'..."go-getters" who are willing to work hard for rewards had higher release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in areas of the brain known to play an important role in reward and motivation, the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. On the other hand, "slackers" who are less willing to work hard for a reward had high dopamine levels in another brain area that plays a role in emotion and risk perception, the anterior insula. -- The role of dopamine in the anterior insula came as a complete surprise to the researchers. The finding was unexpected because it suggests that more dopamine in the insula is associated with a reduced desire to work, even when it means earning less money. The fact that dopamine can have opposing effects in different parts of the brain complicates the picture regarding the use of psychotropic medications that affect dopamine levels for the treatment of attention-deficit disorder, depression and schizophrenia because it calls into question the general assumption that these dopaminergic drugs have the same effect throughout the brain.'

'The second question is whether consumers will use just one electronic wallet on their phones, choosing between, say, Google, PayPal and their own bank, or whether they will have several. Most analysts think that consumers will gravitate towards a single electronic wallet which will hold many cards. This is because there may be significant benefits to be gained from aggregating transactions and the data associated with them. For example, PayPal’s wallet will allow consumers to use various stores of value besides money when paying for goods or services. These could include coupons, loyalty points from stores and banks and air miles from airlines. PayPal stands to profit from steering customers into shops, perhaps by reminding them that they have unused coupons. It could also tell shopkeepers about the tastes of their customers, allowing retailers to make targeted shopping offers (“this would look great with the black skirt you bought last week”) or extend credit on the fly. -- Google, too, is hoping to do far more with its wallet than process payments, which it sees as akin to queries typed into its search engine. In the same way that it sells advertisements that are precisely targeted to a user’s search, it hopes to be able to deliver offers matched to people’s spending patterns.'

'"Dopamine is not about pleasure, it's about the anticipation of pleasure. It's about the pursuit of happiness." Unlike monkeys however, humans "keep those dopamine levels up for decades and decades waiting for the reward."' -- "If you block that rise in dopamine from occurring, you don't get the work." -- "'Maybe' is addictive like nothing else... it's the uncertainty of the reward."

"Games are play at which you can lose." -- "Gamified activities are not play ... it's just an activity; and you can't lose it." -- Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Rewards: "Games, when they offer extrinsic rewards ... that's typically for things you've already found fun." -- "Gamification is basically bribery." -- "...until people learn that all these points and badges are worthless, there's a big opportunity to make some money out of it."

'...what we're discussing now are explicit or self-aware influencers of identity, pursued for the purpose of influencing identity. #Commemorating choices. In virtual environments, just like reality, people desire means of demonstrating or expressing their identity. In video games with avatars, gear worn and abilities wielded tell a story of choices made that other players will be able to read. Non-game environments are no different and there is value in commemorating choices in a way that can be "read" by other members of the community. Badges and trophies can fulfill this need, but only if there is value in the underlying choices and behaviors. There is no point in commemorating choices that users don't recognize as relevant. #Social Purpose. If role-playing is anchored in opportunities to express identity, social purpose is anchored in opportunities to prove worth. This means interdependencies between community members are needed. What's important is identifying what your audience values; if you're a Facebook user, it's attention, if you're a Call of Duty player, it's kills, and if you're a Question and Answer forum user, it's accurate, detailed answers.'

'Dr Clark found that near misses activated the same brain pathways as wins, even though no reward was given, and that this reaction was stronger in those gamblers who had more symptoms of problem gambling. In particular, the study found strong responses in the midbrain, an area that is packed with dopamine-releasing brain cells. The dopamine system is associated with addiction and targeted by drugs of abuse. The study also found the near misses were linked with increased activity in a brain region called the ventral striatum, an area associated with reward and learning. The results help explain why problem gamblers find it hard to give up. According to Dr Clark: “These findings are exciting because they suggest that near-misses may elicit a dopamine response in the more severe gamblers, despite the fact that no actual reward is delivered. If these bursts of dopamine are driving addictive behaviour, this may help to explain why problem gamblers find it so difficult to quit.” Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays an important role in signalling “rewards” such as money and chocolate, and the dopamine system is also targeted by drugs of abuse.'

'Both near-misses and personal choice cause gamblers to play for longer and to place larger bets. Over time, these distorted perceptions of one’s chances of winning may precipitate ‘loss chasing’, where gamblers continue to play in an effort to recoup accumulating debts. Loss chasing is one of the hallmarks of problem gambling, which actually bears much resemblance to drug addiction. Problem gamblers also experience cravings and symptoms of withdrawal when denied the opportunity to gamble. In addition to an array of psychological factors, problem gambling may also have some important biological determinants. The brain chemical dopamine is known to play a key role in drug addiction and may also be abnormally regulated in problem gambling. -- #Near-misses: Problem gamblers often interpret near-misses as evidence that they are mastering the game and that a win is on the way. #Personal choice is a further determinant of illusory control, referring to situations where the gambler has some responsibility in arranging their gamble. Choice appears to encourage a belief that the game involves skill when in fact the outcome is entirely random.'

'See if this sounds familiar to you: "To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game." That’s a slot machine, right? Wrong. It’s the basic action loop of FarmVille. -- Skinner then found that randomizing whether the reward was given made the pigeons come back more often, as did randomizing the amount of the reward. Lastly, he found that combining these experiments to randomize both whether the reward would occur and how much the award was for lead to a striking increase in engagement. Zynga and other social games companies have implemented the Random Reward Schedule to great effect in their games to keep players coming back. Zynga combines mass appeal, addictive gambling mechanics, and an aggressive viral marketing strategy to achieve incredible growth. Their stylish, highly approachable games help them avoid the stigma of gambling while appealing to precisely the audiences that are the most avid gamblers. Zynga’s core paying audience is 30-55 year old females. It should come as no surprise that this demographic overlaps almost exactly with the core audience of slot machine users. The biggest thing that unequivocally separates social gaming from gambling is that the players have no ability to tangibly recoup the money put into the game.'

'Stephanie Clifford, reporting for The New York Times, described how the incentive system works at Pret: "When employees are promoted or pass training milestones, they receive at least £50 in vouchers, a payment that Pret calls a 'shooting star,' but instead of keeping the bonus, the employees must give the money to colleagues, people who have helped them along the way." To install Pret's incentive system in the academy would be to blow it up. What if when students got gold stars on ClassDojo they didn't keep them, but rather gave them out to other students who helped them along the way? No longer would students be motivated solely to perform the best--they would be motivated to help their classmates. This motivational system is the beginning of community-directed learning.' -- Marksism

'...intrinsic and extrinsic are tangled in complicated ways. So, for example, I may set up a system of giving out points, right, that's totally extrinsic. And you would say, "Well, therefore, in the long run, it won't work." Well, but what if me and my friends all kind of get into it, and like we start this kind of social thing about one-upping each other, and we're now doing it not because we care about the points for the sake of the points, but it now becomes like a little social ritual with us, which is intrinsically rewarding? So, these extrinsic systems can sometimes become an anchor for something that has intrinsic power, and that part is where I think our brains get a little tangled up, because it's difficult to predict and it's difficult to plan for.'

'...there is the question of what happens when you stop providing a reward, which is referred to as "extinction." As a general rule, extinction involves a lot of frustration and anger on the part of the subject. We expect the universe to make sense, to be consistent, and when the contingencies change we get testy. Interestingly, this is not unique to humans. In one experiment, two pigeons were placed in a cage. One of them was tethered to the back of the cage while the other was free to run about as it wished. Every 30 seconds, a hopper would provide a small amount of food. The free pigeon could reach the food but the tethered one could not, and the free pigeon happily ate all the food every time. After an hour or so of this, the hopper stops providing food. The free pigeon continues to check the hopper every 30 seconds for a while, but when it's clear that the food isn't coming, it will go to the back of the cage and beat up the other pigeon.'

'The idea of "nudging" citizens to do the right thing sounds cute. But in reality it marks the return of a powerful psycho-political theory that rose up in the mid-20th century. It was called Behaviourism. ...who decides what is "good" behaviour, and what happens when others decide it is bad[?] These are questions that the Nudge enthusiasts seem to be blithely unaware of. ...the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally – the machines we have built. The computers. In our age of individualism we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours. And from that they can predict what choices and decisions we will make. And they do it solely through our observed behaviour.'

Self-bondage -- 'To participate in Ultrinsic, all a student does is log into their account at the beginning of each semester and choose the course they are registered for. Based on the student’s academic history, and the amount they choose to invest in their ability to reach that target grade, a cash reward will be calculated for the student. -- Rewards: #Course Incentive. Hit your target grade and earn cash rewards. Choose your cash incentive and your target grade, and find out how much cash Ultrinsic will contribute to your incentive. #4.0 GPA Incentive (Freshmen Only). Achieve a 4.0 GPA throughout college and earn cash rewards. $2000 of cash incentives is $20, $1000 of cash incentives is $10, and $500 of cash incentives is $5. #Course Insurance. Buy insurance for any course in your current schedule and get cash if you get a bad grade. #Semester Insurance. Buy insurance on your semester GPA and get cash if you get bad grades.'

Multiplayer game wrapper for personal goal-setting - 'Set real-life goals and track your progress. Get motivated by the friends in your mafia. Be the Boss of your own life. -- Execute Your Goals: Turn your dreams into specific, achievable goals. Upload photos as evidence of your progress. When things get tough, turn to your mafia for protection (and motivation). Conspire With Friends: Be a Godfather to your friends' goals. Reward friends with cigars and champagne when they make progress. Break their (virtual) knees when they start slacking. Win At Life: Finally, a social game with a purpose. Don't just click cows and spam your friends. Have fun while doing something meaningful.'

'Sometimes we could all use a little extra motivation to exercise. While you’d think that the allures of better health and a leaner body would be enough to kick us into action, the reality of the matter is that they’re not. Hyperbolic discounting means that humans discount the value of a reward that occurs far into the future, preferring instead a more immediate reward even if its absolute value is less. For example, if I gave Harry the option to receive $10 today or $20 in a month, he’d probably choose $10 today even though it’s financially wiser for him to get $20 in a month. Hyperbolic discounting is the reason why better health and a leaner body down the road are not compelling enough to make us exercise today. So we’ve created a system that gives you more immediate rewards for your exercise. Our hope is to foster a more active lifestyle in each of us, and in turn play a small role in improving the health of our users.' -- Rewards for gym checkins via foursquare, Nike+ activity..

'Reward your most passionate fans for their loyalty with badges and points.'

'Prestige as it applies to social gaming is pretty simple: You play a game, advance levels in that game or accumulate goods, and then broadcast the advancement your social network. Prestige turns into real money in any one of several ways. Game players are granted some amount of free virtual currency at the start of play. That currency is used to purchase virtual goods or services that allow the player to advance levels. When the user runs out of currency, he/she can replenish it by paying for more currency with a credit card or PayPal account; by taking a survey; by taking a lead-generation offer like a Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) trial subscription; or by watching videos (gWallet offers this). Other prestige approaches allow the person at the top of a leaderboard (“mayors” in FourSquare, for example) to get discounts at certain real-world establishments. Others don’t monetize prestige, but use it to drive other business goals like time spent on site, which leads to advertising dollars.'

'Reward your fans for visiting your web site and sharing your content. Let visitors to your web site and your Twitter followers unlock badges + earn points.' -- Creator describes it as "Foursquare for the web."

'The genius of hunter-gatherer societies lies in their abilities to accomplish the tasks that must be accomplished while maximizing each person's experience of free choice, which is essential to the spirit of play. They manage to accomplish that through their extraordinary willingness to share everything, which removes any immediate link between work and the receipt of life's necessities. Even the most industrious and successful hunters and gatherers receive no more of the food brought back to camp on a given day than does anyone else in the band. Why should those who get the most intrinsic rewards from play—because they enjoy it so much, and are so skilled at it, and therefore participate in it the most—also reap the most extrinsic rewards from it? Hunter-gatherers simply trust that, as long as work is play and as long as people are treated well and are truly free to make their own decisions, the great majority of people will quite gladly contribute to the band in the ways they can.'

WANT/LIKE QUAD. Good stuff.

'...it’s clear why Civilization is so compelling; every single turn of the game is a mini-compulsion loop. In every single turn, like clockwork, you move units, you achieve tangible goals, and you get new content. The game keeps you playing until you’ve have seen everything and done everything that the world has to offer.' -- Great Wall > Liberalism > The Kremlin. And I'm happy.

'Consumer-review sites like Yelp, Amazon, and Epinions, which use an army of amateur critics to cover products and services, offer elaborate appreciation programs that reward their unpaid people and keep users engaged. Yelp has more than 40 “community managers” scattered around the world, who throw parties for prolific reviewers. After Gawker introduced its Star system, which gave preference to the work of “Starred” commentators, participation on the comment boards rose to a new high. The Huffington Post, which offers its best users digital merit badges and special rights (like the ability to delete other people’s posts), boasts the most active commenters of any news site. Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Back in 2006, predicted that the winners in the social-media world would be “those that figure out a formula for making their users feel amply compensated.” Prizes are a start. Can cash be far behind?'

'MoLo Rewards mission is simple: Help people save money and enable retailers and marketers to better serve their customers." MoLo Rewards enables consumers to obtain and redeem retail shopping coupons, gift cards (or as we call them deals) and earn loyalty rewards directly through their mobile phone without the need to clip a paper coupon ever again. All of this is achieved by simply tapping your mobile phone in front of the cash register at the time of purchase. -- MoLo treasure hunt is quite simply a treasure hunt on your mobile phone making use of location based technologies such as GPS as well as your phones camera and yes NFC technologies. So how does it work? First find a treasure hunt you like, accept it, read through the instructions and figure out what the clue is asking you to do, where you need to go or what you need to find. Some hunts will want you to go to a specific location, others will want you to find a specific product.'

'#1. Create a coherent experience that unfolds over time #2. Define a points system (experience points, social points, redeemable points) that supports your purpose and audience #3. Introduce feedback and rewards that motivate newbies, regulars, enthusiasts, and leaders #4. Design rewards that players will be eager to share #5. Use "game pacing" to grant rewards over time' -- Productive example: Stack Overflow, a reputation-building technical Q&A community

'If Facebook continues its growth on mobile platforms, then Facebook Credits will have the opportunity to become the default mobile payment currency accepted worldwide. Half a billion people would not have to sign up for an account to use them, because they already have the account. The data, learning, market research, and point-of-sale advertising implications are potentially limitless. The opportunity for Facebook Credits is to reward people for engaging with brands and retailers. If using Facebook Credits more often, or sharing information about their purchases results in discounts or even the earning of more Facebook Credits, you can count on consumers to reveal more to their friends and Facebook, as long as the value exchange is clearly identified. This kind of access to purchase habits and behaviors may finally be able to help justify using Facebook as a true CRM tool for brands, allowing for the tracking of sales back to influence and relationships...'

'"Q: What is Fan It?A: Fan It is NBC.com’s affinity program where members are awarded points for participation and interaction. Members can choose to redeem these points for a variety of rewards and/or experiences. Q: How do I earn points? A: There are two different ways to earn points: events and challenges. Events are the activities you do on the site and on the social networks you’ve linked to every day, such as leaving comments, watching videos, playing games, posting links or updating your status. Challenges require you to perform specific events within a specific amount of time and are typically worth more points." -- Of course, this has as much to do with traditional community management and traditional rewards points programs as with games. But note the prominent leaderboards, the featured members area on the home page, the badge system...'

'All of the known foursquare badges are listed below...'

'The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn't seem to know how. We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don't get there, it's for lack of effort—or talent. Sometimes that's true. But a lot of the time, people are just flying blind. Kids may respond better to rewards for specific actions because there is less risk of failure. They can control their attendance; they cannot necessarily control their test scores. The key, then, may be to teach kids to control more overall—to encourage them to act as if they can indeed control everything, and reward that effort above and beyond the actual outcome. Just like grownups, kids need different kinds of incentives to get through the day, some highbrow and some low, some short-term, some longer-term. And money and other external rewards can be a gateway to more substantive motivators.' -- Use rewarded money to fund internally-motivated creative projects?

Comment: crinklebat: "One of the smartest things my department in college UCSD Computer Science did was use a program called GradeSource. It set up anonymized leaderboards for your classes, so you could look yourself up by your secret number (a random six-digit code handed out at the beginning of the quarter) and see how you measured up to everyone else in class on every assignment, every exam, everything. Within minutes of every set of grades being finalized, you could see where you ranked on it. I definitely felt more engaged in classes where I could see, homework by homework, where I stood exactly in relation to my classmates. If I was near the top, I'd work harder to stay there. People near the bottom could drop knowing exactly how screwed they were, rather than engaging in elaborate, pathetic guesswork. Getting the top score on a homework or exam did feel like I'd just gotten an achievement."

'...the really big idea isn't figuring out how to USE online gamers for real world purposes (as in the dirty word: crowdsourcing -- people doing work for you for FREE -- blech!). Instead, it's about finding a way to use online games to make real life better for the gamers. In short, turn games into economic darknets that work in parallel and better than the broken status quo systems. As in: economic games that connect effort with reward. Economic games with transparent rules that tangibly improve the lives of all of the players in the REAL WORLD. This isn't tech utopian. It's reality. The global electronic marketplace and the political system that currently dominates our lives is at root a game but with hidden rule sets. As a result, it's a game that being run for the benefit of the game designers to the detriment of the players. The reason we keep playing is that we don't have any choice. Let's invent something better and compete with it. Let's provide people with a choice.'

'If we develop games that make people rely more and more on external recognition – on achievements and rewards and points – they will not be prepared for when things go badly. Every leader board has the worst player as well as a top player. The way to cope with reverses in life is by developing resilience against the caprices of the world; to determine and internally maintain a steady direction and sense of worth, and to remember past successes and recognition. Yet I fear that the games we are designing, focused on real-time things that other people have decided to measure and reward – will undermine rather than build that resilience. You can design a game that encourages resilience, although it wouldn’t work for everyone, and books and movies might work better for some people. But can you design a game that will save the world? No. The question is meaningless. It is people who save the world, each in their own way, through perspiration as well as inspiration. It is not always fun.'

'#3. Making You Press the Lever: The Chinese MMO ZT Online has the most devious implementation of [variable ratio rewards] I've ever seen. The game is full of these treasure chests that may or may not contain a random item and to open them, you need a key. How do you get the keys? Why, you buy them with real-world money, of course. Like coins in a slot machine. Wait, that's not the best part. ZT Online does something even the casinos never dreamed up: They award a special item at the end of the day to the player who opens the most chests. And that's hardly the most ridiculous aspect of the game. Now, in addition to the gambling element, you have thousands of players in competition with each other, to see who can be the most obsessive about opening the chests. One woman tells of how she spent her entire evening opening chests--over a thousand--to try to win the daily prize. She didn't. There was always someone else more obsessed. -- #2. Eliminating Stopping Points.'

RE: Jesse Schell, speaking at DICE 2010 -- Comment: Zaphid: "...there is no greater evil than the greater good.." -- Jim Reaper: "Don’t worry, Schell’s vision of the future won’t come to pass. People instantly dislike being puppets when they can see the strings." -- Uhm: "Gamers know as well as anyone that we like to watch numbers go up." -- always_black: "People ‘play’ because the results *don’t* matter, that’s why it’s ‘playing’ instead of, you know, doing stuff. When the play becomes doing stuff then it isn’t play anymore and it’s just earning a different kind of money." -- Jeremy: "He seems way too excited about the casual brainwashing of our species for money." -- Taillefer: "I’d pay somebody in China to earn my life points for me." -- Tom Camfield: "...one thing he definitely gets wrong: there’ll be far more competition between providers than he outlines; you’ll earn points for drinking Dr Pepper while simultaneously losing insurance points... "

'Every game is a system that you interact with; listening to and responding to your actions in a certain way. Every game is teaching your brain something, every game is a dialogue with its player. Its no wonder that people will spend hours grinding for loot if their brains are conditioned to do so by the most efficient reward system that we know of. Does this mean that they are actually having a good time? They might be, but they might also just say that they had a good time after the fact. Another psychological effect causes us to post fact self-justify the amount of time we spend performing any action because we never like to believe we are wasting our precious resources of time and money. Whether designers are doing this deliberately or subconciously I believe its damaging to the people who play these games...'

'I'm always on the lookout for these incentive schemes gone wrong. There's a great book on the subject by Robert Austin -- Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. The book's central thesis is fairly simple: When you try to measure people's performance, you have to take into account how they are going to react. Inevitably, people will figure out how to get the number you want at the expense of what you are not measuring, including things you can't measure, such as morale and customer goodwill. His point is that incentive plans based on measuring performance always backfire. Not sometimes. Always. What you measure is inevitably a proxy for the outcome you want... Because people have brains and are endlessly creative when it comes to improving their personal well-being at everyone else's expense. As some of your workers substitute making the most of an incentive program for serving customers the best way they know how, the customer experience will suffer.'

'To be persuaded, agents must have had the opportunity to deliberate about an action or belief that they have chosen to perform or adopt. In the absence of such deliberation, outcome alone is not sufficient to account for peoples' beliefs or motivations. Otherwise, we have no basis upon which to judge virtue in the first place. Otherwise, one code of conduct is as good as another, and the best codes become the ones with the most appealing incentives. After all, the very question of what results we ought to strive for is open to debate. -- The heart of games is not points, but process. Games have the capacity to persuade us because they can depict perspectives on how things work, and they can give us insights into the complex and often ambiguous connections between them. At their purest, schell games want to strip process from games, putting simplistic incentives its place.'

'Games are just a minor symptom of a systematic disease: The Social Pathology of Fake Achievement #1. Our society is set up to make us feel as though we must always achieve and grow. That’s true because individuals growing tend to bolster the power and creature comforts of the groups they belong to with inventions, innovations, and impressive grandstanding. #2. Because of this pressure to grow, there’s another incentive to make growth easier. More perversely, to make growth seem easier. ..why achieve at all when you can plug into any number of “achievement games” and get the same personal satisfaction? That’s when it becomes pathological. ..by creating profound pressure to achieve, our society has sprouted ways to exploit that insatiable drive by setting up “games” that simulate achievement, but that are actually meaningless. – Q: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Is it a real, true prerequisite for a tangibly effective activity?'

'The unspoken premise of his DICE 2010 lecture is that people are prisoners to external reward systems. "External reward" is practically a curse word to me, a thing I'm ever vigilant against. I don't need experience point systems giving me a false sense of mastery... people absolutely are driven by external rewards. So much so that Schell doesn't even question it, he simply takes it as given. He muses about a (dystopian?) future where games with external rewards permeate every minute of our lives. He looks at the beginnings of that in our current world and extrapolates out an extreme future where this stuff has completely taken over. What will stop it from taking over? Nothing, of course. Humanity has thoroughly proven that it can be manipulated by hollow external reward systems, and so these systems will take over.'

"We live in a bubble of fake bullshit." -- Ergo we must build an even bigger bubble of authentic bullshit.

Comment: Richard Watson: "The trouble is disenfranchisement. When a student realizes they can't get gold stars because they do not excel at whatever the task at hand is, then they turn away from the system and try to counter it. Counter-cultures develop where the rewards are different and you are rewarded for different actions, and that becomes just as addicting as doing the "right" thing. We all want praise, and if that praise come from negative actions or positive actions, it doesn't take much to get us going down the path that is reinforcing us. ...when you get to start talking about rewarding behavior, alternative systems that reward those who cannot achieve those goals should be put in to place to discourage counter-cultures..." -- Comment: Pete Smith: "We seem to be moving away from a culture of gamers who explore the map to see what they can find, into a culture (beyond gaming) that only undertakes an action for some quantified reward."

'#Autonomy: People want to have control over their work. #Mastery: People want to get better at what they do. #Purpose: People want to be part of something that is bigger than they are.' -- Sounds like anarcho-capitalism to me.

'Ego #1. Ask yourself: Does this feature increase the users self-worth or stoke the ego? #2. If a user is contributing to my system, what emotional rewards do they walk away with? What (visible) rewards will they receive?'

Incentives don't work as motivators for creative, non-linear tasks.

'When it became clear to competitive players that simply beating a game was no longer enough to differentiate themselves, the gamers themselves began to define new, harder objectives and qualifying criteria, leading to the advent of hyper-competitive pursuits. Soon, gamers were taking photos of their TV screens to verify high scores or crucial in-game moments. Game creators and media began to come on board with this new trend of in-game excellence, offering prizes for especially notable achievements. [Activision's] sew-on patches appear to be the first appearance of game achievements as we know them today: abstract, collectible representations of in-game merit, whose presence is separate from the gameplay yet intertwined with the experience as an extra motivator and/or novelty. -- As Napoleon famously said with regards to the ceremonial medals his soldiers fought alarmingly hard to earn: "With a handful of ribbons I can conquer all of Europe."'

'It is an emotional state Panksepp tried many names for: curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy. He finally settled on seeking. Panksepp has spent decades mapping the emotional systems of the brain he believes are shared by all mammals, and he says, "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. -- For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.' -- "The dopamine system does not have satiety built into it. As long as you sit there, the consumption renews the appetite."'

"The first social game based on real-life achievements. #Follow Booyah Moments all over the world #Post to Facebook and Twitter in an entertaining new way #Celebrate you and your friends' achievements #Learn surprising things about friends, family and yourself #Be rewarded for activities you already do #Get challenged to explore new passions #Enjoy gameplay activities that help you level up in your real life #Preserve the moments that make you want to shout "Booyah!" #Gain insight into how you live your life #Collect your social updates into an easily-accessible life history. Booyah Society blends social networking, entertainment and gameplay in a way that we hope will foster personal growth and generate positive social change. It's ambitious, but we can't think of anything more worth trying. We hope you'll join us: It's going to be a heckuva ride." -- Ludotopianism. Achieving ourselves to death.

'Psychological studies have shown that random reward schedules are usually the most effective, so it’s no coincidence that you see them in the most addictive games. For example, every enemy or container in Diablo is like a piñata — there is a random chance that it will drop something good if you click on it. This combines with the sunk cost fallacy very effectively. Once you’ve killed three enemies looking for a rare item, you can’t stop now… you have to keep going until you get it! Many games use well-designed rewards to convince players that they’ve accomplished something important, even when they’ve only completed a trivial task.' -- 'There’s a vital question that is rarely asked: does our game make players happy when they play, or just make them sad when they stop? This is a subtle distinction, and irrelevant to sales, but I think it’s very important. Medicine and heroin both sell for a high price, but I would sleep better at night selling one than the other.'

"When we are cogs in a large machine, we need to be paid to feel recognized, because our individual contribution is lost in the elaborate division of labor and our autonomy is similarly circumscribed. But having control over how the work is done and knowing one is responsible for the final product in its entirety makes work palpably meaningful, which is its own reward, fulfilling a basic aspect of what it means to be human. ...money functions as a consolation for social isolation, which it then reinforces by supplying the illusion of strength and efficacy ...when we work for free online, our main goal may be to express our freedom from capital, for at least a little while, and experience the restorative essence of performing socially useful work for its own sake. It could be that it’s inherently delightful in the midst of late capitalism to discover a social need that can be fulfilled without capital’s intervention."

"The iPlant is a type of brain implant advocated as a means of programming yourself. The idea is that an iPlant would be similar to today's deep brain stimulation implants. The iPlant would electronically regulate the release of monoamines in the brain. Monoamines effectively determine motivation, mood, learning and creativity."

'A design is addiction-based to the degree that it encourages players to experience the same content again and again (often referred to as grinding) in return to obtain a series of rewards. These can be simple labels with no tangible effect (like an in-game title or some achievements), or they can be character improvements that give the ability to move on to a new location with a slightly different sort of grinding. I call this the grind/reward cycle, and it can keep players coming back to one game for years... if a game uses rewards of any sort to entice you to experience highly repetitive content, you should see what it's trying to do and which of your buttons it's trying to press. If you don't mind, that's cool, but you should understand it. ...The feeling of satisfaction we get from these sorts of rewards is real - peculiar, but real. It is a powerful tool, one we would be foolish to ignore. In my view, though, it is dangerous to rely on it too heavily.'

'It's all about the scores: ABSTRACT → ACTUAL, METAPHORS → MEASURES, SIMPLE → COMPLEX, DESIGNERS → EVERYONE, IN GAME → IN LIFE'

'A few basic things about quantified metrics: #1. They are always stand-ins for more complicated status measures. A single number cannot possibly convey the nuances involved in social status and social hierarchy... #2. Techie/geek/engineer types love quantified metrics precisely because they facilitate comparison. #3. Quantified status metrics spur competition and therefore increase user action [and] reward certain types of behavior... #4. Social status is an under-studied, under-rated aspect of product design and motivation for user action.'

'Our relationship with money has many facets. Some people seem addicted to accumulating it, while others can't help maxing out their credit cards and find it impossible to save for a rainy day. As we come to understand more about money's effect on us, it is emerging that some people's brains can react to it as they would to a drug, while to others it is like a friend. Some studies even suggest that the desire for money gets cross-wired with our appetite for food. And, of course, because having a pile of money means that you can buy more things, it is virtually synonymous with status - so much so that losing it can lead to depression and even suicide. In these cash-strapped times, perhaps an insight into the psychology of money can improve the way we deal with it.'

'Users can gift Facebook Credits to other users, use them to purchase virtual gifts, or spend real money to obtain more from Facebook. Users in the beta test can give Credits to those not currently in the beta network, essentially inviting them into the test. At the current exchange rate, $1 is worth 100 Facebook Credits and new credits may only be purchased with credit cards. Other users, for example, cannot see how many Credits others have. Individuals can't even see their own Credits balance until they're trying to give Credits or spend at Facebook Gifts. Right now Facebook doesn't allow users to "cash out" Credits for real money, so if a user does get a lot of Credits, all that can really be done with them is to give them to friends or to use them to buy virtual gifts for friends. The currency is, quite literally, social.'

On services that... 'attempt to transform everyday life tasks into games by assign values to them and keeping score. ...a world in which collective experience is systematically abrogated, a world in which only competition can “unite” us and corporations reap the profits from our combat. We end up sharing only the ideal of measured achievement: how many more points we can score, how many people are reading our updates, how many more things we can own or add to our list of experiences. Services [that] meet the need we now have to have our social experiences more rigidly structured by an outside party, a referee, some sort of mediator. We seem to have worked ourselves into a corner where we must outsource our ability to be motivated. We need outside parties to generate motivational schemes and point systems to drive us through life activities that were once rewarding enough in and of themselves. ...nullifying the quality of experience and reducing it to a point value.'

#Slide 49: "Elements of Addiction: Day Trading/MMORPG -- #Attractor: Things happening outside your control in the system, yet affecting your status. #Motivator: You have a stake (self-esteem, emotional, financial) in changes happening to your status."

"The sort of extroverted, harmony-seeking, consensus-driven collectivists who think it is all about the group, cutting big-ego prima donnas down to size, and building Brave New Egalitarian Communities that enshrine social justice values. It also explains why thoroughly introverted, unsociable, egoistic and ornery individualists (I am one; among my nicknames in college was “hermit”) take to the medium like ducks to water. This conflation of social with sociable, collectivist and communitarian is extraordinarily tempting. Yes, the medium fosters communication and collaboration, but remember, wolf packs communicate and collaborate rather better than sheep. And they compete viciously for the carcass right after. The true nature of social media, the “message” of this medium, is one of radical, uncompromising individualism, within a brutally competitive, bubblegum-flavored Darwinian virtual environment. The “social” adjective is about something else entirely, not collectivist utopia." ...

"Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip­ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author. It is unclear why thought speed affects mood, but Pronin and her colleagues theorize that our own expectations may be part of the equation. In earlier research, they found that people generally believe fast thinking is a sign of a good mood. This lay belief may lead us to instinctively infer that if we are thinking quickly we must be happy. In addition, they suggest, thinking quickly may unleash the brain’s novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward." -- One for the game happiologists

"In the first ten minutes of many new games, players receive such a blizzard of rewards that they’d be forgiven for thinking they’d won the lottery, cured cancer, and completed the game. It sounds ridiculous, and sometimes it is, but this constant encouragement keeps players with the game long enough for them to get into the story and gameplay. Books are not interactive. You can’t give readers rewards for reaching page 6 (although…). The principle is the same though - you need to give readers momentum. You need to help readers along those nervous first ten minutes when they haven’t quite gotten into the flow yet, and when they’re still being battered by distractions from their TV, radio, mobile phone and computer. After those ten minutes, if they’re hooked, they’re hooked."

'Why did this con work? Let's do some neuroscience. While the primary motivator from my perspective was greed, the pigeon drop cleverly engages THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System). THOMAS is a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown--even with strangers. The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action. Cons often work better when a confederate poses as an innocent bystander who "just wants to help." We are social creatures after all, and we often do what others think we should do.'

"Human beings both want to -- and, in a deeper way, need to -- feel a sense of being autonomous. When someone else begins to seduce you into behaving with an offer of a reward, it takes away your sense of being autonomous. Now you are doing it for someone else. External rewards and punishments are counterproductive when it comes to activities that are meaningful -- tasks that telegraph something about a person's intellectual abilities, generosity, courage or values. People will voluntarily perform intellectually arduous work, for example, because it gives them pleasure to solve a puzzle or win a game of wits. It is easy to offer a reward, but it is not easy to help people find their own motivation." -- Numbers numb.

"When you log into WoW, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you just plant your ass in that chair for long enough, you'll level up. The thing is, almost no arenas of human endeavor work like this. Many are precisely the opposite, in fact. But grinding? Grinding always works. Always. You get a gold star just for showing up. This is a quietly joyful experience. It feeds our souls, as well as our sense of justice and fair play. We grind because we can't believe what a totally awesome deal we're getting handed here, often the first time in our entire suck-ass put-upon lives."

'... three different modes of in-game product placement as it relates to game genre: “instrumental” [using simulated branded product], “diegetic” [branded game environment for realism], and “archetypal” [branded game features/mechanics/acts].'

'"Women and men showed activity in the reward circuitry, which overlaps with addiction circuitry," Hoeft explained. "Men activated those regions more than women, and the brain regions moved together more than women."'

Comment (Leland): "In Second Life, we initially play the archetypal role of the innocent until we grow up into a new role." Nice little gaming of everyday life discussion.

"We don't have to think in terms of funnels and winners in online storytelling. We can let stories fracture, multiply, escape and wither, depending on how we want to encourage our users to play with them."