I love good stories. For me, the atmosphere and plot are vital. It feels like after work I just don’t have enough time and mental capacity to put a lot of effort in a video game, therefore I avoid things like Minecraft or the whole survival genre, even though I used to enjoy that kind of stuff when I was a teenager.

Time played: 400 hours. Completion percentage: 15%

extremely intrinsically motivated. give me a world with stuff in it, not goals

Definitely extrinsically. In a lot of those super open games, I get just completely overwhelmed by choice, don’t know where to go or what to do, and give up. I’ve tried twice to play Breath of the Wild and I just can’t. Give me a linear experience any time.

Both. I love to set my own targets. They can be informed by larger in game targets on entirely seperate (‘wouldn’t it be cool if I did X’ or ‘I wonder if I can do Y’) but I cannot play without a goal or target of somesort. Often I find something as trivial as a client side number going up is enough to keep me satisfied like a high score at an arcade but I’m not competitive with other people.

All of you intrinsically motivated gamers. Have you heard of our lord and savior, Bob? Have you played eve online?

One of the most complex, brutal, make your own fun games I’ve ever played. On and off for 16 years and I still suck at it.

For most games, I’m like you - It’s been a gradual shift for me, as I used to play very sandboxy type games before (although I could never get into Minecraft), but have been heavily focused on story-heavy / experience-based games for the last 3+ years.
I will say that I really liked BotW though, and am looking forward to playing TotK eventually (in the next 2/3 years or so) and Starfield has got me really intrigued, so we’ll see.

Then there’s the “intrinsic me”, I guess, I don’t mind playing some games for the sake of it, with no goals in mind - Forza Horizon just going from one end of the map to the other, or the same loop of various arcade games whenever I don’t feel like doing anything else - sure there’s some sort of objective, but ultimately when you’ve seen and done it that many times, it’s not far off from it not being there at all imo, and I still enjoy it just as much.

I’m not a “make my own fun” gamer, and now when I think about it, because all of my “make my own fun” is done outside of gaming, e.g. playing music, coding, 3d printing, drawing, etc.

“Extrinsically motivated” games I like: I’ll play it once, beat it, play a bit of post game, drop it.

“Intrinsically motivated” games I like: make my own stupid-ass goal, spend dozens and dozens of hours on it, finally do the stupid thing, progressed 1% further through the game, get bored, drop it, but then I pick it up again thinking about doing another stupid-ass thing.

It’s gotta be a mix of both. If there aren’t frivolous side tasks I can do, a game feels empty to me, but without a primary set of goals, it feels aimless. Games that combine the two are my white whale. I want to defeat the big evil with fishing minigames and trading quests.

I almost exclusively play games where I can set my own goals, or do my own thing, or experiment. I also gravitate towards immersive games. I assume that means I’m more intrinsic?

I really don’t like games that treat leveling as an obstacle to the “real game.”. Makes it seem pointless.

When I was young I would spend hours taking photographs or randomly roaming around in GTA San Andreas, it was a nice break from reality to just be free. As I grow old, I find myself actually enjoying good narrative without painfully complex mechanics like Minecraft, and I presume TotK. Back then I would skip the missions and just fool around, now i would follow the missions and in the process fool around only after i get comfortable with the game world and setting.

I’m largely extrinsically motivated. I always have high hopes of 100%-ing games, but I find once all the quests are done, my enthusiasm for going out and wandering and finding the last things drops off precipitously. Even if I’m not following the storyline and have wandered off to explore, I still feel the need for some ultimate promise of more story to come.

I feel that the line is not nearly as sharp. I play a lot of freeform games for extrinsic reasons. Building a cool castle in Minecraft is probably an extrinsic motivation, for example.

When I played Minecraft a whole ton, It was because I was on a server, and I was motivated by impressing my friends, a clear extrinsic motivation.

In WoW, I’m largely motivated to master the game so that I can keep up with my boyfriend, running 20+ dungeons and Heroic (soon Mythic) raids. Another extrinsic motivation.

Etterna, a rhythm game is probably my most intrinsically motivated game. I play it mostly because I enjoy the feeling of mastering a new skill. But even that is extrinsic to some degree, because what most clearly shows my skill? The game praising me with AAs and big streaks. I wouldn’t enjoy Etterna without those things, so I wouldn’t play a gradeless version.

@bijuice I recall when achievements were still kinda new and weird a little game called viva pinata. While it was a creative sandbox of sorts, the achievements essentially guided you to get ‘everything’ the game had to offer, and it ended up being one of the only ‘monster catching’ games I actually finished completely and loved.

I think that’s probably the way to do it. Freedom to do what you want, but a guide to encourage you to do most of it.

I kind of feel bad for people who are only motivated by things like trophies, or feeling the need to 100% a game. If I’m not enjoying a game, I’m not going to force myself to play it longer because of some strange need inside me to 100% complete every game I start. If I don’t like playing a game, I will just stop playing it.