How superstitious in-game behaviours become habits
In this guest post, psychologist Aidan Barry discusses how some of gaming's more quirky behaviour patterns form and why they become ingrained as myths within the gaming community.
There's a famous rumour in Pokemon Red & Blue; pressing Down on the D-Pad and B while throwing a Pokeball apparently increases your chance of catching a Pokemon.
This, of course, isn't true, and was later proven by hackers digging into the code that this had no impact on the game whatsoever. But the ritual pervaded nonetheless and has been enshrined as a form of superstition within the game.
That word, ritual, often evokes certain ideas or beliefs. It might conjure up the idea of religious ceremonies or spiritual practices. We might not necessarily think that rituals are pervasive in gaming, just as they are in other areas of life.
Often, rituals are given different names; sometimes they're called superstitions, sometimes hacks, or even sometimes just a thing that you do. Contextualising ritualistic behaviour in gaming is something I've been interested in lately, and I want to explore this. That said, there is such a wealth of factors that affect ritualistic behaviour in gaming; today, I'm only going to be talking about one part of it: behaviourism.
What is a ritual?
Ritual behaviour has been of interest to psychological and sociological researchers for an incredibly long time. Because of this, there are a lot of definitions available. Hobson and colleagues (2017) emphasised three major components for rituals. First, the ritual has a set of physical characteristics or movements that are performed the same way or conform to rigid guidelines. Second, the ritual has a psychological component; that is, it must be interpreted to have purpose or meaning. Finally, the ritual is typically not causally linked to a goal or outcome. To see these three things in action, let's look at that in action with the example in Pokemon Red and Blue. This ritual has a clear set of rigid physical movements (holding the buttons from the moment the Pokeball is released), a psychological interpretation (it increases the odds of catching the Pokemon), but is not causally linked to it (it does not, in fact, increase the odds).
In a lot of ways, rituals in games were localised to these small hacks or rumours that could be used to obtain a desired outcome. In reaching for explanations of how these rituals persisted and were maintained, some researchers adopt a behaviourist perspective. Conditioning principles tell us that behaviour that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated. So if you get a desired outcome while doing something, you are more likely to try and replicate the circumstances in which you got the outcome. Drawing on the Pokemon example, you might do a variety of different things while lobbing Ultra Ball after Ultra Ball at Zapdos.
You might hold Down and B, you might hold your Gameboy at an angle (I definitely started turning mine upside down), you might look away, or tap the A-button. If and when the catch finally works, you are set up to take a mental snapshot of what you were doing as this behaviour was rewarded. As you repeated it on higher likelihood outcomes (for example, catching a Caterpie), this ritual becomes reinforced and, ultimately, entrenched. But, as I'm sure some astute people are saying, surely if holding Down and A does not lead to successful captures, won't the behaviour eventually stop? This is true, but there's an important caveat I'll outline below.
Intermittent Reinforcement at Work
The concept of intermittent reinforcement is something that's likely at work here. Broad behaviourist principles are likely common knowledge. If a behaviour is rewarded, we do it more; if a behaviour is punished, we do it less. Some of the finer points, however, haven't quite made it that far. In psychology, we use reinforcement and punishment as terms to describe how a stimulus affects a behaviour. We also use positive and negative to mean the addition of something or the taking away of something.
So, if your psychology-minded friend says "negative reinforcement," they don't mean doing something to make a behaviour less likely; they mean taking something away to make your behaviour more likely (think of that annoying noise in your car going away when you put your seatbelt on). What also gets lost in public discussion of behaviourism is the idea of intermittent reinforcement. Once a behaviour has been reinforced a few times, if it stops being rewarded, it will fade away. So a pure reward or no reward mechanism doesn't produce long-lasting results. But if that behaviour starts being rewarded sometimes, it will persist for a lot longer. This is because I don't know which repetition of my behaviour will yield the benefit, and so I have to keep trying. Eventually, my holding Down + A coincides with a successful capture, and so I've entered into an intermittent pattern of reinforcement which, as the success of gambling establishments tells us, is one of the best patterns for long-lasting adherence to a behaviour.
The Influence of Game Theory
For me, it's important to bring in the adjacent field of game theory. Although largely associated with economics, a lot of game theory feels like psychology. After all, there's decision-making, planning, and predicting others' behaviour. All are classically the domain of psychology. In fact, famous game theory problems such as the Prisoner's Dilemma go hand-in-hand with social and ethical psychology's trolley problem.
Game theory assigns mathematical units to a person's value of any given outcome and uses these to weigh probabilities. Mathematics aside, game theory suggests that if the ritualistic behaviour is sufficiently small, and the "cost" to me is also small, then the probability it affects the outcome would have to be tiny before it became worth it to not do it.
Let's say, for example, catching a Pokemon on any given Pokeball throw is worth 10 units to me, and not catching is obviously worth 0. Also, let’s say the cost of completing the ritual is 0.1. Assuming the probability of the catch is 50/50 for simplicity's sake, my expected return from the ritual is 4.9, and not completing the ritual is 5.0. However, because the "cost" of the ritual is so small, it only needs to affect the outcome ~2.5% of the time for my expected outcome to be greater than not completing it. In short, the smaller the behaviour, the more I can "justify" doing it.
Behaviourism is just one lens to explore ritualistic behaviour in games. It happens to be one of the most popular lenses for looking at this. Breaking ritualistic behaviour down in this way starts to open the door to see it as superstition. It tells an interesting story, for sure. We can use the ideas of reinforcement, especially intermittent reinforcement, to explain why otherwise logical people do things that look silly, such as turning their Gameboy upside down. There is more to say. As we explore more, we'll expand our lens to look at the social influences of rituals and what they can tell us about our place in a group.
Multiplayer Games and Introducing Social Pressure
The social context, being observed and observing others completing a ritual, adds an interesting layer that behaviourism alone cannot account for. The presence of other players adds a layer of social pressure and engagement that allows us to expand our exploration of these behaviours beyond potentially reductive conditioning or game theory explanations.
Massive multiplayer online games, most famously World of Warcraft, have been used by researchers as a window into gaming-related behaviours for the better part of 15 years. We see similar behaviours pop up in the quest for more and better loot from encounters here too.
To share a story from my own experience, my raiding group in Final Fantasy 14 would use spells or abilities with wings before opening the loot chest reward at the end of a fight (think White Mage's Temperance or Paladin's Passage of Arms). Clearly, these actions have no direct effect on the contents of a loot chest. So why would we do them? Hobson et al. (2017) speak about the social signalling importance of completing rituals. Specifically, being seen by others completing the ritual is an important way for me to signal my loyalty to the group. In my example above, if I continue to complete the socially meaningful action of casting Temperance in front of the loot chest - especially after I have my loot - it conveys my loyalty and team-player attitude to my party. They get to see tangible proof of my engagement in the team.
Obviously, there's a lot that can be said about ritualistic behaviour in gaming, and here we've only scratched the surface. Game theory factors can be filtered through behaviourism to reflect the effort relative to the payoff; self-signalling and the use of a ritual for myself can be brought in alongside the social context.
What I’m playing: Amnesia: The Bunker
One of my great genre loves in games is horror. At this point I’ve lost count of the number of horror games I’ve played even just throughout the last ten years. So this week I’ve returned to a game that I started a while ago but got lost in other things: Amnesia: The Bunker.
Horror seems to be a place where studios come and stay, developing sprawling franchises - such as Resident Evil. I’ve made no secret of my love for Frictional Games from Penumbra, Amnesia, and their fantastic blog. The Bunker, the latest in the Amnesia series, is a departure from the journeys that other games in the series have provided. In short, The Bunker offers a simple problem: you’re stuck in a bunker with a violent beast, escape.
The move to semi-open world makes it feel more like an escape room than a grand discovery with higher and higher stakes. The more limited scope has allowed Frictional to refine the give and take that makes survival horror shine.
Worth trying if you like: Outlast, The Quarry, Superliminal (although decidedly more spooky)
Available on: PlayStation 4, Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S
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