Why are mobile games so addicting?

Have you ever wondered what compels you to keep playing mobile games like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans (other than the awesome alliteration in their titles)? What makes you continue to play these games consistently for weeks or months (or even years on end, in my Dad’s case), whereas Triple-A games like Assassin’s Creed, Super Mario and GTA sit on the shelf for months after one or two binge sessions?

Let me introduce you to my main man, B.F. Skinner.

Image courtesy of Reynaldo Flores

You mean B.A.M.F. Skinner, right?

Skinner was a pretty cool dude (in psychology. So he'd probably just be a nerd). He's known for a lot of things in psychology. One device he used a lot which might sound familiar is called the Skinner Box. If you clicked and read any of that article and/or know something about psychology (bonus points), the Skinner Box was used by that guy up there to test his theory of operant conditioning.

Operant conditioning is based off of Pavlov's theory (a different dude -- there's a lot of them in psych, sorry) of classical conditioning; it's the experiment where someone teaches a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. There's no quick way to explain without boring you all to death, so if you're not familiar with the concept, here's a hilarious example of this training technique at work. 

Anyway, operant conditioning is like classical conditioning, but instead of relying on a naturally occurring response (the dog salivating), it's taught through rewards (getting a 1-up) and punishments (losing a life). Skinner liked to call rewards and punishments "reinforcements".

Reinforcement, as put by B.F. Skinner, is “the process of encouraging or establishing a pattern of behavior, especially by encouragement or reward.” The key word here is reward. If I ask my dog to sit and give him a cookie, his sitting is reinforced by the idea that next time, he’ll get a cookie!

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Let's take a step back for a second and think about mobile games. First thing that might come to mind is this: 

Image courtesy of  bestandroidappsreview

Is this game even still a thing?

That is the #1 app on all mobile markets. Still. Angry Birds is a funny game with decent graphics for a mobile title, and it has good puzzle elements. It also has more people playing it consistently than any other game in the world. This free game is outperforming multi-million dollar titles. 

...Why?

Games like Angry Birds get paid in ad dollars and in-app purchases. They want their players to keep playing their games for a long time. How do they do this?

Developers use this operant conditioning thing to get their players to keep playing. 

I ask my dog to sit and give him a cookie, his sitting is reinforced by the cookie. With games (and people), the process isn’t this simple. 

Game developers want to increase the behavior of you playing the game, so that they can make money. They use a very special reinforcer for your brain to make you subconsciously want to keep playing. The reward they use/manipulate is a chemical is called dopamine.

This bastard.

This little chemical is released in your brain to make you feel pleasure. 

You see, most games have continuous gameplay, allowing you to go through the game at your own pace. As you play, you complete tasks -- like killing enemies, collecting loot, or completing quests -- which results in a release dopamine into your brain to let you know you did something good.

However, as you play, your brain starts to become used to all the dopamine swimming around in there. You essentially start to ‘overdose’ on dopamine. As you continue to play, you get less and less pleasure out of completing the same tasks because your brain becomes habituated to all the dopamine. The game isn't fun anymore. And then it gets thrown behind the TV until you remember months later and wonder "Why didn't I finish beating that game?"

Image courtesy of GameFaqs

Oh yeah, because it sucked. That's why.

Mobile developers were smart. They recognized the burnout that gamers of triple-A titles faced. So they decided to train your brain by manipulating dopamine intake. They use a technique called scheduled reinforcement. It's Skinner's reinforcement but....scheduled.

Usually, a game starts off by allowing you to play the game with relative freedom. Either the levels are very easy, you're allowed a lot of extra lives, or the time penalties are very short. You complete any of these tasks, and BAM! Reinforcement through release of dopamine.

Before your brain becomes habituated with dopamine, they cut you off. Levels become too difficult to complete without multiple attempts, time penalties are longer, or enemies become stronger. Because dopamine is so pleasurable, your brain wants more. But it can no longer achieve those max levels it's used to. The game refuses to allow it.

Your brain is aware of when it's allowed to get that dopamine again. You soon begin to check your game at regular intervals for your reward of sweet, sweet dopamine.You've learned through reinforcement to continue to play the game. You're trapped.

Thankfully, you’re not trapped forever. Many people can stop playing these games, but only after the developers have gotten ad revenue and money from in-app purchases.

It can be extremely addicting. I’ve been playing How To Train Your Dragon on my phone for…oh, six months now? At least I have those Titan Dragons.

Thanks a lot, Skinner.