[MUD-Dev] Evolutionary Design

[Paul Schwanz]

Sasha Hart wrote:
> [DanC]

>> All of this leads to a subject that I glossed over in my previous
>> essay: Intrinsic motivation.  The reward systems I described in
>> the first essay were all extrinsic motivation systems.  In other
>> words, the design builds sticks and carrots into the game that
>> push the play towards a particular type of action. Intrinsic
>> motivation stems from the player's internal desire to do an
>> activity.

> Extrinsic motivation is incoherent to me.

[snip]

> The pigeon is considered to peck the key because that will result
> in some seed, and because the pigeon just likes eating seed. If we
> then have to explain the motivation for eating seed, we start to
> have more and more difficulty. While it might indeed be possible
> to specify the biological causes involved in the pigeon's eating
> seed, it is really sufficient in the general case to talk about
> eating seed as if it were just inherently motivating.

So is the pigeon motivated to peck the key?  If so, it seems to me
that this motivation is different than the motivation to eat the
seed.  This is not to say that the pigeon is any more or less
motivated.  I only mean to say that, while it is quite easy for me
to understand that the seed is a "carrot" it does not seem nearly as
natural to think of the key press as the "carrot."  The key press
seems more like a causal relationship set up to elicit specific
behavior based on our knowledge of what functions like a "carrot" in
motivating a pigeon.

So if the pigeon is considered to be motivated to peck the key, I
can see how this motivation could be thought of as dependent upon
things that are external to the pigeon.  This might be a helpful
distinction when talking about things that motivate pigeons.  Even
so, I suppose the motivation itself always happens internally.

> It *is* really critical to realize that certain rewards can
> interfere with others. Imagine playing a game that gave out
> experience rewards proportional to use of the 'chat' command. You
> wouldn't get better community; you'd get spam. But it should be
> clear that this isn't because experience rewards are ineffective
> (extrinsic, weaker, more contingent). It is just that experience
> is important enough to the players for them to figure out optimal
> ways of getting it which also happen to ruin the chat
> channels. Which may drive off some or all of the players anyway,
> even if they like the easy xp.

> In that example, *your* carrots and sticks are effective in
> increasing the activity (e.g., they are motivating), it's just not
> a good thing. It's obviously also possible for your carrots and
> sticks not to make a difference, or for your carrots and sticks to
> inhibit rather than motivate activity.  

Are they your carrots and sticks or are they simply your key
presses?  Again, it seems to me that a distinction here might be
helpful, but I can see that the extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation
distinction might introduce confusion.  Perhaps a better distinction
would be to decide what *are* motivations and what simply *leverage*
those motivations.  So, is the pigeon motivated to peck the key?
Perhaps not.  Perhaps it is only motivated to eat seeds, but a
causal relationship between key presses and seeds might very well
leverage this motivation.

--Phin the Layman


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