7 Psychology Principles Video Game Designers Use to Guide Players

[00:00:00]every game tricks us into doing as we're told but what exactly are they doing and why as games have got more advanced so to have the methods developers used to control us when players are faced with open worlds or broad choices game designers have to employ thoughtful hidden systems to keep us on the correct track but there's a balance make these cues too obvious and it ruins the sense of immersion make them too vague and will get lost and frustrated in this video we'll break down the secrets that game developers use to keep us playing but it's about more than just game design much of what we'll talk about involves psychology designers use everything from lighting tricks to our innate behavioral patterns to direct us we'll explain why loop boxes are so addictive and why near misses in games feel almost as good as wings and we'll look at how gains steal ideas from theme park designers to dictate our behavior I promise you'll never look at games the same way again here are 7 ways gains his psychology to control you the idea of offering a reward for an action seems like a simple one we do quests in games to get better gear or gain XP but this is a superficial way of looking at it behind the scenes there's some very interesting stuff going on now please don't take this personally because it might sound like we're comparing you to rats but really not the most relevant piece of research on this was done by a psychologist named BF Skinner Skinner kept rats that were fed every time they pressed a lever now when he began to run low on food himself he changed the system so the rats were only fed every tenth time they pressed the lever in doing so he discovered a brand new area of psychology one that is directly relevant to how we play games there are loads of ways this can be applied in an RPG for example players gain levels with a certain amount of XP to continue with the rat analogy we gain one level after ten presses another after 20 and so on other games offer rewards at random you might get a drop on the third press or the 30th so long as we understand the rules were obliged to keep on pressing and that means there's always a reason to keep playing in fact offering a reward then taking it away is actually worse than never offering it in the first place this is something psychologists call the over justification effect for example if you know a game awards achievements or trophies for certain actions but doesn't for the main quest then you're less likely to complete it so offering rewards in the wrong way can actually hurt your motivation rather than increase it rewards and achievements work best when they feel like they take place in the natural course of the game this is called intrinsic motivation most of us are happy to reap the rewards from the main campaign of a game but ask us to do something outside of that and our motivation drops this is why we have to be especially motivated to mop up all the extra stuff after we've completed a game and it's also why the loot grind in games like destiny works so well the promise of a massive reward in the distant future is powerful enough to keep us pressing that lever indefinitely immersion sounds pretty straightforward and it's something we take for granted but it's a word we often use without thinking about the psychology of it how do developers make us actually feel like we're part of the world well there are loads of ways games can do this and a few ways it can go very wrong one of the most effective things again uses is a sense of spatial presence but simply this means you start to feel like you're part of the world when you're immersed in a game the choices you make change you make decisions that fit the world you're in and subconsciously you're more likely to enjoy those choices when you're fully immersed in Skyrim for example you're more likely to travel between towns on horseback or by carriage rather than using fast travel and even the act of doing so will improve your experience this might sound like simple role-playing but it's deeper than that on his amazing website the psychology of video games psychologist Jamie Madigan breaks down many of the elements games used to keep us motivated he explains that when everything in a game world feels natural and complete it's easier to feel immersed contrivances such as silly reasons why a town is deserted or invisible walls unlikely to shatter that immersion there are loads of tricks you might not notice that increase your sense of immersion in the article Madigan explains that the more senses a game assaults of one the more immersed you'll feel so seeing a bird flying overhead in the game is good whilst hearing it cool out is even better and it's for this reason that 3d games are particularly immersive and another trip games play to disguise any shortcomings is forcing you to concentrate on understanding or navigating the world you're in this means that when you're concentrating on a task it's less likely you'll notice things that would normally break your sense of immersion if you're worried about that wolf howl you just heard or whether you're on the correct path to Whiterun you're less likely to notice that the fish aren't real by narrowing your focus the world around you feels more real our brains like to keep things organized they compartmentalize and order things and games can use that to tell us what to do on an obvious level this is as simple as a single color telling us where to go but the reasons why this works so well and the fact we barely even need to think about it at all are fascinating to do this games use something called selective attention theory behind this is that when you concentrate hard enough on a thing your brain blocks out anything else that's irrelevant an excellent example of this was done by Dan Simon's at the University of urbana-champaign go on click the link on a watch or wait did you spot the gorilla well if not you've just experienced something called inattentional blindness and games can use this and the opposite of this to help keep you on the right track this is why color coding works in games Mirror's Edge is a great example we know in the first 10 seconds that we need to follow the red path so we keep looking for red objects the fact it's so obvious is a reflection on the nature of the game you're running as fast as you can and you always need to know where to go next game designers can use inattentional blindness to help improve your experience but it's not all just about running through red doors once you're used to searching for a specific color in a game you'll notice it more often now this really helps with navigation and helps reduce levels of frustration but of course the opposite is also true if you want to hide something using different colors and shapes really how so if your critical path is red making your hidden area yellow will make it harder to spot than an invisible gorilla so the next time you're searching for secret in a game don't just look for hidden doors look for hidden colors spotting the one that doesn't fit may lead to an interesting area or developers didn't only to find humans are compulsive creatures this is especially obvious when you look at the reasons people gamble it's not just about winning back lost money we're wired to think that near misses are as good as winds as Madigan's so perfectly puts it I'm not failing I'm almost succeeding according to our daft brains borderline failures are just as rewarding as successes the example madigan uses is a 2009 paper gambling this showed that gamblers take near misses as a sign they should keep on playing this might be because near misses activate the same reward centers in the brain as wins this is something we see in games all the time there are many applications of this in game most near misses in games of skill-based rather than chance but they activate the same systems if we feel like we almost won a battle in total war for example we're more likely to try it again and then there are games like XCOM offer the promise of a different outcome if all the Charles roles go your way and this could be the reason that loot boxes are so popular missing out on that legendary item should make us give up but it doesn't this is because we're inherently irrational creatures even if the odds remain the same just coming close to the thing we want is enough motivation to keep this trial think on that the next time you're sure your next loop box will give you the right skin for Divac or the correct cudgel for Swamp Thing ever have that feeling where you tumble between quests unable to stop playing when you start a game after dinner and the next thing you know it's 5 a.m. and the Sun is coming up well there's a name for it and it'll probably remind you of high school science lessons about gravity say hello to Newtonian engagement the name is a reference to Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion which states that an object once set in motion will continue in that motion until it is acted upon what does this have to do with games I hear you was well plenty apart from the obvious application to ragdoll physics the idea is that you'll keep playing a game until you have a reason to stop there are of course always external factors in play like you need to eat sleep or go to work but games are getting better and better and hiding the gaps between missions as you might expect Madigan has an excellent article on this too he refers to a GDC talk by Nils Pihl at GDC China in 2013 which explains that we keep playing until we reach a reevaluation point Jerald right these occur once we've completed a task in game and we pause to decide if we'll keep playing or stop and do something else Ubisoft is fantastic hiding reevaluation once you complete one tower and four more quests flower in front of you the same with the bounty board in The Witcher 3 but there are games that don't do this Madigan uses Metal Gear Solid 5 as an example of a game that fails to hide its reevaluation points once you've completed a mission you can either hop back on the helicopter or cross the map in search of another task but both give you the chance to stop playing and do something else but in an article on games radar Dan Dawkins argues that this is exactly the point in mgs 5 snake is effectively phoning in his job I constantly reader points the battlefield he suggests that by repeating missions and deployments the player experiences the same as snake it's a generous reading but this could be Kojima using a psychology of open-world games to hammer home his point whichever way you look at it at least you have a name for the reason you were late to work today just blame it on Newtonian engagement are you the sort of person who hundred percents every game you buy or do you play them for a few hours step away and try something else the chances are even if you're in the latter group there's a small part of your brain telling you to go back and finish the job humans don't like it when we leave tasks unfinished it's very difficult to relax or focus on anything else when you have a specific task that still needs doing and when we finally finish that task we get closure and it feels rewarding that's why it's so easy to get sidetracked playing an RPG and why MMOs work so well once one quest is done two more just pop up in its place Madigan describes this perfectly as digital whack-a-mole and it's all to do with something called the Zeigarnik effect named after soviet psychologist and psychiatrist Bluma Zeigarnik but simply it's the idea that we find it easier to remember uncompleted tasks than completed ones because we're wired to worry about unfinished business it's the reason waiters can remember your food order right up until the moment they served you at which point they completely forget and it's for exactly this reason that MMOs and RPGs are designed so your quest log is never empty but this effect isn't limited to quests think about strategy or building games like civil Total War that one more turn factor is a direct result of this psychological phenomenon there's always something else left to do whether it's advancing your tech trees building new settlements or invading France in my case of course it's always invading France blame the cigar neck effect my final entry could be a video of its own it's all about the tricks games use to aid navigation many older titles contain everything you needed to know on a single screen but it's much easier to get lost in sprawling open-world games and developers need to use more nuanced systems to direct us how do they do it theme parks have the answer one of the immersive ways games hints at where we're supposed to go is via weenies this is a term borrowed from Disney's theme park designers referring to large structures in the distance that hold the eye as well as looking interesting and important they also provide a reference point for navigation things like white gold tower and Oblivion provide you with context no matter where you are on the map there's a great garma Sutra article about this and load other navigational tricks by Martin Iruka it explains how even things like maps need to be designed differently some maps uncover things gradually for example because otherwise we'd never know where we'd be and then there are discreet ways games tell us where to go such as the laser trail in dead space contrast is another big factor we're drawn towards light areas in games and this is another brilliant way of showing us where to go again this is a trick borrowed from theme parks many Disney rides use light to mark their exits helping to reduce congestion another way of seeing just how prevalent this is is with the squint test close your eyes and stare at the screen chances are you'll still know which direction to go because of the light it's a simple trick many first-person games use and you'll notice it everywhere once you start looking there's even a squint mode feature in the Unreal Engine editor so developers can test the navigability of their games by using all the tricks we've covered in this video color shape inattentional blindness games can guide us along a path without ever breaking that all-important sense of immersion and it's the combination of these things that makes game development so impressive and playing games so special this is your lucky day so there you go 7 ways games are secretly telling us what to do please do go have a look at Jaime Madigan's excellent website about all this stuff we have barely scratched the surface and check out the links in the description below for more and if you like this video please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to Logitech G for more in-depth behind-the-scenes features thanks for watching