Recently I watched an interesting video on Kotaku of Jesse Schell's presentation at the DICE Summit. He talks about the future of videogames, talks about market trends and then goes on to talk about how clever psychological tricks and marketing trends will influence society. Welcome to marketing in the 21st century Jesse!
What was the most interesting part of his topic is his prediction that reward systems will permeate our society even more so than it does now, and this theory I can see happening as it's already dramatically taking hold of the world. It's the simple psychological tricks that are already used in games: I want achievements! I want lots of unlocks! I want a high level! I want to be rewarded! I mean look at the left of your screen and you'll see the badges you've earned on the forum, I don't know about you but I like getting awesome badges.
You see this is all well and good as people like to be praised and rewarded and will often go to lengths to get these rewards with the delicious carrot dangled in front of them, but in the real world does it work? yes in some instances but there comes a point where people think to themselves why am I doing this? why do I want all these points? I can get a reward but is it really worth it? and that's where you lose the consumer exactly like a veteran mmo player who gets tired of their favourite game. When we are rewarded all the time what makes anything rewarding at all?
Source [http://kotaku.com/5479125/points-for-toothbrushing-the-gaming-speech-everyone-is-talking-about]
Well that's enough of my rambling, thoughts?
What was the most interesting part of his topic is his prediction that reward systems will permeate our society even more so than it does now, and this theory I can see happening as it's already dramatically taking hold of the world. It's the simple psychological tricks that are already used in games: I want achievements! I want lots of unlocks! I want a high level! I want to be rewarded! I mean look at the left of your screen and you'll see the badges you've earned on the forum, I don't know about you but I like getting awesome badges.
You see this is all well and good as people like to be praised and rewarded and will often go to lengths to get these rewards with the delicious carrot dangled in front of them, but in the real world does it work? yes in some instances but there comes a point where people think to themselves why am I doing this? why do I want all these points? I can get a reward but is it really worth it? and that's where you lose the consumer exactly like a veteran mmo player who gets tired of their favourite game. When we are rewarded all the time what makes anything rewarding at all?
Source [http://kotaku.com/5479125/points-for-toothbrushing-the-gaming-speech-everyone-is-talking-about]
Well that's enough of my rambling, thoughts?
