Games keep us motivated!

Prashant Choubey
Nov 5 · 2 min read
img source: unsplash.com

Have you ever wondered why we get bored after studying for long but rarely do we feel bored playing a game or sport?

This is because games are designed in to a way to give us a winning sensation at frequent intervals which keeps us going. While studying/reading this winning sensation is not automatically given.

But boring things can be gamified too. Like let’s take reading a boring book for example, you set small target for yourself to read 20 pages in an hour. Now start playing this game, you’ve to complete 20 pages in 60 minutes. Just go after this goal. You’ll get the winning sensation once you complete these 20 pages. Congratulations! , you’ve made reading a boring book an interesting game.

Everything that can keep humans interested for longer periods of time is a game designed to give frequent winning sensations. A successful game is a game comprising many smaller games. There are layers of game, every layer gives you winning sensation at different levels.

Another interesting question to ask is why are these “winning” sensations and not “losing” sensations. All successful games have a higher win probability than losing. This is because winning encourages trying again. But only winning is boring. So you lose sometimes, try again and win.

Games are what our society is run on. If you closely observe the world is a multi layered game. There are characters like you and me, sub-games like education and cheat codes like corruption.

The silver lining is that the probability of winning is higher than losing, can’t be any other way, else people will start quitting in big numbers and that’s not what we want.


I write one blog everyday at choubeysahab.substack.com

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