7 ways games reward the brain
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0:00 - 0:03I love video games.
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0:03 - 0:06I'm also slightly in awe of them.
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0:06 - 0:08I'm in awe of their power
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0:08 - 0:10in terms of imagination, in terms of technology,
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0:10 - 0:12in terms of concept.
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0:12 - 0:14But I think, above all,
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0:14 - 0:16I'm in awe at their power
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0:16 - 0:19to motivate, to compel us,
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0:19 - 0:21to transfix us,
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0:21 - 0:24like really nothing else we've ever invented
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0:24 - 0:26has quite done before.
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0:26 - 0:29And I think that we can learn some pretty amazing things
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0:29 - 0:31by looking at how we do this.
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0:31 - 0:33And in particular, I think we can learn things
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0:33 - 0:36about learning.
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0:36 - 0:38Now the video games industry
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0:38 - 0:40is far and away the fastest growing
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0:40 - 0:42of all modern media.
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0:42 - 0:44From about 10 billion in 1990,
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0:44 - 0:47it's worth 50 billion dollars globally today,
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0:47 - 0:50and it shows no sign of slowing down.
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0:50 - 0:52In four years' time,
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0:52 - 0:55it's estimated it'll be worth over 80 billion dollars.
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0:55 - 0:58That's about three times the recorded music industry.
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0:58 - 1:00This is pretty stunning,
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1:00 - 1:03but I don't think it's the most telling statistic of all.
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1:03 - 1:05The thing that really amazes me
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1:05 - 1:07is that, today,
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1:07 - 1:09people spend about
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1:09 - 1:12eight billion real dollars a year
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1:12 - 1:14buying virtual items
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1:14 - 1:16that only exist
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1:16 - 1:19inside video games.
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1:19 - 1:22This is a screenshot from the virtual game world, Entropia Universe.
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1:22 - 1:24Earlier this year,
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1:24 - 1:26a virtual asteroid in it
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1:26 - 1:30sold for 330,000 real dollars.
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1:30 - 1:32And this
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1:32 - 1:35is a Titan class ship
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1:35 - 1:37in the space game, EVE Online.
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1:37 - 1:39And this virtual object
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1:39 - 1:41takes 200 real people
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1:41 - 1:44about 56 days of real time to build,
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1:44 - 1:47plus countless thousands of hours
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1:47 - 1:49of effort before that.
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1:49 - 1:52And yet, many of these get built.
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1:52 - 1:54At the other end of the scale,
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1:54 - 1:57the game Farmville that you may well have heard of,
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1:57 - 1:59has 70 million players
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1:59 - 2:01around the world
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2:01 - 2:03and most of these players
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2:03 - 2:05are playing it almost every day.
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2:05 - 2:07This may all sound
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2:07 - 2:09really quite alarming to some people,
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2:09 - 2:11an index of something worrying
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2:11 - 2:13or wrong in society.
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2:13 - 2:15But we're here for the good news,
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2:15 - 2:17and the good news is
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2:17 - 2:19that I think we can explore
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2:19 - 2:22why this very real human effort,
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2:22 - 2:26this very intense generation of value, is occurring.
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2:26 - 2:28And by answering that question,
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2:28 - 2:30I think we can take something
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2:30 - 2:32extremely powerful away.
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2:32 - 2:34And I think the most interesting way
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2:34 - 2:36to think about how all this is going on
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2:36 - 2:38is in terms of rewards.
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2:38 - 2:41And specifically, it's in terms
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2:41 - 2:43of the very intense emotional rewards
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2:43 - 2:45that playing games offers to people
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2:45 - 2:47both individually
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2:47 - 2:49and collectively.
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2:49 - 2:51Now if we look at what's going on in someone's head
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2:51 - 2:53when they are being engaged,
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2:53 - 2:56two quite different processes are occurring.
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2:56 - 2:59On the one hand, there's the wanting processes.
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2:59 - 3:02This is a bit like ambition and drive -- I'm going to do that. I'm going to work hard.
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3:02 - 3:04On the other hand, there's the liking processes,
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3:04 - 3:06fun and affection
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3:06 - 3:08and delight
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3:08 - 3:10and an enormous flying beast with an orc on the back.
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3:10 - 3:12It's a really great image. It's pretty cool.
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3:12 - 3:15It's from the game World of Warcraft with more than 10 million players globally,
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3:15 - 3:18one of whom is me, another of whom is my wife.
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3:18 - 3:20And this kind of a world,
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3:20 - 3:22this vast flying beast you can ride around,
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3:22 - 3:24shows why games are so very good
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3:24 - 3:27at doing both the wanting and the liking.
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3:27 - 3:29Because it's very powerful. It's pretty awesome.
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3:29 - 3:31It gives you great powers.
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3:31 - 3:34Your ambition is satisfied, but it's very beautiful.
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3:34 - 3:37It's a very great pleasure to fly around.
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3:37 - 3:39And so these combine to form
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3:39 - 3:41a very intense emotional engagement.
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3:41 - 3:44But this isn't the really interesting stuff.
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3:44 - 3:46The really interesting stuff about virtuality
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3:46 - 3:48is what you can measure with it.
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3:48 - 3:51Because what you can measure in virtuality
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3:51 - 3:53is everything.
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3:53 - 3:55Every single thing that every single person
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3:55 - 3:58who's ever played in a game has ever done can be measured.
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3:58 - 4:00The biggest games in the world today
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4:00 - 4:04are measuring more than one billion points of data
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4:04 - 4:06about their players, about what everybody does --
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4:06 - 4:09far more detail than you'd ever get from any website.
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4:09 - 4:12And this allows something very special
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4:12 - 4:14to happen in games.
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4:14 - 4:17It's something called the reward schedule.
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4:17 - 4:19And by this, I mean looking
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4:19 - 4:21at what millions upon millions of people have done
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4:21 - 4:23and carefully calibrating the rate,
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4:23 - 4:26the nature, the type, the intensity of rewards in games
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4:26 - 4:28to keep them engaged
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4:28 - 4:31over staggering amounts of time and effort.
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4:31 - 4:33Now, to try and explain this
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4:33 - 4:36in sort of real terms,
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4:36 - 4:38I want to talk about a kind of task
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4:38 - 4:40that might fall to you in so many games.
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4:40 - 4:43Go and get a certain amount of a certain little game-y item.
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4:43 - 4:45Let's say, for the sake of argument,
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4:45 - 4:48my mission is to get 15 pies
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4:48 - 4:51and I can get 15 pies
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4:51 - 4:53by killing these cute, little monsters.
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4:53 - 4:55Simple game quest.
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4:55 - 4:57Now you can think about this, if you like,
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4:57 - 4:59as a problem about boxes.
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4:59 - 5:01I've got to keep opening boxes.
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5:01 - 5:04I don't know what's inside them until I open them.
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5:04 - 5:07And I go around opening box after box until I've got 15 pies.
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5:07 - 5:09Now, if you take a game like Warcraft,
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5:09 - 5:11you can think about it, if you like,
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5:11 - 5:14as a great box-opening effort.
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5:14 - 5:17The game's just trying to get people to open about a million boxes,
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5:17 - 5:19getting better and better stuff in them.
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5:19 - 5:22This sounds immensely boring
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5:22 - 5:24but games are able
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5:24 - 5:26to make this process
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5:26 - 5:28incredibly compelling.
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5:28 - 5:30And the way they do this
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5:30 - 5:33is through a combination of probability and data.
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5:33 - 5:35Let's think about probability.
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5:35 - 5:37If we want to engage someone
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5:37 - 5:40in the process of opening boxes to try and find pies,
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5:40 - 5:42we want to make sure it's neither too easy,
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5:42 - 5:44nor too difficult, to find a pie.
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5:44 - 5:46So what do you do? Well, you look at a million people --
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5:46 - 5:49no, 100 million people, 100 million box openers --
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5:49 - 5:52and you work out, if you make the pie rate
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5:52 - 5:54about 25 percent --
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5:54 - 5:57that's neither too frustrating, nor too easy.
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5:57 - 5:59It keeps people engaged.
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5:59 - 6:02But of course, that's not all you do -- there's 15 pies.
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6:02 - 6:04Now, I could make a game called Piecraft,
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6:04 - 6:06where all you had to do was get a million pies
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6:06 - 6:08or a thousand pies.
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6:08 - 6:10That would be very boring.
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6:10 - 6:12Fifteen is a pretty optimal number.
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6:12 - 6:14You find that -- you know, between five and 20
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6:14 - 6:16is about the right number for keeping people going.
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6:16 - 6:18But we don't just have pies in the boxes.
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6:18 - 6:20There's 100 percent up here.
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6:20 - 6:23And what we do is make sure that every time a box is opened,
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6:23 - 6:25there's something in it, some little reward
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6:25 - 6:27that keeps people progressing and engaged.
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6:27 - 6:29In most adventure games,
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6:29 - 6:32it's a little bit in-game currency, a little bit experience.
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6:32 - 6:34But we don't just do that either.
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6:34 - 6:36We also say there's going to be loads of other items
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6:36 - 6:38of varying qualities and levels of excitement.
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6:38 - 6:41There's going to be a 10 percent chance you get a pretty good item.
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6:41 - 6:43There's going to be a 0.1 percent chance
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6:43 - 6:46you get an absolutely awesome item.
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6:46 - 6:49And each of these rewards is carefully calibrated to the item.
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6:49 - 6:51And also, we say,
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6:51 - 6:54"Well, how many monsters? Should I have the entire world full of a billion monsters?"
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6:54 - 6:57No, we want one or two monsters on the screen at any one time.
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6:57 - 7:00So I'm drawn on. It's not too easy, not too difficult.
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7:00 - 7:02So all this is very powerful.
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7:02 - 7:05But we're in virtuality. These aren't real boxes.
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7:05 - 7:07So we can do
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7:07 - 7:09some rather amazing things.
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7:09 - 7:13We notice, looking at all these people opening boxes,
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7:13 - 7:16that when people get to about 13 out of 15 pies,
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7:16 - 7:19their perception shifts, they start to get a bit bored, a bit testy.
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7:19 - 7:21They're not rational about probability.
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7:21 - 7:23They think this game is unfair.
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7:23 - 7:25It's not giving me my last two pies. I'm going to give up.
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7:25 - 7:27If they're real boxes, there's not much we can do,
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7:27 - 7:29but in a game we can just say, "Right, well.
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7:29 - 7:33When you get to 13 pies, you've got 75 percent chance of getting a pie now."
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7:33 - 7:35Keep you engaged. Look at what people do --
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7:35 - 7:37adjust the world to match their expectation.
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7:37 - 7:39Our games don't always do this.
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7:39 - 7:41And one thing they certainly do at the moment
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7:41 - 7:44is if you got a 0.1 percent awesome item,
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7:44 - 7:47they make very sure another one doesn't appear for a certain length of time
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7:47 - 7:49to keep the value, to keep it special.
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7:49 - 7:51And the point is really
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7:51 - 7:53that we evolved to be satisfied by the world
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7:53 - 7:55in particular ways.
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7:55 - 7:58Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years,
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7:58 - 8:00we evolved to find certain things stimulating,
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8:00 - 8:02and as very intelligent, civilized beings,
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8:02 - 8:05we're enormously stimulated by problem solving and learning.
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8:05 - 8:07But now, we can reverse engineer that
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8:07 - 8:09and build worlds
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8:09 - 8:12that expressly tick our evolutionary boxes.
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8:12 - 8:14So what does all this mean in practice?
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8:14 - 8:16Well, I've come up
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8:16 - 8:18with seven things
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8:18 - 8:20that, I think, show
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8:20 - 8:22how you can take these lessons from games
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8:22 - 8:25and use them outside of games.
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8:25 - 8:27The first one is very simple:
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8:27 - 8:29experience bars measuring progress --
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8:29 - 8:31something that's been talked about brilliantly
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8:31 - 8:34by people like Jesse Schell earlier this year.
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8:34 - 8:37It's already been done at the University of Indiana in the States, among other places.
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8:37 - 8:40It's the simple idea that instead of grading people incrementally
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8:40 - 8:42in little bits and pieces,
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8:42 - 8:44you give them one profile character avatar
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8:44 - 8:46which is constantly progressing
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8:46 - 8:49in tiny, tiny, tiny little increments which they feel are their own.
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8:49 - 8:51And everything comes towards that,
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8:51 - 8:54and they watch it creeping up, and they own that as it goes along.
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8:54 - 8:56Second, multiple long and short-term aims --
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8:56 - 8:585,000 pies, boring,
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8:58 - 9:0015 pies, interesting.
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9:00 - 9:02So, you give people
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9:02 - 9:04lots and lots of different tasks.
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9:04 - 9:06You say, it's about
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9:06 - 9:08doing 10 of these questions,
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9:08 - 9:10but another task
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9:10 - 9:12is turning up to 20 classes on time,
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9:12 - 9:15but another task is collaborating with other people,
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9:15 - 9:18another task is showing you're working five times,
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9:18 - 9:20another task is hitting this particular target.
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9:20 - 9:23You break things down into these calibrated slices
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9:23 - 9:25that people can choose and do in parallel
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9:25 - 9:27to keep them engaged
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9:27 - 9:29and that you can use to point them
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9:29 - 9:32towards individually beneficial activities.
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9:33 - 9:35Third, you reward effort.
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9:35 - 9:38It's your 100 percent factor. Games are brilliant at this.
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9:38 - 9:41Every time you do something, you get credit; you get a credit for trying.
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9:41 - 9:44You don't punish failure. You reward every little bit of effort --
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9:44 - 9:47a little bit of gold, a little bit of credit. You've done 20 questions -- tick.
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9:47 - 9:50It all feeds in as minute reinforcement.
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9:50 - 9:52Fourth, feedback.
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9:52 - 9:54This is absolutely crucial,
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9:54 - 9:56and virtuality is dazzling at delivering this.
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9:56 - 9:59If you look at some of the most intractable problems in the world today
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9:59 - 10:01that we've been hearing amazing things about,
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10:01 - 10:04it's very, very hard for people to learn
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10:04 - 10:07if they cannot link consequences to actions.
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10:07 - 10:09Pollution, global warming, these things --
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10:09 - 10:11the consequences are distant in time and space.
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10:11 - 10:13It's very hard to learn, to feel a lesson.
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10:13 - 10:15But if you can model things for people,
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10:15 - 10:17if you can give things to people that they can manipulate
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10:17 - 10:19and play with and where the feedback comes,
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10:19 - 10:21then they can learn a lesson, they can see,
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10:21 - 10:24they can move on, they can understand.
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10:24 - 10:26And fifth,
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10:26 - 10:28the element of uncertainty.
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10:28 - 10:31Now this is the neurological goldmine,
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10:31 - 10:33if you like,
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10:33 - 10:35because a known reward
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10:35 - 10:37excites people,
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10:37 - 10:39but what really gets them going
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10:39 - 10:41is the uncertain reward,
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10:41 - 10:43the reward pitched at the right level of uncertainty,
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10:43 - 10:46that they didn't quite know whether they were going to get it or not.
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10:46 - 10:49The 25 percent. This lights the brain up.
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10:49 - 10:51And if you think about
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10:51 - 10:53using this in testing,
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10:53 - 10:55in just introducing control elements of randomness
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10:55 - 10:57in all forms of testing and training,
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10:57 - 10:59you can transform the levels of people's engagement
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10:59 - 11:01by tapping into this very powerful
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11:01 - 11:03evolutionary mechanism.
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11:03 - 11:05When we don't quite predict something perfectly,
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11:05 - 11:07we get really excited about it.
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11:07 - 11:09We just want to go back and find out more.
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11:09 - 11:11As you probably know, the neurotransmitter
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11:11 - 11:13associated with learning is called dopamine.
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11:13 - 11:16It's associated with reward-seeking behavior.
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11:16 - 11:19And something very exciting is just beginning to happen
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11:19 - 11:22in places like the University of Bristol in the U.K.,
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11:22 - 11:25where we are beginning to be able to model mathematically
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11:25 - 11:27dopamine levels in the brain.
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11:27 - 11:29And what this means is we can predict learning,
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11:29 - 11:32we can predict enhanced engagement,
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11:32 - 11:34these windows, these windows of time,
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11:34 - 11:37in which the learning is taking place at an enhanced level.
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11:37 - 11:39And two things really flow from this.
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11:39 - 11:41The first has to do with memory,
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11:41 - 11:43that we can find these moments.
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11:43 - 11:45When someone is more likely to remember,
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11:45 - 11:47we can give them a nugget in a window.
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11:47 - 11:49And the second thing is confidence,
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11:49 - 11:51that we can see how game-playing and reward structures
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11:51 - 11:54make people braver, make them more willing to take risks,
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11:54 - 11:56more willing to take on difficulty,
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11:56 - 11:58harder to discourage.
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11:58 - 12:00This can all seem very sinister.
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12:00 - 12:02But you know, sort of "our brains have been manipulated; we're all addicts."
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12:02 - 12:04The word "addiction" is thrown around.
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12:04 - 12:06There are real concerns there.
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12:06 - 12:08But the biggest neurological turn-on for people
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12:08 - 12:10is other people.
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12:10 - 12:13This is what really excites us.
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12:13 - 12:15In reward terms, it's not money;
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12:15 - 12:18it's not being given cash -- that's nice --
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12:18 - 12:20it's doing stuff with our peers,
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12:20 - 12:22watching us, collaborating with us.
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12:22 - 12:24And I want to tell you a quick story about 1999 --
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12:24 - 12:26a video game called EverQuest.
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12:26 - 12:28And in this video game,
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12:28 - 12:31there were two really big dragons, and you had to team up to kill them --
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12:31 - 12:3442 people, up to 42 to kill these big dragons.
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12:34 - 12:36That's a problem
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12:36 - 12:39because they dropped two or three decent items.
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12:39 - 12:42So players addressed this problem
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12:42 - 12:44by spontaneously coming up with a system
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12:44 - 12:46to motivate each other,
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12:46 - 12:48fairly and transparently.
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12:48 - 12:51What happened was, they paid each other a virtual currency
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12:51 - 12:54they called "dragon kill points."
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12:54 - 12:56And every time you turned up to go on a mission,
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12:56 - 12:58you got paid in dragon kill points.
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12:58 - 13:00They tracked these on a separate website.
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13:00 - 13:02So they tracked their own private currency,
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13:02 - 13:04and then players could bid afterwards
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13:04 - 13:06for cool items they wanted --
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13:06 - 13:08all organized by the players themselves.
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13:08 - 13:11Now the staggering system, not just that this worked in EverQuest,
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13:11 - 13:13but that today, a decade on,
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13:13 - 13:16every single video game in the world with this kind of task
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13:16 - 13:18uses a version of this system --
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13:18 - 13:20tens of millions of people.
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13:20 - 13:22And the success rate
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13:22 - 13:24is at close to 100 percent.
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13:24 - 13:26This is a player-developed,
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13:26 - 13:29self-enforcing, voluntary currency,
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13:29 - 13:31and it's incredibly sophisticated
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13:31 - 13:33player behavior.
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13:35 - 13:37And I just want to end by suggesting
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13:37 - 13:39a few ways in which these principles
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13:39 - 13:41could fan out into the world.
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13:41 - 13:43Let's start with business.
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13:43 - 13:45I mean, we're beginning to see some of the big problems
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13:45 - 13:47around something like business are
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13:47 - 13:49recycling and energy conservation.
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13:49 - 13:51We're beginning to see the emergence of wonderful technologies
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13:51 - 13:53like real-time energy meters.
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13:53 - 13:55And I just look at this, and I think, yes,
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13:55 - 13:58we could take that so much further
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13:58 - 14:00by allowing people to set targets
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14:00 - 14:02by setting calibrated targets,
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14:02 - 14:05by using elements of uncertainty,
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14:05 - 14:07by using these multiple targets,
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14:07 - 14:10by using a grand, underlying reward and incentive system,
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14:10 - 14:12by setting people up
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14:12 - 14:14to collaborate in terms of groups, in terms of streets
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14:14 - 14:16to collaborate and compete,
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14:16 - 14:18to use these very sophisticated
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14:18 - 14:20group and motivational mechanics we see.
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14:20 - 14:22In terms of education,
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14:22 - 14:24perhaps most obviously of all,
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14:24 - 14:27we can transform how we engage people.
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14:27 - 14:29We can offer people the grand continuity
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14:29 - 14:32of experience and personal investment.
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14:32 - 14:34We can break things down
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14:34 - 14:36into highly calibrated small tasks.
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14:36 - 14:38We can use calculated randomness.
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14:38 - 14:40We can reward effort consistently
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14:40 - 14:43as everything fields together.
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14:43 - 14:45And we can use the kind of group behaviors
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14:45 - 14:48that we see evolving when people are at play together,
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14:48 - 14:51these really quite unprecedentedly complex
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14:51 - 14:53cooperative mechanisms.
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14:53 - 14:55Government, well, one thing that comes to mind
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14:55 - 14:58is the U.S. government, among others,
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14:58 - 15:00is literally starting to pay people
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15:00 - 15:02to lose weight.
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15:02 - 15:04So we're seeing financial reward being used
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15:04 - 15:06to tackle the great issue of obesity.
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15:06 - 15:08But again, those rewards
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15:08 - 15:11could be calibrated so precisely
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15:11 - 15:14if we were able to use the vast expertise
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15:14 - 15:17of gaming systems to just jack up that appeal,
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15:17 - 15:19to take the data, to take the observations,
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15:19 - 15:21of millions of human hours
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15:21 - 15:23and plow that feedback
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15:23 - 15:25into increasing engagement.
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15:25 - 15:28And in the end, it's this word, "engagement,"
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15:28 - 15:30that I want to leave you with.
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15:30 - 15:32It's about how individual engagement
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15:32 - 15:34can be transformed
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15:34 - 15:37by the psychological and the neurological lessons
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15:37 - 15:40we can learn from watching people that are playing games.
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15:40 - 15:43But it's also about collective engagement
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15:43 - 15:46and about the unprecedented laboratory
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15:46 - 15:48for observing what makes people tick
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15:48 - 15:50and work and play and engage
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15:50 - 15:53on a grand scale in games.
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15:53 - 15:56And if we can look at these things and learn from them
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15:56 - 15:58and see how to turn them outwards,
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15:58 - 16:01then I really think we have something quite revolutionary on our hands.
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16:01 - 16:03Thank you very much.
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16:03 - 16:07(Applause)
- Title:
- 7 ways games reward the brain
- Speaker:
- Tom Chatfield
- Description:
-
We're bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours -- and real money -- exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:08
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TED edited English subtitles for 7 ways games reward the brain | |
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