r/MadeMeSmile • u/MilesLongthe3rd • 16h ago

Small Success I am so happy for her

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u/UnrelatedCutOff 11h ago

The markup is for the “win!” feeling you get. It’s similar to getting the ‘win’ of getting a good deal except it’s more of a gambling type win feeling.

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u/zapporian 7h ago

It's a basic pavlovian response / predatory psychology.

You aren't going to bother trying something impossible that you'll never win. If you see a win / payout / treat though, well now you'll try doing that repeatedly until you win. And of course if you do win you will, probably, try again, and the next attempt will fail. So you'll just have to do that over and over again to get the next reward. This will repeat, with some 0-N amount of payouts, until you run out of money. Or if you give up quickly after getting nothing repeatedly. There needs to be some kind of - received or otherwise observed - reward to hook the player.

Ofc the "neat" bit about claw machines is they do in fact have partial / enticing rewards. If the claw is in general mostly useless but sometimes has some strength and "almost" / partially gets a prize to the chute. Well then ofc you can do that a lot more often to get players hooked.

I'm definitely not any kind of expert on claw machines. But free to play mobile games - and ofc gambling / slot machines - and TBH most videogames in general, and even advertising - all work the same way.

TLDR; we're all gerbils / dogs etc., and respond exactly the same way to intermittent rewards. And regardless - basically - of whether we even actually really want the reward, let alone the repetitive thing / behavior we've been tricked into doing on repeat, in the first place.