Slow News Day: Hedonic Adaptation

I normally prefer to post something topical from the news, but things are just dead this week. Fortunately, the hardworking folks at Gamasutra have wrangled some worthwhile reading. It’s a cursory examination of hedonic adaptation, which sounds terribly sciency.

In truth the term just means “diminishing fun,” and the phenomenon is equally simple. Think about your pants for a second and how you can feel them touching your leg. The fact that you couldn’t feel them thirty seconds ago (and won’t 30 seconds from now) is adaptation. Any consistent sensation becomes less acute over time. Your brain redefines it as normal, that is to say adapts, and stops paying any attention.

Sadly, the same principle applies to fun, which is where the hedonic part comes in. Psychologist Jamie Madigan argues that the embargo conditions for advance review copies have a negative impact on review scores. Lock yourself in a room for twenty hours to get a timely review, and hedonic adaptation sucks the fun out of the play and the value out of the score.

Madigan does miss the opportunity to examine the entirely testable hypothesis that longer games net lower average review scores than comparable shorter games. However the article is worth reading to see the argument unfold more completely.