Achievements considered harmful

GDC2010 강연.

The Nightmare Self-Fulfilling Scenario:

1. make an intrinsically interesting game, congratulations!
2. use extrinsic motivators to make your game better
3. destroy intrinsic motivation to play your game
4. metrics fetishism pushes you towards designs where EM works

Minimizing the Damage:

• Don’t make a big fuss about them
• Use unexpected rewards
• Use absolute, not relative measures
• Use endogenous rewards
• Make them informational, not controlling.

Call to Action:

• The industry needs to start studying the long term impact of achievements on players
• Developers need to be better versed in the literature and more thoughtful about the consequences of extrinsic motivators