The Anatomy of Seduction in Casual Games

A casual observation of mine — most of the casual/hyper-casual mobile games advertised on Facebook are similar to an extent: bright, colorful UIs accompanied by playful music and tons of effects. The casual/hyper-casual game industry is big despite the wacky ads it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. That led me to study the anatomy of successful casual/hyper-casual games that keep players hooked.

The field was narrowed to single player casual/hyper-casual mobile games that are free to play. Multiplayer games which have a social element to them were avoided to keep the study focused. This field is well explored with tons of studies done and research papers published. It’s not one key decision that makes players engaged for hours but rather there exists a proper design system.

Alexandrovsky et al. (2019) introduces us to the concept of snacking. It’s a self-explanatory pattern name where instead of long hours players are incentivised to have brief but daily interactions spread throughout the day. The paper suggests novelty in content and waiting/cooldown after a session encourages players to snack instead of feast on the game once and eventually leave. The game Candy Crush has this mechanism where each new level has new variations and failing multiple times penalize the player putting a cooldown.

Audiovisual feedback is critical in making the snacking rewarding. Most casual/hyper-casual games provide grand feedbacks on each action taken in the game by design. The confetti, the celebration sfx — all these make your actions feel more rewarding. This was observed in Juul and Jason (2016); players find games with high concentration of audiovisual feedback more engaging and more rewarding. Pair this with Shafer and Carbonara (2015)’s findings and the seduction becomes more effective. This paper recruited a sample of 363 players and had them play a range of casual games across mobile (iPad, iPod Touch) and console (Wii, Xbox 360 Kinect, PS3 Move). They found that cheap mobile games could easily overtake games with expensive production being more spatially present. There was no need for good story writing or realism, just instant consequential feedback i.e. tap to jump. A player’s one tap gives them the sense of action done.

Flappy Bird brings forth an idea that feels contradictory to reality — frustration can be used to maintain retention. The main concept rests on a neuroscience split between two different systems — “wanting” pathway, the urge to pursue something again and the liking pathway (find it pleasant to do). This borrows from slot machine design principles. Games like Flappy Bird are built on near misses and unpredictable outcomes, it stimulates the “wanting” pathway without requiring to make it delightful (Roest and Bakkes, 2015). The ads these category of games rely on also employ this principle.

Anatomy

We can simplify the whole discussion further by categorizing the process of making a seductive game thanks to Pichlmair and Johansen (2020).

Tuning

Physicality and predictability of how objects move and respond: gravity, momentum, acceleration curves, collision behavior. Or how believable the action taken in game feels.

Juicing

Making a given action’s feedback more exaggerated, more than necessary such that it feels rewarding. It is done through particles, sound effects, vibrations, etc.

Streamlining

Making the game simpler by removing frictions that might require mastering. The player is given as minimal resistance as possible.

The distinction between clever design and manipulation is very thin and worth addressing. Zagal, Björk, and Lewis (2013) names it “dark pattern”. Design that stops serving the players and engages in exploitation instead. None of these discussed principles are inherently dishonest by design but it takes mindfulness to not plunge into predatory practices.