The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics (Destiny)

by Fuertisimo, Thursday, January 15, 2015, 13:46 (3401 days ago) @ RaichuKFM

It doesn't need to be exploitative to work that way. There's no denying that the vast majority of your time playing Destiny beyond the 15 hours or whatever it takes to go from level 1 to 20 is replaying the same missions over and over, with the purpose basically to increase bars until they ding, whether those bars are on guns, or your light level. Or worse still, running endlessly around harvesting materials to make those guns ding, the most senseless time-wasting grinding you could possibly add to a game.

If you find running around just shooting stuff in the game to be fun, good on you, for me it plays like a pared down less interesting version of Halo, but I can certainly understand why some people would get into it. From a broader perspective however, with what the game is trying to accomplish in terms of retaining its players, it is most definitely operating on a Skinner box principle.

Opinions on this game vary wildly, but I think it would be a little silly to pretend that there isn't a bit of a carrot on a stick mechanism keeping a lot of people coming back for more.