Cyber-psychologist Berni Good talks free-to-play gaming

so my name is Bernie good I'm a psychologist and my specialist area of research and work and consultancy is within the gaming environment and trying to understand G behavior from a psychological perspective from a psychological perspective and in terms of the perception of the game man which is what the area that psychologist would look at there's very limited research around that over here so psychologists like would look to Pockets where it's where free to play has being establish for a long time such as South Korea so in South Korea there's a couple of really interesting uh guy psychologist from parking who developed um some research around the perception of value for the game act and how they perceive value within a free-to-play environment um freeo playay is not going

anywhere so it's important that developers understand the psychological triggers that are going to engage the gameer within that kind of a monetization strategy without disengaging them and without the gameer coming away feeling that perhaps they you know had the war Falls over their eyes for example so par Le's research uncovered some very uh interesting categories within the perception of value for example people will see a game will see um value good value if they can um pay for uh Power and strength within their game plan so um they're quite happy to do that and for me as a psychologist that's a really interesting area because psychologists have uncovered that um within this area that there is actually um some quite fiery emotions in play and the sort of emotions we've been looking at would be envy jealousy and envy and jealousy are really strong emotions very difficult

for human beings to keep a lid on these kind of emotions and psychologists are uh uncovered within a technical interaction environment and they've done research actually within iPhones around this that there are two types of um Envy there is benign envy and there is malicious Envy when you apply that to the perception of the gamer and how they perceive value examp when they want to get a power up um or strength or get a leg up somewhere in the game play um these two types of Envy are very interesting so the benign Envy is when a gamer will perceive that another player um has done very well they they've worked really quite quickly for example through a grind um or they've taken out a boss quite quickly or they've done something else in the game though that they admire they're still jealous of them and envious of them that they've done that but but they don't want to

pull them down they want to elevate themselves up to that point so within malicious Envy uh we see that uh a gamer might perceive that an individual um hasn't quite warranted what the place that theyve got to in the game play so they may have paid for a leg up for example or to get to the end of a grinding session Etc so that's when um a player will will want to pull down the other player from an EnV jealousy perspective so that's quite interesting that's just one of the elements that the work that Park and they um have uncovered in terms of perception of value in this free toay environment another area that they've looked at is something called conspicious consumption um and that's been around since the 1900s um it's a very well-known psychological phenomena um where uh it's a bit like the P effect where players will perceive good value if they can and

Adorn their character for example in a really nice outfit or something like that um because if I as a player look better than you that kind of gives me a bit of an edge so this conspicious consumption is another area that par uh in their paper have uncovered in terms of the perception of value of the player so those are just some of the examples of the type of psychological research that's been done within these new monetization strategies what's really interesting is that satisfaction in game B does not equate to from psychical perspective does not equate to the gamer receiving perception in terms of uh value so even if a game is very satisfying to play it does not necessarily mean that the player will actually spend any money in the game so uh for the first time really designers

and developers are having to um include within their design strategies and development strategies these monetization strategies and they absolutely ought to be based on the perception of the value for the gamer because gam we will not mind paying if they perceive that it's good value um so other areas like uh good monetary value for example and again that's nothing new that's really easy to understand buy one get one free you know you've only got walk into any supermarket and understand that consumer psychological aspect and to incorporate those into the development and design um is quite appropriate in terms of the perception of the game man because they will perceive as long as they are perceiving that they're getting some kind of Val it's really interesting because I think and the research that I've done myself um suggests that gers are really quite switched on to this um where I

think it's problematic is for uh minors and I also think it's problematic for uh adults who might be vable so someone has not mentally hous that's when it becomes problematic um for me um I think transparency um is really important to the game and I think because people are so switched on to um these kind of strategies um it would be interesting for game uh for game developers and designers to try have a little bit more transparency perhaps and I think that um research that's underway at the moment with other colleagues of mine other academics that's yet to be published or finalized um is uncovering that as long as the viewer or the gamer is perceiving that um they are not being CED and that it's transparent from the get go they're quite happy with these strategies it's when they're faced with something a bit further down the line when they're into the game

um and they're not expecting to have to pay to get a LEL to do something in the game um that's where it becomes problematic for the game I think that there are aspects um around Miners and and potentially some vulnerable adults where that kind of thing mind to be viable but it would need to be research extensively um and I know that the office Fair trading at the moment are investigation free toay for children and how that the can in that might work and and so I don't really have a yes or no answer to that because I think it's a gray area um I think that developers and designers do have a responsibility um to ensure that they are being as transparent as possible um and actually what's really interesting is that desire for continuation to play in a game and to avoid disengagement again um the more transparent and UPF

developers are the more likely they are to retain the player I mean that I've probably said it what 10 times already but that word transparency it's really key because you will get loyalty Grand loyalty you know you will get people recommending you and one of the big areas um I see a potential growthing from a psychological perspective um in terms of people is people recommending games to and we've seen that with a lot of the social games that are out there and I think that that's going to play you know more important role and there's that b um adage that you know well only one person out of 10 talk about how brilliant you are but nine out of 10 people will be very unforgiving if they don't see clean up of them a supper