The Psychology of Feedback

Research on motivation, primarily in education, suggests that an important factor for explaining how people respond to failure is their perception of why the failure occurred. Those who believe that their failure is the result of stable factors, such as native ability or intelligence, which they cannot easily change, are most likely to give up or not even try.

However, people who believe that a failure is the result of unstable factors that they can change through effort or strategy are more likely to believe they can overcome initial setbacks. The determining factor is the person's mindset about his or her ability.

The same holds true for video games. Players who believe they can learn and master the game persevere, while those who think they lack a particular game-playing ability, or that some other stable factor lies between them and success, are likely to quit.

Fortunately, this is susceptible to change. There are things we game developers can do to encourage a mindset that anticipates success rather than failure. But before we get to that, consider these two studies, both of which illustrate the simple and subtle means through which we can shape players' perception of ability.

M. L. Kamin and Carol S. Dweck (see References) conducted a study in which they had students take a difficult test. After the test, they praised half the students for being smart (the "ability" group) and the other half for their effort or strategy (the "learning" group). The participants were then given the choice of two new tasks to complete: a simple one at which they were likely to succeed but learn little, or a difficult task that would be more interesting but would likely result in mistakes. Most of the ability group chose the simple task, while the learning group tended toward the more difficult task.

As far as psychology experiments go, this was a very simple manipulation. The researchers merely changed a few words in their feedback, which produced significant changes in the students' attitudes.

In another experiment, two Stanford University researchers manipulated the attitudes of participants before a task. Craig Anderson and Dennis Jennings (see References) told half their subjects, prior to having them take a test, that their success on the test was likely dependent on innate ability -- either they had the ability to perform well, or they didn't.

The other half of the subjects were told that doing well was a matter of determining the right strategy -- anyone can do it, but it takes effort.

However, Anderson and Jennings designed the test so that everyone would initially fail (does this sound like a game you've played?). After taking the test once, the subjects were asked how they thought they would do on another, similar test. Those who were led to believe that success depended on strategy and effort were more likely to expect future success. Those who believed that success was a matter of ability did not.

Interestingly, this manipulation had an even more dramatic effect. The subjects with the strategic mindset were more likely to have monitored their own methods for completing the tasks so that they were able to modify them in subsequent attempts. That is, they were able to learn from their experiences. The participants with the ability mindset did not monitor their strategies and therefore did not learn as much as the other group from their experiences. In short, the manipulation affected both the participants' anticipation of success (or lack thereof) as well as what they learned when taking the test. 

Perception Management

Intuitively, these results make sense. If people believe that success is dependent on ability, then no matter how much effort they expend on the task, they believe they are going to fail again. When people say things like, "I can't cook," or "I can't draw," or "I'm no good at first-person shooters," they don't typically then sign up for a cooking class or begin carrying a sketchbook everywhere or practice playing Halo. "Why bother trying to improve if you don't have the innate talent?"

What is less intuitive, and what we need to leverage as game developers, is our ability to manage expectations and mindsets.

To do this, we have to change our mindsets as well. I strongly suspect that most designers spend very little, if any, time considering what the player experience should be in the 10 seconds between a failure event, such as dying or losing a race, and the moment when play resumes -- or worse, the moment the player quits. (There are some notable exceptions, including Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty, which I discuss in the following section.)

Given the opportunities to keep players involved and motivated, it's unfortunate that game developers rarely take advantage of these moments. In fact, they might be the most important 10 seconds of your game. While we spend weeks creating a few seconds of a cut scene and hours perfecting a texture, we spend very little time considering and implementing appropriate feedback at those very moments when a player decides whether to continue playing (See also research summarized in "GDC: Top 10 Video Game Research Findings," by Jill Duffy.)

Let's take a quick look at some of the player experiences surrounding defeat. Historically, these moments have been brutal. The "game over" screens for most arcade games were terse, bordering on insulting: "You Lose," "Game Over," "You're Dead." How far have we come since then? Not very. Most games fade to black, switch cameras to provide a view of the corpse, or simply pop the player back to a save point.

But we still see ghosts from the arcades. Some of these are intentionally reminiscent of the past, though most are just thoughtless designs. Language such as "You Suck" (yes, I've seen it), "Failed," and "Game Over" encourages players to put down the controller and do something else.

I'm not suggesting we swap in touchy-feely or overly encouraging language. In fact, there's a fine line between providing appropriate feedback and being patronizing. What we should be doing is focusing on the player's actions and emphasizing improvement.