I wouldn’t say the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is entirely subjective, or even particularly subjective: I more or less agree with the definition provided, though I suspect that if you pound hard enough on the phrase “inherently interesting or enjoyable” with an evolutionary neuroscience textbook, things will get real fuzzy real fast.

But let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t be surprised if the distinction is objective enough to be detectable by MRI. After all, with extrinsic motivation, the part of your brain that prevents you from getting screwed over left and right is most likely evaluating the cost-benefit bargain you’re in the process of making, whereas a good part of what makes something inherently enjoyable—and perhaps a good chunk of the very definition of “interesting”—is that it literally gets you to let your guard down—that self-consciously wary part of your brain can, for once, take a breather. So sure, there’s probably some grey area and overlap, but yes: the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is most likely not just objective, but objectively observable.

But I was talking about the rewards, where the distinction is fundamentally subjective, in that it’s how the player responds to them—not any objectively detectable quality of the reward itself—which determines whether they are external or internal rewards. While some rewards correlate with extrinsic or intrinsic motivations more strongly than others, this isn’t an essential quality of a reward—not only might different players be differently motivated by the same reward, but the same player’s motivational relationship to a reward might change over time, even in the course of a single play session.

For instance, the main reason I find the obsessive-compulsive collecting in Mario and Zelda games—break every block, sword-mow every lawn—less irksome than this mechanic in general is the craft and attention put into making these actions innately satisfying, so that even if the coins were totally worthless, I would probably bash some block or sword-mow some lawn anyway. So is the coin an external reward, part of the fun of an intrinsically pleasurable action, or some of both? It all depends on my motivation, which may shift from minute to minute: if I have 98 coins and am about to face Bowser, I might be boringly, methodically bashing blocks just to get those last two coins for an extra life—whereas in the next world I might end up getting two coins as a side effect of merrily jumping and bashing crap while running like a maniac, just ’cause it’s fun.

Actually, the Super Mario Bros. point system, which seems like an archetypal external reward, might be a better example for analysis, given that motivational responses to it tend to be fascinatingly incoherent. In my experience, most non-hardcore SMB players (including myself), have virtually no sense whether their current total score is particularly good or not, even relative to their own previous games. The benchmarks of success tend to be about discovery rather than quantitative achievement—you remember when you found the pipe on 1-2, not when you first broke 100,000—exactly the revolution that SMB brought about, as well as the reason that its point system has always been an odd, male-nipple-like atavism.

But on the other hand, many is the time I’ve slaughtered yet another poor Mario by taking some dumb risk in order to…get more points. Not coins for an extra life, not a power-up, just more completely meaningless points, points that in the aggregate I do not care about in the slightest. Why? Because it’s intrinsically fun for me to watch the successively higher numbers appear over each chain-bopped Koopa, or to grab high enough on the flagpole to at least get 2000 if not 5000. Which perhaps brings me back to ludic naiveté, a state from which I clearly cannot exempt myself.

Here is one theoretical distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I wouldn’t say that it’s entirely subjective:

“The most basic distinction is between intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome.”

Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. 2000. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology 25, no. 1 (January): 54-67. doi:10.1006/ceps.1999.1020.

P.S. I am fond of your anti-spam blocker, but feel it’s time for you to take it to the next level and make “Huizinga!” your catchphrase expletive, as with Emeril and “Bam!”

Internal rewards would be the reaction of NPC’s towards your character such as in Fable 2 or the memory of helping a Tenda overcome shyness in Earthbound.

Please correct me if i’m wrong :>

A few weeks ago I heard a learning theorist argue that score is an external motivation, but narrative is internal to the game. I am lacking any clear way of making the distinction.

I think that some of the points here carry over to video games, as the difference between monetary and symbolic rewards only account for *some* of the differences in motivations. In the larger picture, inside of videogames and outside, what you’re trying to do as a designer (or manager) is to create a system which uses extrinsic rewards to encourage a player or worker to internalize your values. In videogames those might be achievements, points, or some other signifier of success. One point this video is discussing is that money, perhaps like points in a game, is only one of those markers of success– and the talk is then noting that that particular marker is often not the best to use.

I don’t think it translates directly, but it’s interesting to try to make the translation, as I think we’ll learn a bit through the comparison.