Addicting Gameplay (not in a good way): How does ED fare?

mossfoot · Jul 31, 2015

Don't get me wrong, I love Elite Dangerous, but the nature of gaming is changing and it's up to us to be aware of what tricks are being used in the industry, because not all of them are good.

As a kid in school my class was shown a film that showed all the common tricks advertisers used in commercials - everything from how they make food look perfect to making action figures seem more exciting than they really are. It was a great public service that stuck with me to this day.

So I wanted to post this article here in the hopes of generating some discussion: Does ED use any of these techniques? And how so compared to other games out there?

Page 1
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html
Page 2
http://www.cracked.com/article_1846...-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted_p2.html

I and I Redeye · Jul 31, 2015

Yes, this game uses all that stuff just like any other title.

Merit decay, rank decay, easy rank up then harder rank up, the grind, etc.

I played GW2 for ages and they bombard your brain with flashing images and visuals, looks cool but they overdone it and it hard to see whats going on.
Then again it's an American made game and I think they like to flash images at you to hypnotise, not sure if other countries/companies use that method.
I think the Simpsons made fun of it iirc.

I'm disappointed in the way PC gaming has been taken over by this method. Games with hidden auto-suggestions in them are prolly the worse, I dunno.

Aewarin Jameson · Jul 31, 2015

Funny how they describe the merit decay method as ... a "certain appendage" move

ozrix84 · Jul 31, 2015

There is stuff in the game designed to keep repetition up, but the obsession comes from you, not from the game.

Pile_O_Gunz · Jul 31, 2015

Yea elite uses all the tricks. That articles putting a negative spin on enjoyable mechanics though IMO. I play to switch-off and relax mostly so a lot of my favourite games are basically skinner boxes and I don't mind. I like long term progression even if it involves doing fairly tedious things.

mossfoot · Jul 31, 2015

Pile_O_Gunz said:
Yea elite uses all the tricks. That articles putting a negative spin on enjoyable mechanics though IMO. I play to switch-off and relax mostly so a lot of my favourite games are basically skinner boxes and I don't mind. I like long term progression even if it involves doing fairly tedious things.

Negative spin, yes, and yes some of these things are perfectly legit gameplay in its own right.

But to me the article highlights its possible abuses.

For example, FD does not in any way have a system set up for you to buy in-game credits with real cash (despite some foolish people asking for it). Why? Because once you have that in, you then can't help but gear your economy in a way that will encourage you to spend that real life cash.

It's the reason a "Free" game like Game of War can afford to hire Liam Neeson for a superbowl commercial.

[video=youtube;GC2qk2X3fKA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC2qk2X3fKA[/video]

Sure, the game is "free", but clearly they are making a crapload of money of their little encouragements to have that kind of money to spend on advertising. Hey, for just a buck you can speed up the time it takes for something to complete! You'll have to wait a whole day if you don't (and of course as you advance a day becomes a week so the incentive gets stronger). That's just one example.

This is the dark side of those tricks, and it's the sort of line that, if crossed, would cause me to drop ED on the spot.

What does ED have? Well, you can spend in-game credits to speed up your PowerPlay, but there's no real money involved. That's cool.

What kind of encouragement to spend more on the game does ED have? Extra paint jobs. But since those are entirely optional and provide no advantages to gameplay, again, that's cool.

ED doesn't have any of the "slot machine" loot drop nonsense, either.

So it's not a question of if ED uses some of these tricks. It's a game after all, and games work in certain ways because they appeal to us in certain ways.

It's how those tricks are used and leveraged that we need to be aware of.

Growing up one of my favorite shows (believe it or not) was a consumer awareness show called "Fight Back!" which, much like the film I mentioned at the start of the article, was all about being made aware of advertising and marketing trickery. Its slogan still sticks with me:

Stay aware and informed, and Fight Back, and don't let anyone rip you off.

Ironwolf · Jul 31, 2015

ozrix84 said:
obsession comes from you, not from the game.

Well said. That's why I moved on to something worthy.

Chann3l · Jul 31, 2015

I don't think ED does the kind of things in the article. At least not in a harmful way. It's not subscription based and it's not pay to win. Any sort of spending of credits to achieve something faster isn't done with real money. If ED ever started the things I've listed I would stop playing. If ED ever reminded me of wow and he actual fun was gone, I would stop playing.

Scudmungus · Jul 31, 2015

Mon. Babylon usin aal dem tricks an nuf mo since before yuh born.

Aal gat to de-condition. Re-educate self. Defend self drough understandin.

Be bold enuff to luv

Windscreen Smudge · Jul 31, 2015

Voting that the articles in the OP be renamed to "5 ways Video games are Video games."
|
Anybody with a modicum of sense knows these gameplay elements, most of us consider them bad game design and either focus on the other good elements of the game or find ways to play the system. I personally enjoy gaming the games. It was quite satisfying to 99% Clicker Heroes, a game designed to keep you on the treadmill for over a year, in 2 days. I only break bad games though, ED doesn't exploit these gameplay elements as a substitute for content, thus I don't go out of my way to break it.

Iskariot · Jul 31, 2015

Life itself is a skinner box.
Elite is part of that skinner box.
And I am grateful for it, because for me it would be hard to keep going without these kinds of distractions.

Scudmungus · Jul 31, 2015

''Dear Sir, mi hatin tinkin dat mi brain bein aal washed.''

HA! NO. DAT DE POINT!

Nonya · Jul 31, 2015

Elite Dangerous used to be addicting but then they released update 1.3 and it got stupid/boring/even-more-grindy.
So 1.2 was horribly addictive and 1.3 was the "cure" for that addiction.
The cure was even worse than the disease.

Surly_Badger · Jul 31, 2015

There is also some interesting stuff in the You Are Not So Smart podcast, episode somethingorother: "the psychology of video games"

For me, the takeaway from that is that the games that are ultra addictive are exactly the ones that one might describe as "grindy" -- they rely on programming people to return at a certain time, generating cliff-hanger content, expiring things over time so you have to log in. etc. In my opinion that is why, for example, World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion lost so many people: the hooks were a bit too obvious. Speaking for myself, I quit when I realized that my garrison followers were tamagotchis.

Games like The Sims are some of the most popular games, ever, with the highest user retention-rates, ever. There is a lot to learn from them: create a sense of connectedness through customization, do not require users to pay too much attention to day-to-day stuff, but include an element of change over time, allow naming of in-game objects to encourage people to "bind" to them, etc.

It is in this area where I'd score FD's efforts close to a solid "F". They appear to have an utter tin ear about this kind of stuff, which is incredibly important to gamer satisfaction in so many games. Just for example: look at these forums and look at the number of avatars that were generated in EVE.

A basic list of things that would help players feel more connected to the game would be:

Simple stuff:
- ship naming
- ownership if in-game real-estate
- storage (people take their banks in World of Warcraft really seriously! Hello?)
- social zones (a spaceport bar where people can meet and hang out)
- moderate customization of in-game real-estate (think: captain's cabin in Mass Effect, or houses in Skyrim

Harder stuff:
- persistent tier 2 NPCs (tamagotchis!)
- persistent long-running missions (quests that take weeks or months bind players to game!)
- long-term programmed events (get people to prepare and plan for in-game events!)
- social goals (like in WoW where you can create a guild, name it, pick a logo, have guild goals and shared resources)

Hard stuff:
- paint tools that allow players to deeply customize ships
- ship interior customization tools
- in-game transactions (get players concerned with what eachother are doing; builds inter-player continuity and society)

I have no idea why most of the things I list above aren't already in the game. It's baffling, really; those sorts of things have huge bang for the buck. I know people who spent months in-game in World of Warcraft collecting transmog costumes and pets. That kind of stuff matters to people.

Surly_Badger · Jul 31, 2015

Nonya said:
Elite Dangerous used to be addicting but then they released update 1.3 and it got stupid/boring/even-more-grindy.
So 1.2 was horribly addictive and 1.3 was the "cure" for that addiction.
The cure was even worse than the disease.

Wow, you sound so ... absolutely sure of those opinions you state as if they are facts.

Perhaps that's your experience. Mine's the opposite. So, maybe what Mossfoot's asking about is the issue: there are elements of 1.3 that somehow broke the addiction potential of the game through their addition. What would those be? Can you break it down past just "I don't like it" to some of the psychological changes you experienced because of 1.3?

Some people appear to deeply resent some aspects of powerplay (not understanding, apparently, that powerplay doesn't have to affect you at all...) most specifically the decay of standing. That produced a serious emotional backlash from a very vocal group of players. It seems to me that the root cause is similar to what I mentioned earlier regarding Warlords of Draenor: it became a learned helplessness problem. When you convince the player they have no choice but to grind certain grinds they may just bail out entirely. I think FD did a particularly bad job of thinking through the ramifications of that design (there are ways they could have made it addicting instead of aversive)

Since I haven't let any of that touch me, all 1.3 did was remove some bugs and add a few more.

My impression of the psychology of Elite is that FD has been remarkably thoughtless in their focus on gaming features and lack of thought about gaming experiences. Clearly, E/D has managed to get a great emotional buy-in from many players: look at the forums, which have a significant number of ex-players who are so angry that they hang around and complain. That's an accomplishment of sorts! A really dubious one, but an accomplishment.