php
Reward Schedules
In the world of Behavioral psych, when it comes to video games, developers think in terms of reward schedules. Reward schedules, in their most primitive form, make a combination of reward and effort to create a schedule that will hopefully keep the player glued to the screen. For example, a fixed ratio schedule would be a schedule where a reward is gained after a player kills a fixed amount of enemies. Compare this with a variable ratio, where as you might have guessed, the amount of monsters killed to gain a reward is not fixed, but variable. So what does this mean for the player? Well it means that different schedules will bring about different behaviors. Fixed ratios cause people to have a short pause and then a burst of playing in the hopes to achieve the reward. While a variable ratio has a slightly less active amount of playing, but there is a more consistent level of play (players tend not to take a pause after leveling in a variable ratio schedule). There are also interval schedules that mirror the above schedules except instead of using monster kills, time is the element that is either fixed or variable. Where this ties into League of Legends is crucial, so I wanted to set up the basics.
Reward Schedules in League of Legends
League of Legends is interesting to dissect through this lens, because League of Legends uses two reward schedules at once. They use an overarching variable ratio (winning the match) and several fixed ratios (leveling up and money intake). The combination of these two reward schedules make it so that players find themselves playing at an incredibly high level of intensity, in response to the fixed ratio schedules, but don't depart from that level of play due to the variable reward of winning the match. Nobody knows how many rewards and levels and money and armor it takes to win a match. A critical mistake by the opposing team or a simple disconnect could make it so that the bar to winning the match is raised or lowered accordingly. This means that those who are serious about winning need to play at a high level of intensity at all times. What this makes for is the high stakes exhausting one hour matches that League of Legends is known for. There is a reason people take a five minute break between matches (sometimes); playing with full concentration for one hour at a high level is mentally wearing.
Cheating the house, how probability could destroy a variable schedule
Now when I talk about the variable reward schedule of winning the match, I'm speaking from the point of view of the average player. People who play this game professionally know the game so well that the variable schedule is probably inconsequential for them. That's because much like any game of probability (baseball, blackjack), if you know how the percentages work, you can take reasonable guesses at what is the best course of action and how much effort is going to be needed to win a match. For example, if you took the moneyball approach to League of Legends, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an average amount of k/ds you needed to raise your probability of winning a match over 80%. In fact, I've seen plenty of my more experience friends use k/d as a clear indicator of whether a match is over or not. The assumption they are usually riding on is that the other team leveled up at a far faster rate, making coming back impossible. This could probably be used for overall professional gaming, where people aggregate the statistics from their matches to choose the best professional players among thousands. But all of this only exists in the realm of professional gaming, so it really doesn't have much to do with what I'm speaking to (or perhaps who).
What happened to speaking about addiction
I thought that by taking a psychological approach to the subject of MMOs, more specifically League of Legends, I'd find an answer to why the game is so addicting. The answer I was hoping for would have absolved me of all my wasted hours and abandoned responsibilities. Instead it becomes clear that while the reward schedule in League of Legends is adept at making the game incredibly fun and intensive, it is not the main reason for game addiction. I still have theories as to why MMOs are so addicting, but I'm going to write another post about them, so I can give them the effort and thought they deserve.
Note: If anyone who knows more about behavioral psych than me (I'm a Political Science major) has any insight to the system or knows why I'm completely wrong, then please comment and I'll more than happily make changes to the article with proper credit given.
Note: If you want to read the experts on this subject I would suggest you look up the "Skinner's Box experiment" and also read this article from Gamasutra.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php
Reward Schedules
In the world of Behavioral psych, when it comes to video games, developers think in terms of reward schedules. Reward schedules, in their most primitive form, make a combination of reward and effort to create a schedule that will hopefully keep the player glued to the screen. For example, a fixed ratio schedule would be a schedule where a reward is gained after a player kills a fixed amount of enemies. Compare this with a variable ratio, where as you might have guessed, the amount of monsters killed to gain a reward is not fixed, but variable. So what does this mean for the player? Well it means that different schedules will bring about different behaviors. Fixed ratios cause people to have a short pause and then a burst of playing in the hopes to achieve the reward. While a variable ratio has a slightly less active amount of playing, but there is a more consistent level of play (players tend not to take a pause after leveling in a variable ratio schedule). There are also interval schedules that mirror the above schedules except instead of using monster kills, time is the element that is either fixed or variable. Where this ties into League of Legends is crucial, so I wanted to set up the basics.
Reward Schedules in League of Legends
League of Legends is interesting to dissect through this lens, because League of Legends uses two reward schedules at once. They use an overarching variable ratio (winning the match) and several fixed ratios (leveling up and money intake). The combination of these two reward schedules make it so that players find themselves playing at an incredibly high level of intensity, in response to the fixed ratio schedules, but don't depart from that level of play due to the variable reward of winning the match. Nobody knows how many rewards and levels and money and armor it takes to win a match. A critical mistake by the opposing team or a simple disconnect could make it so that the bar to winning the match is raised or lowered accordingly. This means that those who are serious about winning need to play at a high level of intensity at all times. What this makes for is the high stakes exhausting one hour matches that League of Legends is known for. There is a reason people take a five minute break between matches (sometimes); playing with full concentration for one hour at a high level is mentally wearing.
Cheating the house, how probability could destroy a variable schedule
Now when I talk about the variable reward schedule of winning the match, I'm speaking from the point of view of the average player. People who play this game professionally know the game so well that the variable schedule is probably inconsequential for them. That's because much like any game of probability (baseball, blackjack), if you know how the percentages work, you can take reasonable guesses at what is the best course of action and how much effort is going to be needed to win a match. For example, if you took the moneyball approach to League of Legends, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an average amount of k/ds you needed to raise your probability of winning a match over 80%. In fact, I've seen plenty of my more experience friends use k/d as a clear indicator of whether a match is over or not. The assumption they are usually riding on is that the other team leveled up at a far faster rate, making coming back impossible. This could probably be used for overall professional gaming, where people aggregate the statistics from their matches to choose the best professional players among thousands. But all of this only exists in the realm of professional gaming, so it really doesn't have much to do with what I'm speaking to (or perhaps who).
What happened to speaking about addiction
I thought that by taking a psychological approach to the subject of MMOs, more specifically League of Legends, I'd find an answer to why the game is so addicting. The answer I was hoping for would have absolved me of all my wasted hours and abandoned responsibilities. Instead it becomes clear that while the reward schedule in League of Legends is adept at making the game incredibly fun and intensive, it is not the main reason for game addiction. I still have theories as to why MMOs are so addicting, but I'm going to write another post about them, so I can give them the effort and thought they deserve.
Note: If anyone who knows more about behavioral psych than me (I'm a Political Science major) has any insight to the system or knows why I'm completely wrong, then please comment and I'll more than happily make changes to the article with proper credit given.
No comments:
Post a Comment