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McChicken

Delayed rewards in video games ?

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Quote of the Moment :

I stopped my son from playing video games, and he began to develop all kinds of creative skills. It's human to seek out the quickest reward, but if you get the reward immediately, you don't go anywhere else. You learn that the delayed reward is more rewarding.

-Film director Michel Gondry, sadly unaware of delayed rewards in video games

What I understand from Michel "Godlike" Gondry's quote is that playing video games won't get you any creative skill, but apparently The Thumb thinks otherwise. Have you any example of delayed rewards in video games ?

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The Movies?

Getting to the point where you can make a decent movie in that game is incredibly long and sometimes frustrating. But then you make a movie. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet.

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Yeah I posted that quote. :gaming:

I do not understand why video games are (still) seen as providing instant gratification. It's a medium that more often than not requires a longterm investment from the player.

Yes, games provide an instant response to input. You press left and the guy goes left. But the actual rewards usually don't come immediately at all. You could even argue that games are all about delayed rewards. It goes back to having to beat an X number of levels or get an X amount of coins, and all the way to forming strategies and prioritizing missions and sub missions in more complex games.

Playing games is not like eating icecream. It can take a lot of effort to squeeze out the reward.

I don't know if games make you more creative though. I guess some do. I'm a big fan of Gondry so I know where the guy is coming from with the creativity thing and from his perspective I think he's right, but his rationale behind it is completely wrong.

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Okay, I agree that satisfaction doesn't come instantly in most games, but I think the point of Gondry is : games doesn't make you progress in real life. I mean, sure you can make the biggest Katamari in no time, but that can't really enrich your personality. However, by playing guitar, or drawing, or making short films for real, you can encounter a whole lot of problems and interesting points that will make you more aware of the creative world that surrounds you.

So, to sum up, getting satisfaction in games may take longer than eating an ice cream, but it's just as much creative.

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I mean, sure you can make the biggest Katamari in no time, but that can't really enrich your personality. However, by playing guitar, or drawing, or making short films for real, you can encounter a whole lot of problems and interesting points that will make you more aware of the creative world that surrounds you.

I think what you're doing here is comparing creating works of art in mediums that are already established to simply experiencing works of a newer form. That's a bit unfair, seeing as how I'm sure that actually creating a game is as much a creative and potentially helpful learning experience as any other.

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I mean, sure you can make the biggest Katamari in no time, but that can't really enrich your personality. However, by playing guitar, or drawing, or making short films for real,

It's not realy fair to compare playing games with MAKING movies, now is it? If you're going to do that, then why not compare MAKING games with WATCHING movies? I'm sure the latter is far less productive.

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Finding creative solutions to problems.

Games are full with problems the players have to solve.

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Heh. Also, I just thought of how long, how many fucking weeks it took me to complete Gods when I was little, and the sense of elation and victory I felt when I finally did it! I'm as happy when I finish a good game, as I am when I'm finished reading a good book.

I don't really see how you can sum up the value of something by the number of 'delayed rewards' you receive from it. Jesus, that makes us sound like trained mice. As far as I'm concerned, you get just as many 'delayed rewards' from games as you do from watching movies or reading books.

Besides that video games are fucking fun, and that's my reward.

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Gondry's "The Science of Sleep" is all delay and no reward, so maybe he was inspired by video games while making the movie.

Games are something you play when you want to unwind, not when you want to be productive, but the good ones inspire different thoughts and strategies and hey, at least develop hand-eye coordination. :blink:

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I think Gondry's point is sort of like playing Guitar Hero for two weeks versus, say, learning to play the guitar. Guitar Hero makes you feel like a rock virtuoso after only a few solid days of playing, but -- unlike spending years learning to play a real guitar -- you don't actually get any real reward out of it other than a high score in Guitar Hero.

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I spent years learning to play real guitar, and the only reward I get is having people complain about the amount of space it takes up in the house.

Whereas when I win at Guitar Hero, I am rewarded by a high score, respect among my peers, affection from my boyfriend and admiration from my foes.

Gondry's quote is that playing video games won't get you any creative skill, but apparently The Thumb thinks otherwise

Well, when I was little I used to make lots of little designs for video games, design characters and stories and what have you. I learned to make music for the games, how to animate (so very badly) the characters, and I even eventually made a few little (awful) games using various crap game-making packages. So I did use my love of video games in a creative way, kinda.

I think that's an example of a reward from playing video games... i'm not sure what you mean though... erm... I mean is that delayed enough? Or too delayed? Or a progressive reward...

I do agree that in general and in most cases, video games don't tend to teach you any creative skill. But I don't believe fictional books do either, or movies, or anything else that was created to entertain. And I don't think that people necessarily WANT to develop creative skills while being entertained.

But that's not what this topic is about, sorry. I don't understand what you mean by delayed rewards. I don't understand why that makes sense ;(

Oh sorry one last thing:

I mean, sure you can make the biggest Katamari in no time, but that can't really enrich your personality. However, by playing guitar, or drawing, or making short films for real,

I'd just like to point out that I play guitar, draw, and have been known to make short films and games too... it's not like playing games stops me from doing those things, so I don't really see Gondry's point...

Anyway I'm going to stop now before I make a twat of myself like I ALWAYS MANAGE TO in these threads *sigh* I've already managed to go off topic since the original question was 'what ARE the delayed rewards of video games?' and I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

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We're getting two things confused now. Some posts are talking about the catharsis when completing something inside the game itself... the reward for sitting through something. Other posts appears to be talking about real life rewards from playing video games, such as knowledge gained or whatever.

I'm losing track of this. :( Maybe it was a bad idea to try to interpret Gondry's quote too much, as he might not know much about games at all.

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Gondry is completely ignorant like most people are on video games. It's like he's comparing a cheap romance novel with the illiad because he only knows the term "books", or independent movies with porn movies because he only understands the word "film".

However, I would say that it's not hard to be ignorant, since the video games are mostly portrayed as a glorified board game/porn industry enterprise.

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However, I would say that it's not hard to be ignorant, since the video games are mostly portrayed as a glorified board game/porn industry enterprise.

That's kind of true though, seeing as how many of the top-selling games and their respective franchises are utterly lacking in an artistic sense. There are of course irregularities, such as Shadow of the Colossus which has been doing well recently, but that's a rare exception. I wouldn't think of calling Madden, Tony Hawk or most Star Wars license games works of art. Whether they are fun or not is another issue, but I think that most would agree that they lack that special something that bumps it up a notch from just being yet another game.

I think this is what puts most games on about the same level as a board game.

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That and crap like Mario Party. What the hell were they thinking?

Mario games were the top selling franchise this console generation, so I guess they did something right in order to appeal to so many people, because I'm pretty sure Super Mario Advance didn't sell all those copies on its own. That something isn't necessarily anything that we will appreciate, but someone sure does.

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Well, that and the fact that there were something like 20 mario games this generation. No franchise with only a few installments, even a GTA or a Halo, will be able to seriously compete with that.

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I believe the thinking was probably something along the lines of "we need a cash cow to fund our R&D for more innovative things....."

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What the fuck is this thread about? Why on earth would (or should) games give the same benefits to CREATING something? That's sort of an unfair comparison, don't you think? I can't even tell what people are arguing here. Yeah, playing video games won't give you tons of creative skills. What about making video games? Isn't that more comparable to making movies or playing an instrument?

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What the fuck is this thread about? Why on earth would (or should) games give the same benefits to CREATING something? That's sort of an unfair comparison, don't you think? I can't even tell what people are arguing here. Yeah, playing video games won't give you tons of creative skills. What about making video games? Isn't that more comparable to making movies or playing an instrument?

The creativity thing was brought up right away and dismissed. After that the thread has slowly, but steadily, been derailed. If you hadn't said anything I'm sure we would have been talking about ponies in about three pages.

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That and crap like Mario Party. What the hell were they thinking?

Hey, Mario Party is fucking fun, as long as you play it with the right people. (In fairness, five and seven are severely flawed and I haven't played the N64 editions.)

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