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October 18 - November 9, 2023
A GOOD GAME is a unique way of structuring experience and provoking positive emotion.
FIX # 2 : EMOTIONAL ACTIVATION
Compared with games, reality is depressing.
The better he got at the game, the more he wanted to play, and the more he played, the better he got.
Flow is exhilarating in the moment. It makes us feel energized. A major flow experience can improve our mood for hours, or even days, afterward. But because it’s such a state of extreme engagement, it eventually uses up our physical and mental resources.
We have to find ways to enjoy the world and relish life even when we’re not operating at our peak human potential. This is true in games as well as in life.
Too much flow can lead to happiness burnout. Meanwhile, too much fiero can lead to addiction—a
somewhere around twenty hours a week—they start to wonder if they’re perhaps missing out on real life.
After three hours of consecutive online play, gamers receive 50 percent fewer rewards (and half the fiero) for accomplishing the same amount of work. After five hours, it becomes impossible to earn any rewards.
there are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness.
“hedonic adaptation,”
seeking out external rewards is a sure path to sabotaging our own happiness.
The scientific term for this kind of self-motivated, self-rewarding activity is autotelic (from the Greek words for “self,” auto, and “goal,” telos).
relationship between hard work, intrinsic reward, and lasting happiness has been verified and confirmed through hundreds of studies and experiments.
“The attainment of extrinsic, or ‘American Dream,’ goals—money, fame, and being considered physically attractive by others—does not contribute to happiness at all.”
We wean ourselves off consumption and acquisition as sources of pleasure and develop our hedonic resilience.
we are the one and only source of our own happiness isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a biological fact.
autotelic
“intrinsic reward”
When we make someone else laugh or smile, our brain is flooded with dopamine,
Every time we coordinate or synchronize our physical movements with others, such as in dance or sports, we release oxytocin into our bloodstream, a neurochemical that makes us feel blissed out and ecstatic.
We’re hardwired with neurochemical systems to make all the happiness we need. We just have to work hard at things that activate us and immerse ourselves in challenging activities we enjoy for their own sake.
satisfying work, every single day.
allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts.
we crave the experience, or at least the hope, of being successful.
we crave social connection. Humans are extremely social creatures,
we crave meaning, or the chance to be a part of something larger than ourselves.
“We have been conditioned to believe that the wrong things will make us lastingly happy.”26 We’ve been sold the American dream.
giving up real happiness in favor of the pursuit of wealth, fame, and beauty.
More Satisfying Work
Between the high-stakes work, the exploratory work, the busywork, the teamwork, and the strategic work, the hours of work definitely add up.
FIX # 3 : MORE SATISFYING WORK
Compared with games, reality is unproductive. Games give us clearer missions and more satisfying, hands-on work.
Satisfying work always starts with two things: a clear goal and actionable next steps
(This is your goal.)
(And this is why your goal matters.)
(These are your step-by-step instructions.)
(This is your proof of completion.)
fastest way to improve someone’s everyday quality of life is to
“bestow on a person a specific goal, something to do and to look forward.”
When a clear goal is attached to a specific task, she explains, it gives us an energizing...
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The real payoff for our work in WoW is to be rewarded with more opportunities for work.
something just a little bit more difficult than what you’ve just accomplished.
MOTIVATION AND REASONABLY assured progress: this is the start of satisfying work. But to be truly satisfied, we have to be able to finish our work as clearly as we started it. To finish work in a satisfying way, we must be able to see the results of our efforts as directly, immediately, and vividly as possible.
we like productive work because it makes us feel that we are developing our personal resources.
phasing, which is designed to vividly show us our impact on the world around us.
phasing, the server compares the game histories of different players in the environment and shows each player a different version of the world depending on what they’ve accomplished. When you complete a heroic quest or a high-level raid, your virtual world literally changes—you see different things from someone who hasn’t finished the quest or raid.
We’re not only improving our characters; we’re improving the whole world.
When we don’t have visible results that we can clearly link to our own efforts,
Fun Failure and Better Odds of Success
