Facts about Players - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 86

games were positive and successful or negative and unsuccessful, and
there are some very good reasons for this.
It Is Never Okay to Throw the Controller
One important factor to consider when discussing prior experiences
with games is prior negative experiences with games, and how these
can code our interaction with future games in the same genre. We
talked a little bit about the things that cause players to stop playing
games in Chapter 4. Particularly, I tried to highlight the importance
of both frustration and boredom in preventing people from continu-
ing to play your game. These are important factors, as measuring them
can give you meaningful insight into when players are about to quit
playing. The level to which players will tolerate punishment is directly
proportional to their previous experiences with gaming, which you
can't control. Let me elucidate this point a bit. An individual who
has been through a terrible business failure is going to be more likely
to identify patterns that will lead to business failure in the future. So
too will an individual who has had negative experiences with gaming
in the past, such as being unable to learn or perform game outcomes
despite his or her best efforts, identify patterns in games as leading to
negative outcomes. Eventually, the player's tolerance for game punish-
ment will approach zero, and he or she will literally balk from playing
games that punish him or her at the first sight of such treatment. On
the other hand, an individual who has had repeated successes in gam-
ing is more likely to blame the game for problems. “I'm not bad, this
game is bad. Why should I be treated like this? I'll show this game:
I'll keep playing it until I beat it.” That is not to say that experienced
gamers are invincible. Even the most erudite of gamers will eventually
throw the controller down in disgust if they are abused repeatedly.
Unlike the other elements of individual differences psychology I
have mentioned in this chapter, this factor can be investigated in-
game without being invasive and asking questions about age, sex,
and so on. Low tolerance to failure is something we can definitely
detect. Suppose a simple data point is dropped every time a person
dies, every time a person saves, and every time a person turns off the
game (perhaps by placing a data point every time a game is loaded