The Soapbox: Psychology, Reward Systems and Game Design (aka Why I Love Monster Hunter)
I love games. I love video games, board games, card games, mind games, and so on. But I want to talk about the layers behind what you see and what you’re playing - the invisible forces guiding your experience.
My plan is in social psychology and media studies, so it should come as no surprise that this is something I’d find fascinating. How do game developers shape our play? How do they draw our eyes? What is the thought that goes into what we do?
Now’s the part where I rant about Monster Hunter! For those of you who don’t know: Monster Hunter is a video game series where you use drastically over sized weapons to take down massive dragons, dinosaurs, bugs, and the occasional sand shark-whale-mountain. There’s lots of reasons to love these games, from the difficult yet rewarding combat, the inventive monsters, the unique landscapes, and I’ll stop myself before this just becomes a massive list.
The main reason I love Monster Hunter though, is its psychologically rich game-play philosophy. Instead of leveling up in the typical “beat thing, get experience, get stronger,” Monster Hunter trains the player to become better instead. The experience gained isn’t arbitrary points in a system, but rather the experience comes from training your mind and muscles to recognize the monsters’ tells and find your opportunities to counter attack. You, as a player, become better rather than your character. You learn where monsters tend to go, what their attacks look like, what supplies to go in with, what parts to break, and so on.
Once you’ve taken down your fair share of dragons, the second part of the game comes in: weapon and armor crafting. Numbers do go up in MonHun but it’s all from using the parts you’ve gained from taking down the beasts to make new equipment. The series isn’t rich on story, so most of your drive in these games will come from intrinsic goals of wanting to make a new set because it has cool abilities or just looks cool. So you find a set you like, and it’s back to the hunt. You repeat your quests over and over to collect randomly dropping parts of the monster and you cobble together your fancy new suit.
That’s where this system melds beautifully with the last one. The more you need for a piece of equipment, the more you’ll need to hunt that monster. But the more you hunt that monster, the better you’ll get at it because you’re learning it so well. You can cut down hunt times from 40 minutes to around 15 just from learned skill alone. A mix of intrinsic motivations and an extrinsic reward system keeps the player in a cycle of hitting their goals at a reliable pace that prevents them from getting bored of anything repetitive.
But just in case you are getting bored, you can take the hunt online with your friends! Monster Hunter is a series known for its cooperative experience where you team up with friends or strangers to all help each other accomplish your goals. Initially made as a test game by Capcom to see how well online multiplayer could work, the series blew up in Japan because of its themes of teamwork and its easily digestible nature. On the train? Hunt a monster. In the cafe with your friends? Hunt a monster. Bored at home? Hunt a monster.
The system works perfectly to hold a player’s attention and allow them to set their own goals while maintaining a rewarding experience that doesn’t over saturate them with unnecessary rewards nor withholds the rewards for an artificial difficulty
I could’ve gone on and on about these things and could’ve named a million other examples, but alas, I only have the one post. Thank you for reading the first Soapbox, please let us know what you think or if you have any comments!
