Friends, this is tough love. (And damn I wish I had a stern looking photo of myself as the avatar for it.) I know right now you're thrilled with the roll of cash you brought back from GenCon, but designers you need to learn about the Overjustification Effect.

Researchers played math games with children that the children seemed to enjoy. And then with one group they started giving a reward (coins, or gold stars or something) for the playing of the games. After a while they stopped playing the games with the children, which also ended the rewards to those that had been receiving them.

And what they observed is that the children in the group that hadn't been given rewards was significantly more likely to continue playing the games among themselves than the children in the rewarded group. The rewarded children generally lost interest in the games once the context of rewarding had clearly ended.

Social psychologists call the initial unrewarded enjoyment the intrinsic motivation, and they call the reward the extrinsic motivation. Their explanation is that extrinsic motivations will supplant intrinsic motivations so completely that when they're removed there's almost no intrinsic motivation left. And they have consistently demonstrated this same loss of intrinsic motivation not just in children, but also in adults of all ages.

So every year the successful young turks of the Forge booth come howling home from GenCon, geeked (with good justification) by their achievements, high as kites on the smell of Franklins, and announce plans to write and publish three or four games in the next year. And then...maybe they force one game out. Maybe. (And maybe they aren't too pleased with it.) But mostly they come to GenCon the next year with just the same game they were selling the previous year and a deeply buried knot of regret, confusion, and feelings of failure and inadequacy.

So designers, my advice is to hold on tight to the motivations that brought you to GenCon in the first place. The studies show it's possible to stay grounded in your intrinsic motivations if you recognize the extrinsic motivations for what they are.

Paul