User:Issa Rice/Gamification table

I made this table while/after replaying MMBN in 2019. As I played the games, I introspected on the ways in which the game felt addicting/interesting/purposeful, and compared it to how I felt while doing math, AI safety, and text editor configuration (one of my "guilty pleasures").

Property/attribute	MMBN	Math/AI safety	Vimscript/vimrc
addicting/feeling of being engrossed	yes	no	yes
important	no	yes	no
instant feedback	yes	no	yes
collecting things	yes	?	?
mentally easy	yes	no	most of the time
livelihood could depend on it	no	yes	no
multiple threads that can be pursued	yes	yes	yes
social competition	no	yes	no
early on, you are told the point of the thing you're doing	yes	no	yes
varied repetitiveness (i.e. not grinding)	yes	no	no
dominance reasoning/upgrades	yes	no	yes
randomness/surprise	yes	no	no
pre-made dependency tree	yes	no	no
tacit linearity	yes	no?	no
large class from which to pull strategies	no	yes	yes?
tinkering mechanics	yes	no	yes
pressure to keep doing better/find flaws in what I am doing	no	yes	no

see also https://youtu.be/SqFu5O-oPmU?t=783