Psychology of Video Games: Gains, Losses and Grouping Results

On Uncensored we’ve talked about psychology and games before (twice actually), and today we’d like to highlight another post of the behavioral science department. Tipped off by MassivelyOP we stumbled upon an interesting piece of the “The Psychology of Video Games” blog. It goes over the psychology of leveling system and how grouping results affects the valuation of rewards. If you’re interested in game theory, psychology, and science in any combination, you’ll probably find this interesting. If you don’t feel like going through everything, don’t worry. I’ll briefly sum it up for you.

Gains vs. Losses

There are basically two bigger points in the piece. The first one explains how losses are always perceived as worse than an equal amount of gains. Getting two gold by a quest feels worse than spending two gold at a vendor. It’s the same for ingame items. A weapon in Neverwinter that adds +500 Power but subtracts 500 Crit is not a net zero for our brains. One interesting example of this are nerfs. Let’s take the most recent Bonding nerf for example. Although the devs gave players the ability to earn back their lost power with new Rank 14 Enchantments, it doesn’t make up for the loss emotionally. That’s also why nerfing something is a bad per se, at least based on behavioral science. You can of course not avoid nerfing and taking away stuff entirely, but this explains why players can react quite strongly to such events.

Grouping Results

The second interesting aspect is grouping gains and losses. While we tend to value losses more than equal gains, both exhibit diminishing returns. Losing 1,000,000 AD versus 100,000 is a big deal, losing 10,000,000 compared to 9,100,000 not so much, although the net loss is the same. So for game designers it makes sense to deliver losses with one big punch, and gains in much smaller chunks. That’s why each piece of equipment can be gained separately so it becomes an achievement of its own. And that’s really only one random example of how you constantly get rewarded with very tiny bits of progression in a game.

Again: Read through the full piece as it contains a lot more explanation of the underlying theory. It’s worth it!

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