Thought 15: Does satisfying an arbitrary goal provide happiness?

I beat the game Minecraft yesterday.  There isn't any real narrative arc for the game.  There were times where it felt like the tasks put in front of the player are arbitrary.  Collect wood.  Make wooden tools.  Collect iron.  Make iron tools.  Collect diamonds.  Make diamond tools.  Collect Obsidian.  Make a portal to another world.  Collect Blaze Rods.  Collect Ender Pearls.  Build 12 Eyes of Ender.  Complete the Ender Portal.  Go through the Portal and Kill the Dragon.

But why are we killing the dragon?  Is he threatening us?  No.  We're just killing him to get to the End of the Game.  The ending is pretty interesting.  You can look it up on you tube if you don't want to spend the 40-50 hours necessary to beat the game.

Oddly enough one of the things that drew me to Minecraft was the lack of a plot.  It was just a sandbox.  You could build lots of things.  The only point was to build something cool while simultaneously not dying.  Not dying was pretty easy as the monsters were not difficult.  There wasn't much of an incentive to kill them other than to collect a few items they dropped.

Then the game grew more complex.  If you want to tame a dog then you'll need to go collect skeleton bones.  Want to enchant that diamond sword?  You'll need to kill a lot of monsters to gain the necessary levels to buy enchantments.  Want to build some of the more complicated mechanics?  For those you need slimeballs so go dig deep in the caves to find slimes.

Yet it was always fun.  While there isn't a strict arbitrariness (because logically you would need iron tools to mine diamonds, wooden tools just wouldn't be strong enough!) adding in the hierarchy gives a feeling of progress.

I didn't (it turns out) need a full suit of enchanted diamond armor to be able to beat the Ender Dragon.  In fact it made the final fight pretty easy.  While building up to a bow that fires infinite arrows at double damage is fun going around taking pot shots at creatures isn't as fun.  There needs to be a feeling of progression to continue in a game.

Now that progression might be something like building a cool castle.  It might not be going out to slay a dragon.  It might be the mere act of survival (dwarf fortress).  But once we hit a part of the game where there is no struggle to survive or goal to accomplish we lose interest.

So no, satisfying arbitrary goals doesn't provide happiness.  We need to feel like we're making progress.  Whether it be through a narrative or building a character's stats we need to feel like we're moving forward.  Even new year's resolutions run into this.  If I don't think that I'm actually getting healthier through not eating french fries then why continue?  I need to see or feel some progress.