The Reinforcement of Habits in Multimedia
Why do we do what we do?
How are we encouraged/discouraged to do them? The ideas of Burrhus Frederic (BF) Skinner can help interactive designers with these questions. At a glance, he was an American psychologist most known for his work on operant conditioning and positive and negative reinforcement.
B.F. Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania on March 20, 1904. He was a smart, inventive kid. Skinner along with his friend created a business gathering elderberries and going to peoples’ doors to sell them. However, they encountered a problem. When they picked the berries off the branches, the unripe ones would fall off as well. As a solution, they built a device with water in which the ripe berries would sink to the bottom and the unripe ones would float to be discarded.
He attended Hamilton College with hopes of becoming a professional writer. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature, he wrote some short newspaper articles and tried writing a novel. However, he found little success. Skinner thought he had little worldly experience and perspective to draw inspiration and write from. He would later refer to these as the “dark years”.
Afterwards he pursued further education and enrolled in the Psychology Department of Harvard University. Encouraged by a fellow student, Skinner created a prototype of the Skinner Box, a device which is used to study a subject animal and teach them certain behaviors though the use of stimuli. He received his PhD in 1931 and continued at Harvard as a researcher.
Skinner’s Primary Ingredients
B.F. Skinner researched positive and negative reinforcement as a part of operant conditioning in which a behavior is either encouraged or discouraged. In positive reinforcement, repeat behavior is encouraged through the use of positive stimuli, whereas in negative reinforcement, a behavior is discouraged through the use of negative stimuli.
Positive/Negative Reinforcement in Multimedia
Positive and negative reinforcement is used in all facets of life, from getting grounded for staying out past curfew, to getting a reward for doing well on a test. Behavior is heavily influenced by the succeeding result and this is no different for Interactive Multimedia. Here are some specific examples in the context of some recent experiences.
Positive Reinforcement
Missions/Challenges
One common thing in games nowadays is the presence of missions and challenges for the player to complete. These games use positive reinforcement to get players to complete these missions.
Fortnite is a great example of this. It is a battle royale third-person shooter where the goal is the to be the last one standing by the end of the game. The game has a “Battle Pass” that includes optional challenges that the player can complete to earn XP. As the player earns XP and levels up, they can gain an assortment of items in the Battle Pass including various cosmetics and in-game currency. These challenges are voluntary and do not impact the actual gameplay. However, Fortnite uses positive reinforcement to encourage the player to complete these challenges through the use of rewards. Do challenges -> get items -> repeat.
Daily Login Rewards
Many games (especially mobile games) nowadays feature a rewards schedule where the player receives an item or prize the first time they open the game in a day. Some of these games even give you bonus rewards for logging in a certain amount of consecutive days. They entice the player through positive reinforcement to open the game up daily to collect their free prize. Even if the player is too busy or doesn’t want to actually play the game during a particular day, they still may log in to collect their rewards.
For me personally, I have many games on my phone and computer that I don’t necessarily play every day. Despite this I still log in every day for all of them just to collect the rewards and it only takes about 20 seconds per game. Because of this I still have these games always floating around in the back of my mind and I feel like it’s a waste not to, because if I start playing those games again, I don’t want to be too far behind in resources and want to have a decent amount of items stockpiled up. One example of this is Paladins, It is a champion-based shooter that I probably only actually play about 2 days a week, despite this I log in every day to collect currency to buy new champions and skins for when I do actually play.
Negative Reinforcement
Hazards
Enemies and hazards that harm or kill the player appear in all types of games. However, sometimes it is not immediately obvious whether or not these hazards are harmful. Once the player interacts with the hazard, they then learn that they should avoid it.
This is done through the use of negative reinforcement, if a player knows that something will lead to an undesirable result, they will avoid it. One example of this is present in Chrono Trigger, a role-playing game. At the beginning of the game, you have the option of fighting the final boss Lavos. However, this is not obviously not encouraged, since the level of your units is way too low to even have a chance of beating Lavos at the beginning of the game. Challenging Lavos early is heavily discouraged because the player will be met with a “Game Over” screen and be forced to start from their previous save.
Fighting Games
In fighting games, a player plays against another player (often another human player). During the game, Player 1 might opt to do the same move/combo over and over again. Thus, Player 2 might react by doing something else to punish Player 1 for doing the same thing over and over again through the use of negative reinforcement.
One example of this is present in Super Smash Bros. Melee, a platform fighting game. During a game Player 1 might opt to shield Player 2’s attacks over and over again and punish them by doing something afterwards such as grabbing. Player 1 provides negative reinforcement to Player 2 by blocking all of their attacks and discourages them to hit their shield.
