How do you make an addictive video game?
pjvogt.substack.com
How do you make an addictive video game?
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#2The way you make an addictive anything:
* Random, variable rewards, with the possibility for really great rewards.
* In as many different ways as you can feasibly include.
* Optimise for 'near-misses', which have been shown to increase the addictive properties.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#3Digging into the abstractions of life (with my admittedly non-medical non-scientific background) it seems that if you really boil things down it's all dopamine
Dopamine reward: Anticipation, something good happens, repeat
Addiction: Anticipation, something good happens sometimes, repeat
To answer the question from that standpoint, reward the player.. but not too much :)
Everything on top of that is there to get the person into the loop in the first place
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#4Start with easy difficulty and gradually make it harder. Introduce new mechanics along the way.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#5The way you make an addictive anything: * Random, variable rewards, with the possibility for really great rewards. * In as many different ways as you can feasibly include. * Optimise for 'near-misses', which have been shown to increase the addictive properties.
> Random, variable rewards, with the possibility for really great rewards
The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that variable reward is a key component of fun. All of the most fun and successful games have it built in, even if you don't realize it. Does it have ranked match making? That's variable reward. Why do you think online chess is so popular now? The ranked match making gives you just enough wins to keep you hooked.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#6IMHO, links to podcast episodes aren’t super well-suited for HN. Text works much better here. And in this case, there’s not even a transcript AFAICT.
So what is the tl;dr? What are we supposed to take away from this podcast episode?
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#7Just make a good game, there are plenty of games that don't follow the skinner box/psychological tricks that are extremely addictive e.g. Counter Strike.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#8Make it easy to play "one more turn". Each turn only needing a few minutes is what causes players of turn-based games to suddenly find themselves still playing at 7am. The built-in "pause" in the game's action—with each turn accomplishing a discrete task—offers an automatic offramp out of the game, which makes it easy for players to decide that they will take that offramp after "one more turn". If gameplay were not so discrete, players would at some point just pause the game on their own and leave.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#9Then there is the classic Nintendo approach: "so you've put a lot of effort into this game? Well, you better keep coming back every day or we'll chip away at that".
- Animal Crossing: your island may become overgrown with weeds, villagers want to move out, some furniture will rust, your home will have cockroaches
- Nintendogs: the puppies will get very hungry and thirsty, they'll lose weight and stop recognizing your voice.
Re: How do you make an addictive video game?
#10"This episode will change how you look at games. We talk to Ben Brode, the designer behind Hearthstone and Marvel Snap, about how a creative person learns to make the things they love, and about the secret ideas hiding in games as simple as rock-papers-scissors."