\"Awesome by proxy\". The 2 types of gamer

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roid
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\"Awesome by proxy\". The 2 types of gamer

Post by roid »

http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awe ... -fake.html

i thought this was relevant to players of hard games like Descent.
(i minimised the intro up until the part of interest)
Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

When I was old enough to care whether I won or lost at games, but still too young to be any good at them, I decided RPGs were better than action games. After all, I could play Contra for hours and still be terrible at it - while if I played Dragon Warrior III for the same amount of time, my characters would gain levels and be much more capable of standing up to whatever threats they encountered. To progress in an action game, the player has to improve, which is by no means guaranteed - but to progress in an RPG, the characters have to improve, which is inevitable.

As I grew older, this conclusion lay dormant and unexamined in my mind. RPGs continued to be my favorite genre. I relished the opportunity to watch interesting, lovable characters develop and interact in epic storylines. (Comparatively interesting and lovable, anyway - say what you will about Cecil, but his quest for redemption revealed a lot more depth than Mega Man's quest to shoot up some robots.) And I loved feeling like a hero. I saved the world in Final Fantasy IV, again in Lufia II, then again in Chrono Trigger.

Then,
one day in a Child Psychology course, I learned something interesting.

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation (\"Paul\") and a person with a mastery orientation (\"Matt\"). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved.

Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle.

While a performance orientation improves motivation for easy challenges, it drastically reduces it for difficult ones. And since most work worth doing is difficult, it is the mastery orientation that is correlated with academic and professional success, as well as self-esteem and long-term happiness.

In childhood, it is remarkably easy to instill one orientation or the other. It all comes down to the type of praise you receive. If you perform well on a task and are told, \"Wow, you must be smart!\" it teaches you to value your skill, and thus fosters a performance orientation. But if instead you are told, \"Wow, you must have worked hard!\" it teaches you to value your effort and thus fosters a mastery orientation.

What does this have to do with videogames? Well.

RPGs are many things, but they are almost never hard. As I realized in childhood, the vast majority of RPG challenges can be defeated simply by putting in time. RPGs reward patience, not skill. Almost never is the player required to work hard - only the characters need improve. Failing to defeat Zeromus might mean your strategy is flawed, but it also might mean your level is too low. Guess which problem is easier to remedy?

Yet while the player is mostly marking time, the characters are accomplishing epic, heroic deeds, saving lives and defeating evil. Even when the player is not explicitly praised for this, the game makes its attitude clear. \"You're awesome!\" it says, in essence. \"You're so strong and noble and heroic!\" The player is showered with praise for non-achievements. It's like porn for the performance oriented.

The characters make all the effort, but the player receives all the accolades. The game doesn't have to say \"Wow, you must be smart!\" to train the player to value impressiveness that was not hard-won - even when the praise is for effort rather than skill, it is a lie. The player has expended only time.

\"You may have cursed this never-ending journey. You have known injury and defeat, but you have struggled on to reach this place. Your in-born intelligence and courage have helped bring you here. You have believed in your friends, and as a group, you have supported each other. Have you ever stopped to consider how much your power has grown?\"
—Tenda tribe member, Earthbound


When I learned about performance and mastery orientations, I realized with growing horror just what I'd been doing for most of my life. Going through school as a \"gifted\" kid, most of the praise I'd received had been of the \"Wow, you must be smart!\" variety. I had very little ability to follow through or persevere, and my grades tended to be either A's or F's, as I either understood things right away (such as, say, calculus) or gave up on them completely (trigonometry). I had a serious performance orientation. And I was reinforcing it every time I played an RPG.

(article continues)
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Post by Krom »

This makes me think of an older game I used to play a lot called Oni. My favorite level was the second to last level. I used to play this level over and over again because it was easy and accessible fun. There was only one cheat code I would use while playing this level \"hurtmeplenty\" which turned off some restrictions on the AI's movement and combo moves they would use making them even stronger than the hardest mode. I would challenge the level by attempting to beat it on the cheat hard mode without using any health powerups through the whole level, and I really had a lot of fun that way.

That and the huge amount of time I spent playing Indika 3 in Descent 3 even though I never really liked that level. I at least grew to not dislike it. :P
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Post by Top Gun »

Not to bump this up a bit or anything...but holy crap, roid, this is kind of a personal revelation for me. I was able to cruise through all of grade school and most of high school without having to apply much effort, because just about everything came easily to me. I was at the top of my class throughout that whole period, and I received the scholarships and academic awards and fluff to go along with it; I was just the sort of \"smart kid\" that the New York Magazine article is talking about. Then I made it to college...and I eventually ran into what felt like a wall of difficulties. I'd never learned proper studying and time-management skills, since I'd never needed to, and I was either too proud or too ashamed to ask for much help; as you can imagine, this wasn't a good combination. I eventually graduated, but I know I could have performed far better than I did and had a much better experience if I had approached things differently from the beginning.

Strangely enough, though, I've never really been one for RPGs, for a variety of reasons. But I think I can extend the concept over to more action-based games as well, since I'm generally fairly skilled in the hand-eye coordination department. I tend to get incredibly frustrated, to the point of flat-out rage, when I'm having trouble getting past a particularly-difficult point in a game and have to replay it several times; I usually manage to grit my teeth and eventually make it through because of my stubbornness, but I never really think of it in terms of \"honing my skills,\" but instead as an unpleasant task. And when playing games that require some puzzle-solving, particularly adventure games, I tend to look for a walkthrough way too easily when confronted with a puzzle that initially stumps me. I generally don't like games that are too challenging as a whole, either.

Thanks a lot for posting this, roid. It's given me something to chew on. :)
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Post by Isaac »

Wow.
I'm the prime example of a performance orientated person. Everything I do is based on how easy it is for me to accomplish. I even liked doing 3d work because I found it easy. My dad would always give me lots of praise for accomplishing small tasks and the only games I ever wanted to own were RPGs. That false sense of accomplishment is incredibly addicting.

I got a degree in 3d animation not to learn new skills, but only because I was already a good 3d artist.
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Post by Pandora »

you'll have a harsh awakening later in life, when you are in a group of coworkers who all got to do what they did best --- it was for me, at least. Suddenly it is really hard to stand out...
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Post by TOR_LordRaven »

Isaac wrote:I got a degree in 3d animation not to learn new skills, but only because I was already a good 3d artist.
Thats not always a bad thing. Some people just have a knack for something.

Some people are born singers, it comes easy to them. Yet we praise them for being good at it because we wish we could do what they do.

Some things should be praised, even if they didn't work for it. Its all a matter of how you treat other people.

If my child comes home from school with an A in a subject he likes, or that he thinks is easy, I will still praise her.

If she comes home with a B- or even a C on a subject she finds difficult - I will still praise her as long as she did her best.

Doing your best, if that comes easy or is difficult, is all that matters.
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Post by Sllik »

Being someone far stronger in English than math skills, I'm sure it was an odd choice for me to go into computers instead of writing/editorial/etc. Frankly, in hindsight, I think it was partly due to the fact that English was too easy for me and computers, while mostly math-based, offered more of a challenge. The gaming angle certainly factored into that equation as well, I'm sure.

In recent years, I've reached a level of expertise that has put me in the company of giants, and I definitely can't keep up. If it's anything they have an aptitude for, I'll never be able to produce as well. Each day is a struggle to learn something new that I likely won't retain unless I use it frequently over the span of weeks, because it will probably be 10+ months before I need it again. It doesn't help that my role forces me into a jack-of-all-trades situation almost constantly.

The interesting side-effect of this scenario is that, for any truly virgin territory, most but not all of the others will find themselves giving up after some Google searches and a bit of tinkering with their scripting/programming language of choice... which makes it end up in my lap where I plod on through it like everything else. So there's always two sides to every coin.
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