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

GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

[Shikaku]

Gotta catch em all, POKEMON!

Re:GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

[thetoadwarrior]

Pikachu fur makes great underwear.

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.

     

Re:How would this fail the hunter-gatherer?

[F34nor]

It is also a no-no in yoga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamas see Aparigraha (non-horading).

I had a hell of a debate with the people in my yoga class about MP3s. Because they violate asteya (non-stealing) and Aparigraha (non-hoarding) and they just would consider the idea, free MP3s beat out philiospy, practive and truth in their minds.

The reason you are not supposed to hoard is because someone else might have a current use that outweighs your possible future use for the item. I have often thought that making NPC need items in games would make hoarding harder ethically to pursue. I also think that monster ecologies would be cool. Kill all the fur seal in freezly land when power leveling and fuck... they went extinct. Kill all the predators and shit we are overrun with disease carrying rats!

Re:How would this fail the hunter-gatherer?

[rs79]

This might explain the 25 sinks, 40 doors and 200 windows in my barn.

Doesn't exactly help though.

Anyone near Kingston ont need a Pepsi cooler? Or a clawfoot bathtub? Or a 3 sink stainless restaurant counter? Or a half ton of glass panes?

Re:How would this fail the hunter-gatherer?

[hairyfeet]

Yes, but you are talking IRL and we are talking game. Hell your MP3 analogy doesn't even hold up IRL because you can't actually "hoard" MP3s, as you can plug your flash into my PC and "take" my MP3s and I'll still have them. And in game it is a whole different ball of wax.

For instance I like this game called Sacred Gold that I picked up out of the bargain bin. I never heard of it but the screenshots looked good and for $20 I'll give any game a shot. if you haven't picked it up it rocks. Anyway they have this "green" armor, which gives major bonuses in a set, like in Legends of Aranna. Unlike Legends where you could get a walkthrough to tell you where each piece is Sacred is random drops, and the green set armor is one of the rarest. Worse, since there are six characters you can get green drops that aren't for your character and even if they ARE for your character there are about 5 suits per character so it may not respond to the set you are trying to build. So I'd set there for hours going "nope nope nope nope Green? &^%^&%$&^%$ Gladiator crap! nope nope nope" while I'm dripping with expensive items and all the cheap shit is in 20 foot mounds around my character.

But who cares? It is A GAME. And I'm enjoying myself, even when I'm cursing the damned gladiator and battle mage because I keep getting their crap. By hoarding i now have huge amounts of money by selling the lesser crap, so when I walk into a village and see a "ring of badass" that is a crazy price I just slap the gold on the table, my character has gotten powerful enough that even midlevel monsters refuse to attack me for fear of getting their asses kicked, hell its fun. So while I HATE those "bring me the asses of 20 snow goats" kinds of quests, which thankfully aren't that many in Sacred, as long as whether to hoard or not is my choice and it is fun, who cares . it is a GAME. The whole bloody point is we get to do the kinds of antisocial crap we wouldn't pull IRL. And as long as the designer remember to make it fun as opposed to "bring me the asses of 20 snow goats" I'm a happy little camper.

And if you haven't tried Sacred give it a spin. Good graphics and random monsters and items makes for the fun and lots of replay in my book.

Re:How would this fail the hunter-gatherer?

[kenp2002]

THey did that in UO early on.

I run a simulation that I am reasearching that takes the spawns of creatures and moves, add, deletes them as a result of activity.

Simple version:
Spawn X criteria
Damage Done to Players: + 1 per 100
Players Killed: + 10 per 1
Dmage Done to Mobs: +1 per 50
Mobs Killed: +5 per 1
Damage Taken by players: -1 per 80
Times Killed by players: -1 per 1
Damage Taken by Mobs: - 1 per 50
Times Killed by Mobs: -1 per 5

The location of Spawn X is then shifted a random direction away from the last J spawns where J was negative and towards the last M spawns where M was positive.

If the last spawn was positive the level of the mob spawn is +1, if the last spawn was negative then -1. The last 5 spawns are active at all times. For every 3 in a row positive spawn we turn the oldest of those three spawns into a new roaming spawn (e.g. the population went up by one.)

If a spawn hits a streak of 5 negative spawns we expire the current roaming spawn.

Over simplified (we actually track males and females, level averaging, migratory behavior, etc..)

There is a lot of interest in ecology modelling in games these days, don't ask how much the consultant ask for these days...

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

[gringofrijolero]

Hey! Whatever makes them happy...

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

[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.

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:TF2 Hats...

[DPyro]

Idle easier! http://www.sourceop.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1611

Why couldn't /. tap into this?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Oh, wait.

Morrowind

[F34nor]

Let me tell you about houses full of crap. Multiple sets of all the armors, weapons, and huge amounts of reagents all laid out on the floor in neat grids.

My pride and joy was stealing the full set of dramora armor off of the guy who helps you with corpus disease. I made a low DPS dagger with huge magical armor damage and broke the armor off his body. Then I knocked him out bare handed and robbed him and charmed him back to friendly. Each item was enchanted with a variable stat increase. All decked out I was totally unstoppable.

The best hoard was all the moon sugar in the game, which I ate all at once. When I ran and jumped it would load four or five games tiles before I hit the ground. It never wore off before I was bored of the game.

I am replaying Ultima Underworld right now on DOSBOX and am fighting my self not to hoard because items have no effect in that game really and trade is useless. P.S. Where is the bandit's hideout behind the store room? I cannot find it at all.

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.

Re:Obsessive Compulsive Society

[Lemmy Caution]

And I've collected all their newsletters.

The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

[Yvan256]

Rule 284: Deep down, everyone's a Ferengi.

So Blizzard got it right?

[Thoughts from Englan]

For the Horde!