Section 8-3: Video Games and Reinforcement Schedules

-Courtesy of arcadeclassics.net-

The systems used in conditioning are deeply intertwined into the development and creation of videogames, and the videogame culture. The first step in the evolution of videogames into the monetary monstrosities that they are now is in the creation of the public arcade machine, which held "HIGH SCORES". With the highscore system your name could forever be written in the annals of history at your local arcade by being the highest scorer on the arcade machine. This pitted player against player in more than just a battle of skills, but a financial battle to have the highest score possible. This model is taken to the next level in game models of games such as "Metal slug" which allow the player to retain their previous score and continue on, if they insert the next coin within 10 seconds of dying. I'm not sure if game developers were intentional in this money making mechanic but within the next decade they would be.

-Courtesy of seobyswaby.wordpress.com-

Some promontional material actually excludes her face...
Obviously the emphasis is elsewhere...
-Image Courtesy of mr-margo.gamerdna.com

In what appears to be a bit of a financial backwards step, companies such as Nintendo started to make 'home' arcade consoles that allowed the purchaser to pay a one time fee for the machine, and then a one time fee for each game or 'cartridge' and could play in the comfort of their own home without any additional fees except for the game. Due to game developers only major source of income during this period being the initial sales of the game, many developers started to use evaluative conditioning in their games to boost sales. Take for example Lara Croft and the 'Tomb Raider' video game series. While Tomb Raider was an advanced and good platformer at the time of its release, it's sales were greatly boosted by making the main character a busty feminine model type. Thus the previously neutral stimulus to the primarily male (at the time) gaming audience of a male protagonist was replaced with a pleasing to look at female protagonist.

-Courtesy of spreadshirt.net-

With the release of the 2nd generation of Microsoft gaming consoles (the XBOX360) Microsoft announced to its developers a new and mandatory mechanic to be implemented into all of their games, a artificial points system known as Gamerscore. this points system would total cumulitvely across all games and provide special recognition to players that obtained all available points in a particular game.

-Courtesy us.playstation.com-

This drove sales of XBOX360 games in multiple ways, first the desire to continually buy new games and continue building your individual gamerscore total, and second it lengthed fairly short games into longer ones by making ridiculous to obtain achievements. This small reward has been shown to activate the reward centre of the brain and thus functions the same as operant conditioning when a rat pushes a lever to receive a reward, so too are the gamers rewarded by accomplishing virtual tasks.
This in some games gets out of hand to such an extent that developers are accused of spending more time planning lengthy achievements rather than focusing on actual game development. Take for example the 'Seriously 3.0' achievement in the game Gears of War 3 as it is explained here. This model was so successful that within the year of its launch Sony created an analogous system it called Trophies.


A new type of highly effective reward schedule has been created with the advent of social gaming and DLC which allows the gamer to unlock rewards that he would previously have had to wait for by either recruiting more people to the games (which are most often offered as free initially and rely on purchasing virtual items in the game for revenue) or monetarily compensating to skip the enforced wait time. You don't have to look very far in recent news to hear stories of children who lack the understanding of the value of a dollar to hear about multiple thousands spent towards these virtual rewards on their parent or grandparents credit cards in order to avoid the wait these games enforce otherwise. I suppose one could call this a variable-fixed interval reward schedule. fixed in the fact that without monetary compensation there is a set time limit, variable in the fact that with a financial contribution you can 'skip the line'.

-Courtesy of mobygames.com-