Burnout

Mitch Krpata of Insult Swordfighting argues here that gamer burnout is a function of gamers getting too into a game, rather than not enough.  I would tend to agree that burnout is often a function of the length of playtime.  That said, I think that perhaps Krpata is confusing the technical definition of work with what we typically mean by the term in this context.

Undeniably, it takes a great deal of effort to get through many games, like Fallout 3 as is cited in the post.  That said, I got burned out by WoW in a way I never did by Fallout, because when I say that the former felt like “work” I meant that it became harder and harder for me to find the intrinsic value of my labor.

Case in point: there are people in the world who love their jobs and find personal meaning and validation in every day of their career (I’ve felt this way myself!).  But I would suggest that almost everyone at some point feels less than pleased with their professional lives, feeling enervated and frustrated by their careers.  This is much as I felt with WoW.  Although I still put forth the same amount of effort to accomplish each quest, the sense of boredom I experienced made that effort seem undesirable - in short, not fun.   

What’s interesting is that I’d suggest a few particular characteristics contribute to this feeling in games, and these characteristics mimick many of the same issues in the office:

• Repetitiveness - leads to boredom.  In the office, repeated tedious tasks like administrative busy work, in games, fetch quests like I abhorred in WoW
• Poorly identified goals - leads to a lack of direction.  In the office, a lack of objectives leads to directionless wandering and lack of focus; in games, some ”open-world” titles like GTA fail to provide a lot of clear, useful objectives or offer so many side-quests that the main quest is ultimately less than interesting
• Lack of control - leads to frustration.  In the office, feeling a lack of autonomy often leads employees to recuse themselves from their roles, since they fear that they don’t matter; in games, poor controls or an ability to perform specific tasks easily and effectively has a similar impact on their desire to play.
• Absence of emotional fulfillment - leads to disengagement.  If people don’t feel like they’re gaining any satisfaction from their roles, they won’t feel compelled to continue.  In the office, this might be a feeling that your job has no social benefit; in gaming, a lack of interest in the story, characters, or skills exhibited has the same impact.

No doubt there are other paralells.  But the point I’m intending to make is that burnout results not from lack of playing or effort, but rather a lack of fulfillment derived from that effort.