The Psychology of Collection and Hoarding In Games

This article at Gamasutra takes a look at how the compulsion to hoard and accumulate objects, as well as the desire to accomplish entirely abstract goals, has become part of the modern gaming mindset. "The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation explains that in compulsive hoarders: 'Acquiring is often associated with positive emotions, such as pleasure and excitement, motivating individuals who experience these emotions while acquiring to keep acquiring, despite negative consequences.' Sound familiar? The 'negative consequences' of chasing after the 120th star in Mario 64 or all 100 hidden packages in Grand Theft Auto III may be more subdued than those of filling your entire house with orange peels and old cans of refried beans. But game designers know that it's pretty damn easy to tap into this deep-rooted need to collect and accumulate. And like happy suckers we buy into it all the time, some to a greater degree than others."

Comments

Re:GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never have enough!

How would this fail the hunter-gatherer?

[Anonymous Coward]

They always attribute this behavior to some kind of compulsive outlier, but the the behavior is common to all humans. And is at the root of a lot of the fruitless consumerism. Comes from before there was culture or communication. Comes from the lizard brain. And probably never failed the early hunter-gatherer who didn't get penalized for keeping too may cats or a garbage-ridden apartment.

     

Stating the Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so basically this article is saying that people collect and horde in-game items because they like it and it makes them happy ("positive emotions").

Sort of like the way psychopaths kill because it makes them happy, lazy people are sedentary because it makes them happy, and fat people eat too much because it makes them happy.

That's saying about as much as barking dogs.

Re:Stating the Obvious

[TheRealMindChild]

Actually, what makes a psychopath kill (sociopath is the more politically correct term now) is their inability to truly tell right from wrong. To them, killing a person is the same thing as stealing a candy bar. They don't get "happy". Their impulse is satisfied. It may not seem like much of a difference up front, but do you get "happy" when scratching an itch? No, but you are satisfied by doing so.

Re:Stating the Obvious

[Omestes]

Legal != Right; Illegal != Wrong.

Legality and morality are loosely linked, but do not imply each other. I jay walk almost daily, but I doubt that this puts my morality into question. Some people might not view some copyright laws (and instances of them) as particularly moral, and thus feel free to ignore them as long as the risk of getting caught is lower than the satisfaction gained in the action.

I'm sick of people thinking that following law is always moral, or that all laws are moral statements. In extreme circumstances following laws can be immoral, and breaking them moral. Hording mp3's or ROM files probably don't fall into this (to me its pretty morally agnostic, in some cases I see no problem with piracy, and in some I do, depending on circumstance, and how unnatural the law is in that case).

To me the pathology springs from wanting to have 6000 ROMs, when there is no chance in hell that you could ever enjoy a significant percentage of them, I horde DVDs, but I have managed to watch all of them (sans a few crappy gifts).

Re:Stating the Obvious

[Fulcrum of Evil]

With the NES collectors, you could argue that there is no real harm in having 6000 ROMs from a game system that's 15 or so years old. They don't sell it, and even if they did, there isn't much market for that stuff anyway - you'd need to package it nicely and make it play like a regular game. Even then, the appeal is limited. This is more akin to collecting antiques.

Re:Stating the Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

ROM goodsets exist not so that one person can have every ROM, but as a way to distribute ROMs. For an old system, even a complete set of every ROM ever made is still not that big, but part of how the size is kept down (other than the ROMs being tiny by today's standards to start with) is that their compression is usually very bad and on top of that, there may be significant shared code between ROMs, so a solid archive would probably be used. On top of that, for the vast majority of the ROMs the audience interested in them is probably very small -- too small to expect to find someone else sharing that specific ROM on a p2p network.

All of this comes out to it being far easier and better for everyone if every ROM for a system is distributed in a single package. No one wants every ROM (unless they are doing some sort of statistical analysis on them...), but someone wants every ROM, so it is best if everyone offers it up via p2p.

Dastardly Designers

[_Sprocket_]

But game designers know that it's pretty damn easy to tap into this deep-rooted need to collect and accumulate. And like happy suckers we buy into it all the time, some to a greater degree than others.

Game designers are just out to reel in suckers. Skinner boxes, treadmills, and obsessive compulsive triggers - anything to land them a pigeon. Yup. That's it. It wouldn't ever be because someone wants to build something they think might be fun.

Re:Dastardly Designers

[Yewbert]

If the measure of success the game company values most is sales, and therefore the game designs that are emulated most closely in subsequent generations are the ones that sold the best, then these kinds of features (that 'reel in more suckers' by playing on psychological predilections) will evolve whether or not the game designers are conscious that they're using OCD triggers. Just, as the phrase goes, sayin'.

Really?

[mmaniaci]

This is not some new thought or idea. Its survivalism and hasn't changed since... ever. Horde it up 'cause you may not have it tomorrow, and you still gotta eat. This trend in games is now obvious probably because of the popularity of WoW et. al. and how our "selves" are so easily transferred to an abstract, digital realm where we can horde and collect as long as there's stuff to horde and collect. For fuck's sake, people have been collecting and playing card games for decades. This is incredibly un-newsworthy.

Re:Really?

[rpillala]

The word you want is "hoard." I'm not trying to be snarky I just thought you would want to know for future reference.

The effect in MMO's is magnified by the fact that it's possible for some objects to be permanently removed from the game. Most times I've seen this, people who already have something are allowed to keep it while no new copies of it will be spawned. In real life we have endangered species that are sometimes permanently removed, and there is a small (in number of people) trade for parts from those species. Partly for the rarity itself and partly I expect because the parts may not be available tomorrow, so to speak.

This, however, is not for survival.

Why couldn't /. tap into this?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Oh, wait.

Um, finishing?

[maxume]

I don't think I play games like Mario64 to 'collect' all the stars, I play until I think I have finished the content, the stars track that progress. Once the game is finished, the stars don't really have any meaning or other significance.

This is very similar to filling in all the answers to a crossword, not so similar to making sure my T.V. Guide collection is complete.

Re:Um, finishing?

[artor3]

But some people do play to collect all the stars. Now, I never played Mario 64, but in most games there are stars or flags or some other widget scattered all over the place, and collecting them is completely tangential to the plot. A normal play through might have you find 20% of them. But some people then go back to find every last one. Those are the sort of people being discussed here.

Comes from watching too much TV

[Animats]

I've never had much of a desire to own stuff. But I've never owned a broadcast TV in my whole life. I have a DVD player and a large flat-screen display, but no antenna or cable connection. Watching 20 minutes of commercials per hour is bad for you. Hours a day of "consume, consume, consume" has to have an effect.

The "hoarding" mentality may come from overdosing on advertising.

Obsession is obsession

[Rastl]

If you're prone to obsessive behaviours then you're going to be prone to them in games as well as in real life. I can't see how game designers are somehow bad for catering to this. As long as the game is playable without the need to collect all the widgets then they're actually just creating extra features.

Speaking as someone who is prone to obsessive behaviours I can tell you that the most idiotic flash game can 'trap' me if I'm not on my guard. For me it isn't the need to collect widgets, it's the "One More Game" syndrome. Win or lose, it's the need to play just One More Game.

And that, dear readers, is why I won't play online games any more. Rather than battle the temptation I'll just avoid those things that could cause me problems. Bravo to the designers for giving people the option but I'll pass, thanks.

One last thought for all of you folks who have a ton of $ITEM in your house. After having to clear out the households of several deceased relatives I recommend that you GET RID OF YOUR CRAP! We're doing that ourselves since we discovered first-hand just how much stuff accumulates and how much space is being filled by completely useless $ITEM. Books have gotten cleared out to just the ones we really like, unused small appliances are gone, saved 'just in case' are gone. We're not only doing this as a favor to whoever has to clean out our house but to actually make it more livable. We've even got ~gasp~ empty space on the bookshelves.

Re:GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

If I made a game where kids grew up their 'digital' dogs to be mean and then they'd throw them in a pit with other kids 'digital' dogs to fight to the death I'd probably be hunted down and killed. But make them fantasy things that don't really die and it's wonderment.