Intrinsic Reward Structures in Games and Learning
To learn more about the ideas in this story, get the book Intrinsic Rewards in Games and Learning.
If you want to know why people get addicted to games, it’s probably this: games are filled with rewards. Earning rewards is what keeps us going.
But there’s a nuance we don’t typically talk about that concerns the structure of the reward. Extrinsic rewards (a certain number of points, a flashy animation, or a grade on a report card) fail to compel gamers. Intrinsic rewards, or rewards that once gained allow you to play the game better, compel gamers immensely.
How does an intrinsic reward structure work? The best example is from role-playing games. In these games, you fight monsters to get experience points. The experience points make you stronger, allowing you to fight stronger monsters that give even more experience points. This allows you to gain even higher levels, fight even stronger monsters, etc. As you can see, the system is intrinsic and feeds back into itself. It seems stupidly repetitive, but that actually makes it quite addictive.
The example that really hammered home to me the value of intrinsic feedback structures is Farmville. This is a Facebook app, and it’s hardly a game: it’s basically an intrinsic reward structure without a game. You don’t need to do anything to get your rewards besides… wait. You plant crops and wait for them to grow, so that you can cash them in, buy even more crops, wait for them to grow, and cash them in for even more money. It’s exactly like an RPG except the exciting game element of monster fighting has been replaced by waiting. But, this game has one of the most direct intrinsic reward structures that I’ve seen. This game has addicted tens of millions of users during it’s peak, (the record high of logins in a single day is 32.5 million), which speaks to the power of intrinsic rewards.
Apparently there is something hardwired in our brain that makes us want to get stuff. All reward structures do is tap into that psychological desire. But we don’t want to get just anything, we want to get meaningful stuff. And the meaning more often than not comes from elements in the game. We want to gain stuff that gives us a more powerful role in the game, rather than just trophies or grades that we can display on our wall. Intrinsic, feedback-driven reward structures give rewards that meaning, and I think are the main reason games are addictive.
Which raises an interesting question. Are games the only medium that has mastered the idea of intrinsic rewards? Are there any intrinsic reward structures in real life?
If there is some tick in our brain that responds to reward structures, that psychological tick probably has an evolutionary purpose other than addicting us to games. Gaming companies have just learned to co-op this urge for their own purposes. But what might be the original purpose of our psychological tick? Phrased differently, what real life activities hook us because they have intrinsic reward structures?
Here’s a potential answer: hobbies. Why do we have hobbies, like say knitting? Sure, knitting has a useful purpose, you can make sweaters and scarves and socks. There is an end product that you can show others, and perhaps the motivation for knitting is simply to acquire more of the end product, in this case getting more socks. But then, time would be better spent working at a job, and earning the money to just buy tons of socks (which not many people do). No, it’s something about the process of making a sock that makes knitting an engaging hobby.
Consider this idea. People knit to get better at knitting socks, which allows them to knit socks even faster and learn new stitches, which allows them to get even better at knitting socks. The process of learning how to knit compels someone to keep knitting, since that skill is actually embedded in an intrinsic reward structure. By practicing a hobby, you get better at the hobby, which allows you to practice the hobby even more, which allows you to get even better at the hobby. This can also go for learning to play a sport, or learning in general. The process of learning is an intrinsic reward structure. Thus, reward structures provide us with an inherent motivation to learn new skills.
Let’s take a step back and talk about games again. In this light, it makes perfect sense to view games as learning tools. Games are simply packages of virtual skills. When games embed skills in a virtual intrinsic reward structure (analogous to the real intrinsic reward structure that compels us to have hobbies) we become addicted to the game, or more specifically addicted to learning the skills in the game. Whether the skill is virtual or real, embedding the skill in an intrinsic reward structure can make the learning fun and engaging.
Originally published as a series of two blog posts at kmiklasz.blogspot.com during May, 2013. To learn more about the ideas in this story, get the book Intrinsic Rewards in Games and Learning.
