Game: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Fixed Interval Reinforcement Schedule:
The fruit trees in the game allow the player to harvest fruit every three hours. The desired action is that the player will return every 3 hours to harvest their digital fruit. As the player gets closer in time to being able to collect their fruit their anticipatory pleasure will build until they are able to consummate by again harvesting the fruit. However, just after harvesting they experience the downswing in pleasure from the dopamine boost of their fruit collection and want the feeling again right now. The entire time that the trees are re-growing fruit there is an icon above them which the player can click to speed up the process. This is a desired action on the part of the player to get them to spend money to speed up the process and the dopamine delivery.
Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedule:
The player is often passing the small section of seafront that houses the fishing mechanic. At any time, a fish’s shadow may appear which should trigger the player to attempt to catch the fish. Should they succeed they are rewarded with one of many in-game fish which can be used in quests or simply to sell. They are also given a moment of victory in which their character holds up the fish to present to the player their success. The acquired item along with the moment of victory become one reward with variable elements that the player can get the opportunity to receive at any time as long as their character is near a body of water. This means their reinforcement pause remains at zero as long as the player stays interested in receiving this reward because it could come at any time.
Fixed Ratio Reinforcement Schedule:
This schedule is triggered by the player being given quests, usually to complete requests for NPCs or collect coconuts or fish. An activity that the player can, and ideally will, set about doing immediately. If the player completes all their quests for the day then they have a maximum 24hour reinforcement pause that would almost certainly cause them to stop playing that day. If, however, they have other quests to complete, then after they have turned in their completed quest (after some manufactured anticipation of needing to turn it in) they are met with a screen compiled of all their incomplete quests, showing them how close they are to finishing them. If these quests successfully trigger the hook cycle again then this renders the reinforcement pause to nothing in this case.
Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule:
The player can be driven to catch one particular fish for a quest or to sell. This will trigger the player to take their character fishing. While engaging in the fishing mechanic the player can only ever see identical fish shadows in the water, any one of which might be the one they need for their quest or the one that is worth enough to buy that one in-game item. This means that the player will, ideally, continue to catch fish until they catch the one they desire. The player believes that every next fish could be the fish they want as they are performing an action that could lead to their desired reward on any occasion that they perform it.
With this game, the key investments that a player puts into the game are threefold.
From the moment a player starts playing any game, they are investing their time and any decision to quit the game is weighed against time already spent. If a player spends two hours and fifty-five minutes waiting to harvest their fruit, then they will be unlikely to delete the game when there are only five minutes left to wait. That is partially due to the build-in anticipation, but it is also the sunk cost fallacy, telling them that if they don’t collect their fruit then that two hours and fifty-five minutes was wasted.
Once the player has felt the need to speed up a fixed interval reward, they have invested money in their experience. People are loath to waste money so having already spent it they will go to great lengths to convince themselves that it was a good investment. The most effective way of convincing themselves of this is to continue playing.
Players can personalise their camp and their in-game avatar to their specifications. They will invest time and money doing this, but they are also investing their own personality. To design your in-game space and how your character should look allows the player to feel as though they have put a piece of themselves into the game. Not only do players love influencing their games in this way but they hate to lose that personalised feeling.
In the game, the player only has a limited amount of inventory space meaning that once their inventory is full, they must choose some items to sell so that they have space for new things. This is often an irritating task for the player to undergo but they are given the option to pay with in-game currency (purchasable with real money.) to increase their inventory space. This is a form of negative reinforcement where the player is being triggered by the irritating task of inventory management to perform the action of spending money to increase their storage size and receiving the reward of being able to collect items uninhibited.
