Internet Game Site/App habits and impacts on people
Dec 23, 2023 18:41:36 GMT -5
Stephanie (swordlilly) likes this
Post by Gelquie on Dec 23, 2023 18:41:36 GMT -5
I have thoughts about Neopets playing habits.
...And I figured why not share them in a safe environment such as a debate board. I dunno. I'm just gonna share them.
I've felt this for a while with game websites, ones like Flight Rising and Neopets; new and old. (Relatively new, I should say.) Both are adoptable pet sites where they each have their own worldbuilding, and you go around exploring or taking in that world and engaging with it in several different ways. They're different in tone and type, but they're basically the same type of site where you get and customize your adopts and then interact with the site, and maybe battle with your adopts.
(There are more gaming sites than this, it's just those are the two I play.)
There's one major difference I notice between new and old sites. Older sites had a tendency to do certain events during One Day, often on the same day that they're announced. Back then, the players were often a bunch of tweens or other people who had time on their hands to do this. Newer sites may still have dailies, but when it comes to getting massive rewards, they may have more leniency.
I don't think big rewards for participation are necessarily a problem in itself. It can be a way to encourage users to log on, and thus be invested in the site, which may mean more activity and more money, which means the people producing each site can continue on with maintenance and also feeding themselves. Plus, it's just nice to have regular things to participate in.
But I think there is a problem. And I feel it's best illustrated with two examples; Flight Rising's new Pursuits system, and Neopets' new Quests system.
Functionally they're the same. You do small tasks around each respective site and then go to the page to turn them in. You get some reward, and both sites have a progress bar where upon completing it or reaching certain tiers, you may get a Big Reward. And those are often peoples' incentives to complete these.
I understand this is a Neopet's fansite and thus there may be more context for Neopets, but I'm going to start with Flight Rising's example for reasons that will hopefully become clear. Flight Rising has a pursuit bar, where you gain a certain number of points, which can be redeemed for unique items of your choice at a particular in-game shop. You gain points for this pursuit bar by completing Daily, Weekly, or Monthly tasks, and once you achieve enough points to reach each of several tiers, you earn the reward points that can be redeemed. Daily tasks, you only have that day to do them, and they have the smallest rewards and pursuit points, but they can really add up. Weekly tasks are slightly larger and give slightly larger rewards, and you have the whole week to do them. Monthly tasks last as long as each month's pursuit bar; they have the highest rewards for accomplishments and give the most points, and while the tasks are bigger, you have all months to do them. At the end of each month, the Pursuit bar is reset, and you start over.
Basically, the rewards for each month are the same, but tasks are randomized. While you have dailies, you could miss a couple days and still be able to fully complete the pursuit bar. So while it is a chore (beyond tasks that one may do anyway, or are as easy to complete as clicking a button), it's one with slightly less pressure.
However, there may be pressure. A lot of people like to fill the pursuit bar just for the sake of completing it, and fulfilling that completionist aspect. There's another site aspect that's similar where you turn in items to get more dragon slots, and that's where I learned that I really have to bite back the completionist aspect in myself because it's really not worth giving up my one million-treasure ultra rare item that I spent months working for just to have one single slot when I don't have a full tab anyway.
So my problem with it is the encouragement of completionism when it may ultimately be futile. But Flight Rising does have the upside where you don't have to log in Every Single Day in order to pursue the rewards, as long as you are making progress with them. And if you don't quite make the full bar, it's really not the end of the world, and you probably won't feel more than a pang of disappointment unless you have an unhealthy sense of completionism.
Now Neopets.
Neopets implemented the Quests system not too long after Flight Rising implemented their Pursuit system. I bet it's a coincidence given how much time it takes to code anything, much less on a spaghetti site such as Neopets. (Maybe there's a trend to this system that I am unaware of.)
The Neopets Quests system has a similar aspect, with some significant variation. You have 5 daily tasks, which you can complete with significant rewards for each tasks, and if you complete all 5, you get 20K neopoints per day. The rewards are not points, they are actual items or Neopoints, so there is a sense of Instant Gratification. Some of those items can be rare too; you can even earn paint brushes or morphing potions from them, even from daily luck of the draw.
And Neopets has a weekly tier system. You can go to the Weekly tab, and by completing all your daily quests, you make progress towards the Weekly tier system, towards an often greater reward. (And if your weekly reward is crap, you can refresh it, but you will lose all progress before. That's up to the player.)
So when it comes to rewards, I find Neopets' to be better. However, there's a catch.
If you want to take full advantage of these rewards, have a chance towards an item you want, or make progress at all on the Weekly tier, you have to log in. Every. Single. Day.
And you have to do Every Single Quest to make weekly progress. Don't like a task or its reward? Well, if you want to make any weekly progress or at least the 20k Neopoint reward, tough. You're stuck to your computer, taking the 20+ minutes going around the site doing random tasks that you may not otherwise do. Or are stuck with tasks that you can't do because, say, your pet is full, or the shops won't restock and you don't have time to wait for the Healing Springs, or your internet connection is lousy and won't load any games.
(Flight Rising also has the problem with some quests being unattainable if you have a full nest or something, but it feels like less of a problem because fulfilling those pursuits does not require daily participation.)
Basically with Neopets, the rewards can be great. But there's a silent expectation of Daily Participation.
Busy with work? Tough, gotta set aside 30 minutes of time to get some item, lest you start over.
Need to go on a trip? Well, we can't just enjoy the scenery and log off, we might miss out, after all.
This had been on my mind for a while, but what really set this off for me was me taking time planning a sudden impromptu trip, and finding myself trying to plan time to log onto the site and figure out how to get my password manager to work on my phone so I can spend 30 minutes out of every day of this family trip where I am going to a funeral and processing a death so I can make imaginary progress towards imaginary items in an imaginary game.
And that is where my concern is. Game sites with mechanics that care far more about your daily participation, at the expense of your life or what may be better for you as a whole.
Flight Rising is a bit better because daily participation is not required. You get some modest benefit for doing your dailies, but if you need to take a week off for real life things, you're probably not gonna miss much. No one gets anything rare from a daily on that site, so while it's nice to get, it's whatever.
(Flight Rising also has non-time sensitive pursuits with larger rewards, which can be completed at any time. Hate a task? Don't worry, you have the entire lifetime of the site to do it or not. I'm talking more about the time sensitive ones.)
Neopets is a relic of old times where players had more time on their hands, but now may be participating either out of nostalgia or because they're a new generation of players. Now a load of their players may be adults with jobs, obligations, children, Stuff Happening. But events are often sprung on the user-base that one may not know about ahead of time until they see the site or they're subscribed to an alert saying it's happening. And the event could be big. Or maybe there's a plot element or hint happening that will disappear the next day. Were you busy or planning to take an internet break? Well, hope you don't mind missing plot events or rewards too much. (Looking at you, Advent Calendar this year, which has the archive but not the plot dialogue added to it. Plus the rewards missed.) And then that's always on your mind, so there's always the mental load of that, even when your mind should be focused on other things.
Basically, a lot of pressure and time sensitivity, combined with promise of large reward, and needing to spend mental energy remembering that... It seems like a recipe for internet addictive tendencies.
I half wonder if that's part of the reason why some of the Neoepts base can get so explosively upset when something goes wrong. Because these tendencies are cultivated in the habits of the site.
And even though I know the priority for me is to go to the funeral... I still feel like I'm gonna to miss something massive if I completely disconnect. Even though I'd otherwise take the week as a disconnect week.
The reason I made so many comparisons with Flight Rising is that it's a newer site that has taken steps to account for time sensitivity. The dailies give small rewards, events are announced ahead of time with the exact start date and time (not always perfectly, but in general yes), and if there's a giveaway or event, they often last for a few days to a week, allowing plenty of time to get that reward. There are still times where I feel compulsed to complete a pursuit or goal, but I don't feel like it's on a 24 hour clock either unless I'm really bad at time management.
I'm sure there are other sites with either the same problems or the same solutions; I just don't personally play or know much about them. If people want to bring them up for comparison, be my guest.
That said, I sometimes hear about other internet games through the grapevine, and sometimes I see incentives to keep the player base active... also going too far, to the point of instilling unhealthy habits in people.
Maybe my point is lost in this post, but my main point of the post is that I'm concerned about the unhealthy habits that are being encouraged or enabled by sites. Whether they mean to have that effect is another question; psychology and balancing player health with site longevity (and thus worker compensation) is hard. Intended or not, it's an effect I'm seeing and feeling. And I'm concerned about what it may be doing to people.
Anyway, I wanted to bring this discussion to others to hear or discuss the point.
For my end, I'll tackle a few words I anticipate.
-"Why not just not play?"
Because we still need enrichment, or one may be attached for other reasons. I like my Neopets creative contests still, dangit. Basically, I don't want these games to necessarily disappear. I'd like them to have healthier parameters.
-"Maybe it's a site restriction. Neopets is spaghetti code."
Yeah, maybe. Harder to argue for the newer stuff, but that is a thing. Complete code restructuring is hard, and would take a long time.
-"Maybe you just need more practice at personal boundaries and not feeling that urge."
Maybe. Maybe not. I like to think I'm okay with self control, at least when it comes to certain things like this. But if I'm feeling that pressure of Losing Out on a thing that could never come again, then I can't be the only one. It's like with gambling. People don't restrict gambling to stick it to people who maybe spend small amounts here and there for fun. People restrict gambling so that people with gambling addictive tendencies don't spend their entire life savings trying to get a certain item in a gatcha box. Even without that extreme, people will be human, and react to things like this as humans should.
-"Do you really think this will change anything?"
On the sites? No. With people and awareness? One can only hope. Honestly, I just wanted to talk about it.
-"Complainer."
I know.
So, there's my long essay on how I feel certain game site habits are fostering internet game addiction tendencies and thus changing people with them.
...And I figured why not share them in a safe environment such as a debate board. I dunno. I'm just gonna share them.
I've felt this for a while with game websites, ones like Flight Rising and Neopets; new and old. (Relatively new, I should say.) Both are adoptable pet sites where they each have their own worldbuilding, and you go around exploring or taking in that world and engaging with it in several different ways. They're different in tone and type, but they're basically the same type of site where you get and customize your adopts and then interact with the site, and maybe battle with your adopts.
(There are more gaming sites than this, it's just those are the two I play.)
There's one major difference I notice between new and old sites. Older sites had a tendency to do certain events during One Day, often on the same day that they're announced. Back then, the players were often a bunch of tweens or other people who had time on their hands to do this. Newer sites may still have dailies, but when it comes to getting massive rewards, they may have more leniency.
I don't think big rewards for participation are necessarily a problem in itself. It can be a way to encourage users to log on, and thus be invested in the site, which may mean more activity and more money, which means the people producing each site can continue on with maintenance and also feeding themselves. Plus, it's just nice to have regular things to participate in.
But I think there is a problem. And I feel it's best illustrated with two examples; Flight Rising's new Pursuits system, and Neopets' new Quests system.
Functionally they're the same. You do small tasks around each respective site and then go to the page to turn them in. You get some reward, and both sites have a progress bar where upon completing it or reaching certain tiers, you may get a Big Reward. And those are often peoples' incentives to complete these.
I understand this is a Neopet's fansite and thus there may be more context for Neopets, but I'm going to start with Flight Rising's example for reasons that will hopefully become clear. Flight Rising has a pursuit bar, where you gain a certain number of points, which can be redeemed for unique items of your choice at a particular in-game shop. You gain points for this pursuit bar by completing Daily, Weekly, or Monthly tasks, and once you achieve enough points to reach each of several tiers, you earn the reward points that can be redeemed. Daily tasks, you only have that day to do them, and they have the smallest rewards and pursuit points, but they can really add up. Weekly tasks are slightly larger and give slightly larger rewards, and you have the whole week to do them. Monthly tasks last as long as each month's pursuit bar; they have the highest rewards for accomplishments and give the most points, and while the tasks are bigger, you have all months to do them. At the end of each month, the Pursuit bar is reset, and you start over.
Basically, the rewards for each month are the same, but tasks are randomized. While you have dailies, you could miss a couple days and still be able to fully complete the pursuit bar. So while it is a chore (beyond tasks that one may do anyway, or are as easy to complete as clicking a button), it's one with slightly less pressure.
However, there may be pressure. A lot of people like to fill the pursuit bar just for the sake of completing it, and fulfilling that completionist aspect. There's another site aspect that's similar where you turn in items to get more dragon slots, and that's where I learned that I really have to bite back the completionist aspect in myself because it's really not worth giving up my one million-treasure ultra rare item that I spent months working for just to have one single slot when I don't have a full tab anyway.
So my problem with it is the encouragement of completionism when it may ultimately be futile. But Flight Rising does have the upside where you don't have to log in Every Single Day in order to pursue the rewards, as long as you are making progress with them. And if you don't quite make the full bar, it's really not the end of the world, and you probably won't feel more than a pang of disappointment unless you have an unhealthy sense of completionism.
Now Neopets.
Neopets implemented the Quests system not too long after Flight Rising implemented their Pursuit system. I bet it's a coincidence given how much time it takes to code anything, much less on a spaghetti site such as Neopets. (Maybe there's a trend to this system that I am unaware of.)
The Neopets Quests system has a similar aspect, with some significant variation. You have 5 daily tasks, which you can complete with significant rewards for each tasks, and if you complete all 5, you get 20K neopoints per day. The rewards are not points, they are actual items or Neopoints, so there is a sense of Instant Gratification. Some of those items can be rare too; you can even earn paint brushes or morphing potions from them, even from daily luck of the draw.
And Neopets has a weekly tier system. You can go to the Weekly tab, and by completing all your daily quests, you make progress towards the Weekly tier system, towards an often greater reward. (And if your weekly reward is crap, you can refresh it, but you will lose all progress before. That's up to the player.)
So when it comes to rewards, I find Neopets' to be better. However, there's a catch.
If you want to take full advantage of these rewards, have a chance towards an item you want, or make progress at all on the Weekly tier, you have to log in. Every. Single. Day.
And you have to do Every Single Quest to make weekly progress. Don't like a task or its reward? Well, if you want to make any weekly progress or at least the 20k Neopoint reward, tough. You're stuck to your computer, taking the 20+ minutes going around the site doing random tasks that you may not otherwise do. Or are stuck with tasks that you can't do because, say, your pet is full, or the shops won't restock and you don't have time to wait for the Healing Springs, or your internet connection is lousy and won't load any games.
(Flight Rising also has the problem with some quests being unattainable if you have a full nest or something, but it feels like less of a problem because fulfilling those pursuits does not require daily participation.)
Basically with Neopets, the rewards can be great. But there's a silent expectation of Daily Participation.
Busy with work? Tough, gotta set aside 30 minutes of time to get some item, lest you start over.
Need to go on a trip? Well, we can't just enjoy the scenery and log off, we might miss out, after all.
This had been on my mind for a while, but what really set this off for me was me taking time planning a sudden impromptu trip, and finding myself trying to plan time to log onto the site and figure out how to get my password manager to work on my phone so I can spend 30 minutes out of every day of this family trip where I am going to a funeral and processing a death so I can make imaginary progress towards imaginary items in an imaginary game.
And that is where my concern is. Game sites with mechanics that care far more about your daily participation, at the expense of your life or what may be better for you as a whole.
Flight Rising is a bit better because daily participation is not required. You get some modest benefit for doing your dailies, but if you need to take a week off for real life things, you're probably not gonna miss much. No one gets anything rare from a daily on that site, so while it's nice to get, it's whatever.
(Flight Rising also has non-time sensitive pursuits with larger rewards, which can be completed at any time. Hate a task? Don't worry, you have the entire lifetime of the site to do it or not. I'm talking more about the time sensitive ones.)
Neopets is a relic of old times where players had more time on their hands, but now may be participating either out of nostalgia or because they're a new generation of players. Now a load of their players may be adults with jobs, obligations, children, Stuff Happening. But events are often sprung on the user-base that one may not know about ahead of time until they see the site or they're subscribed to an alert saying it's happening. And the event could be big. Or maybe there's a plot element or hint happening that will disappear the next day. Were you busy or planning to take an internet break? Well, hope you don't mind missing plot events or rewards too much. (Looking at you, Advent Calendar this year, which has the archive but not the plot dialogue added to it. Plus the rewards missed.) And then that's always on your mind, so there's always the mental load of that, even when your mind should be focused on other things.
Basically, a lot of pressure and time sensitivity, combined with promise of large reward, and needing to spend mental energy remembering that... It seems like a recipe for internet addictive tendencies.
I half wonder if that's part of the reason why some of the Neoepts base can get so explosively upset when something goes wrong. Because these tendencies are cultivated in the habits of the site.
And even though I know the priority for me is to go to the funeral... I still feel like I'm gonna to miss something massive if I completely disconnect. Even though I'd otherwise take the week as a disconnect week.
The reason I made so many comparisons with Flight Rising is that it's a newer site that has taken steps to account for time sensitivity. The dailies give small rewards, events are announced ahead of time with the exact start date and time (not always perfectly, but in general yes), and if there's a giveaway or event, they often last for a few days to a week, allowing plenty of time to get that reward. There are still times where I feel compulsed to complete a pursuit or goal, but I don't feel like it's on a 24 hour clock either unless I'm really bad at time management.
I'm sure there are other sites with either the same problems or the same solutions; I just don't personally play or know much about them. If people want to bring them up for comparison, be my guest.
That said, I sometimes hear about other internet games through the grapevine, and sometimes I see incentives to keep the player base active... also going too far, to the point of instilling unhealthy habits in people.
Maybe my point is lost in this post, but my main point of the post is that I'm concerned about the unhealthy habits that are being encouraged or enabled by sites. Whether they mean to have that effect is another question; psychology and balancing player health with site longevity (and thus worker compensation) is hard. Intended or not, it's an effect I'm seeing and feeling. And I'm concerned about what it may be doing to people.
Anyway, I wanted to bring this discussion to others to hear or discuss the point.
For my end, I'll tackle a few words I anticipate.
-"Why not just not play?"
Because we still need enrichment, or one may be attached for other reasons. I like my Neopets creative contests still, dangit. Basically, I don't want these games to necessarily disappear. I'd like them to have healthier parameters.
-"Maybe it's a site restriction. Neopets is spaghetti code."
Yeah, maybe. Harder to argue for the newer stuff, but that is a thing. Complete code restructuring is hard, and would take a long time.
-"Maybe you just need more practice at personal boundaries and not feeling that urge."
Maybe. Maybe not. I like to think I'm okay with self control, at least when it comes to certain things like this. But if I'm feeling that pressure of Losing Out on a thing that could never come again, then I can't be the only one. It's like with gambling. People don't restrict gambling to stick it to people who maybe spend small amounts here and there for fun. People restrict gambling so that people with gambling addictive tendencies don't spend their entire life savings trying to get a certain item in a gatcha box. Even without that extreme, people will be human, and react to things like this as humans should.
-"Do you really think this will change anything?"
On the sites? No. With people and awareness? One can only hope. Honestly, I just wanted to talk about it.
-"Complainer."
I know.
So, there's my long essay on how I feel certain game site habits are fostering internet game addiction tendencies and thus changing people with them.
