People often play games to gain pleasure by seeking rewards. Playing games, however, is frequently not fun e.g. in Tetris you die eventually and have to start from the beginning. Thus it is ‘painful’ to play Tetris because you will never be able to progress or complete the game. People continue to play because games tap into the rain’s natural reward circuitry. Within games, there are clear rewards such as more lives, objects and progressing to the next level. There is always a new reward so people continue playing the game, even though it can bring pain and frustration.
According to Hallford and Hallford (2002) there are four types of reward, glory, substance, access and facility.
Applying this theory to Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone, it is clear that there are constant rewards within the game. In order to progress, you must learn a new spell so this can be viewed as a facility reward; you are enhancing Harry’s abilities to improve his magic. The newly learnt spell must then be practised in order to discover new rooms, collecting Bertie Botts beans, wizard cards and house points. These are access rewards, finding new locations and resources. Harry Potter must also learn how to play Quidditch, however, this does not help to win so is a glory reward; it is pleasurable for the player to do but has no impact on the game. In order to maintain Harry’s energy, you must find chocolate frogs so this is a substance reward.
People enjoy gaining rewards and the subject matter is usually irrelevant. Whether it is finding a new spell or learning Quidditch, this is irrelevant, what is important is that it is a reward, which is what the human brain is wired to seek out. Other media don’t provide this so playing digital games is important for people to gain satisfaction and pleasure from being rewarded.
Bibliography
Hallford, Neal and Hallford, Jana (2002). Swords and Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games. Course Technology PTR.
No comments:
Post a Comment