GM Rewards for Conventions vs. Game Days

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed a series of heated posts/replies to them. It's fine to offer criticism, but it should be kept constructive.

[Todd Morgan]

Thanks, much appreciated!

[Mekkis]

This seems somewhat related.

The Harvard Business Review wrote:

at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all. These studies examined rewards for children and adults, males and females, and included tasks ranging from memorizing facts to creative problem-solving to designing collages. In general, the more cognitive sophistication and open-ended thinking that was required, the worse people performed when working for a reward.

source

[trik]

Mekkis wrote:

This seems somewhat related.

The Harvard Business Review wrote:

at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all. These studies examined rewards for children and adults, males and females, and included tasks ranging from memorizing facts to creative problem-solving to designing collages. In general, the more cognitive sophistication and open-ended thinking that was required, the worse people performed when working for a reward.

source

So... someone not running the game at all, and the game not going off, or someone running it with the expectation of a reward, but potentially not as well as if there were no rewards.

[trollbill]

Mekkis wrote:

This seems somewhat related.

The Harvard Business Review wrote:

at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all. These studies examined rewards for children and adults, males and females, and included tasks ranging from memorizing facts to creative problem-solving to designing collages. In general, the more cognitive sophistication and open-ended thinking that was required, the worse people performed when working for a reward.

source

Yes, people are going to do a better job doing something they want to do verses something they are only doing for an expected reward. But that certainly doesn't mean rewards are pointless. Having someone GM for the rewards is better than having no GM at all and in many cases I think it may be an issue of getting someone to GM perhaps a little more frequently than they really want to. Rewards can motivate people via greed (not necessarily the best choice) or they can motivate people via pride (making them feel appreciated). The latter is more likely to get you a better performance from the GM than the former.

[TriOmegaZero]

Acedio wrote:

Also, I have to question the wisdom of reviving the dispute that was cleaned out by Chris.

Cleaned twice, I believe.

[trollbill]

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

Acedio wrote:

Also, I have to question the wisdom of reviving the dispute that was cleaned out by Chris.

Cleaned twice, I believe.

Pick any given hot topic and in between the extremists on both ends you will usually find a lot of reasonable people. The fact those extremist exist does not mean the reasonable people should be ignored.