Skinner Box Games

You're kinda slow, so I will forgive you for that terrible post.
What you're describing are P2W games, which are a whole other can of worms. Skinner box games can be P2W or F2P. Doesn't matter. The whole point of a skinner box is that it rewards you after doing a certain task for long enough so that you are motivated to continue doing that task and be rewarded again. Hence, lootcrates and item drops (all of the games I listed have these) which can then be sold for real life money; although, very little real life money. For most players, however, this is enough.
Do you understand now? I suggest you read up more about skinner boxes in general, and you'll see why I called said games 'Skinner Box Games'.

I don't know about that. I think western gamers will stop buying games and consoles altogether if their favorite game series (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc) discontinue, which they will because the games will only get worse and worse.

Skinner box games do exist but OP doesn't know what that even means or what they are.
People play PUBG either to win, or because they're a jew streamer, or because they're fans of a jew streamer hoping to encounter them in-game.
Rocket League has fun gameplay with a high skill ceiling and the cosmetic unlocks are just icing on top.
CS:GO might have crates but it's tried and true FPS gameplay at its core that has been around for decades now.
ASSFAGGOTS are the closest "real" game to a skinner box because they're stupidly easy since most of your enemies are braindead AI you can just stomp as long as there isn't another player around, and every aspect of the game is constantly flashing rewards in your face for everything you do. But it still has "gameplay" unfortunately boring as it is. There's a meta to know and some players have more skill than others.

Mobile games are the true realm of the skinner box. A perfect example is Magikarp Jump which is an official pokemon company release on mobile. The goal of the game is to make a magikarp stronger so that it can jump higher than the opponent magikarp. EVERYTHING you do in the game gives you Jump Power. There is no action that does not result in furthering your eventual goal of completion. You can't lose, and everyone who plays it will have exactly the same experience, in about the same amount of time. There is no skill involved, every action is tapping a thing once. The game even offers you choices at some points which are gambles, either you play it safe and get small XP, or you go for the risk/reward of your magikarp being killed or getting huge XP. But if the risk doesn't pay off and your magikarp dies, there's no real penalty. You just get another one and train it to almost the same level you were just at in an instant.
Then they also have the in-game currency and cash shop to buy items to level your magikarp faster, which is the only way one player could experience the game faster than another. But there's no point because you're not competing against anyone real.

Magikarp Jump is a skinner box. People (children) playing it get addicted to victories and rewards they didn't work for, and then ask their parents for their credit card info so they can get more victories faster. There is no gameplay to speak of, just tapping a text box on the screen to get your reward, like the rat pushes the lever for food. Shitty "real" games, no matter how much you personally hate them, are not skinner boxes as long as they require any skill.

This is wrong. You're rewarded whether you're skilled or not. You still get item drops even if you lose a round.

Following that logic, any game that offers persistent rewards beyond satisfaction from the core game loop is a skinner box game. That would make it a pretty useless distinction, as nearly every game includes those.

I understood exactly what you meant by Skinner box games but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe you just got some things wrong but it looks like you're just straight up retarded. Here's the thing:
This can be applied to a lot, if not most single player games. This shit can be applied to a lot of good games. Are you against single player games where you unlock stuff? Unlocking fighters in a fighting game, unlocking cars and tracks in a racing game, unlocking extra costumes, extra stages, extra weapons, extra modes, better equipment, a sound test? Are you implying that it's intrinsically bad for games to do this? If you think unlocks in a video game are bad you can fuck right off back to wherever you came from, you underage retard.
The whole premises of your thread is awful because you completely misunderstood what people are usually talking about when they talk about Skinner box games.
Going back to your previous post here
Those games are doing poorly because the market is saturated and those games are so bad no one is willing to buy them, not because there's a crash coming, or because of what you think are Skinner boxes.
You need to fucking think more and play more games before posting.

All RPGs are skinner boxes. If you play RPGs, you're an autistic faggot with down syndrome.

You vastly underestimate exactly how much shit normal faggots are willing to eat to get a piece of candy.

You could apply that to every single game that has ever been made…if you're a retard.
The Skinner Box Games I referred to give you tangible IRL rewards. Money. Sure, it's kinda tethered to steam unless you use paypal or something, but it's still just as valuable as any other dollar.

I guarantee you that if games like PUBG or Dota or CSGO removed the ability to trade or sell items, player count would drop dramatically. They only play those shitty games for the pellets (i.e. the money from selling cosmetic goods)

All games are skinner boxes by definition.

How the fuck does Rocket League give you money? You can't sell the stupid car accessories.
And giving the player real money or a "tangible" reward was never even a condition of a skinner box, it's just that food for the rat was the easiest way to reward it. The reward is psychological satisfaction.

I don't know how you can look at my description of Magikarp Jump and think that anything else more complex actually qualifies as a SB in comparison.

That's not how it works, dumbass. Skinnerbox game design needs it to be an item that gives you a tangible benefit in gameplay. IE: Randomized weapon stats. Grinding for 3 hours to get a sword that has just a little more DPS is what devs want to make. Because then they can sell you 35c "boosters" that'll let you get that same sword in just 1 hour instead.
And no, people don't play PUBG because of the cosmetics you can get. It's just the natural competitive nature of man wanting to go into a room with 100 people and being the last man standing. Last man standing game modes have always been some of the most popular in multiplayer games, PUBG is just a game that got released with perfect storm conditions that skyrocketed it's popularity.
I'll concede about CS:GO dying without items thoguh. The game is almost entirely played by third-worlders who want to sell $600 knives to move out of their shithole country where $600 USD is worth $6,000 in their country. Funny you brought up PUBG because I've actually seen a few Twitch streamers for PUBG and most of them used to be CS:GO streamers but moved onto PUBG because "CS:GO is just for tournaments and cosmetic farming these days. No one just plays it anymore."
Pic unrelated

Every game is a skinner box. You do a thing and are rewarded with more things to do.
Trying to make an argument that some games are a waste of time whereas others aren't is a bizarre argument. If you're playing any game, you're wasting time.

You buy keys in Rocket League with real money. You can then use those keys to open up crates. These crates work like every other loot crate, with some item being 'extremely rare' and thus costs more money. A lot of people trade these rare items for paypal money. You can't directly trade for money, you kind of need a middle man to do it safely, but that's besides the point. The items therein have real worth because you can only get them using real money.

Our definitions of Skinner Box is what is causing this contention. I think it's only a skinner box if you get something tangible. Think of it in terms of an actual skinner box. The tangible thing you get, as a mouse, for pushing a lever, is a pellet of food. Now, think of a situation like that in real life. You play a game, let's say CS:GO for example, and you get an item drop, let's say a crate that is worth a dollar. You then sell that crate and you get a tangible dollar. Not receiving a tangible reward is kind of like the mouse pushing the lever and the lever rewards the mouse by oiling the joints on the lever so it isn't as squeaky, or making a fanfare noise play after is gets pushed, or making the container of pellets turn a different color. The mouse is using physical energy to get a physical thing. It wouldn't be a skinner box if it used energy to get a virtual thing.

Jesus christ how plebeian.
The point of the skinner box is that the mouse receives psychological conditioning to continue pulling the lever. The tangible food is just a stand-in for anything else that could be used to condition a consciousness, but food is used because it's basically the only thing stupid-ass rodents respond to. For humans it can be anything that causes the brain to release chemicals that increase happiness and make you want to pull the lever again to receive more. The video game form of this is sparkly popups and fanfare telling you about the new item you've just won, or coins, or XP. Not the winning of a multiplayer match, or the completion of a story, or real world money. If real world money was enough of a reward, then people wouldn't be looking for a psychological escape from their daily employment. They already have money, and so does everyone else, so it's not that special. They want to be told they're winners, even if they suck at the game or the game's very design does not have a win/loss condition.

As much as I hate to say it, I don't think you understand the mind of a normalfag.
Look, you even said it yourself.

Alright, so what we're looking for is something that makes normalfags want to pull the lever (play the game) more. It's not for the fanfare of winning because, more often than not, the player is going to lose. Take PUBG for instance. Very few normalfags will win a game of PUBG, let alone win more than once in a row. They'll keep playing even after they win, though. Why? Because they know that they'll get an item whether they win or not. Winning is just a cherry on top of the cake that is cosmetics (money). They want to see their in-game ranks improve just for the same reason that forum posters want to see their post count increase, but that isn't the sole reason. They want something else. Something tangible. An in-game economy.
For fuck's sake, man. Think of three mulitplayer games which you think are the most popular to normalfags these days. Any three and I guarantee you they'll each have an in-game economy. For instance, look at the stats page of steam. The three most played are PUBG, Dota 2, and CS:GO. If they didn't have some economy where you can put in money and somehow get money out of it, then these normalfags simply would not play it. You don't see many normalfags playing a game like XCOM 2 because
1. It's too hard
and
2. There's no financial incentive.
Whereas a game like PUBG is easy to understand, easy to pickup and play, and has an in-game economy.
You have to understand they're not attaching themselves to whatever game will make them more money for the sole reason that they want a different job. Understand that most normalfags that play these types of games are underage in the first place, and won't have any need for a job. Even if they are older, they still play it for the mere quarters they make at any given time. Look at the richest TF2 players. These fucking losers spend so much time outta their day making high-volume trades for expensive items, and for what? The money they make is almost nothing compared to how much someone with a full-time job with an average salary makes. They've already climbed the ladder of success to the highest rung. There's nothing left for them, because, in most cases, they have pretty much everything they will need. But they keep playing it, maybe waiting for the next items to be released so that they can trade for them. At that point, the fanfare of winning a game is pointless to them. What they really care about is the cha-ching of buying or selling an item. And again, because this needs re-emphasis. They wouldn't even touch the game in most cases if there weren't an in-game economy.

My conclusion? It's just greed. Greed and autism. Normalfags don't care how much money they make wasting their time playing these shitty 'games' if you can even call it that. They only play for the illusion of financial success, as if becoming the richest person in any given game will make them a better person in real life.

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i ain't clickin that shit nigger

Surely they'll stop making transformers movies! They're so bad!

is warframe considered a skinner box? about 2 years ago I literally played nothing but warframe, and maybe tf2 a bit.

I spent 1000 hours to warframe in 1 year. Even some of my friends were upset about it. It also affected some other irl stuff.

My GPU was bad and I couldn't afford games either. So all I could do is to play those free games. Started a new account and farmed every neccesary frames, weapons etc.

I don't have all of the prime frames, weps etc. But I don't find it neccesary to farm them anymore. I already have OP stuff and I sometimes farm some new weps/frames, have fun for about an hour, and stop playing it again

Yes. Most grindan games are some variety of skinner box.

It has an in-game economy, so yes.

AAA will burn, shovelware like PU is the future.

Somebody doesn't know what happens when you over saturate a market.

PUBG has the call of duty audience

Nobody here knows what a "video game crash" means. It doesn't mean "bad games = video game crash" it means "unprofitable games = video game crash"

Video games are significantly more profitable than they've ever been and it's only rising. Skinner box designs if anything make a game more profitable in the short term which is all these companies want.

The video game crash of the 1980s was also very localized, it only really occurred in America. In Europe for instance the video game industry kept going pretty successfully due to home computers.

People are just going to avoid playing games with skinner box designs. It's not like the 1980s with clone consoles where people had no idea what to buy anymore. In the modern day video games release every single day and people have an enormous freedom to choose.

but if all the e-celebs get paid to shill the games, and they still get followers, then their fans are still gonna buy the skinnerboxes

Then they'll not get trusted and people will use their money elsewhere

The point is that money is still staying in the market. People are still going to buy video games. They'll just buy different games, like ones that lack this design due to it being unpopular. And eventually the market will shift to accommodate this.

This happens very frequently. A good example is how during the early 2000s almost every FPS was a WW2 shooter. During the mid-late 2000s almost every fps had a two weapon limit and regenerating health. Now FPS games are significantly more diverse and if one releases with a 2 weapon limit outside of Halo or Call of Duty it's seen as kind of outdated. See Bioshock Infinite where the mechanic was universally disliked.

im not quite sure if you understand just how impressionable children and middle schoolers are

"PewDiePie recommended me a game that sucks. Thats it I'm not playing video games EVER AGAIN"

that's not going to happen user

"PewDiePie is cool. I'm going to play [GAME] and be cool like PewDiePie! If I'm lucky I might join a match with PewDiePie! I should buy other games that he hasn't played yet in case he's making a new video about them!"

If anything that's just going to increase profits since they're still buying video games. An economic crash would not occur.

Then there's how children are only a demographic nowadays with vidya adults make up a huge percentage of sales.

Plus most kids are just going to play what is popular/what their friends are playing.

What you're referring to is called operant conditioning, which is basically a method of behavior control.
As you can see, this type of conditioning can be utilized to influence the player's behavior, regardless of the type of game being played. Most games use this type of technique, both in positive and negative ways, and with varying degrees of reward scheduling, so just what the fuck are you talking about? Lootboxes are indeed a form of operant conditioning, but they're meaningless incentives that raise an average player's "long term morale" so to speak. Assuming that they're purely cosmetic, they exist to give the player another small reason to keep coming back to the game over an extended period of time. A good game doesn't need such incentives, though; the game's primary game loop will likely use incentives that reinforce behaviors that revolve around the core gameplay.

You are fucking retarded.
The positive stimulus of a Skinner box doesn't have to be something tangible it just have to make the subject feel good enough so it keeps doing the action (in this case "playing").As an user pointed, mobile gacha are probably the closest to a Skinner box because of how dull ,repetive and boring they are however people keep "playing",why? because of the rarity of the characters.You can't sell them for money but people still grind a lot or waste money to have a chance of getting one,a lot of times the chances of getting one of the rarest units is close to 0.2% but if a person gets it one time they'll keep playing just so they can experience it again even if it doesn't happen in months.
Also your view on the whole market in lootcrates games is retarded too.Do you think people is just selling 600$ cosmetics to other people so they can re-sell it?.Most of the people want the rare cosmetic not to sell but to use it,since it is rare they can fell important because they can't get good at the game itself.However with the chances of getting it being so low it's way faster to just buy it from someone else at an inflated price due to its rarity.If no one gave a fuck about using cosmetics in the first place there would be no market or prices wouldn't be so fucking high.

Anyways this whole Skinner box thing is retarded.

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Everything is a skinner box, if you win the difficult game you feel rewarded for your hard work memorizing the boss patterns.

Games are Games, what sort of higher purpose do you think they serve?

Fam, everything is a skinner box. Life is just a really complex skinner box.

Nice joke.

Oversaturation doesn't work that way any more due to digital distribution. If you had to use funds to get your shit shipped as a physical copy out into the world, of course that's where it could've hurt. Digital shit has bypassed that fail condition for the most part.

Of course Lawbreakers (?) and other team deathmatch clones aren't making it far, but it's mostly due to a generic and shit product that launches when the competition is already overwhelming for just one or two titles in the lead. The oversaturation will in fact stregthen "the industry", here the industry being the ones who are already ahead.

you should care. normalfags spend a combined amount of time and money that is exponentially higher than "us real gamers".

they move the market, and big developers make decisions based on them. you should care. because when eleven million normalfags play a piece of trash game, you know that that kind of game is all you're going to get for years to come.

you do realize that literally every game, computer or not, is a form of skinner box right?
you overcome the challenge, you feel good, repeat

fuck off retard. that's not what skinnerbox means

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Pretty much every single game is a "Skinner's Box". Every game trains you to perform some sort of regular action for some sort of psychological reward.
There are games that are little more than Skinner Boxes, like Cookie Clicker and other shitty clicking games, but almost every game could be considered a Skinner's Box. Hell, some very good games are quite a lot like Skinner's Boxes, like Diablo and Diablo 2.

A skinner box requires that the reward is random. If I complete a level in Quake I have no incentive to keep playing that same level over and over again, I beat the level. A skinner box ties the feeling of being rewarded reward to the small chance of getting something good, so the player keeps playing and playing since the reward is not consistent. If they were actually rewarded every time they win they'd eventually move on to something else (as is healthy). Instead of obsessively playing the same game for 3 years or something.

The model of the Skinner Box is a rat in a cage with a button that dispenses food. If the button always dispenses food the rat loses interest as it knows it can always press the button for food. If it dispenses food randomly it keeps mashing it. Of note is the fact the rats were locked alone in a cage alone which is basically torture for a rat since they're social animals. The result of the experimentation might be different if the rats weren't in solitary confinement. Extrapolate from this thought what you will.

are you people being retarded on purpose?
the very definition of skinnerbox is that the reward is supposed to be RANDOM after performing the action.

IF you perform the action AND get a reward depending on your ability to excel at said action, its NOT a skinnerbox, its a GAME.

what definition are you reading off of?

That's not true at all. A Skinner Box is simply an operant conditioning chamber of any sort, and operant conditioning is most effective when the reward is random. You should have paid more attention in your psychology class. The common example of a skinner box is that the rat or pigeon hits the lever for the reward when it comes every time, but if the reward is random, the animal goes crazy on it. Randomness is not necessary for something to be a Skinner box, and in practice, randomness is frequently not present at all.

It is a joke. It's not 11 million players a day. It's usually 1-2 million, it has 11 million owners though. Do with that information as you will.

nice projection but fuck off.

a skinnerbox means the reward is random, if its guaranteed, its not. its an exchange, X effort nets you Y reward, every single time. if X effort has a 1% chance of giving you Y reward, THEN and only THEN its a skinnerbox. the skinnerbox was the end product of skinners research, not the prototype he made that lead him to realize that getting the same exact reward every single time you do the action eventually tires out the subject, and the subject stops doing the action.

you people need to fuck off with redefining terms, the chad meme being rewritten was already bad enough, but now you retards are trying to rewrite a well established psychological concept. kys.

inb4

This, TBH fam.

le reddit meme

Wrong. The reward scheduling can vary for effectiveness, but a stable reward schedule doesn't somehow translate into a less effective conditioning. You're retarded.

Absolutely not. You are wrong and you have absolutely no evidence. You can look up "Skinner box" in any psychology textbook or almost anywhere online and find nowhere that even implies that randomness is a requirement, only that it's a common experiment that is performed with a Skinner Box. This sounds like the ramblings of somebody who had a psychology class a decade or so ago and regurgitating the concepts that they've mostly forgotten.
You are not only ignorant, you are willingly obtuse, preferring to be stupid and wrong rather than do the most minimal amount of research necessary. Being wrong at first is fine, but doubling down when confronted with facts is despicable. You should be ashamed of yourself.

nigger please, go read a book.

Got any recommendations? Why don't you point me to the book that your retarded ass read that states that a variable reward schedule is a necessary prerequisite for a Skinner box?

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Alright you're correct. However the definition doesn't change the validity of concerns over random reward systems. Modern F2P games intentionally implemented these systems because of the fact animals go nuts when the reward is random, and it's evident that it has been incredibly effective at hooking people into playing shitty games for months or years on end.

concerns over randomness is extremely valid. it's probably second greatest threat to gaming atm, right behind microtransactions, and they go hand in hand