Variable-Interval Reinforcement

[Aiursrage2k]

If you skip to 22:20 jack talks about the idea of Variable-Interval Reinforcement and why games likes like FTL are so popular

Previously Recorded - What we're playing RIGHT NOW this very moment

[CaoMengde777]

LOOL made me think of playing “Path of Exile” … theres a rediculously rare and valuable “Mirror of Kalandra” and supposedly it can drop from any stupid crate or urn or enemy in the game(dunno if thats true)… so you end up wanting to look in all of them

its actually really crappy, and part of what made me HATE the game, hate the devs, and HATE myself for playing it LOOOOL

[RockoDyne]

So skinner boxes, or operant conditioning chambers for the overly academic? FTL is actually not a great example of this. It’s present, but it’s a small part of a much more complicated system. Roguelikes in general are like this. What is actually more important in these games is your skill/knowledge, while the random drops contributes more to changes in play style.

Compare this to MMO’s and Diablo-esque loot based games that are JUST the skinner box, and are all about being the mouse pressing the button hoping for drops.

[Gigiwoo]

Works for dogs. And humans. And people who play your games. Skinner boxes (aka interval-based-rewards) are a part of most modern games, in most genres: WoW, LoL, Candy Crush, and yes, even Cookie Clicker. It’s an important tool in the designer tool box.

Gigi

[Aiursrage2k]

Theres a synergy between the professional youtube LPers (northernlion for example) and rouge likes especially binding of issac – because they can keep playing the same game over and over again (which will in turn drive traffic to the game).

For the first few weeks post-launch, the game averaged around 150 sales a day, which was already more then McMillen had expected – but five months after release, sales suddenly picked up.
“Our daily average started to climb. 200 copies per day turned into 500 copies, then 1,000 copies, and by the seven-month mark Isaac was averaging sales of more than 1,500 copies a day and climbing,” the developer revealed.
“I couldn’t explain it – we hadn’t put the game on sale or anything, so I was clueless as to why sales were continuing to grow.”
The answer was on YouTube where a passionate group of players had begun promoting the game through Let’s Play videos, showing off unique builds created by the random equipment drops and strategies for beating bosses.
“Over 100 videos every day, each getting tons of traffic. Isaac had found its fanbase, and that base was growing larger and larger. Not bad for a game that was meant to fail,” McMillen noted.
“At the time of this writing, there are well over 30,000 videos of Isaac on YouTube, countless pieces of fan art, animations, and plush toys all over the Internet, and over 30 fictional fan blogs where people can ask characters in Isaac questions and get in-character responses. It’s totally surreal. Something in Isaac just spoke to a large group of creative people, and they held him up and ran with him,” he added.

The Binding of Isaac "meant to fail", rescued by hardcore fans

I started looking at the roguelikes on steam, and noticed the top sellers were all pixel art.
http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Rogue-like/#os[ ]=mac&p=0&tab=TopSellers