Economics newsletter edition #6

Page 1

NOVEMBER, 2015

Neuroeconomics -

Why people like retro games

DUBAI COLLEGE

Successful Entrepreneurs

In the UAE

Economic Cartoons

- How they achieved success!

DC ECONOMICS Neuroeconomics: Why People Like Retro Games The human mind is a weird, weird thing. Let’s take, for example, the case story of the game ‘’Shovel Knight’’ for the Nintendo 3DS. The gaming industry prides itself on ‘’realistic graphics’’ they aim to replicate real life as much as possible, yet out of nowhere, ‘’Shovel Knight’’ delivered 16-bit graphics, yet was still praised and bought due to ‘’amazing graphics’’ as quoted by game reviewer, Kotaku. The game has sold nearly 1,000,000 copies, making it the one of the highest selling Indie games for the console. 
 Rationally speaking, this statistic is a nonsense. The economist views the situation objectively, and thinks to himself ‘’what the heck is going on?’’. It is in this respect that blindly modelling consumption with pure mathematics finds a few loopholes; consumers are not totally rational and don’t pretend to be.
 
 Where Yacht Club Games may have turned to was the realm of neuroscience. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the brain is what controls decision making; it links internal goals with thoughts, and actions. To the gamer (the target market for the firm), the PFC contributes to nostalgia, which is, according to a study by The University of Hong Kong, a ‘’rewarding mechanism for turning to stimuli which have proven to be positive in the past’’. In essence, playing Shovel Knight is undergoing an activity that, in the past, has proven to be ‘’fun’’ (games of the 16-bit era often bring good memories to the aged gamer) , and as a result the body secretes dopamine to ‘’reward’’ the individual for playing the game.
 
 This is the part that mathematics cannot capture directly (albeit the mathematics enthusiast would argue that all science is just an application of maths, and to them I say: ‘’get a different hobby’’). If people are being rewarded for things that have in the past proven to be good, then !1


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