By Ben Reeves | September 25, 2014
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….In order to better understand why gamers are sometimes drawn to challenging experiences, I talked with Dr. Scott Rigby, president of Immersyve, a research firm that has worked with companies like Warner Bros., Electronic Arts, and Disney to help them understand player motivation for over a decade. I have previously talked with Rigby about what drives us to play games, and he was eager to share some of his findings regarding game difficulty.
“Decades of research on what energizes us intrinsically show repeatedly that we have a basic need to grow our abilities, to integrate new experiences, learning and improving as we go along,” says Rigby. “We can see this in our pursuit of challenges in games, but just as easily in our pursuit of excellence playing soccer with friends, or seeking out new challenges at work, etc. We like it because success at a challenge satisfies this basic need to feel mastery and growth – a need that has energized us for thousands of years to keep exploring, innovating, and tackling new frontiers.”
However, Rigby continued to explain that, for some people, failure provides additional information about how to succeed the next time. Gamers seem especially skilled at getting up, brushing themselves off, and trying a new tactic that leads to victory. Games, in turn, give players strong “informational feedback” that helps them find these path to success.
“At the same time, if we feel a challenge is not within our reach – if it is pushing us too hard – we will disengage,” says Rigby. “One way we see this in video games is in boss battles: In our data, across many different titles, after around the fourth ‘death,’ there is a massive spike in churn-out. Players hit the off button in greater numbers, and many won’t come back. Simply put, the psychological experience happening in the brain is something like this: ‘The challenge is not optimal for me. It is too much and it is causing anxiety. My need for mastery is only going to continue to be frustrated. See ya…’”
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/09/25/why-we-like-hard-games.aspx
