There are a ton of ways video games have always done that...but the writeups I'm aware of from MS's researchers were looking more at the Skinner Box. Then again, the author retracted his statements regarding it last year.Cronozilla wrote: There's actually a deeper issue with achievements, that I don't think people are aware of. They were designed after studying what happens to people when they gamble. Microsoft has done a lot of research, not into how to make things fun ... but in how to manipulate the pleasure centers. Achievements is one of the things to come out from that, and in a lot of ways, its feedback functions like a slot machine.
I think most of it isn't wrong per se. Just that it's less a construct of the companies, and more a recognition of why players like the things they do.
Achievements are less like that I think, since they're fixed. The bigger slot machine psychology stuff would be random rewards in MMOs or something. Kill this NM over and over and it has a 5% chance to drop what you want. Didn't drop this time? Maybe next time!
That's a bit different from having a list of stuff you've accomplished in games. It might enhance the aspect of game successes being used as a surrogates for harder-to-achieve progress in real life...but games do that anyway.
