Today while playing Puzzle Bobble around the corner from me, I noticed that my loss felt a little bit random, even though playing it convinces me it is deterministic. The sense of randomness, yet with exposed mechanics, reminded me of RJ Layton's gumball pachinko prototype, which I played with and was wondering what about its design inclined me to play. I saw the buckets below the pegs, wheel, and bumpers. I speculated on how I could land a gumball in the highest scoring bucket (in the center, flanked by the losing buckets). I could choose which horizontal position to roll the ball down, and I had a little influence on making a low risk play on the side or high risk in the center (which Masahiro Sakura discussed much better than I can).
To speculate as conjecture, I'll hypothetically suppose that part of the motivation to interact with RJ's pachinko prototype was an illusory belief about the control over the outcome. From events where control really does exist (such as tossing a ball in beer pong at the beginning of an undergrad party), to where it doesn't (such as tossing the ball at the end of the party), there seems to be a feeling that if you can observe the results of your input, then there is a subconscious assumption of control.
The phenomena of illusory control through perceptible dynamics seems to have plenty of ubiquitous examples, from the flip of a coin (when its result is called in the air) to a fair game of rock, paper, scissors. In dice games, such as Craps or Dungeons & Dragons, the players have a superstitious belief in the user's influence on the die roll. In card games and even non-game card rituals (such as Tarot card divination), there is a subconscious sense of either control or destiny, too, but it is not as strong as the feeling that particular gesture on shaken fair dice (barring barrel rolling techniques) will have a significant influence on the result.
If this hypothesis were broadly applicable, one would expect that systems of chance, where the mechanisms of chance were exposed as a visually and aurally consonant dynamics with perceptible origins with the user's tactile input (such as the roll of dice or bounce of a pachinko ball) then the user would be more invested in the outcome than if the mechanism were unexposed. In casino slot machines, the spinning of the wheels might inject a sense of control. In roulette, the bouncing of the ball (unless you're Hiro Nakamura) is outside of control and designed to be unpredictable.
Psychologists have posited that random reinforcement schedules elicit trained responses. Some, such as John Hopson have suggested the application of the theory of reinforcement schedules to designing reward mechanisms. Psychologists might say that such superstitious belief in control is due to the neural mechanics of learning, whereby results are causally associated with behavior, even when the results are chaotic.
While visiting my son in Kentucky, his little sisters of ages 5 to 8 would engross themselves for several minutes with Cascade on my Psion Revo. The game can be played skillfully, but only the oldest (Nature) would play it that way sometimes. The youngest (Eudora) would stipple the screen with the stylus until some adjacent balls popped. She kept at it earnestly for several minutes, in hopes of a high score, and yet poking almost randomly, game after game. Her and her sister Haven would apply such sincere determination to turning over the cards in Sorry Junior, giving the act of turning more attention than the shuffle. The behavior of such children, I believe, illustrates principles of the subconscious psychology of adults; in this case, focusing on interactive dynamics, deterministic or not.
It's ironic that one company, such as Crow River, services parts for pachinko, pinball, vending machines, and trade simulators. What could be closer to laboratory operant conditioning than a candy vending machine?
Around the block, I often see children and young adults manipulating a crane to to fetch a stuffed animal. As a function of the crane's starting horizontal position, I've thought the outcomes were close to chance. But there seems to be a commercial connection. As an example, Birmingham Vending is the same company that offers slot machines, popcorn machines, and pool tables.
It seems that not only is the apparent nature of the mechanisms--or more precisely the methods by which the user interface represents the simulation--it seems using a mental model that humans can subconsciously process with high fidelity (such as kinetics), that then even random results can mistakenly feel controllable. This is not news to those familiar with superstitions of boxers, baseball players, businesspeople, gamblers, and medieval medicine. But it suggests to game designers that visualization of quasi-stochastic simulation mechanisms through the user interface can impact the player's belief of control, and therefore their investment in monitoring the result of their input. If the user feels an illusory sense of control over the outcome through visual, aural, and tactile perception of the dynamics of seemingly deterministic system (such as the toss of a die), then the user is rewarded by observing the procedure that creates the outcome.
The Price is Right (of which my grandmother was a devotee and audience member of, even though she lived in North Carolina) offers other examples, from Plinko, a derivative of Pachinko, to its big wheel. Speaking of wheels, Wheel of Fortune offers its own example of perceptible dynamics for a stochastic simulation. From the spinning wheels of slot machines to the Mario Kart 64 power-up spinner.
In WarioWare Smooth Moves Darts, there is a bit of randomness to the dart toss (displayed as a pulsing circle), which is mostly skill based, yet with some perceptible randomness. This randomness is more of an edge case. What is a closer to a confirming example is cutting the yellow or red strings at the end of the lifeline race, when they are all the same color.
While considering the gulf between aesthetic requirements for educational versus entertaining software, I considered that Guitar Hero is effective and entertaining because of the illusion that the user is controlling the song, that the user is responsible for more of the music than she has control over. It is this illusion of control that both encourages play through rapid rewards, and short-circuits the difficulties and precision-tuning exercises of guitar playing. Rock Band extends this thesis from the guitar to drums and vocals: make believe is enhanced through perceptible interactive dynamics of tracks and forgiving feedback.
What are some more telling examples in videogames, and even better, what are some edge cases or counter examples?