Rat in a cage: why your mind loves Steam sales
You have a gigantic library of Steam games you buy in sales then never play. Why would you spend money on something you don't use? Julie Horup searches for answers.
“It's absolutely fundamental for the human being to react quickly when offered something, and we have very strong urge to gather and hoard. Sometimes this exceeds our abilities to reconsider whether or not we actually need a game that's only available on sale for a certain period.”
In the 1950s, American psychologist BF Skinner coined the term 'Operant Conditioning'. His theory attempted to explain how we learn through behaviour, and how we repeat actions if they've positive consequences, or how we refrain from doing something if it repeatedly turns out to have a negative effect.
To prove positive reinforcements can make us repeat certain behaviour, Skinner invented an operant conditioning chamber known as the Skinner Box, in which there was a rat, a lever and a food dispenser. At first the rat wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do in its new-found cage, but when it accidentally pressed the lever food would be dispensed. The rat's behaviour was positively reinforced with a yummy reward. It didn't take long before the rat would learn to constantly press the lever in order to get food.
Operant conditioning still stands as one of the most renowned behavioural theories; and it can help explain why we spend a lot of money during Steam's sales even though we'll probably never play most of the games we buy.
The Steam Box
Initially it might seem a bit strange to compare rats in a box to people buying games on Steam, but it actually makes a lot of sense, especially given Steam's reputation as the most popular digital platform online.
“If it was some random online store that you never had visited before, then you'd be less inclined to buy from it, but because you're so familiar with Steam it actually makes a difference,” explained Johan Eklund, psychologist and co-founder of Checkpoint Therapy, a company that offers consultation and counselling to people dealing with excessive video games use.
“It's a very basic thing when we're exposed to some sort of stimuli or perform an activity, like playing a game on Steam, and it turns out to be a positive experience. The whole experience becomes extremely positive, and the next time you see a game on sale on Steam, and you have to pay less for it than usual, you're even more prone to buying the game, even if you have limited knowledge of it. Because of the positive, earlier experiences you're more motivated to actually click 'buy'.”
Valve's extremely effective at creating positive experiences, and the company knows how to plan perfectly executed sales. This Summer we saw the introduction of community voting in polls to decide which games would go on sale next. While users might think of their involvement and voting as something to their benefit, this is just the employment of basic psychology that'll most often lead to improved sale figures. You're being treated like rats pressing a lever to receive a reward.
“If you vote on a game, then you've invested in something that didn't even cost you anything. But you've also prepared your mind for the possibility of the game going on sale. If it does, it acts as positive reinforcement since your mind believes that you've made a difference.
“If you have to go through the process of responding to a poll, and it ends up being in your favour [your pick going on sale], then there are already a lot of positive feelings present, which makes it much more likely that you'll buy the game,” said Eklund.
“It doesn't cost Steam anything to make a poll, so it's actually quite clever. They get to see which games people want to buy while also observing how motivated people are. If you look at it from Steam's perspective, then it'd be rather sensible to believe that they're maximising the amount of games being sold.”
Involving users in this way can be compared to companies asking their employees how they work best, what their interests are, and then delegate their assignments accordingly to their response. While the approach is somewhat different from the community-driven sales, the final result is the same: the persons feel more involved and thereby more motivated to show their support and perform at their best – in this case by preferring Steam as the place to buy games instead of visiting competitors like Origin.
Playing to the mind's way of reacting to certain situations is also present in Steam's time-limited offers.
“If you make something limited or make it seem like a sparse resource, it triggers a reaction in our mind and starts our need for hoarding, which then translates into trying to maximise the possible yield,” explained Eklund.
“It's absolutely fundamental for the human being to react quickly when offered something, and we have very strong urge to gather and hoard. Sometimes this exceeds our abilities to reconsider whether or not we actually need a game that's only available on sale for a certain period. When Steam succeeds in triggering this response, where reflection is tossed aside, then the consumers are much more likely to buy something.”
Easy access
According to Eklund, it's obvious – besides the psychological aspects - why gamers choose Steam as their primary digital platform even when ignoring their famous sales, and it's the same reason why Apple proved successful with iTunes as the go-to place for buying music online.
“Valve knows how to make [Steam] a pleasant experience, which can make a huge difference when buying a product.
“There's always a barrier to overcome before getting what you want. The barrier at Steam is a lot smaller because you don't have to type in thousands of passwords and click several times before the game you want is being downloading.
“I'm sure they've given it a lot of thought how to make the experience as easy and pleasant as possible.”
Pleasant it may be, but why does the human mind keep enjoying the stimuli from sales even though we tell ourselves it makes no sense to buy cheap games that'll just gather dust in a dark, virtual corner?
These psychological mechanisms are exactly what drive you to advance in the very games Steam sells. The structure of Steam sales has a lot in common with game design, how it makes your mind seek rewards – whether we're comfortable with it or not.
“It might be possible to be aware of the negative effects like buying a lot of games you'll never play, but it'll only happen momentarily. Unless it's absolutely and constantly clear, then most people will forget about it,” said Eklund.
“If you go to the supermarket and buy a lot of toothpaste you might realise that you'll never be able to use all of this toothpaste you've just bought, but you'll have forgotten about it the next time you see toothpaste on sale. The mind's ability to organise and plan long-term is overridden because we're caught up in a moment where spontaneous urges take over, and it's difficult to intervene when those urges block our otherwise logical way of thinking.
“If Steam made a status bar of how much money you spent last sale, and how many hours you've actually played the games you bought, then the users would be more aware of their consumption pattern. But obviously they won't do that as they're very selective in the information provided to the users.”
If you're starting to feel like chopping off your head and removing your brain, you shouldn't feel too bad. These psychological mechanisms are exactly what drive you to advance in the very games Steam sells. The structure of Steam sales has a lot in common with game design, how it makes your mind seek rewards – whether we're comfortable with it or not.
“If someone points a light to a certain part of the ground, then you start digging and you end up finding gold. This would give a feeling of shrewdness and that you somehow figured out how the system works, which is kind of like what games do. You realise that your behaviour has positive consequences.
“It's exactly what good games do: providing small challenges that you can handle well. When you finish a boss fight, you might get a positive reward, and then you feel like you'll be able to handle a slightly more difficult challenge. It's basically the same rules and mechanisms that apply every time people do something.”
At least there's one good thing about how the mind works; you aren't in danger of becoming addicted to Steam sales.
“Before we talk about addiction, we'd like to examine the specific case and see if there's a reason why something has become such a rewarding behaviour that you'd spend all of your time on it, and because of this I'd go a long way before saying it's an addiction.”