Smart man automates Destiny grinding (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Tuesday, January 20, 2015, 16:02 (3384 days ago) @ Cody Miller

You contribute a lot to the community and you have a sharp mind. At the same time, you tend to universalize your experience of the world. As much as you may think you know what is best for people, you are limited because your brain neurons are wired in ways that are totally different from others. The stimuli that hits you as fun is going to be different than that which triggers the "fun" in others. People often say that you should try to see things from the other person's point of view. This is laudable, but it is also impossible. The best we can do it reach approximations of what we think that person may be experiencing.

You say I don't, but I fully realize that there are different tastes… when someone honestly says "I find X activity fun", they are not wrong. They CAN'T be wrong. They find it fun. True statement.

Thus when constructing a theory of fun or whatever you are talking about, you have to account for that. I can perfectly well explain why some people find dumb activities fun. It doesn't make the activity less dumb however!

Pixel Poppers has an old article that's very good regarding this.

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation ("Paul") and a person with a mastery orientation ("Matt"). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved.

Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle.

While a performance orientation improves motivation for easy challenges, it drastically reduces it for difficult ones. And since most work worth doing is difficult, it is the mastery orientation that is correlated with academic and professional success, as well as self-esteem and long-term happiness.

It's easy to see why someone with performance orientation will be drawn to games where success is primarily defined by putting in time with easy repetitive activities. If they were however taught to shift their thinking to mastery orientation, they would shun such games and see them for what they really are: lame. Even though they were actually having fun playing them.

So if the only two reasons to take up a challenge were the two described here, the problem could be broken down like this. But neither of these describes why *I* take up challenges in-game, for example - and I'd bet there are others here, in this very, very tiny subset of the gaming world, that could make the same statement.

::shrug:: Simplify ANY problem down to a pair of possible outcomes and you can solve most things. The trick is actually doing that simplification. :)