The Borderlands Gun Collector's Club

This inevitably leads to burnout and it usually happens in one of two ways:

1-they run out of content or master the learning curve, therefore they run out of stuff to be addicted to; this usually causes a general tapering off of play time

2-the stress overcomes the addiction and they flat out quit, even though they are still addicted

It would be interesting to examine the play patters of various games that have different variations on addiction vs stress vs fun.

LoL -high fun, high stress, low addiction

WoW -med fun, med stress, med addiction

farmville -low fun, high stress, high addiction

edit: the stress of a game like LoL is very different from a game like FV. LoL is high because you must play perfectly in order not to be ridiculed by your teammates. FV is high because you are given a dozen new things to do every time you just want to do the basic stuff, but your compelled to do everything, which generally requires you to keep a large mental queue of everything it throws at you every time you log in.

If this list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g...) is accurate, for instance, Diablo and Diablo 2 sold about 6.5 million copies together, which ain't hay; but The Sims, Sims 2 and Sims 3 together sold 39 million copies, making it a completely different magnitude of hit. (Not even counting all the expansions, either.) And how many hundreds of millions of copies of Angry Birds have been sold?

Not that I would play Borderlands through again, I didn't enjoy it at all.

It reminds me of tech trees in 4x strategy games. They're fun until you've maxed out the tree.

Some games make you choose a particular path that you have to commit to, making you replay the game to see different parts of the progression tree, but I've always hated those.

A big problem, and this is where Borderlands lost me, was that the enemies simply became too easy/boring. I ended up just driving across the world ignoring the enemies as they weren't challenging to fight and I had no need for loot.

Some games make the opposite mistake, like Oblivion. You level up, but so do your enemies. So there really doesn't "feel" like a reason to level up. You don't really get anything for it.

So the hard part is finding the right balance where your weapons and stats improve, but so do your enemies. But at just the right ratio to make you want to grind for stuff, but to keep it from getting boring.

It's a problem as old a the first Dragon Warrior (which incidentally solved it by having the player enter new parts of the world with harder enemies, leaving the easier enemies in already explored areas).

To answer your question, I thought Diablo's environment and atmospherics were fun. I got bored with it eventually about halfway through the game. I think I found a gold cheat someplace and just loaded up with gear and finished the game off.

Your example (Let's call him Bob, scared of spiders, and Ann, a therapist).

Ann would explain that Bob is in a safe space, and there are no spiders, and that she's not going to bring any out. Then she'd ask him to think about a spider. She'd ask him what his "hot thought" was; what his "emotion" was; and she'd ask how strongly he felt those.

Bob might say Fear, 50%; "I might get bitten".

Ann would then ask him why he thought that. Is it a reasonable thought? There's some discussion about the probability of being bitten, and so what if you are, and etc. She then asks Bob how he feels, and if it's as strong. Hopefully it's not as strong.

This continues each week; next week she draws a scribble (not even a spider) on a piece of paper; then a spider; then a picture of a spider; then a dead spider; then a live spider but in a sealed box; then a live spider in a box with the lid off; eventually building up to Bob being able to touch a live spider.

Note that all the time Bob is in control of how much exposure to spiders he gets, and it's all very gently progressing. CBT is a very effective treatment for phobias.

Compare this to "FACE YOUR FEARS" - Charles hates elevators, but he decides to face his fears. He goes to the mall. His palms start to get sweaty, his breathing gets faster, his heart beats harder. He's having an adrenaline reaction. He walks up to the elevator. He's really stressed now. He pushes the button to call the elevator. He waits. His stress and fear levels are pretty high now. The elevator arrives, and he gets in. It's small, and he's really panicked. The door closes, and the elevator starts moving with that little jerky clunky move they make. It goes up one floor. Charles is on the verge of a full blown panic attack, and is very uncomfortable. The doors open, and charles leaves the elevator.

As he leaves relief -endorphins- flood through him. He sits, head in his hands, so pleased to be out of the elevator.

All Charles has achieved is to strengthen his fear of elevators - now they're more scary because he's had a really unpleasant experience in one, and he was rewarded when he "escaped" the situation.

Your idea of a virtual computer driven way to introduce people to something they fear is excellent, but only if done carefully.

It's weird, because it's different for pretty much every game, and I can't put my finger on what makes me impossible to finish the game, and what in appearance of monsters makes it bearable.

I think it might be that in Doom, those were (more or less) human heads with spiderlegs, and I was able to convince my brain that it's ok, those are just deformed humans I'm fighting.

What might made Borderlands worse, was that those worms and spiders came out of nowhere. Five minutes earlier, I was shooting bandits and wolves (skags, or whatever they were called), then I go to new location, and BANG!, completely different enemies. And they looked totally different than what I fought before, whereas Doom spiders felt like they belong in the same world.