EA has done it
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Meh personally I really want Bioware to win it as I thought they leapt and bounded last year whilst Blizzard kind of crashed and burned;
I did not play much Starcraft 1 but I finished Starcraft 2; I found it very generic and really overhyped not that it was a bad game but I found it very mediocre and certainly not deserving of the fanboy 10/10. I am glad I was not alone in that view. I am a wow player and have been so since launch but have been on hiatus since december due to degree studies but also boredom. I just think Blizzard have kind of reached their apex HOWEVER Diablo 3 could certainly win me back as for their new MMO which is apparently a shooter; I will not go near it as I can predict the community a bunch of ex COD drop outs going Herp-herp derp derp boom and pretty much that will be a large majority with their new IP if it is a shooter.
As for Valve I personally kind of have a huge distaste for half life just because I find it very very little on story that I got bored same for L4d. portal was ok. Apologies if I sound trollish just kind of a bioware fanboy at the moment as there games lately provided the best entertainment.
My personal BIG four
Bioware
Blizzard
Rockstar
Bethesda but I am kind of bias
I did not play much Starcraft 1 but I finished Starcraft 2; I found it very generic and really overhyped not that it was a bad game but I found it very mediocre and certainly not deserving of the fanboy 10/10. I am glad I was not alone in that view. I am a wow player and have been so since launch but have been on hiatus since december due to degree studies but also boredom. I just think Blizzard have kind of reached their apex HOWEVER Diablo 3 could certainly win me back as for their new MMO which is apparently a shooter; I will not go near it as I can predict the community a bunch of ex COD drop outs going Herp-herp derp derp boom and pretty much that will be a large majority with their new IP if it is a shooter.
As for Valve I personally kind of have a huge distaste for half life just because I find it very very little on story that I got bored same for L4d. portal was ok. Apologies if I sound trollish just kind of a bioware fanboy at the moment as there games lately provided the best entertainment.
My personal BIG four
Bioware
Blizzard
Rockstar
Bethesda but I am kind of bias
Call me a fanboy, but I stopped caring when the people who basicaly brought gaming back from the bring of total anailation were taken out by a company that hasn't even finished it's first bloody game. Not that I don't understand, but still - bit of a shock.
(Have to say though, the match ups at the start of this thing seemed even - hell, I couldn't pick more then five people to go to the second round, never mind who won. Mind you, at the time, I though I should be guessing what everyone else was going to say, but... Eh.)
(Have to say though, the match ups at the start of this thing seemed even - hell, I couldn't pick more then five people to go to the second round, never mind who won. Mind you, at the time, I though I should be guessing what everyone else was going to say, but... Eh.)
Okay, that is not the right usage of the term "Skinner box".Freechoice said:
Being able to sink time in an activity doesn't make it a Skinner box, by any loose definition of the term. WoW is a Skinner box. The crate system in TF2 is a Skinner box. Minecraft is not a fucking Skinner box.
What makes a Skinner box? Operant conditioning. Look it up.
Looked it up, couldn't find the concise point, watched the EC video.TiefBlau said:
You can dig a small hole, place a few blocks in front of you and bam, you've "won" the game. Nothing can kill you. Why bother continuing? Why expand your little hole into a home and your home into an inevitable doom fortress?
There is gold ore and lapis lazuli, largely purposeless rarities that require a great devotion to attain. Why harvest it?
You can add windows and glass to your volcano doom fortress despite it being a structural weakness or even add a rooftop garden with a complicated irrigation system. What's the point?
Why would you do any of this?
It's about as simplistic a skinner box as can be attained. The reward is the aesthetic as one needs very little to ward away any potential threats. There is no beating Minecraft. You simply play it until bored. It doesn't even tell you what you should be doing. That's why it's difficult to see the skinner box for what it is. Its reward system is so well guised within gameplay that you forget how much time you wasted building up a virtual castle and having hold armor that's about as useful as a paper clip covering your ghoulies. You don't even need negative reinforcement, but there are explosive NPC's that can fuck up your shit. It's a skinner box.
Your success is fleeting, grows progressively more difficult to maintain due to the infrequency of crafting materials and you will look back on the 80 hours you dumped into it and wonder, "what the hell was I doing?"
Jesus Christ...Freechoice said:
By your logic, Legos are a Skinner box too, because they have no real life application, and therefore any achievement attained is completely pointless.
Fuck, any videogame out there is a Skinner box by your definition.
Alright, fine. I'll explain.Freechoice said:
Like, eighty decades ago there was a man named, you guessed it, Skinner. He was interested in turning psychology into a science, et cetera. One of his experiments to test behavioral psychology in a laboratory environment involved a box. There was also a rat and a lever, but unfortunately, it's not called Skinner ratleverbox. He wanted to figure out ways to get the rat to voluntarily press the lever over and over again. So he made the lever dispense food every time the rat pressed it. At first this worked, but the rat eventually figured everything out, and stopped pressing it on a regular basis because it knows exactly where and when it could get the food if it was hungry. So Skinner tried a variety of reward schemes (dispense food every 7th lever press, dispense food on a random basis, etc.) and thus the Skinner box was born.
How is Minecraft, Legos, and almost every video game out there not like a Skinner box? Well, imagine if instead of a lever, Skinner was trying to come up with a way to get the mouse to drink water or breathe air. It would be pointless. There's no need to tell a rat to do something they've always wanted to do to begin with. This is intrinsic fucking motivation. That means that you wanted to build something in Minecraft for the sake of building something in Minecraft. You wanted to beat Mario or Portal or Starcraft because you felt it was worth it to beat Mario or Portal or Starcraft. Because it's fun.
Operant conditioning is fueled by the creation of various incentives completely unrelated to the desired behavior. World of Warcraft and Farmville aren't evil for getting people to play their games for long periods of time. They're evil for getting people to play their games long after they stopped having fun. You can say to yourself, "Gee, I don't think I want to play Farmville anymore" but you still wouldn't stop if you knew your farm was going to die if you didn't water it every ten minutes or something (I never played Farmville), because if you ever decide that you want to play again, you would have to start all over, and that would be a total waste. TF2's crate system is also an example of a Skinner box-styled system because its random crate system makes you pay 2.50 perhaps out of curiosity or the allure of getting rare items only to find that you get a stupid common item about 99% of the time. Like a slot machine. Did I mention gambling uses Skinner box methods?
So would that make finding gold and lapis lazuli a kind of skinner box scheme? Yeah, okay. It's an incredibly stupid thing to say, though. Do you go into Burger King and say "WELL GEE THESE FRENCH FRIES ARE LIKE A SKINNER BOX YOU FIND AN ONION RING IN THERE SOMETIMES" before getting kicked out by a very irritated manager? No. You really, really don't. I guess you can call all grinding and random drops or any rewards at all "Skinner box methods", but they're so common and on such a small, pointless scale that just about every game and most activities have them. It wouldn't even be realistic if they didn't. What's the alternative, having a specific level of ground designated to gold, another to redstone, and another to lava? Now that'd be stupid.
Another reason calling Minecraft a Skinner box is utterly retarded is because Minecraft has no absolute system of reward. If you wanted more gold, you can literally just turn on admin status and give yourself more fucking gold. If creepers or zombies are bothering you, it's as easy as going into options and changing difficulty to "Harmless". This shit ain't World of Warcraft. There's no in-game currency. You can quit Minecraft whenever you want. They don't destroy your buildings if you don't play every 5 hours. It's just there, and completely up to you whether or not you want to play it.
Congratulations, you just described every hobby out there.Freechoice said:
I would be more inclined to have a logical debate if you weren't trying so hard to display your anger over the internet. Your rage does not make your argument more compelling.TiefBlau said:
Or in other words, tl;dr.Freechoice said:
The presence of the word "fucking" and well-mannered behavior aren't mutually exclusive. I happen to use italics to, you know, create emphasis, and find it humorous to imagine hammering points onto the blank slate of perpetual ignorance.
But that's not really important, is it? No, you just don't want to argue with me because that would mean admitting that you made an honest mistake. GOD FORBID.
Watch it now. Tag Force 5 is awesome.Sober Thal said:
OP: It is just a popularity contest. Does it really matter who wins?
If Mojang beats valv i am giving up as i am okay with how far it got now as it hasnt really came up against that much competition sorry but nintendo hasnt brought out a good game at least for the last year.
But now it getting serious and if i see a indie developer that has it game still in beta beat the best developer in the buisiness i will just not pay any attention to this next year
But now it getting serious and if i see a indie developer that has it game still in beta beat the best developer in the buisiness i will just not pay any attention to this next year
The biggest problem in Halo is that it's too meh. It's an okay shooter.The Apothecarry said:
And frankly, I get much more enjoyment out of Minecraft than Halo Reach.
And besides, Half Life > Halo anyway.
On your first point, I cite the fact that I had to have at least read some of it to pick up the profanity and the italics. And yes, you adding "fucking" for emphasis does nothing to endear the argument through humor. It comes off as opinionated and conceited. Also, what's the purpose behind saying "GOD FORBID" as you did? You're passively making attacks against my character.TiefBlau said:
And I was trying to get an ad hominem response for an easy victory, but I'll continue the point.
As I understand it, a skinner box used in games will create the illusion of amusement by predicating a system of rewards and using that system to keep players within the world as the primary motivation to continue playing.
Nick Yee [http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html] will help prove my point.
"The rewards cycle in EverQuest begins with instant gratifications. When you start a new character, everything you need to do is close by - finding the guildmaster; finding mobs to kill. The first few mobs you attack die in several swings and you make level 2 in about 5 kills. By the time you make level 3 half an hour later, you are more aware of the underlying skill points, the accumulation of money, and gain a desire to get better equipment. Gradually, it takes longer and longer to get to the next level. The simple tasks that you did to improve trade skills have become trivial, but the rewards you get - the blue skill points and the metal bits - drive you to perform tasks more elaborate than before because trivial tasks are no longer rewarded. The one-click reward disappears, and is gradually replaced by rewards that take more and more clicks to get. And suddenly, some of us find ourselves clicking away for hours in front of a forge or jewellery kit."
Now let's transpose a few words.
The rewards cycle in Minecraft begins with instant gratifications. When you start a new character, everything you need to do is close by - finding some wood; finding mobs to kill. The first few mobs you attack die in several swings and you make your first tools in about 5 minutes. By the time you make iron tools half an hour later, you are more aware of the underlying skill points, the accumulation of material, and gain a desire to get better equipment. Gradually, it takes longer and longer to get to the next level. The simple tasks that you did to improve your tools have become trivial, but the rewards you get - the windows and doors - drive you to perform tasks more elaborate than before because trivial tasks are no longer rewarded. The one-click reward disappears, and is gradually replaced by rewards that take more and more clicks to get. And suddenly, some of us find ourselves clicking away for hours in front of a furnace or crafting table.
Now the most obvious differences between the two is the visibility of randomness. You will get something with enough effort in Minecraft. But then it becomes more like a fixed schedule. It's less effective, but still a tactic. I believe it is countered slightly by the degree of control you can exert over the world, but I cannot say for sure.
As a response to the definition of a Skinner Box:
"It is in the same way that EverQuest shapes players to pursue more and more elaborate blacksmithing or tailoring combinations. Moreover, EverQuest players continue to attempt elaborate combinations in the face of many costly failures."
You might be holding some of your most valuable equipment, but fall into lava and die whilst searching for gold for golden apples.