A Case Study in the Use of Operant Conditioning in the Design of Interactive Media
Our chef: BF Skinner and his ingredient → Operant Conditioning
Burrhus Frederic (BF) Skinner was born March 20, 1904 in Pennsylvania. At the end of his 86 years, he held a very nice reward — a National Medal of Science, having made great strides in the fields of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy at Harvard University.
A frustrated writer
Originally, Skinner wanted to become a professional writer and attended Hamilton College, where he joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. During a hazing ritual, he was tied to a pole overnight, but was able to cut himself out with a concealed blade in his shoe. After graduating from Hamilton, he spent nearly two years which he called the “Dark Ages” living with his parents and trying to write his first novel, with minimal success. He felt that in order to write a good book, one needed to have deep and enriched life experience; at only 24, Skinner felt he did not have the necessary life experience and gave up on writing professionally. Ironically, Skinner would publish a novel in 1948 called Walden Two, along with a series of autobiographies, after he had abandoned his dream of becoming a professional writer decades earlier.
After his failure as a writer, Skinner decided to attend Harvard University and pursue a career in psychology instead. While he was there, he would develop his most well known behavioral study, the Skinner Box. He received his PhD in 1931, but would stay at Harvard until 1936 as a researcher. That same year he would marry his one and only wife, Yvonne Blue, and eventually have two daughters named Julie and Deborah. Having two children would affect the way Skinner studied psychology and later on cause him to focus on education. Although he took some time away to teach at the University of Minnesota and Indiana University, he eventually returned to Harvard in 1948 and stayed there as a professor and head of the Psychology Department until his retirement in 1974. While there, he would develop many of the trials and behaviorism studies he would become highly popularized for in the 1970’s. Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 and would pass away a year later, with his wife following him in 1997. He would also become a man of controversy in the psychology world for his inventions, studies, and application of theories in real world scenarios.
From Classical to Operant: Evolution of Behaviorism
In the 1930’s, the reigning psychological theory for understanding learning was classical conditioning, wherein two stimuli repeatedly occur together. From studying classical conditioning, the idea that a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus can eventually be elicited by the first stimulus alone was born. In nonscientific terms, something that happens at the same time that something else triggers an action can come to cause the same results while having a different meaning. Pavlov, the creator of the classical conditioning theory, tested out his idea through the salivary glands of dogs:
By only ringing the bell without giving the dog food, Pavlov was still able to get the dogs to drool, because classical conditioning told them the bell signified feeding time. However, Skinner did not believe that classical conditioning showed the entire scope of complex human behavior and set out to conduct his own experiments on why humans act in certain ways. He felt that environment was just as important as conditions on the subject. For this, he created the Skinner Box.
Skinner tested his work on pigeons by allowing them to peck a certain target a number of times to earn food, or performing written actions the birds had memorized. There was also a lever for rats to pull to get food. He created reinforcements, the process of encouraging or establishing a belief or pattern of behavior, through either positive or negative rewards. Positive reinforcers strengthen a behavior through a positive event, and negative reinforcers strengthen a behavior through the removal of a negative event. He also came to believe that certain events were predestined and that thoughts or emotions cannot change human behavior, also known as behaviorism. The Skinner Box proved that people could be “shaped” into the desired behavior through continuous reinforcements. All of these complex behaviors come together to form operant conditioning, which is known as the association of a behavior and its consequence. The cause and effect nature of operant conditioning means it can be “chained” together to create longer strings of causes and effects with a greater overall change, which Skinner took to be a breakdown of very complex human behavior into smaller segments on the chain. As more stimuli, reinforcements, and responses are added, the chain better comes to represent the nature of humanity.
Throughout all of his testing, Skinner sought to understand the nature of human behavior; however, he only ever tested his work on animals, not humans. For many fellow psychologists, this tarnished the quality of his work because he was equating the actions of rats and pigeons to be equivalent to humans.
Operant Conditioning and Interactive Media
Skinner’s theories can create sometimes addicting rewards systems. The idea of active motivation — the “causes” Skinner creates through extrinsic motivation to get an exact effect — is discussed in this video, which does a good job of showing just how encompassing Skinner’s operant conditioning is in the world of gaming:
Final Fantasy VII.
This classic game employs rewards in thoughtful ways that create activity loops of gameplay without abusing the player’s motivations. Battling enemies drops a random item out of a certain set of drops, with more rare items showing up in a smaller percentage. This leads to activity loops because not being rewarded the best items immediately motivates players to “grind” or continue to fight certain enemies in an attempt to get those rarer items. Furthermore, there are optional boss battles that can give you excellent drops or even progress the storyline. The story is another form of operant conditioning, where beating certain bosses progresses the story. This is in its own way a reward to the player as it changes what actions (the “cause”) the player will take. Here is some gameplay from the final boss, along with end of story cutscenes:
Every choice the player makes leads to this moment, and in this video it is apparent the player has gone out of his way to set up each of his characters with specific armor, weapons, and items, done through grinding or beating optional bosses. Operant conditioning is well shown here, as the entirety of the game has created a motivational “chain” of causes and effects that lead to, for this player, beating the game. However, for every well crafted game like Final Fantasy VII, there is a dust game that abuses its manipulation of the player.
Games like World of Warcraft may begin as magic to the player, but often turn to dust as the player reaches a higher level.
In this gameplay, the player is already a very high level, but they continue to play it without a real reward. The enemies they face only drop experience, which is not useful for the player because they are already such a high level. Any drops the enemies make are not useful either — the player’s weapons and armor are too high to be replaced by simple drops. So why continue to play? The answer is that operant conditioning is being abused. World of Warcraft wastes the player’s time with leveling systems that do not lead to a greater reward, but rather are used to extend the overall gameplay time to make paying for the game seem “worth it.” In the same way that a man at the casino will spend all his money without reward but still feel satisfied he took the chance, the player takes the chance he will gain a new reward that will cause him to keep playing. Further, there are no intrinsic rewards in WoW either; the story is vague and does not matter to the gameplay, which means the player’s causes to play must rest solely on the leveling system. Once players hit a certain level cap, the game is no longer worth the time it takes to grind for items when there is no real purpose for it.
A better example of rewards systems is found in Dota 2.
This game has a randomized reward system that gives a random level and quality item every time the “Battle Experience” bar at the top fills up. This is an effective way to reward players because it does not frequently reward players, but still motivates them to want to play a few games, get a random item, then continue to play on and hopefully get another random item again. In the same way that the Skinner Box gives a seed to the pigeon after a random number of pecks, Dota 2 works with the player to motivate them to play without making it their only motivation to play. It’s a nice balance that does not abuse the willingness of the player to invest a lot of time or money into their success in the game, and can be considered a bit of magic for that reason.
Operant Conditioning gone wrong: Star Wars Battlefront II
It takes about 40 hours of play for the average player to unlock just one top-tier character in Star Wars Battlefront II.
With 14 top-tier characters to unlock, that would take the player 560 hours or over 23 days to unlock everyone.
If the gameplay were exceptional, you might be able to overlook the lack of rewards. But it isn’t. In my review, I’d call it “dull at best without any trace of story or significant reward.”
That means all of the gameplay relies on the character unlocking to reward players. Not only is that not fair to players, EA took it a step further and allowed players to spend money on randomized loot crates to unlock characters quickly, but it would take thousands of dollars to unlock every character. This attempt to exploit the addictive nature of the game EA created is cruel. You have to spend $80, and then some more to satiate the conditioning in the game.
Conclusion
BF Skinner never saw a modern game console, but his clear thinking combined with his excellent research methods can be a game designers best friend. It is easier to flag the the use and abuse of reward systems which are more frequently being used as the result of the greed of the game designer.
It is up to the designer to responsibly use operant conditioning, and it is up to the consumer to recognize when it is being used.
