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The goal is never in sight: the obstacles are randomly generated (so learning to anticipate their structure is impossible) and endless (there’s no way to “beat” or finish the game). Flappy Bird, which went viral in early 2014, pushes the logic of intrinsic motivation to its limits. In other words, if you find yourself doing something regardless of whether you’ll be paid, acknowledged or otherwise compensated in exchange for doing it, you are intrinsically motivated. Psychologists call it “intrinsic motivation”-the urge to make progress toward a goal without the promise of an externalized reward. It’s Logo.” The concept of “hard fun” neatly encapsulates the experience sought by many players of Super Meat Boyand other ultrahard games. Legendary computer scientist and educator Seymour Papert once quoted a student describing the experience of learning Logo, the educational programming language that Papert co-created: “It’s hard.
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Insights from psychology and computer science can illuminate the conditions that transform frustration into satisfaction (and vice versa)-which may help us design better ways to engage people in challenging tasks outside gaming. These games seem to defy the normal rules of motivation and engagement-but on closer examination, they’re not exceptional at all.
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But why would players seek a game whose reputation seems largely built on frustration? The gaming press describes Super Meat Boy as “ a definitive work in the subgenre of brutally difficult platformers,” but casual games like Flappy Bird and strategy games like the Dark Souls series are infamous and addictive for the same reason-they’re superhard. Many popular video games are challenging. “I forgot how rage-inducing this game was.” The post then devolved into a string of all-caps curse words. “I’m already throwing tantrums and curling my toes,” he wrote on Reddit. After playing Super Meat Boy for an hour FranktheShank1 reported that it seemed to be delivering the desired effect.
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The game, Super Meat Boy, was considered a classic among gamers since its debut in 2010, and its release for Sony’s newest console had been highly anticipated. One afternoon last fall a Reddit user with the handle “FranktheShank1” was enjoying a new video game on his PlayStation 4.