Walkthrough 1 - Mind at Play – Why Video Games are Fun PDF

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You will read an article in the walkthrough 1 resources and write a paper. This is an example of that paper. Professor Chelsea Lovejoy (Online)....

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Mind at Play – Why Video Games are Fun

Video game addiction is caused by the “partial reinforcement effect” (pg. 14). Reinforcement is psychological terms means that whenever we get a reward for doing something, it reinforces what we were doing to gain the reward. The two best forms of reinforcement are continuous reinforcement and partial reinforcement. Video games use partial reinforcement, because the game shouldn’t reinforce everything good that you do in a game, because if you did you wouldn’t find it interesting and the reward effect would wear-off quickly. By rewarding you every so often with rewards like a level up or some other prize, you are more compelled to keep playing the game. If there were no reward given at all, the behavior would result in what is known as “extinction” (pg 17). Extinction occurs when there is nothing left to gain from a behavior, so we cease the behavior we were doing when we were being reinforced. A partial reinforcement situation is the most effective technique of reinforcement, because it makes people do the behavior more, and takes the longest to go through extinction. When designing a video game, it is essential that the game not be too hard or too easy as to aid in the reinforcement and lack of extinction of behaviors, or in this case: playing your game. When deciding the rewards used for reinforcement, it is important to remember that the values you use must be meaningful, in the sense that the numbers themselves don’t matter, but if you make the prizes too big, it seems almost unbelievable. This disinterests gamers, because humans can’t psychologically comprehend super high numbers and the difference between them. Other things that get gamers into the habit of gaming is the different tools they use to make the game more interesting. Things that entice players to play a game include: “audio and visual effects; the degree to which players had to react quickly; and randomness (unpredictable games are preferred)” (pg. 34). Even when kids say they like high-fantasy type games, or games that relate to trademark properties they recognize, the games they actually enjoy the most are

Mind at Play – Why Video Games are Fun

games that touch upon those 3 topics of interest. As long as anybody feels like they are able to master the skills to play the game, that is what makes a game more addicting. Habits can be formed by a variety of reasons, but video game habits can be tracked down to partial reinforcement, and the 3 topics of interest that make games more interesting....