Thanks for calling them out for being Skinner Boxes (also known as an Operant Conditioning Chamber). When my friends were having addiction issues with WoW 20 years ago, I called it out as being addictive because it was a glorified skinner box. Nothing has changed, it’s just become more exploitative.
For anyone unfamiliar, it’s a science experiment. There’s two rats in two boxes. One rat has a lever that, when pressed, drops food to the rat. The rat only presses the lever when it is hungry. In the other box, the rat has a lever that randomly outputs food, but never consistently. A lot of the time, it produces nothing. The rat in that box spends all day long pressing the lever. Since it has no idea when the food will come, it panics and never stops trying to get more food, unsure if it will starve if it does not.
This is Diablo/World of Warcraft and the “Epic Loot” problem. People are clicking on the games endlessly looking for that top tier loot drop. It’s the same thing, because the results are inconsistent, people get addicted to the grind of trying to find the “best” item.
Also, thanks for pointing out that it doesn’t matter what game it is it’s still not okay. It wasn’t okay when it was WoW, it’s not okay when it’s Genshin Impact.
While I understand and agree with your premise to a point, aren’t you advocating for the removal of all randomness in videogames? As long as random factors are tied to outcomes, games will always be playing off that desire that the Skinner Box highlights. I’d argue that the entire modern rogue-lite genre is predicated on the fact that sometimes you will get “better” powerups, upgrades, etc., which leads to better outcomes. Auto-chess games are similiar, where hitting good random rolls leads to high powered teams and easy wins.
Mastery of both these genres requires both a wide birth of knowledge, and flexibility as you make due with what you are offerred, rather than simply always having the best things at all times. These are skills that are fun to have tested and build master in, and I don’t really think we should eliminate that from games. I agree that the worst offenders are simply trying to feed off human addiction rather than build are emergant gameplay situations, but any rule that targets the addict chasers is likely to catch other games with randomization in the crossfire.
I understand I didn’t make it clear in this comment and I apologize for that, elsewhere in the thread I made clear that I don’t want games like WoW/Diablo/Borderlands/Balatro to get banned, but I do think it’s important to recognize how their systems work and can impact people with addiction/gambling issues. I think we haven’t ever actually had a conversation about that aspect of these games, and I think it may be an important one to have, even if it only deeply affects a small sliver of society. Out of 9 billion people, a sliver is still often millions.
Also, and I do apologize, (especially if it was just a typo) but it is actually “wide berth” not “wide birth.” Otherwise, I agree with your point. However, I really did have friends who struggled with WoW in functionally the same way I have had other friends struggle with drugs and alcohol. They were in the minority, but they existed. I think it’s important to find ways to help those people deal with those issues without impacting the large number of people whom it does not. As I said elsewhere, I personally don’t have good ideas how to achieve that, I just know the conversation should happen. I would hope more clever and thoughtful people than I could have good ideas.
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Thanks for calling them out for being Skinner Boxes (also known as an Operant Conditioning Chamber). When my friends were having addiction issues with WoW 20 years ago, I called it out as being addictive because it was a glorified skinner box. Nothing has changed, it’s just become more exploitative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
For anyone unfamiliar, it’s a science experiment. There’s two rats in two boxes. One rat has a lever that, when pressed, drops food to the rat. The rat only presses the lever when it is hungry. In the other box, the rat has a lever that randomly outputs food, but never consistently. A lot of the time, it produces nothing. The rat in that box spends all day long pressing the lever. Since it has no idea when the food will come, it panics and never stops trying to get more food, unsure if it will starve if it does not.
This is Diablo/World of Warcraft and the “Epic Loot” problem. People are clicking on the games endlessly looking for that top tier loot drop. It’s the same thing, because the results are inconsistent, people get addicted to the grind of trying to find the “best” item.
Also, thanks for pointing out that it doesn’t matter what game it is it’s still not okay. It wasn’t okay when it was WoW, it’s not okay when it’s Genshin Impact.
While I understand and agree with your premise to a point, aren’t you advocating for the removal of all randomness in videogames? As long as random factors are tied to outcomes, games will always be playing off that desire that the Skinner Box highlights. I’d argue that the entire modern rogue-lite genre is predicated on the fact that sometimes you will get “better” powerups, upgrades, etc., which leads to better outcomes. Auto-chess games are similiar, where hitting good random rolls leads to high powered teams and easy wins.
Mastery of both these genres requires both a wide birth of knowledge, and flexibility as you make due with what you are offerred, rather than simply always having the best things at all times. These are skills that are fun to have tested and build master in, and I don’t really think we should eliminate that from games. I agree that the worst offenders are simply trying to feed off human addiction rather than build are emergant gameplay situations, but any rule that targets the addict chasers is likely to catch other games with randomization in the crossfire.
I understand I didn’t make it clear in this comment and I apologize for that, elsewhere in the thread I made clear that I don’t want games like WoW/Diablo/Borderlands/Balatro to get banned, but I do think it’s important to recognize how their systems work and can impact people with addiction/gambling issues. I think we haven’t ever actually had a conversation about that aspect of these games, and I think it may be an important one to have, even if it only deeply affects a small sliver of society. Out of 9 billion people, a sliver is still often millions.
Also, and I do apologize, (especially if it was just a typo) but it is actually “wide berth” not “wide birth.” Otherwise, I agree with your point. However, I really did have friends who struggled with WoW in functionally the same way I have had other friends struggle with drugs and alcohol. They were in the minority, but they existed. I think it’s important to find ways to help those people deal with those issues without impacting the large number of people whom it does not. As I said elsewhere, I personally don’t have good ideas how to achieve that, I just know the conversation should happen. I would hope more clever and thoughtful people than I could have good ideas.