I just finished watching a TED talk about motivations and I had one of those moments where you wonder if two separate parts of life can actually be more connected than you thought.
The talk is a really good talk and well worth a watch.
For those that don't wish to, the crux of the talk is that traditional motivators don't work. What do I mean by motivators? Incentives, penalties, commissions, bribes, we all know what they look like. "If you finish this task really quickly, you get shiny stuff" Turns out it narrows focus and make people ignore the possibilities of creativity in favour of "just get it done"
The example given was the candle problem. the test subjects are given this..., and told to affix the candle to the wall. Now most of them will start with ideas like pinning it to the wall, and melting wax with matches, but the way you have to do it is this...
As Dan Pink says it, there were tests done that pitted two groups against each other. One was told they were being used as the baseline, and the other was given a financial incentive. Turns out giving a financial incentive, rather than just letting people try stuff out, makes the puzzle take longer to solve. The groups that wanted the cash prize for being the fastest took consistently and significantly longer to solve the puzzle than those that didn't.
He goes into a lot more depth in the video (which is another reason to go watch it. It's ok, I'll wait...), but the upshot is that if you want people to be creative, don't offer them material (or equivalent) incentives.
So I watched that video, and then I went on the ladder. And I got points for winning! WOO!
And the I had a possible realisation.
We're being offered the same incentives as the group that were offered the incentives. Does that mean that we're strangling our own creativity for ladder points? For promotion?
And might this be the difference between Korean and Foreigner play, that the Korean style is to reduce SC2 to a purely mechanical way of playing, which is why there seems to be a correlation between matches where the Korean players know what their opponent does (and thus can prepare for that specifically, avoiding the need for creativity) and can therefore excel by emphasizing on those mechanics. Which might explain why players like Stephano do so well, because they have the creative spark, and defeating them requires a more than just mechanical solution.
This might end up being tested when Stephano ends up in the GSL and people have a week to prepare for him. I have a feeling that if he can be reduced to a predictable mechanical puzzle, he's going to suffer in the GSL, whereas if creativity wins over mathematics, he's likely to do very well for himself.
I was actually thinking about this before. Not the exact same concept, but the reason why Stephano is so good. He doesn't have particularly outstanding macro, or micro, so what is it that puts him so far ahead compared to other foreign Zergs? It's the fact that most games, you either see something abusing the metagame, or something that creates an entirely new metagame. He has redefined ZvP and ZvT, because even though he might not to his strategy the best, he does it first when people just can't deal with it.
koreans don't tell you to "fucking kill yourself" or threaten your family when you cheese them. I think.... Its a game and everything in the game is usable. I think thats the problem with foreigners, that and mechanical skill.
=========================================================================================== There was a similar video a few years back also on motivation by RSA animate. It used some similar arguments citing the money experiment and people doing worse.
Around 8:30 the video starts saying that the people most motivated are those who are intrinsically motivated. ===========================================================================================
On reddit a while back someone summarized this article
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Basically that people worked better when they tried things out rather than when they spend time thinking about the right angle to approach. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.html ===========================================================================================
While I agree that more money does not equal more motivation, I don't think its as simple as that. It seems to me that with added financial incentives comes pressure, the pressure of success, which stifles creativity and causes stress. Like in esports when you try to concentrate, it actually backfires because you're trying to force yourself to do something that could have been achieved much more efficiently if you had let your mind and body go into auto pilot mode
Reading through this thread, I couldn't help but think back to an article I read last year.
This famous thread is about poker, but I think it kind of applies to Starcraft too, and it's a good read. If you substitute the word "hand reading" for "game sense" then I think it helps to explain why guys like Stephano are so good, or at least why they do so much better than other more mechanics-oriented players who "learned by the book".
Dan Ariely has done some experiments on that as well. In rural India, that is, so that it was easy to create 'huge' sums of money as incentives. I recommend his book 'The Upside of Irrationality', there is also some TED talk from him.
Right. RSA Animate and Ted used the same speaker. He's saying the same things in both speeches.
Recall the last time you were motivated to do something work related that you didn't want to do. Try to see if that matches what Dan said. If not, and you often do work because you're closing in on a deadline, then you've proven the model is not so simple.
Good talk. I like how he doesn't throw out traditional incentives for doing really straightforward work.
I think it's a really interesting idea when applied to education (both school and games). We traditonally think of people learning something as a simple point A to B sort of endeavor. Open a book, attend lecture, take notes, do homework -> Learn something! In reality, students can take a variety of methods and approaches to learn, its not as straightforward as we're lead to believe. In that case, you can argue that traditional incentives don't work.
In the case of SC2 - you could say the idea of ladder anxiety is a failure of the b.net incentives system. The ranking and point systems take away from the idea of intrinsically just wanting to be better at the game, or just play for fun. People see that it reflects too heavily on themselves - almost like grades. Appropriately, we see advice to newbies often being to ignore the ranking and focus purely on improving and having fun without worrying about the consequences. Their is a necessity for a space where individuals do not feel like they're being ranked or monitored.
And yes these models are not always so simple. He's speaking to a group of very smart, talented, and motivated people in the TED audience who work with a similar bunch who are all capable of being intrinsically motivated.
On January 14 2013 07:05 kollin wrote: I was actually thinking about this before. Not the exact same concept, but the reason why Stephano is so good. He doesn't have particularly outstanding macro, or micro, so what is it that puts him so far ahead compared to other foreign Zergs? It's the fact that most games, you either see something abusing the metagame, or something that creates an entirely new metagame. He has redefined ZvP and ZvT, because even though he might not to his strategy the best, he does it first when people just can't deal with it.
That's an interesting line of thought. Is there a kind of player that he does specifically well against? Such as the Koreans or certain types of players? And conversly, is there a pattern to people that will just kill him? I'm of the understanding that he has a weakness in ZvZ, but I'm wondering if there's something to it beyond that...
On January 14 2013 13:49 obesechicken13 wrote: =========================================================================================== There was a similar video a few years back also on motivation by RSA animate. It used some similar arguments citing the money experiment and people doing worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Around 8:30 the video starts saying that the people most motivated are those who are intrinsically motivated. ===========================================================================================
On reddit a while back someone summarized this article
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Basically that people worked better when they tried things out rather than when they spend time thinking about the right angle to approach. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.html ===========================================================================================
I still think that motivation is more complex.
I agree entirely. Motivation can depend on a large number of things. That said, a lot of people that have motivations have them because of the stick and carrot. The problem with that is it' hard to escape the stick of "I have bills to pay if I want to eat", and the carrot of "If I work extra hard, I can go on holiday, or buy that new tv I've always wanted or whatever"
That said, I love the example of the pots. I think it's partly why I'm doing this blog. I'm writing stuff that comes to and sticks in my mind, and I'm not editing it too much (As you probably have noticed). I'm going with the idea that I can worry about quality more when I've had time to actually write enough stuff that quality becomes an issue...
On January 14 2013 14:01 dongmydrum wrote: While I agree that more money does not equal more motivation, I don't think its as simple as that. It seems to me that with added financial incentives comes pressure, the pressure of success, which stifles creativity and causes stress. Like in esports when you try to concentrate, it actually backfires because you're trying to force yourself to do something that could have been achieved much more efficiently if you had let your mind and body go into auto pilot mode
It's also not just financial I think, when it comes to esports. Part of this is me remembering that old Cold War trope about why people were spies. They did it for 4 reasons, with the acronym MICE.
M - Money I - Ideology C - Conscience E - Ego
I' not sure if the Conscience can be made to play well with esports, and I'm on the fence about Ideology (He says unsure, but wondering if "I just play to have fun" can qualify as an ideology in sc2), but Money definitely does, and so does Ego. We play for cash money american, if we can or some people just play to show exactly how awesome they are. The problem is, the more we lay on the line in terms of either cash to be won or ego points to be lost, the more we start to concentrate more and then the focus narrowing starts.
I do wonder then if we could get a couple of games, one a gsl finals, and one a game with the same players from some other time where there wasn't as much at stake, and compare. I'm imagining the APM is much higher, but the builds simpler and possibly the games shorter? I'm not sure exactly what I'm basing that on, but it makes a kind of sense in my head...
On January 14 2013 14:08 FuRong wrote: Reading through this thread, I couldn't help but think back to an article I read last year.
This famous thread is about poker, but I think it kind of applies to Starcraft too, and it's a good read. If you substitute the word "hand reading" for "game sense" then I think it helps to explain why guys like Stephano are so good, or at least why they do so much better than other more mechanics-oriented players who "learned by the book".
That's also a fun link. I like the idea that we could analyze stuff consciously, or we could let the subconscious mind handle things, and that's why occasionally you see players blind counter muta for instance. They haven't seen anything that says "You are about to suffer a plague of mutalisks", but they have enough of a feeling that they throw turrets down anyway, and while it doesn't work, every so often it's a massive hit for the player in question.
That said, it's presumably also good to be able to say "I saw his first stalker at x:xx therefore he's gone nexus first. I will kill him now"
On January 14 2013 14:21 Rimstalker wrote: Dan Ariely has done some experiments on that as well. In rural India, that is, so that it was easy to create 'huge' sums of money as incentives. I recommend his book 'The Upside of Irrationality', there is also some TED talk from him.
I'm watching a Dan Ariely video as I type this as a result of your comment and I do like it. It's the one about buggy Buggy Moral Code. He's really interesting. I may have to devote more time alter to checking out his other videos.
Interesting note - this video is about cheating and I may have to write something that relates to that. That said, I have a show to prepare so it's probably not gonna be tonight.
On January 14 2013 17:47 shindigs wrote: Good talk. I like how he doesn't throw out traditional incentives for doing really straightforward work.
I think it's a really interesting idea when applied to education (both school and games). We traditionally think of people learning something as a simple point A to B sort of endeavor. Open a book, attend lecture, take notes, do homework -> Learn something! In reality, students can take a variety of methods and approaches to learn, its not as straightforward as we're lead to believe. In that case, you can argue that traditional incentives don't work.
In the case of SC2 - you could say the idea of ladder anxiety is a failure of the b.net incentives system. The ranking and point systems take away from the idea of intrinsically just wanting to be better at the game, or just play for fun. People see that it reflects too heavily on themselves - almost like grades. Appropriately, we see advice to newbies often being to ignore the ranking and focus purely on improving and having fun without worrying about the consequences. Their is a necessity for a space where individuals do not feel like they're being ranked or monitored.
And yes these models are not always so simple. He's speaking to a group of very smart, talented, and motivated people in the TED audience who work with a similar bunch who are all capable of being intrinsically motivated.
Agreed. There's always going to be a place for traditional incentives. That's why they came into being in the first place.
It's also a fun point that I've noticed on tutorials that (especially at bronze level), the focus of them is not around "If you win, you are good", but rather around "I don't care if you win or lose as long as you meet these benchmarks". Those benchmarks not being directly related to the win. Good example is the Filter build where the bronze level one is "Build 50 workers by 10:00 and expand at 3:45, and if you have spare minerals, build more barracks."
That's it. Now to be fair, for a lot of low and medium bronze, that's more than enough to get you up and winning, but even so, it's possibly because we're focused on something that's not the ladder points and more about setting yourself a goal that can be achieved, even if you lose. Hell, if you just follow one build then eventually losing is guaranteed.
So I like to think that one way to learn might be to set myself a stupid goal and just see what happens. Hell, I might try a "I'm gonna battle cruiser rush this game. If I get to build one, I win. Even if my ladder points drop." Either that or just try and get past x minutes in a tvz or something. It'll be interesting to see if that makes me a better player or not. May have to make that a streaming episode at some point...
EPT
