Behavioural Psychology and Conditioning
For any game to gain, grow and keep its player base, designers need to use certain techniques. Games incorporate these techniques through aspects of psychology. Especially behavioural psychology which helps keep people engaged. Whether this be in games or in day to day use.
Classical Conditioning
Behavioural psychology is arguably the most common use for psychology in games and in the general world. It is the idea that the environment is a prime catalyst for learning through interaction. Classical Conditioning is one aspect where players are subconsciously taught game rules. A neutral stimulus is an action that produces no response. An unconditioned stimulus is something that can naturally occur in the environment. When combined together, this creates a conditioned stimulus. This makes a subject matter react to the thought of a conditioned stimulus.
Let’s Shift this to a Games Perspective
Audio-visual cues are one of the prime cues that can be used to generate the same effect as seeing an action. Particularly in horror where sound plays a pivotal role in pacing, suspense and scare factor. Through associating a particular noise with an antagonist, players can be conditioned over time to elicit those same emotions through playing the sound without needing to place the enemy alongside. Having this noise play either before or during the enemy introduction during the conditioning process gives the best possible result. Once players have been conditioned to react to a type of stimulus, developers gain benefits through a reduction in production time. Why have an enemy take up development time when an audio cue on a conditioned player will give the same result? Silent Hill and the use of Pyramid Head is a prime example of this occurring.
Operant Conditioning
Classical conditioning is useful for saving resources during development, primarily with respect to audio cues. Yet operant conditioning allows for further learning through reinforcement. By repeating behaviours in game, players can distinguish between positive and negative interactions. This allows designers to steer player interaction towards the intended direction. This can happen many ways, including:
- Positive rewards: These types of rewards add a good thing, such as experience points or new gear for the player to use.
- Positive Punishment: Enemies or Items that add status effects or extra obstacles.
- Negative reward: Takes away a positive punishment, otherwise known as escape conditioning. For example using a potion to clear a negative status effect.
- Avoidance conditioning comes under this category. This prevents a negative punishment from happening. This would include blocking an attack or using counter attacks.
- Negative punishment: Takes away something good from the player. This ranges from health to the player’s gear and companions.
Game Example: Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart Wii is an ideal example when comparing how operant conditioning works. The game allows the player to learn the mechanics and items of the game through the use of these techniques. When coupled with classical conditioning, players further understand the benefits of their actions. The item box itself encompasses all instances of operant conditioning through its contents. The item box always provides positive rewards by providing you with a good item (unless you self inflict the item on yourself such as those pesky bananas). Items within the box provide positive punishments. The POW box provides an obstacle where players need to jump. In this example speed is something good the player needs but the POW box takes away any items the player has. Failure to jump means a negative punishment impacts the player. Further providing more negative punishment and greater incentive to dodge.
Escape and avoidance conditioning both have their place within the game. Both in the environment and items within the box. The squid is a usable item that provides a positive punishment with ink on the screen, but can be diminished through the use of speed ramps in the environment or mushrooms from boxes. See the diagram below for how each item is used with respect to operant conditioning.
For the item box, every item provides a positive effect for the player when they drive over it. The items that affect other players through positive and negative punishment can all be countered through the use of escape and avoidance conditioning. This allows players to devise strategy throughout the track. All items, that is, apart from two.
Problems with the Blue Shell and Thunderbolt
The blue shell is one such item that does not fit the mould. It does not adhere to the conditioning rules that every other item follows. To escape, the player needs to use a mushroom at a precise moment to escape the blast, which in itself is challenging to accomplish. As the blue shell only targets a player in first place, it can be near impossible to dodge as the item pool for a player in the lead does not include a mushroom . This does not provide a positive reward to the player using the shell as using a blue shell doesn’t guarantee that the player in first becomes displaced to a lesser position (it does provide an emotional reward, knowing you have impeded a player through your input which means they may lose the race).
The thunderbolt is another item that has negative associations. For the same reasons as the blue shell, it is near impossible to counter. However, as it affects every player in front of the user instead of the leader, the use case for this item is clearer. It is used as a catching up tool due to how players are grouped together, leading to more engagements with each other.
As the blue shell only gives negative punishment, it’s associated with negative connotations. Due to this, wider implications occur. For example, positive punishment effects may be more challenging to balance. Does an item get added to allow a counter? Or is the offending item removed, causing a full re structure of spawn rates. So, it’s important to either find a way that allows players to counteract, or to balance it out with rewards. But what types of rewards are there? When are they used? How should they benefit the player? The next blog will answer these problems.
