学习性快感与游戏成瘾

学习性快感与游戏成瘾 学习性快感与游戏成瘾编辑本段回目录 游戏产业中似乎存在着许多被误解的术语。就像快感，激励和上瘾就经常被混淆在一起并到处滥用(尽管它们都是娱乐中的重要内容)。如此便导致最近许多游戏都将快感当成是主要内容以及游戏的核心目标。并以牺牲挑战为代价，将上瘾机制看成是游戏的主要特征。 我将从生物学角度着手，阐述个人发展才是游戏的主要目标，而快感只是个人发展的一种结果。除此之外，我也将强调缺少学习性的快感只能创造出一些空洞乏味的体验，并最终导致玩家的消极沉迷。 让我们先明确乐趣与快感的区别。像享用了一个可口的蛋糕便是一种愉悦的体验，但是这却不一定具有乐趣。而另一方面，我们认为具有乐趣的事物同时也能够让我们感到快感。如此看来乐趣便是快感的子集，这也是我为何要强调研究快感理念的原因。 video_game_addiction(from kotaku.com) 快感是一种积极的心理状态，是人脑受到某些内容的刺激所做出的反应。这种刺激是人类的细胞受体在经历了神经传递物质(游戏邦注:主要是多巴胺和不同类型的内啡肽)而产生的反应。 其实真正的生物化学与我们的研究是不相干的，除了能够帮助我们绕开适当的触发物并获得来自快感中心的刺激。我们可以通过使用替代分子而触发受体或扩大原生神经递质的影响范围。这就是所谓的精神治疗药，并会影响我们的中枢神经系统在理解与处理信息上的能力。 当然了，喝醉了或者喝高了这类诱导改变状态，这也能够创造出“乐趣”，但是现在让我们先继续着重讨论快感。 尽管快感具有“可塑造性”，但是其本身却不具备多少价值。举个例子来说，在一个著名的实验中，实验者通过控制猴子的快感中心而刺激它们不断按压按钮，导致它们忽视了自己的饥饿感而最终死亡。 那些容易获得的快感来源总是具有危险性，甚至有时候还很致命(当对象已经不再受到任何其它内容的吸引时)。这是一个很好的例证，说明我们生物拥有一种非常复杂的系统，并在属于我们自己的环境中发挥着功效，但是如果我们遭遇到难以适应的改变，我们系统的某些部分便会被隔离出去并最终导致精神坍塌。 既然我们已经研究了快感机制及其限制性，我们接下来将尝试着讨论快感所扮演的角色。生物学认为快感是动物进化的一种适应机制。由于遗传密码复制时出现差错，任何活细胞都能够在分裂时获得转变。这便是为何同一种物种会出现不同特征的重要原因，并且也能够推动变异个体在进化压力中生存下去。 物竞天择是一种消极型的过滤方式，即删除所有不能适应环境变化的个体，如细菌无法抵挡抗生素的威力，较低的树叶总是会被低矮的食草动物吃掉，或恐龙逃不过小行星撞击地球的命运等。 因为单细胞生物体的复制速度更加快速，加之其拥有较为简单的DNA，所以它们更可能创造出不同的特征，并适应环境的变化。而进化后的生物体(游戏邦注:如哺乳动物)则不得不等到性成熟后才能够复制并组合其DNA而繁衍出后代。进化后的物种的DNA也变得更加复杂，所以它们的特征也将依赖于不同的类型，致使我们很难在此看到新特征的出现。这也是为何快感能够发挥作用的重要原因。 就像我们所看到的那样，快感是一种绝对的刺激因子，如果一个人的能够因为适应某种情境而现出快感，他便会进一步沉浸于相关的活动中，并在此生存下来。 举个例子来说吧，当我们理解了某个内容(并因此证明了人们是非常聪明的生物)时，我们的大脑便会释放出多巴胺。在做完体育运动后我们的身体中将会生成内啡肽，让我们在运动后精神亢奋并因此激励我们继续锻炼而塑造出更多肌肉。更有趣的是，与很多进化后的动物一样，我们人类也会在游戏过程中受到触发而产生快感。 Selection(from gamaustra) (如果快感是与积极行为联系在一起，它便能够成为一种积极的发展反馈循环。) 本质上，游戏的功能是推动自我的发展。不论你是一只猫还是一个人，与同类斗争都能够为你自己的发展争取一个安全的环境，并且同时你的心态也仍将停留在现实的抽象对峙中。 有人说玩家玩游戏是因为受到好胜心的激励，并因此才产生出快感;但是我个人认为这只是一种激励结果，真正的要点和原因还是来自于个人发展。关注于个人发展的乐趣在于学习并发展我们有限的运动能力，因为这是一种累人的过程，并且需要在休息之后才能发挥功效。就像肌肉运动只能在运动后刺激身体而建造起更多肌肉组织，而学生在休息后也只会记得他们所掌握到的主要信息。就好像快感的平衡元素就是那些我们需要想办法获得的努力，也就意味着快感所扮演的角色是激励进化动物沉浸于那些能够满足它们需要的活动中。而经过认证，人类的需求有不同类型——包括身体，情感，精神，社交和智力。 因为涉及到手眼协调能力，电子游戏一直被当成是一种肢体挑战;并且因为包含策略和谜元素，所以也延伸进了智力领域。而游戏对故事的重视，也使其体现出更多情感和精神性;而随着多人游戏的发展，游戏也将体现出更多社交性，并最终发展成为有利于个人发展的重要工具。 除非游戏能够以某种方式给玩家带来学习体验，否则就会演变成一种拥有快感而让你感到空虚而麻木的苦闷工作。我认为能够为玩家带来快感，无需玩家投入大量精力，并且毫无节制的游戏，很容易令人上瘾。 这是一种引诱我们的身体和大脑专注于一些无意义的内容，并期盼着下一次释放多巴胺的娱乐类型。这种活动中唯一流通的元素就是快感，而参与者往往只能落得与实验中的猴子一样下场。 所以游戏的作用并非给玩家带来这种快感，因为它只能激励他们沉浸其中。游戏的真正价值 是让玩家能够在现实世界所不允许的情境下学习，挑战或发展自己。如果我们只重视追求快 感，我们便只能够创造出一种歪曲的快乐主义系统，不能带给玩家任何真正有价值的好处， 只能让他们不断地在快感中循环并最终沉迷于游戏中，危害自己的身体，心态和精神。 据我理解，生物学并不能帮助我们真正理解乐趣本身，不过作为，我想说的是面对各种 不确定性因素时，乐趣可以让我们掌握经验，并也能够为我们提供更多学习机会。 同样地，当游戏提供给玩家一个未知的区域进行探索并学习时，它便具有一定的乐趣，但当 玩家在经历了几个回合后解决了这些未知问题时，其乐趣也就随之消失了。从这里我们可以 看出乐趣只能够基于学习体验而存在，或者只能够作为满足人们的不同需求而存在。就像小 说，电影或者其它有价值的娱乐形式能够将作者对人性的观点传达给观众那样，我想我们也 有责任明确该如何做才能让玩家从游戏中受益，并在游戏过程中获得对自己有帮助的知识。 (本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者:Alexandre Mandryka ) Pleasure without learning leads to addiction by Alexandre Mandryka Our industry tends to use many terms without having strong understanding of them. Pleasure, motivation and addiction are generally mixed up and misused despite being central to entertainment. So much so that the generation of pleasure seems to be the main and only objective of many recent games, to the expense of challenge, and that being addictive is often considered a desired trait for a game. Gasp! In this article, I want to use the standpoint of biology to advocate that the key goal of play is personal development, pleasure only being a consequence of it. In addition, I will show that pleasure without learning only creates an empty experience that can be dangerously addictive. Let’s first debunk a very common confusion by establishing a distinction between fun and pleasure. Pleasurable experiences like eating a good tasting cake aren’ t necessarily fun. On the other hand, I think we can admit that everything that is fun is pleasurable. It means that fun is a subset of pleasure and that’s the reason I want to focus on exploring the notion of pleasure. Pleasure is a positive mental state that is the result of electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain. That stimulation is typically generated by cell receptors after activation by their neurotransmitters, mainly dopamine and different types of endorphins. The actual biochemistry is irrelevant to us except to know that you can bypass the proper triggers of it and still obtain the stimulation of the pleasure centers. This can be done by using replacement molecules that trigger receptors or amplify the effect of native neurotransmitters. These are actually called psychotropic drugs and affect our central nervous system’s ability to perceive and compute information. Of course induced altered states like being tipsy or plain drunk might seem like a good source of “fun”, but let me hold that thought for now and keep on with the actual discussion on pleasure. Since it can be “forged”, pleasure on its own has limited value. A famous experiment had monkeys pleasure centers wired so they could activate them at will which led them to constantly push that button and totally ignore to feed themselves, to their ultimate demise. A freely accessible pleasure source can be dangerous and even plain lethal as everything else ceases to represent any interest. This is a good illustration that living beings are complex systems that function in their own environment but are prone to collapse if a modification that they are not adapted to is introduced and that one part of the system gets singled out. Now that we’ve reviewed the mechanisms of pleasure and its limits, let’s try to discuss the possible role for pleasure. Biology considers pleasure as an adaptation mechanism for evolved animals. All living cells can be modified as they split, due to errors in the replication of their genetic code. This is how different traits appear in species and allow mutated individuals to survive evolutionary pressure. Typically, natural selection is rather a negative type of filtering that eliminates all individuals that can’t survive a change of conditions like the presence of antibiotics if you are a bacteria, the disappearance of low-hanging leaves if you are an small herbivore, or a giant asteroid hitting your planet if you are an ecosystem-dominating razor-teethed dinosaur. Because of how often unicellular organisms can reproduce and how simple their DNA is, they are way more likely to develop different traits and thus be ready to survive environment changes. More evolved organisms like mammals have to wait for sexual maturity to reproduce and mix their DNA to create offspring. Evolved species DNA is so complex though, that traits are dependent on multiple genes, making new traits way rarer to appear. This is where pleasure comes into play (no pun intended). As we saw, pleasure can be an absolute motivator, so if an individual’s brain is wired to give us pleasure in response to a behavior that makes him more fit, this will encourage him to engage in the related activity and help his survival. For example, our brain releases dopamine when we understand something which obviously plays a role in the fact that humans are actually quite smart. Our body generates endorphins after a physical exercise, giving us the post-workout high which motivates us to train again and build more muscle. More interestingly for us, and like most evolved animals, we also trigger pleasure when we play. If pleasure is linked to positive behaviors, it becomes a positive feedback loop for development In nature, the function of play is to develop oneself. Whether you are a cat or a human, fighting your siblings provides a safe environment for personal development as you can learn while remaining in an abstraction of what a real confrontation would be. One could advocate that playing is motivated by the desire to win and the pleasure that comes from it, but I believe that this is merely a motivating consequence and that the real point and cause of it is personal development. The interest of focusing on the latter is that learning and growing our capacities limits the exercise because it is tiring and requires rest to take effect. Muscular exercise only stimulates the body to build more muscular tissue after the training session, just like a student learning his lessons will mainly retain the information as he rests afterward. It is as if, in nature, the balancing element of pleasure is the effort required to obtain it, thus indicating that the true role of it is to motivate evolved animals to engage in activities that will fulfill their needs. Arguably, humans have needs of different types: Physical, emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual. Video games have historically represented a physical challenge with focus on hand-eye coordination and naturally grew into the intellectual sphere by including strategy and puzzles. With more focus on narrative, they started touching on emotions and spirituality, and with the development of multiplayer we are also expanding to social, giving them a pretty good potential as personal development tools. Conditioning makes our brain fire with excitement, but is it meaningful? But unless they somehow deliver a learning experience they can become a pleasurable but mind-numbing grind that leaves you feeling empty. That type of game that provides pleasure and can be played without effort and thus without limit, I call addictive. It is the type of entertainment that tricks our body and brain to focus on meaningless glitter and look for the next release of dopamine. Pleasure itself is the only currency promoted and the participants pretty much end up like the monkeys in the aforementioned experiment. The function of games is not to give us pleasure as this is only the consequence that motivates us to engage in it. Instead, the value of games is to learn, challenge or develop ourselves in situations that real life wouldn’t allow. If we let ourselves go only after pleasure, we just create a perverted and hedonistic system that doesn’ t provide any benefit and instead establishes such a short and easy loop to pleasure that becomes addictive and ultimately destructive to your body, mind and soul. To my knowledge, biology can’t really help study fun itself, but as a closing note, I would say that fun is experienced when facing uncertainty and having the opportunity to learn from it. A joke will expose you to a breach in logic or an unexpected outcome that engages your brain as he goes through the gap, and will trigger laughter after you finally decoded it, or “got it”. The value of it being that you learn to better understand that given pattern. Similarly, games are fun as they provide a zone of uncertainty to explore and learn from, and lose immediately all their appeal when they are “solved” like tic-tac-toe after a couple rounds. The common point here is that fun can only exist in an experience that can be a source of learning or experimenting with the different human needs. Just like novels, movies and valuable entertainment inform you on the author’ s vision on human nature, I think it is our responsibility to identify how we want our games to benefit players and to make sure they gain something through playing.(source:GAMASUTRA)