this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
63 points (89.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43941 readers
551 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Mobile games like these are designed with the help of addiction experts, each phase of the game is designed to trigger different emotions which builds up to constant frustration in the end.
The key is then manage that frustration by constantly showing the player that they could easily remove the source of the frustration by simply buying more resources.
This has to be done in way to keep the player feeling justly treated according to the rules of the game.
The game can't outright just steal your resources, but it can spawn in enemies to waste them and then limit how many resources you get in a specific time, that makes sure you don't blame the game itself but rather individual parts of the game.
Even better if another human stole the resources, like in clash of clans.
I got caught up in GTA Online, I bought thousands of SEK worth of shark cards, I was able to get a few nice cars, and a lovely house, but Rockstar/Take2 were very clever, in the name of realism you had utility bills to pay, you needed to pay for having your car impounded, you could buy facilities to farm more money, but they cost as well, you needed special offices to get some cars, those cost money on top of needing to buy the car.
It was death by thousand cuts, and after a year or so, I just realized what a shit game it was an uninstalled it, I did have fun in the game, but it also taught me a very valuable lesson.
Don't buy shark cards.
Clash of Clans is kinda safe in this, nobody cares anymore if they get attacked as there are now so many ways to farm resources that got added after the game started dwelling in the player count.
Years ago and it became a hit I realized I needed one more line in Candy Crush to finish the level way too many times for it to be a coincidence. Deleted. And lesson learned