I can believe it. (Destiny)

by LostSpartan, Wednesday, October 08, 2014, 16:41 (3699 days ago) @ ShadowOfTheVoid

Again (at the risk of repeating myself and becoming annoying), Jones was lamenting the fact that for a lot of people (not you, obviously, or me, but many, many others) there WASN'T anything pulling them back to Halo. They played it, they finished it, probably they even enjoyed it, they moved on to other games. It was good, but they didn't come back.

THOSE are the people he wanted to reach. Not you. Not me. He'd already reached us. :)

Are there really that many gamers out there that didn't really replay anything — just one and done and that's it — until developers started adding Skinner boxes, investment systems, or whatever you want to call them into the mix? That's... kind of sad, really, if it's true. If you told me that a decade ago, it would have come across as a totally alien concept to me. But I guess when you have people who play COD and grind all the way to 50, only to Prestige and voluntarily repeat that process again and again and again, it makes a sick sort of sense. COD didn't get popular until it started adding Skinner box crap to it, so maybe there really were that many people who need a carrot dangled in front of them to get them motivated, rather than the promise of a great gameplay experience and a real feeling of accomplishment.

Times and demographics are changing. My evidence is anecdotal at best but I've seen plenty of people who would one and done a game only to trade it in. People would also complain about games being short or having no incentive to keep playing once it has been beaten. If the game has a carrot dangling in front of them though and they get hooked, they are more likely to keep the game in the tray longer and continue playing; COD's continued popularity is a great example of how these types of systems work and keep people in the game longer. I mean the existence of achievements and trophies proves this too. How many people did you see play games quickly, even bad ones, for the achievement payout and the increasing of their gamer score?

I'm not saying whether or not this is a good thing, just that it definitely happens.