Positive Feedback Loops

I'm going to go a little left field with this article, starting with a principle of game design and applying it out to websites.

Positive feedback loops sound, well, positive, but they are actually something to avoid in games.  Positive feedback is when a player receives a reward of some sort for completing a challenge, which makes the game a little easier.  On the surface, positive feedback sounds like common sense: of course you should be rewarded for doing a good job.  Lots of games are entirely designed around positive feedback.  Leveling up in an RPG, or getting bigger, badder, better weapons in a shooter.  But in these instances, the positive feedback is also tempered with negative feedback: the game becomes harder, with bigger bad guys, and more of them.  This prevents the positive feedback from becoming a positive feedback loop.

An unchecked positive feedback loop would make the game easier for players who clearly are already successful.  Grinding, in essence, is using positive feedback loops to get ahead and gain rewards for completing the same easy challenges over and over.  Playing the same easy race to come in first and get the same prize money over and over is the racing game equivalent of grinding.  Often, a racing game will only give you the money the first time you beat it, and subsequent times do not yield any prize money.  This gives positive feedback for doing a good job without creating a loop.

There are other rewards that can be given that, by their nature, require no check or balance.  Beating a boss and getting a cutscene for a reward in no way makes the game easier, but it is still a welcome relief to the player.  Achievements (as much as I hate them) also provide positive feedback without creating a loop--as long as the achievement is a trophy or medal or visual effect, and another bonus is not included with it.

I think by now most game designers understand the concept of positive feedback loops, and how to avoid them.  Sometimes they sneak in, because designers are trying to give less-than-stellar players a leg up, while accidentally giving positive feedback loops to great players.  This aspect still has some kinks to work out, but overall I don't see many games with horrendous positive feedback loops.

To me, the bigger issue is applying this knowledge out into other areas.  Positive feedback loops do need to be avoided, and there are quite a few websites that mess these up.

Let's take YouTube as an example.  Suggestions are oftentimes part of horrible positive feedback loop.  For instance, once, a number of months ago, I watched an episode of Nostalgia Critic or something related to it on YouTube.  I normally watch Nostalgia Critic on thatguywiththeglasses.com, which is their official site, and they host their videos through blip.tv, so the only way YouTube should know I like Nostalgia Critic is through the instance.  Several months later, half of my suggestions are still Nostalgia Critic episodes.

The other half of my suggestions are music videos, because I occasionally look up music through YouTube.

All of my subscriptions are science-based shows, like SciShow and MinutePhysics, so all of my suggested channels are science-based channels, or channels that hover around the VLog brothers (Hank Green is the host of SciShow).

These guys are awesome, but I don't need to worship them, YouTube.

So I get three kinds of suggestions, but all are based on things which I already am satisfied with.  When I want to listen to a piece of music, I search for it.  When I want to watch a science-based video, I check my subscriptions.  And I never want to watch Nostalgia Critic on YouTube anyway, I go to their appropriate site for that.

What I would like from YouTube suggestions is new content.  Since Google (owners of YouTube) is a trend-finding machine, they probably can see an overlap between viewers of science-based shows and other types of shows.  Maybe 25% of science show viewers also like political shows, for instance.  I may not like political shows, but there is a decent chance I will.

Instead, I'm stuck in a positive feedback loop with Youtube content.  I've proven to them I like three types of shows, so my reward is more of the same.  And if I watch those, I get rewarded with more of the same, and more of the same, and it never ends, keeping me in a loop, rather than expanding my horizons.

YouTube suggested you look at this same picture again.

A great example of using positive feedback, however, is Pandora.  Pandora is a music service that offers you new music to go with what you already like.  So when I type in a band name and create a new station, I'm sometimes given that band, but I am also given other bands that have similar sounds, or are even only tangentially related.  When I give positive feedback about a song I like on the station, it uses that information to expand my horizons even further.  Instead of assuming I'm liking the song because it's by a particular artist, it deconstructs the song and then asks me to listen to music with a few similar parts.

So it uses positive feedback to challenge my music tastes.  It never gives me something ridiculously out there that is over my head, but it slowly introduces new sounds for me to get used to and learn to enjoy (or gives me new music I already enjoy but never knew I did).

The only thing I don't quite get about Pandora is that is seems to think Red Hot Chili Peppers goes with everything.

When a game has a positive feedback loop, it makes the game boring.  When a website has a positive feedback loop, it insulates the user from challenge, whether it's challenging tastes, or viewpoint, and creates an echo chamber, which can become dangerous.  Heck, this expands to everything:  Mitt Romney thought he could not possibly lose the last US presidential election.  He was stuck in a positive feedback loop and became insulated from alternative voices, so his worldview was not challenged.

But I digress.

I found it rather weird that Google wants to give "personal" results, both in the search engine, and in YouTube comments now (and possibly other places I don't know about).  Personal results seem to be a positive feedback loop that does nothing but damage the experience for the user.

Google/YouTube is just one example of many, of course.  Website designers, social media designers, etc. need to watch out for positive feedback loops just as much as game designers do.  Perhaps even more so.  Because a positive feedback loop in a game only ruins one game.  A positive feedback loop in other aspects of life can ruin a mind.