Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design
Tags: #gaming #design #psychology #behavioral economics #decision-making #game mechanics #user experience #emotion
Authors: Geoffrey Engelstein
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Overview
My book, ‘Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design’, dives deep into how a core principle of behavioral psychology, loss aversion, can be a powerful tool in designing compelling and emotionally engaging games. As a game designer myself, I wrote this book for both designers and players who are interested in understanding the psychology behind why certain game mechanics feel the way they do, and how to design systems that create specific emotional responses.
Throughout the book, I explore the ways in which loss aversion affects player decisions and how it can be used to manipulate those decisions, from encouraging players to take risks to creating feelings of attachment to in-game objects. I examine a variety of games, both digital and tabletop, including popular titles like ‘Portal’, ‘Hearthstone’, and ‘The Settlers of Catan’, to illustrate these concepts in action.
The book also explores related psychological concepts such as the endowment effect, the framing effect, utility theory, endowed progress, regret, and competence, and shows how these concepts can be used to create different player experiences. It delves into the history of game design, and how the European school of game design shifted the focus away from zero-sum games that emphasize player elimination, which often lead to negative feelings, toward games that emphasize growth and advancement, leading to more positive player experiences.
Ultimately, the goal of ‘Achievement Relocked’ is not to prescribe a specific design methodology, but rather to give designers a new lens through which to view their work, and to help them understand the subtle but powerful ways in which human psychology can be harnessed to create truly memorable and engaging game experiences. These principles have wide applications in game design and beyond, from user interface design to understanding user behavior in any system that involves choice and decision-making.
Book Outline
1. Loss Aversion
This chapter introduces the core concept of the book: loss aversion. This is the well-established psychological principle that people experience losing something more intensely than they experience gaining something of equal value. This is a powerful tool for game designers, as it can be used to create engaging emotional experiences for players.
Key concept: Losing something makes you feel worse than gaining the same thing makes you feel good.
2. Endowment Effect
This chapter explores the endowment effect, a psychological phenomenon closely tied to loss aversion. The endowment effect suggests that merely owning something makes it more valuable to us, even if that ownership is fleeting and the object itself has little intrinsic worth. This can be seen in a range of real-world settings, from our reluctance to part with old possessions to the tactics employed by casinos to encourage gambling.
Key concept: When an object is yours, it gains value, psychologically, over an equivalent object that is not yours.
3. Framing
This chapter examines the framing effect and how it can be used to influence player choices. By presenting the same outcomes as either gains or losses, designers can nudge players towards certain decisions. This chapter explores examples of framing in everyday life, like credit card surcharges versus cash discounts, and shows how game designers use this principle to shape the player experience.
Key concept: The way that choices are presented can have a dramatic impact on how people answer. This is called the framing effect.
4. Utility Theory
This chapter delves into utility theory, which moves beyond the simple maximization of gains to consider the subjective value, or ‘utility,’ people derive from different outcomes. It argues that people don’t always seek to maximize their potential gains. Instead, they often make decisions based on how those gains will impact their lives and how the potential losses make them feel. Understanding utility helps explain why people make seemingly irrational choices, such as accepting a smaller guaranteed gain over a larger gamble.
Key concept: Utility theory describes how desirable something is. This can be very difficult to describe in absolute terms and varies wildly from person to person.
5. Endowed Progress
This chapter introduces the endowed progress effect which demonstrates that people are more motivated to complete a task if they feel like they’ve already made some progress toward it. Even a small initial ‘boost’ can significantly increase engagement and completion rates, as it taps into our aversion to losing the perceived gains we’ve already made. This principle has wide applications in game design, from onboarding new players to encouraging long-term engagement.
Key concept: This is called the endowed progress effect. The idea is that people are more likely to complete a task that has already been started rather than beginning a task from scratch.
6. Regret and Competence
This chapter explores regret as a powerful driver of human behavior and how understanding regret can inform game design. It delves into the factors that make certain choices more prone to regret, such as their permanence and their impact on the game. Legacy games, which feature permanent changes to the game state, are discussed as a prime example of how regret can be used to create tension and emotional investment.
Key concept: Regret is defined as the negative feeling resulting from a choice that has gone badly.
6. Regret and Competence
This chapter examines the concept of competence as it applies to decision-making in games. Players with low competence feel uncertain and may be more hesitant to make choices. High competence, on the other hand, can lead to more confident and decisive play. It explores ways designers can manipulate competence levels to create different emotional experiences, from the frustration of hidden information to the satisfaction of mastering a complex system.
Key concept: Many video games take advantage of the players’ feelings of low competence by giving players the chance to repeat encounters and gradually learn the patterns behind what is happening on screen, which ultimately enables them to succeed.
7. Putting It All Together
This chapter brings together all the threads of loss aversion explored in the book, showing how it manifests in a variety of game genres and design decisions. It argues that a deeper understanding of loss aversion can help designers create more engaging and emotionally resonant experiences, from encouraging players to take risks to creating a sense of accomplishment when they overcome challenges.
Key concept: There are many elements that go into game design, and all of them are critical to the user experience. User interface, story, artwork, sound, game mechanics, difficulty curve, feedback loops—each is incredibly important in its own way. Loss aversion is a piece of this puzzle—and often a hidden piece.
Essential Questions
1. What is loss aversion, and how does it affect player behavior in games?
Loss aversion is the principle that humans feel the pain of a loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain. This has been shown in numerous psychological studies, and it manifests in many aspects of human behavior, including decision making in games. Game designers have learned to leverage this principle to guide player choices, manipulate emotional responses, and craft compelling player experiences.
2. How does the endowment effect influence the player experience?
The endowment effect, closely related to loss aversion, suggests that we tend to overvalue things we own simply because we own them. This principle is used in games to create a sense of attachment and to make decisions about losing items more impactful. The example of the Weighted Companion Cube in ‘Portal’ demonstrates how imbuing an object with personality can amplify the endowment effect, leading to surprising emotional responses from players.
3. How can the framing of choices affect player decisions and emotions?
Framing refers to how choices are presented and can significantly impact decision making, even when the underlying outcomes are identical. By framing choices as gains or losses, designers can nudge players towards specific options and evoke particular emotional responses. For example, a game may encourage risk-taking by emphasizing potential rewards or promote cautious play by highlighting potential penalties, even if the underlying probabilities are the same.
4. What is utility theory, and how can it help designers understand player motivation?
Beyond simply maximizing potential gains, utility theory considers the subjective value or ‘utility’ people derive from different outcomes. A large guaranteed gain may be more desirable than a chance at a much larger gain with the risk of losing everything, because the larger gain doesn’t provide significantly more ‘utility’. Understanding utility helps explain seemingly irrational decisions players make, and allows designers to create systems that appeal to players’ differing motivations and risk tolerance.
5. How can regret be used as a tool in game design?
Regret, the negative feeling associated with a poor decision, can be a powerful tool for creating tension and emotional engagement in games. Designers can amplify or minimize regret by adjusting the characteristics of player choices, such as their permanence and impact on the game. By understanding the factors that make choices more prone to regret, designers can create more impactful experiences and avoid overwhelming players with anxiety.
Key Takeaways
1. Endowed Progress Encourages Engagement
By giving players a sense that they have already made some progress towards a goal, designers can increase player motivation and engagement. This can be as simple as starting players with a few points or resources, or by providing visual cues that highlight progress.
Practical Application:
In app design, onboarding new users can be significantly improved by incorporating endowed progress. By giving new users some initial ‘points’ or rewards, even if they are simply for completing basic tutorials, designers can create a sense of momentum and encourage users to explore more features. This taps into the user’s desire to avoid ‘losing’ the progress they’ve already made and encourages them to continue engaging with the app.
2. Framing Choices Influences Decisions
The way choices are presented, or framed, can significantly influence decision-making. Players are more likely to take risks to avoid a guaranteed loss than to secure a guaranteed gain, even if the expected value is the same.
Practical Application:
When designing an e-commerce website, framing product discounts as avoiding a loss (e.g., ‘Don’t miss out on saving $20!’) can be more effective than simply presenting it as a gain (e.g., ‘Get $20 off!’). This is because people are more motivated to avoid losses than to acquire gains, so emphasizing the potential loss can create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to make a purchase.
3. Understanding Utility is Key for Motivation
Utility theory suggests that people value things based on their subjective usefulness or impact on their lives, rather than simply their objective value. This means that a small but guaranteed gain might be more appealing to a player than a larger but riskier gain.
Practical Application:
Understanding utility can be helpful in designing AI systems that make recommendations or choices on behalf of users. Instead of simply optimizing for the most objectively ‘valuable’ outcome, the AI could consider the user’s specific needs and preferences, tailoring its recommendations to maximize the subjective ‘utility’ for that user. This could be applied in a wide range of AI applications, from recommending movies to suggesting personalized financial strategies.
4. Low Competence Can Demotivates Users
Low competence, where a player feels uncertain about the information available or the impact of their choices, can lead to negative emotions and a sense of helplessness. Designers can mitigate this by providing clear feedback and explanations, allowing players to learn and increase their competence over time.
Practical Application:
In any software product, providing clear and timely feedback to users about the consequences of their actions can help increase their sense of competence. This can involve detailed progress bars, explanations of how specific actions impact the system, or even tutorials that guide users through complex processes. By reducing uncertainty and increasing transparency, users will feel more in control and less likely to experience the negative emotions associated with low competence.
Suggested Deep Dive
Chapter: Chapter 5: Endowed Progress
This chapter is especially relevant to AI product design. The car wash experiment and examples from games like ‘Hearthstone’ provide valuable insights into how even small initial ‘boosts’ can significantly increase user engagement and motivation. Understanding how to leverage endowed progress can be crucial for designing onboarding processes, encouraging long-term user retention, and promoting desired behaviors within an app or software product.
Memorable Quotes
Chapter 1: Loss Aversion. 13
The prospect of losing something weighs more heavily in our decision-making than the prospect of gaining something.
Chapter 2: Endowment Effect. 31
When people have something in their possession, it gains value in their mind. In economic and psychological circles, this tendency to give something more value because it belongs to you is called the endowment effect.
Chapter 3: Framing. 47
The way that choices are presented can have a dramatic impact on how people answer. This is called the framing effect.
Chapter 4: Utility Theory. 63
Utility theory describes how desirable something is. This can be very difficult to describe in absolute terms and varies wildly from person to person.
Chapter 5: Endowed Progress. 76
Giving progress to people made them more invested in the program. It made them think that they already had started the task and gave them a sense of commitment.
Comparative Analysis
While many books delve into the psychology of games, ‘Achievement Relocked’ distinguishes itself by providing a focused and in-depth examination of loss aversion’s impact on game design. Jesper Juul’s ‘The Art of Failure’ explores the emotional experience of failing in games, touching on loss aversion as a contributing factor, but Engelstein provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding how designers can leverage loss aversion to evoke specific emotions. Similarly, Katherine Isbister’s ‘How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design’ broadly covers emotional design in games, while ‘Achievement Relocked’ hones in on the unique power of loss aversion and its various applications. Engelstein’s work also contrasts with books focused on game mechanics, like Raph Koster’s ‘A Theory of Fun for Game Design’, by emphasizing the psychological underpinnings of player engagement rather than specific mechanics. ‘Achievement Relocked’ offers a fresh perspective on established design principles by viewing them through the lens of loss aversion, providing valuable insights for anyone interested in creating engaging and emotionally resonant game experiences.
Reflection
Engelstein’s “Achievement Relocked” provides a compelling case for the importance of loss aversion in game design. He masterfully blends psychological research with practical examples from a wide range of games, both digital and tabletop. While he focuses heavily on loss aversion, he also acknowledges the crucial role of other psychological principles like the endowment effect, framing, and utility theory. He also highlights the shift in modern game design away from emphasizing destruction and player elimination towards growth and advancement, which generally creates more positive player experiences.
One potential criticism is that he focuses primarily on the player’s emotional experience and less on the game’s mechanics and systems. However, it is precisely this emphasis on the emotional side of game design that makes the book so insightful. Understanding how players feel is crucial for creating compelling and engaging games.
While some examples might feel anecdotal, the underlying principles are well-grounded in psychological research. He effectively communicates complex ideas in an accessible way, making “Achievement Relocked” a valuable resource for anyone involved in game design or interested in the psychology of games.
Flashcards
What is loss aversion?
The psychological principle that humans feel the pain of a loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
What is the endowment effect?
The tendency to overvalue things we own simply because we own them.
What is framing?
The way choices are presented, which can influence decision making even if the underlying outcomes are the same.
What is utility theory?
A theory that explains how people make decisions based on the subjective value or ‘utility’ they derive from different outcomes.
What is the endowed progress effect?
The principle that people are more motivated to complete a task if they feel like they’ve already made some progress toward it.
What is regret?
The negative feeling associated with a poor decision.
What is competence?
The ratio of information a person has about a situation compared to the total amount of information that could be known.
What is expectation value?
The average outcome if a choice is repeated many times.
What are legacy games?
Games that involve permanent changes to the game state, often creating a strong sense of regret for players.