week five

This week we discussed why people play games when they are not fun. It made me think of the time my brother was 12 and I was 9 and we spend hours in front of the computer. Playing Pacman, Worms and donkey Kong- like games. We got sometimes so incredibly frustrated that fights were inevitable. Despite all the frustration, aggression, all the blood, sweat and tears.... we wasted hours in our computer room.. and this week I found out why..

It is all about the rewards!!: the glowing feeling of victory when I killed a worm from my brothers team (he named the worms most off the time sophie1, sophie 2, etc.. so I would not want to kill them…. Did not work), the little dances off joy I did when Pacman eagerly swallowed the little yellow dots without being attacked by the scary Blinky, Pinky, Inkey, and Clyde.

According to Steven Johnson are games not fun, people just keep playing them because of the rewards.
General gaming rewards are:
More lives, new levels, power ups etc.. and there are always new and various rewards . These rewards keep you playing despite all the pain and frustration.
This is because the human brain is wired to seek out rewards although the actual reward is completely irrelevant (it does not make a difference in real life whether Mario conquers some evil monster or not)

I played frogger I was the frog and my task was to make it across the road without being hit by traffic, and then make it across the river by skilfully hitching a ride on the floating logs. Very simple and the rewards were clear: every time I made a step without getting; run over, eaten or drown there was a ‘happy sound’. There was an even happier sound when I got to the opposite of the river..Furthermore your level and high score are displayed on the screen.
I felt very 9 again, despite the frustration of getting run over, I sensed that old feeling of joy when frog got safely to the opposite of the river and that’s what kept me playing.