[Tutorial] Making an addictive retro

[Macheath]

Introduction
In this tutorial I will be talking about Skinner Box techniques and possible implementation in Habbo Retros. I wrote something similar on my blog a few days ago and thought that I would share. These techniques are used in things like WoW and other MMORPGs so they take up as much of your time as possible.

What is a Skinner Box
A Skinner Box or a Operant conditioning chamber is a piece of equipment used by scientists. It has evolved over the years, but it started by B. F. Skinner to study behavior. He stuck a pigeon in a box with a button, and when it pushed the button it got food. Simple enough. It was a success, he had conditioned the pigeon to push a button when it was hungry. But as soon as it was no longer hungry it stopped. He found that if the rewards were random, the pigeon would obsessively push the button. Even we it was wasn't hungry. Casinos work on this principle, the jackpot is the food, it's random. Therefore humans will carry on gambling at a random jackpot. 21 and Poker are similar in this way, the randomness of a prize is appealing.

Socialization
Why is Habbo so popular? I mean it's not all that great. It's popular because you make friends, retro's don't have the same community like Habbo or other MMO's have. You don't feel the need to make friends. I mean you would rather play with your friends than some random people you don't know. If you want people to play your retro you must first get contacts, talk to people on forums, help people out. You then have your starting user base. However you want it to grow. This is why games, like WoW, have rewards- invite a friend get a cool mount. The mount isn't the the thing which people want- it's the social symbol having something other people don't.

Social symbols(being better than people)
This is how rare on real Habbo works, and why giving people access to a staff catalog and rares doesn't keep people playing. Same with giving them a ton of credits. Credits are pretty useless on retros. The only appeal to having a ton of them is making amazing rooms, and if the community isn't big enough then no one will see them. It becomes pointless- unless you connect the whole hotel up which is just silly really.

So what can I do?

• Use pixel's effecently
• Create a open market
• Encourage socialization
• Encourage people to invite friends
• Encourage staff to interact
• Add more special items
• Give people less credits
• Use credits more effectively
• The list goes on...

Okay can you help me connect the dots here
Alright, first pixels should be valued. But instead of 100 pixels every so often, try something like. If you have 0-10 you can get 10 pixels an hour, with the chance to win 100, 11-20 pixels and you get 20 pixels an hour, with the chance to win 200. You can change the values and brackets based on your community, but the chance to win a jackpot of pixels will entice people. However if you want to raise the value of pixels, therefore raising the value of spending longer on the hotel, you've got to allow them to spend it on something. Use rares, but call them limited edition, you change it every day and make it 500 pixels, don't rotate them though. But then offer every week another special edition piece for 1,000 pixels. It should be seen as a social symbol, so clothing would work best for this. Clothing in general should be used as a reward. How do you think Valve sells so many hats of TF2, people get them as a social symbol not a 'hat'. To have a hat it's cool to have a hat only a few people have. This brings me onto my next point, voting should also use hats or items of clothing, by just saying "you can't enter until you vote" isn't attracting new users. You should run some kind of lottery, you can buy tickets for 3,000 pixels, this should be run daily and you can win unique clothing, items, etc. You should stagger these rewards though. You should get the user into the position of "I want XYZ and I only have ZXY number of pixels, which one do I want more- well I could just stay on longer get more friends for more and get all of them". You should also give your users a market place, instead of VIP (but I will explain how to implement VIP in shortly) use micro transactions, 50p for an item of clothing, or limited edition furni etc. To implement VIP you could say, hey VIP's get $5 of credit for the microstore. However give users the importunity to get items without paying, either as prizes, trading with others, doing quests, helping others, getting achievements and as some kind of MEGA JACKPOT.

Finally
These are just suggestions on how you could, based on real games with a lot of users. There are tons of way to implement these addictive qualities I just mentioned a few of them. However addiction does take subtly, too much and people wont like the game, they'll find it annoying and wont play. It also requires you have some knowledge on your player base. If you want any help or advise you may PM me and I'll get back to you.

[Roper]

As usual, some great ideas/techniques, thank you for this Katie <3

[vLife]

This is a well written tutorial. And I liked what you touched on.
Excellent tutorial.

[Macheath]

Thanks, it's been a while since I've done anything Habbo related and I hoped it was relevant. As for the well written part I write a lot on the topic of game creation so :P

[Mithex]

Great. Awesome. Incredible eye opening ideas. Surprised I didn't think about this.



Someone needs to code a system, that randomly gives every new user a random rare. They can only make 1 account per IP, so that stops from multiple accounts. That way, everybody gets a different rare and feels special to the game. Plus, with customs coming out, there will be even more rares for users to divide amongonst themselves. But Mithex, what if the rares get over the correct amount, and do not become rares? Lets see... there are over 300 rares including promo rares in the catalogue. Lets say your hotel has 5000 people, that means 17 people will each have 1 of the same rare. So it still stays somewhat sacred. Also, you should be able to change the probability. It just keeps more people coming to the hotel.

[Macheath]

Well retros are very limited on what mechanics they can introduce, also Habbo isn't considered a MMO the same way WoW is and therefore the communities don't overlap. As for your rare idea, I like it but it isn't reinforcing the same thing pixels do.

For example: Steam's summer sale, basically you play the games you get prizes, this is reinforcing playing games. Saying okay every hour you get rares isn't the same as saying every hour you can get something which could be a jackpot. Too many rares will mess around with a economy.

[Mithex]

Well retros are very limited on what mechanics they can introduce, also Habbo isn't considered a MMO the same way WoW is and therefore the communities don't overlap. As for your rare idea, I like it but it isn't reinforcing the same thing pixels do.

For example: Steam's summer sale, basically you play the games you get prizes, this is reinforcing playing games. Saying okay every hour you get rares isn't the same as saying every hour you can get something which could be a jackpot. Too many rares will mess around with a economy.

Hmm... I agree with most everything of that.

As for it messing the economy, your probably right, but as I said,

Also, you should be able to change the probability.

You could easily set that to, every rare has a 0 percent chance except a few rares, then 1 mega rare has a .5 percent chance. Creating your jackpot system.

As your pixel idea goes, I love it :). I may bring that to my hotel, I have seen many hotels create a Habbo Exchange page that charges money for pixels. I loved that idea, also, instead of coins for the weekly rare, it could be pixels. Lets start making pixels, a second currency, more then what it currently is.





Ohh, and on behalf of the Habbo Hotel Section, congrats Macheath

[omnija]

or you could worry a little less on "community" and worry more on people actually getting a life. No offense but worrying about rare's being over priced and trying to make as many worthless and pointless friends online doesn't seem the way to hab it out on a retro. I think being on a retro is more about taking advantage of not having to pay real money for virtual furniture and how creative you can be with the furniture you have. Plus why make systems like that when most server now constantly give out credits and pixels?

[Mithex]

or you could worry a little less on "community" and worry more on people actually getting a life. No offense but worrying about rare's being over priced and trying to make as many worthless and pointless friends online doesn't seem the way to hab it out on a retro. I think being on a retro is more about taking advantage of not having to pay real money for virtual furniture and how creative you can be with the furniture you have. Plus why make systems like that when most server now constantly give out credits and pixels?

Areeeeeeeee you fucking with me? How can you not see the obvious point we have been making?

[Macheath]

or you could worry a little less on "community" and worry more on people actually getting a life. No offense but worrying about rare's being over priced and trying to make as many worthless and pointless friends online doesn't seem the way to hab it out on a retro. I think being on a retro is more about taking advantage of not having to pay real money for virtual furniture and how creative you can be with the furniture you have. Plus why make systems like that when most server now constantly give out credits and pixels?

Okay, apologies for bring elements in game design to the Habbo community and trying to make retros have better mechanics to encourage new users to join and old users to play more. I'm not trying to encourage people HEY HAVE NO LIFE. It's simply ways to improve your hotel. No, retros do not last long as a creativity toy, they work better as a balanced and structured community. More people have fun.

You could easily set that to, every rare has a 0 percent chance except a few rares, then 1 mega rare has a .5 percent chance. Creating your jackpot system.

It's not a bad system, nor is it the best in my opinion. But it could work I suppose. The only way to see for sure is implementation.

As your pixel idea goes, I love it :). I may bring that to my hotel, I have seen many hotels create a Habbo Exchange page that charges money for pixels. I loved that idea, also, instead of coins for the weekly rare, it could be pixels. Lets start making pixels, a second currency, more then what it currently is.

I would love to see how that works out :D and if you want any more stuff you should PM me or check out what I end up doing as a writer on RZ's frontpage, it'll be a whole load of this in more detail and more broad spectrum.

Ohh, and on behalf of the Habbo Hotel Section, congrats Macheath

Meh it's nothing- really. Just doing what I love for a big audience :D.

[Mithex]

Okay, I apologies for bring elements in game design to the Habbo community and trying to make retros have better mechanics to encourage new users to join and old users to play more. I'm not trying to encourage people HEY HAVE NO LIFE. It's simply ways to improve your hotel. No, retros do not last long as a creativity toy, they work better as a balanced and structured community. More people have fun.


It's not a bad system, nor is it the best in my opinion. But it could work I suppose. The only way to see for sure is implementation.


I would love to see how that works out :D and if you want any more stuff you should PM me or check out what I end up doing as a writer on RZ's frontpage, it'll be a whole load of this in more detail and more broad spectrum.


Meh it's nothing- really. Just doing what I love for a big audience :D.

I am looking forward to doing all of those things and making a new ally on the almighty TrollZone.