Hey, guys! Welcome back to my series on applied design game. 
In this video, I'm going to talk about how behaviorism applies to video games. 
Okay, so this video is actually the first video of a three-part series in which I'm going to
apply educational psychological paradigms to video games, 
the first paradigm being behaviorism. Now, before I get started, you first need to know
what the difference is between a paradigm and a theory. So a paradigm is the lens 
through which you look at the world. It's really your way of thinking about the world and how 
you make sense of the world. Say for example, you were to cover up your one eye. 
effectively eliminating your 3D vision. You might mistakenly think that everything you see 
around you is flat. Similarly, you would probably not see a point in trying to measure something
like depth because there is no point in doing so since everything is flat. 
And a paradigm is like that in a lot of ways. It's a set of concepts, values and assumptions that 
determine how you will look at the world. And also, how you will not be looking at the world. 
Now a theory is a logical proposition that exists within such a world view. 
It might take some assumptions and principles from a paradigm, but it's also open to testing,  
reformulating and changing. While a paradigm, on the other hand, is a lot more rigid.
Because it can be kind of hard to change your world view. Anyways, I'm trying to keep these 
videos concise, so if you'd like any more information on the topic of paradigms
or anything else that I might be discussing, just look at the description below. 
In the meanwhile, we're going to move on to behaviorism.  So behaviorism is a paradigm
that considers the learner to be passive and responsive to stimuli. 
So, in this view on the world, learning is seen as something that merely just happens to 
the learner, rather than something that the learner would actively engage in.
Furthermore, it happens to them whenever they are being subjected to stimuli. 
Now, a stimulus can be a lot of things. It's basically anything that incentivizes 
you to do something. It can be a treat, the approval of somebody that you care for, 
or even a kick in the backside. It's basically a matter of rewards and punishments. 
Now in psychology, we typically refer to two kinds of stimuli. A positive stimulus means that 
a stimulus is given, for better or for worse. And a negative stimulus, which means that 
the stimulus is being withheld. Now please note that positive does not necessarily mean rewards
and that negative does not necessarily mean punishments. For example, giving a treat
would be positive reinforcement, while a spanking would be positive punishment.  
In both cases, the stimuli are being provided, likewise, being allowed to leave the dinner table
after finishing your vegetables is negative reinforcement, while taking a toy away when a
child misbehaves is negative punishment, since in both cases, the stimulus is being removed.
Anyhow, with that, you now know what behaviorism is, and with that, there are a lot
of cool things that you can do. For example, you couldteach your dog to play Minecraft. 
Destroy. Destroy. Good boy! Holy crap, you went savage. Oh my god! He's going hard!
Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy
No. No, no, no. Max, what are you doing, bro? Destroy. 
Max. Good boy! Yes! Yes! Now, good boy! Oh my god, yes!
You're jumping. That's pretty epic. Destroy. Yes! Oh my god, yes!
Destroy. Good boy! Oh my god! Now, destroy. Yes, oh my god! Good boy. Now, walk. 
Good boy, yes! Destroy. Yes! Destroy. Yes! Oh snap, brother! Max, destroy. Whoa!
That's right, dogs playing minecraft. But that's the power of learning through behaviorism. 
Now, for the next part of this video, we're going to look at three scholars and their theories that
adhere to the behaviorist paradigm. First, we have Ivan Pavlov and Classical Conditioning. 
Then we have B.F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning. And finally we'll take a look at
Albert Bandura and his Social Learning Theory. 
So let's talk Pavlov, who you've probably heard of in relation to his famous, but quite unethical
experiments with dogs. In these experiments, Pavlov presents the dogs with food
and the sound of a bell together several times. As dogs love food, this would lead to them 
salivating everywhere. Eventually, though, Pavlov decided to leave the food out and 
just provide the auditory stimuls. And lo and behold, the dogs would now salivate 
whenever he rang his little bell. And that's the prime example of Classical Conditioning, 
one of many behaviorist theories. Now, there are four things that I would like for you to 
remember about Pavlov's work. First off, Classical Conditioning is a form of 
associative learning as behavior is being associated with a stimulus. 
Second, Classical Conditioning is a matter of reflexive responses. This all just happens
automatically. The dogs are not sitting there thinking, "Ohh, nice food. I'm just going to 
 start salivating now." It's all about reflexes. 
Third, this stuff comes from the Dark Ages of psychology since these experiments are often
not all that ethical. In fact, another famous experiment had researcher John P. Watson
experiment on an 11-month-old child and taught little Albert to be terrified of everything
furry, including Santa Claus, simply by playing a jarring sound every time the kid touched
a furry animal. 
And four, there are many different types of conditioning. You can use time as a stimulus, 
you can use various objects and different configurations as stimuli, but the important part 
is that you keep reinforcing the behavior because otherwise it will eventually go extinct. 
And that is something that we'll talk about a little bit more later on in this video. Anyways,
let's move on to another behaviorist. B.F. Skinner and his Operant Conditioning.
Now this theory keeps building on Pavlov's work, so there are some similarities. 
For example, we are talking again about associative learning. However, there are some
 differences as well, because we are no longer talking about reflexive responses.  
In operant conditioning, a voluntary response is followed by a reinforcing stimulus. 
Take the famous Skinner box, for example. 
A Skinner box is an environment with a number of stimuli and response mechanisms present. 
An animal is placed in it, and the researcher can then try out behaviorist experiments on it. 
For example, give food whenever they press the button and see how that changes
their behavior. Using similar methods, scholars like Edward Thorndike developed theories
such as the Thorndike's Law of Effect, that states how behaviors followed by 
satisfying consequences tend to be repeated, while behaviors that produce unpleasant
consequences are less likely to be reproduced. And that's often also true for human subjects. 
Hey, Kim. Yeah, I'm... You know what, hold on, let me take this in the hall. 

Sheldon, you can't train my girlfriend like a lab rat. 
Actually, it turns out I can. 
And finally, we get to Albert Bandura and Social Learning Theory. Now Social Learning Theory 
is a collection of theories that explains how people mimic each other's behavior. 
In this case, it's no longer a matter of you being rewarded or punished, but about you mimicking
the behaviors of others that are being rewarded or punished. Now, the most famous experiment
that Albert Bandura did is the Bobo Doll Experiment. In this experiment, they had
children watch adults interact with a toy doll called Bobo to then see if they could get the 
children to learn the adult behavior, even if it was anti-social, violent behavior. 
So since we're talking about stimuli here again, such as mimicking the behavior role models, 
Social Learning Theory does fit within the behaviorist paradigm. However, as we'll see
in future videos, it also fits in other paradigms as well. In any case, before I wrap up
Social Learning Theory, I want you to consider its restraints. You see, Bandura noticed that 
for people to mimic other people's behavior, a couple of conditions needed to be met. 
For one, attention. People needed to notice what behavior was going on. 
Second, retention. People needed to be able to memorize the behavior that was happening. 
Third, reproduction. People needed to be able to reproduce the behavior, because if you're
physically incapable of doing so, you're not going to reproduce it.  
And lastly, motivation. People needed to feel motivated to do the behavior, typically by 
watching somebody they considered a role model, or rather, watching others get rewards.
Now if any of those four steps are not present, Bandura noticed that it would impede learning
and the behavior would not be mimicked. Anyways, you now know a paradigm and 
three theories within that paradigm that are all based on stimuli and responses. 
Now, how does that relate to video games? Well, let's ask a game designer. 
How about Adrian Hon?
I think people don't necessarily understand how powerful some game mechanics can be. 
It's one thing to think, "Okay, I'm playing to much." But another thing to just stop playing,
because some games are designed in a manner that you just don't want to leave. 
(Narrator): He says powerful psychological techniques are used. 
The first one is by using this idea called a variable rate of reinforcement,
which is basically like a jackpot, so a slot machine. 
(Narrator): The idea was discovered after scientists discovered rats taught to feed 
themselves by pressing a lever would press it obsessively when the food appeared randomly.
And people have find that this works on humans as well. If you go and give people
a lever to press or a button to press, and give them random rewards based on pressing that, 
they'll do it all the time. 
(Narrator): In games, instead of food, you randomly get extra lives or extra in-game
features to keep you playing. The idea is to create a compulsion loop to keep us
coming back for more. 
So yeah, video games do use behaviorism all the time. But unfortunately, it's not always used
to make games better. It's often just used to generate more money or to get their players
into compulsion loops. And that is unfortunately even easier done than said. 
You see, originally, humans were motivated by biological needs. Things such as air, food, 
shelter, sex, safety. But eventually, we created artificial needs, such as goods and money.
Now, B.F. Skinner pretty quickly figured out that biological needs are satiating. 
If we keep eating, eventually we're full, and we're no longer hungry and our motivation
goes away. However, money does not work that way. We can always be motivated to 
go get more money to get a bigger house, a bigger car. So if we build our games around
these variable ratio schedules of artificial rewards, we can make it so that people 
are motivated to keep playing our games pretty much forever. Even get addicted. 
And that's why video games are now pretty much Skinner boxes. Originally, that started
with games having you grind away at menial quests for some silly achievements or a 
high score, but then we saw games like Farmville. 
In Farmville, you design a little farm, but it's a closed economy of virtual currency and goods
that you pay for with real money. It uses variable ratio schedules and other 
behaviorist tricks to keep you coming back so that you can get your rewards and build your 
social status. And it made its company Zynga exceedingly wealthy. In fact, Farmville barely
had any gameplay. All you do is click away at your farm to create more virtual wealth, 
and this inspired quite a bit of critique. For example, professor Ian Bogost decideded to
make a game he called "Cow Clicker" with zero gameplay in which you simply log in and click
on a cow, while at the same comparing it to the cows of your Facebook friends. Come back 
enough to click the cow some more, and you get to make it fancier and fancier. 
Now, Cow Clicker became so popular and was even financially viable, that what started as a 
parody eventually turned into the clicker game genre. Now fast forward a few years, 
and behaviorism in games has not slowed down at all. The AAA industry took notice, 
and almost every game now uses its principles as part of its monetization.
Take loot boxes, for example. This is Overwatch, but many games contain
boxes containing virtual goods that you buy with real money, even though you have
no idea what you're buying. It's just random chance, like gambling. And it has the same
reward payout schedules you will find in behaviorist theory. They are so effective
that they can turn a game that costs fifty dollars originally into a game that people spend 
thousands and thousands of dollars on. In fact, it is so profitable that games are pushing 
the boundaries further and further. For example, for NBA 2K, it wasn't enough to 
just sell access to virtual basketball players through these random loot boxes. 
They also decided to boost their presentation and add Pachinko machines, slot machines, 
a wheel of fortune, and so on. So now your basketball game is an actual casino. 
Except that it's one in which you never win actual any money, and even better,  
it is rated E for Everyone. You might as well sell cigarettes to a six-year-old. 
Needless to say, using these techniques has been met with some backlash and some 
countries have banned loot boxes. 
Including Belgium, who are not averse to addictive products whatsoever. 
They have the best beer in the world and they actually invented fries. Go Belgium. 
Now thankfully, behaviorism in games is not all about loot boxes and compulsive play. 
Like any technology, it all comes down to who is using. Take Jane McGonigal, for example. 
So Jane created SuperBetter, a game that uses stimulus and response and other 
game design techniques to make the world super better. In the app, you can set goals
for yourself and the game will give you smaller goals so that your big goals are actually 
something you can accomplish. 
Hey, didn't I talk about that in my last video?
Furthermore, the app also gives you rewards and helps you to see your progress 
so that you stay motivated. It's like a Skinner box of well-being. 
And then there's Beat Saber. Sure, I just put that in here because I love playing Beat Saber,
but this game is a nice illustration of how you can make people better at doing something
through positive reinforcements. It's just so rewarding to get through a hard level
while getting that workout in. Speaking of which, remember game designer Adrian Hon?
He also uses behaviorist techniques at his company Six to Start. Except, he uses them
to get people to get into running through a cool zombie apocalypse game. 
In the end, technology isn't good or evil. It all depends on who wields it. And that applies 
as much to behaviorist psychological tricks as to any other technology.
And that wraps up our video. Now, that means it's time for discussion time with Reggie. 
Reggie, you want a treat? Come here. Good boy!
Alright, so Reggie is super excited right now. So, I hope that this video gave you a good 
idea of what behaviorism is and how it's applied to video games in a lot of ways.
In the meanwhile, I invite you to go to the online platform and share your thoughts with me
If you need some talking points, here are a couple of them. 
And that's going to be the end of the video for this week. I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.
