Gamdev's conscience :)
Saw on Reddit :)
I think it would be great if we start implementing more stuff *for* the wellbeing of people who play our games :)
I think it would be great if we start implementing more stuff *for* the wellbeing of people who play our games :)
Comments
1. Gets the player to take a break.
2. Locking the player out, in some case's where the player is really addicted to your game, has shown to have a positive psychological effect, making them more keen to come back and play.
If someone is over stimulated with anything they can become bored of it, so making them take a break helps with this.
Candy Crush did something similar-ish to this.. although I believe it was more focused on using this to gain more players or getting the players to pay for hearts.
We use a similar system in our casino games. My research showed that players preferred having control over how much they're spending, how long they've played, etc.. So giving them a prompt saying you've played to your set limit has helped greatly. :)
I'm thinking there may be ways to design the game in ways that allows the players to take breaks in an organic less forceful way. I haven't really considered the topic though so I might be completely off base, which is why I'm asking for clarification and other questions. :)
@DavidKnightRedDawn, that's a pretty interesting angle. You mention that implementing those features helped greatly, does that mean players were better at managing their own play habits? Do you have stats like how many times people dismissed the prompt and continued playing vs stopping?
There are games that organically allow for breaks (pokemon go does nothing when you're at home, games with energy mechanics will make you wait unless you pay) but a lot of those can be gotten around (people stay out all day or drive to play pokemon, or pour money down the premium currency hole). I think there's something good about this dev's method. Yes people will go somewhere else, but they would have gone somewhere else anyway if they couldn't play pokemon go or any other f2p game with energy etc. This is not a case of saying "how do we get users to rest while still playing our game", because that's OBVIOUSLY a contradiction. If they want to play your game after the enforced break, cool! If not, COOL TOO!
And no I'm not saying this is the only way to advocate for the player.
@mattbenic I do agree that any games that can be made more accessible should be made more accessible. No doubt about that at all.
I've seen some eastern MMORPGs popup a little notification, when I've been playing for a few hours, to tell me how long I've played and that a little break might be good idea. But they dare not make me quit or be cheeky about my choice like in that screenshot in first post. The notification simply goes away like any other typical one in these kind of games.
In my experience if I've been playing a game for hours, like League of legends, and keep loosing I get more and more frustrated. By taking a break and letting my brain work through everything I experienced in that session, and then come back later, I find that I'm less frustrated and better at the game.
Maybe if the game offered a reward for taking a break ,as kidult suggested, that could help.
Like "Hey! You've been playing for 6 hours! Oh my gosh, we're really honored you love our game so much! Feel like taking a break? Go outside, risk the sun, smell some flowers? Come back in 2 hours or so and we'll give you X amount of coins!". As well as having an opt-out button for those players who want to keep playing.
@Rigormortis, Sorry man, I have a bad habit of sometimes writing before thinking. I don't have any data on the feature, although it is something I keep being asked about so I should get on that.
The response from this feature helping greatly is from our in house testers who have been playing casino games for years, who informed me that they appreciated this feature in a game because it gave them more control rather than just take take taking.
Now I don't believe that locking out a player like the above example is necessarily a good thing. It's a very intrusive way of just shutting them out. I'd rather argue that it was because of bad design that didn't cater for enough exit points to ensure that a player can comfortably quit and their analytics most likely flagged this behaviour and they added it as a quick fix.
I believe their intentions were good, but the execution of it was quite poor.
PS I'm still weary of calling it gaming addiction. I believe the WHO jumped the gun on the topic, but it still doesn't mean that we as designers should just sit back and design experiences that don't have clear exit points.
@DavidKnightRedDawn, no worries. It would be awesome to see data like that if it is available. I agree though that giving your player more control over their experience is great. I think that it's especially difficult to discuss gambling games in this context. The objective of a gambling game is for the participant to lose. I don't think gambling is an inherently bad thing, but I feel that the humane design and gambling can never exist in harmony.
It might be an obvious thing that I'm missing, but how do we as designers evaluate when playing becomes too much or is detrimental to our players? In the OP example the designer thought playing for 6 hours is too much, but I've spent longer than that reading a book before without anyone trying to intervene or be concerned. So are both equally bad or does it have to do with how we measure the "value" of reading a book vs playing a game? The humane design video talks about this a little, but I don't feel like I have a good grasp on it yet.