Skinner Box

 While there are thousands of games out there that use the skinner box method to keep players paying a monthly subscription fee, one of the most notorious is World of Warcraft. In World of Warcraft there are several different systems to keep players paying the monthly fee that are targeted to a different gamer audience. With the hardcore gamers there are things called raids, where a number of players band together and go through dungeons in order to receive equipment that your character can utilize in game. The bosses that the players kill in each dungeon only drop a certain number of items, generally 3 to 4, and items are usable only by certain characters with bosses resetting every week, this acts a reward scheduler making sure players have a scheduled reward system so they don't get items too quickly, but also so they aren't waiting around forever to get new items. This kind of reward system gives players something to work towards and a sense of achievement when they finally get what they were after. The reset timer used keeps players from quickly farming the items they want and getting burned out on the game before more content can be released that offers an upgrade to the equipment the player has. The gear that they player receives acts as a positive reinforcement, giving them a goal to work towards and eventually a reward for spending time working towards it.

 Another aspect of the game, leveling, is a powerful secondary enforcer that is geared at turning the casual gamer into a hardcore gamer. Gaining levels is vital in World of Warcraft because the bulk of the game is only available to players who have reached the highest level. Gaining levels is something that the player quickly learns to be excited about, with the first few levels coming very quickly and after that very slowly to increase the amount of time the player must play. Many players spend all of their free time leveling a character so that they may reap the reward of hitting the final level and experiencing the rest of the game. Recently, World of Warcraft integrated an achievement system into the game, which rewards the player for doing tasks that are often time consuming and trivial. This is a more cut and dry achievement motivation than the other achievement motivations such as act of getting upgraded equipment.

 An example of a negative reinforcement from the game is the system of travel that the game utilizes. During the leveling system of WoW, the players unlock the ability to purchase faster methods of travel, thus giving the play another incentive to reach a higher level so that they can move from place to place faster than before.