Interesting article in Wired by Clive Thompson about the pleasure that can be derived even from being very unskilled at a game. It seems that some very smart Finns over at M.I.N.D. Labs have been hooking up volunteer gamers to various biosensors and watched their biological reactions to Super Monkey Bowling, which is a mini-game in Super Monkey Ball 2, or something. I start to glaze over when there are too many monkeys floating around. Monkeys are distracting.
What they found was pretty darn interesting: When a player succeeds and knocks down a lot of pins, his or her body registers signs congruent with a pleasure reaction. That’s expected. When a player barely misses and does poorly as a result, frustration results, which is also expected. What’s a bit unexpected is to discover that when a player misses by a large margin, his or her body produces the same signs as when he or she succeeds.
As Clive mentions, that is totally the sign of a well-designed game. Expecting losing itself to be fun is probably asking too much, but if you can create such a joyously delightful experience that the process that leads right up to losing is fun, you’re probably going to do ok.
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July 18th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
blachawk
What would be more interesting and relevant would be a study that focused on player versus player games. How does one react after just barely losing that deathmatch or whatever the venue?
Still, the conclusion drawn from this study explains a lot about MMO addiction.
In my experience, the people who really catass in these games aren’t always the best. UO was a perfect example. If you were smart and had a good sense of how to play, you didn’t need to play every waking hour to compete with the best.
So a person would rather lose by a wide margin or win, but hates to lose by a narrow margin. That makes sense to me. Many if not most of the catassers I know either suck, but claim to enjoy the games for the social aspects, or refuse to compete in any sort of difficult challenge unless they have an overwhelming advantage.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
blachawk
Edit button FTW
“If you were smart and had a good sense of how to play, you didn’t need to play every waking hour to compete with the best.”
Should read
If you were smart and had a good sense of how to play, you didn’t need to play every waking hour to compete with the catassers.
July 19th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Larkin
To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed losing at PvP in Achaea, even just in an arena spar. Losing in Lusternia, however, is typically a lot of fun. (I do win more often than lose, however.)
As far as console or arcade games go, my friends and I have loads of fun losing games. Sometimes it’s funny to watch your character scrambling for the right spell or weapon and failing miserably. The best games to lose are the ones that have humorous results from getting injured or dying, such as a character taunting you or your character getting turned into a tomb stone landmark.