Just as there are different types of game, so there are different types of player – the most common being completionists and non-completionists. The difference is that completionists approach a game with the intent of finishing all tasks and levels to 100% and from every angle, while other gamers simply approach a game for fun and can easily walk away. Dr Nicola Davies discusses the psychology behind the drive to complete games – or not…
Whether a gamer is dedicated to finishing the game or not, game developers do everything they can to entice players to continue using their products. For most game developers a complex storyline and dramatic end sequences are a standard lure. Sequels and expansions draw in players who have completed achievements and are looking for more.
Players of shooters like Call of Duty have virtual teams they form from other online players to pit against opposing teams, and they recruit these people on the basis of their achievements in the offline and online versions of the game, as well as by their type of play – such as whether they are completionists.
People can make real friends over their consoles, but it generally starts with grading them in the games as they play. This sort of relationship costs time, money and no small level of commitment to completion. Therefore, because the completionist has “End Game” objectives they will prioritise them over real-world pursuits. For instance, some achievements require extra purchases or particular expenditures of time. MMORPGs, like Rift or World of Warcraft, are particularly good at dangling carrots, but consoles are just as guilty.
For 35 hours of your time playing Halo 4, 100 Microsoft Points were added to your online account; 100 Points often being given as a cheap reward for activating other Xbox features such as Netflix and watching Orange is the New Black. Of course, Netflix has combined both gaming and Orange is the New Black with its game Feisty Chicken.
The Microsoft Points system for Xbox games was filtered out last year and the company now uses plain cash for online downloads. It uses a different system of extrinsic rewarding, Xbox Live Rewards, that gives credits to user accounts. After a minimum of 5,000 credits are acquired, they are converted to your local currency and placed into your Xbox account to be spent in Xbox stores. Console companies are constantly evolving the best way to keep a gamer playing and wanting to complete a level or the entire game; extrinsic rewards are a large part of that strategy.
There are also some very deep psychological reasons for the drive to complete games. Our ability to hold things in short-term memory and let it go when completed is called the Zeigarnik Effect. Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, observed waiters easily committing customer orders to memory and completing those orders, after which the order would disappear from their mind. It didn’t appear to be a trick or to take much cognitive effort to remember, but unfinished orders would stick in the minds of the waiters until the orders were completed.
Zeigarnik also studied how the internal tension of leaving a task unfinished affects the human psyche. Initial concepts of the closure principle became apparent when Zeigarnik found people experienced a rush or relief when they were able to complete tasks. She also discovered that people remembered tasks they left incomplete more often than ones they had completed – even though it made them happier to complete them. These people sometimes formed a preoccupation with incomplete tasks.
Using the Zeigarnik principle, games employ visual triggers like quest logs and achievement tracking to remind players of what they have left to do before finding those euphoric feelings from the closure of various tasks. So, why don’t all gamers lose sleep over not finishing that last quest or achievement? If indeed they do go to sleep rather than staying up to get it finished.
A study regarding the replication of the Zeigarnik Effect showed that the time spent in processing new tasks, the size of the task itself and the nature of the interruption of that task all play a role in the internal tension created by leaving a task undone. For example, it’s easy to stop playing a game when you have only invested a little amount of time in it. However, once you have spent many hours mining 19 of 20 pieces of ore to create enough bars to make your armour for example, it’s unlikely you will feel comfortable abandoning the game before at least having your last piece of ore.
It is this persistent behaviour that drives gamers to bargain for time with themselves; those “just five more minutes” moments. It would be easy to label this as gaming addiction, but what the Zeigarnik Effect shows us is that it is natural to feel compelled to finish and acquire that feeling of closure. Gaming addiction is very real, however. Some completionists fall into this category and some don’t. Those who do are often addicted to the escapism that games offer more than to the euphoria of completion.
Games are built to encourage this addiction. Many console RPGs have alternate endings depending on how the gamer plays, encouraging them to start over from the beginning to see other endings (playing evil rather than good, for example). Elder Scrolls, Fallout and the Mass Effect series are well known for this and many other titles, and genres, have followed suit.
There are few gamers who don’t know of World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment released the game in November 2004, but it was April 2014 that the quintessential completionist, Hiruko, finished the game. This means that he completed 2,057 achievements, explored every possible area on four different world-like expansions, learned every profession option and much, much more.
These achievements give Hiruko titles in the game, rare mounts and notoriety on his realm server (and no small amount of kudos!). It is surmised that it took him 700 days; for reference, the Warcraft timer counts in hours, so 700 days is equivalent to 16,800 hours of play. This would put him beyond a simple persistent gamer, but he is now well known socially in a circle of people with similar interests – a sort of celebrity for those really into the game. In theory he accomplished something outside the online gaming world, but whether it was worth the hours no-one but Hiruko can say.
Game creators and game console companies have evolved drastically over the years; their aim is to create something addictive and fun. They use a complex formula of faster rewards – achievements for gamers concentrating on smaller tasks that tie into larger quests – to produce small chapters of closure within the game’s larger structure. Both persistent gamers and completionists are attracted to the closure and relief of getting that done: the Zeigarnik Effect.
Addictive behaviour in gamers is not uncommon, but a completionist gamer seeks more than simple gameplay. Indeed, completionist gamers are intrinsically goaloriented and love challenges. They wear gaming achievements like battle scars and are proud of their accomplishments, even when they know only other gamers will ever really understand.