sustain these superstitions. The most significant is the relative low cost of the ritual compared to the relative high value of the potential reward, especially in situations in which the team members have nothing else to do to fill the time. After all, if you get to run a difficult dungeon only once a week, whatâs the harm in trying something that takes just thirty seconds?
Generally the experimentation is harmless enough that it is at least permitted by skeptics of the theory. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 24]
There is also the relative cost of trying to debunk a superstition. In a typed chat setting, it takes much more time and effort to argue and attempt to debunk a superstition than to simply follow along, even if you donât believe in the behavior.
If the potential outcome is negative rather than positive, risk aversion comes into play. For example, there are superstitions that make a boss easier to kill and thus decrease the odds of a
raid wipe
âthe obliteration of the entire team by a tough encounter.
âHey kids, donât use curse of weakness on Gandling, because he starts teleporting people a ton faster . . . .â But nobody wanted to try it out; I remember actually offering to pay people a gold each to let me try . . . and they refused; . . . people are very pious when it comes to respecting these technological taboos. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 23]
In Skinnerâs pigeon study, superstitious behaviors persisted even though they did not produce food 80 percent of the time. Even a low contingency rate was sufficient to sustain a superstition. The same is true in online games. After all, a ritual that produces highly beneficial outcomes 20 percent of the time is still worth performing. Indeed, probabilistic superstitions are hard to debunk without a large experimental data set, which few players would have the time or tenacity to collect.
If it worked some of the time, it was enough for the group in question to continue to think that the process they were following was crucial to the success of whatever it was they were doing. [
EverQuest II,
male, 36]
With a group of five people, the likelihood that the superstition has recently been true (that is, reinforced) for any one team member is very high. This secondhand reinforcement also creates the illusion of a much higher success rate.
Old Dogs and New Tricks
Superstition in online games reveals something very important and fundamental about how people interact with new technology. To help us unravel this, let me describe a study that changed how we think about human-computer interaction.
Are people polite to computers? Given that computers are inanimate objects without feelings, this question may seem ridiculous. But a study conducted at Stanford University in 1996 showed that people interact with computers as if they had feelings. Communication scholars Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves had college students take a tutoring session from a standard desktop computer. The session was about different facts of American culture, such as thepercentage of American teenagers who kiss on the first date, and included a quiz on a set of questions the computer had not tutored students on, followed by a scoring session in which the computer went through the studentsâ responses and let them know how they performed. The students were then asked to complete an evaluation of the tutoring session either on the same computer or on a different computer.
When a family member asks you what you think of his or her cooking at a family gathering, you tend to be polite and avoid offending that person. If someone else pulled you aside and asked you the same question, youâd probably be more honest. It turns out that people obey this politeness rule even when interacting with computers. The researchers found that students gave more favorable evaluations if they filled the form out on the same computer that tutored them. Students who filled out evaluations on a
Generally the experimentation is harmless enough that it is at least permitted by skeptics of the theory. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 24]
There is also the relative cost of trying to debunk a superstition. In a typed chat setting, it takes much more time and effort to argue and attempt to debunk a superstition than to simply follow along, even if you donât believe in the behavior.
If the potential outcome is negative rather than positive, risk aversion comes into play. For example, there are superstitions that make a boss easier to kill and thus decrease the odds of a
raid wipe
âthe obliteration of the entire team by a tough encounter.
âHey kids, donât use curse of weakness on Gandling, because he starts teleporting people a ton faster . . . .â But nobody wanted to try it out; I remember actually offering to pay people a gold each to let me try . . . and they refused; . . . people are very pious when it comes to respecting these technological taboos. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 23]
In Skinnerâs pigeon study, superstitious behaviors persisted even though they did not produce food 80 percent of the time. Even a low contingency rate was sufficient to sustain a superstition. The same is true in online games. After all, a ritual that produces highly beneficial outcomes 20 percent of the time is still worth performing. Indeed, probabilistic superstitions are hard to debunk without a large experimental data set, which few players would have the time or tenacity to collect.
If it worked some of the time, it was enough for the group in question to continue to think that the process they were following was crucial to the success of whatever it was they were doing. [
EverQuest II,
male, 36]
With a group of five people, the likelihood that the superstition has recently been true (that is, reinforced) for any one team member is very high. This secondhand reinforcement also creates the illusion of a much higher success rate.
Old Dogs and New Tricks
Superstition in online games reveals something very important and fundamental about how people interact with new technology. To help us unravel this, let me describe a study that changed how we think about human-computer interaction.
Are people polite to computers? Given that computers are inanimate objects without feelings, this question may seem ridiculous. But a study conducted at Stanford University in 1996 showed that people interact with computers as if they had feelings. Communication scholars Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves had college students take a tutoring session from a standard desktop computer. The session was about different facts of American culture, such as thepercentage of American teenagers who kiss on the first date, and included a quiz on a set of questions the computer had not tutored students on, followed by a scoring session in which the computer went through the studentsâ responses and let them know how they performed. The students were then asked to complete an evaluation of the tutoring session either on the same computer or on a different computer.
When a family member asks you what you think of his or her cooking at a family gathering, you tend to be polite and avoid offending that person. If someone else pulled you aside and asked you the same question, youâd probably be more honest. It turns out that people obey this politeness rule even when interacting with computers. The researchers found that students gave more favorable evaluations if they filled the form out on the same computer that tutored them. Students who filled out evaluations on a
Similar Books
