I recommend you read this article on Gamasutra: <br><br>Also, there is a book called 'Mind At Play - The Psychology of Video Games' written by two eminent psychologists (according to my girlfriend). They describe how to make a game addictive and actively encourage designers to follow their advice... :s<br><br>Essentially the book boils it down to a theory called 'variable rate partial reinforcement'. Here the person playing the game receives <i>reinforcement</i> (an obvious reinforcement can be winning a large amount of cash after playing black jack but it is also anything internally important to the game world, like the obtaining 'The Master Sword' in 'Zelda - A Link to the Past'.) Now these reinforcements cause more powerful <i>addiction</i> if they are partial. In other words, not every action rewards the player with a reinforcement but after a certain amount of time (or rate) performing the action they receive &#111;ne. (In Zelda the player &#111;nly receives a rupee after killing several enemies.) This means the player will keep the action going because there is a reward coming soon. Now, if the rate at which the reward is given is <i>unpredictable</i> so the player knows the reward is coming but doesn't know the exact time then this turns out to be the most <i>addictive</i> formula, so to speak.<br><br>Another phenomenon they describe is 'regret and alternative worlds'. (This is pretty much a direct quote from my other post yesterday) Take a look at this question:<br><br>'Mr Smith and Mr Jones both have to catch planes. They're &#111;n different flights, but since both flights leave at 9:00am, they decide to take a cab together. Owing to a combination of unfortunate circumstances, the cab is late and doesn't arrive at the airport until 9:30. &#79;n consulting with the airline agent, the two men discover that, whereas Mr Smith's flight left &#111;n time at 9:00, Mr Jones' flight was delayed at left at 9:28, &#111;nly two minutes ago. Who is more upset, Mr Smith of Mr Jones?' People invariable report that Mr Jones is more upset. This is because it is much easier for Mr Jones to construct an alternative world in which he had caught his flight. ('If the taxi had just driven through that yellow light instead of stopping for it!')<br><br>If you apply this principle to games, then when the player has died/lost a life, the closer to the <i>alternative world</i> his current play situation is and the easier it is to <i>imagine</i> victory then the more likely the player will feel like another go. ('If &#111;nly I had picked up the power pill I could have collected those last few dots!')<br><br>Moving to my own personal opinion now, but if the player starts multiple quests or journeys, each of which will result in a reward, then they act like 'hooks' that keep the player interested. They act like soap operas. In soaps you have several story arcs that move together along the timeline. A story arc for that episode, that week and that month etc. So when a viewer watches a certain episode they resolve the current episodic arc but never get so resolve the larger arcs and therefore want to watch again. No single episode ever ties up all the story arcs so therefore keep the viewer <i>addicted</i> so to speak. <br><br>Speaking from personal experience, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (and I suspect WoW) works in exactly the same fashion. After a small amount of time playing, you end up with multiple quests that are in progress, some larger than the others and the player keeps trying to finish them all but can never end up in a situation where they have no quests currently active, there is always &#111;ne or more quests active, there is always a reinforcement <i>just</i> around the corner.<br><br>I would hazard a guess here, but if you want to keep your game from being addictive then avoid these principles. Whether this would make the game 'boring' is another matter..... :)

Quote:Original post by Tomdominer
I recommend you read this article on Gamasutra: <!--QUOTE--></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!--/QUOTE--><!--ENDQUOTE--><br>Heh, I knew that article sounded familiar. Not &#111;nly have I read it, it looks like I've saved it in my archive of interesting articles several years ago. [smile] But that book sounds interesting; I might chase it up. Thanks!<br><br>I suppose it's the attitude that it's a desirable thing to keep your players hooked &#111;n playing your game forever and ever that bugs me slightly. It's like the soap opera example - you <i>know</i> it's badly written rubbish, but you keep tuning in every week anyway [grin]

Quote:Original post by Trapper Zoid

Quote:As for the particular question at hand.. you can't make a game "less addictive" and still keep it good. It's addictive because it's good. Putting health care warnings on games that tell your players how long they've been playing may be in good faith, but in the end, it'll cost the game something. At the very least, a sense of immersion.

I'm still not 100% certain of this though. Are good games necessarily addictive? That's an assertion I keep seeing but I just don't know if it's true. Is there any way we can prove it's true, or is it all just based on a gut feeling? I may have to hunt down someone with a better understanding of psychology and see if they can help me out on what case studies have been done.

The other question from that is - how important is a sense of immersion? Does a good game need a high sense of immersion?

It's not that a game must be addictive in order to be good, it's that if a game is good, people will become addicted to it. Addiction is something to do with the player, not the game. It's pretty basic stuff, really. You can look up a bunch of stuff on human psychology if you want (and by all means do, it's a fascinating subject,) but chances are that your research will probably give you similar results.

As for immersion.. well, it can be very important, depending on the game you want to make. But I won't sidetrack the topic and hand.

I think there are reasons that MMO's catch so much more flak for being "addictive" than other games. VPellen stated the primary: MMO's are social settings; single player games are not. This has several effects:

1) As VPellen said, you become friends with the people in the game. If you're in a guild, they'll expect you to be there to do something at a certain time. You develop a responsibility to them the same you would in real life. People in the "real world" who don't have much experience with games (like angry wives or concerned parents) tend to view your e-friends as "not real friends". If you spend 6 hours playing with your e-friends, it's considered an addiction and a waste of time, whereas having real friends over to play board games for 6 hours is considered normal.

2) The fact that it's a social environment means that people talk to eachother while they are playing, and the close tie between MMO's and the internet means word spreads quickly, and catch phrases and memes become wired into the player's minds. Lots of Everquest players would jokingly talk to one another ingame about how they really should be going to bed, but they couldn't stop, someone came up with the name Evercrack, and because it was funny it spread as an internet meme. Tetris, being a single player and offline game, would not generate the same discussions between two people. You are generally playing tetris alone and not communicating while you are doing it, so the conversation between two tetris players about how they should really be going to bed never happens, even if there are a hundred people right now playing tetris past their bed time throughout the world.

3) A lot of people will have more fun with their e-friends than they will with their real-friends. Again, from the outside perspective of non-playing friends who get ditched, this won't look like simply dumping your old friends for new ones; it will look like the player is addicted to a computer game. Most people will not dump their old friends for a single player game because humans crave social interaction. But if a game offers fun AND social interaction, then it becomes easier for a person to stop wanting to spend time with their real-friends.

Also, MMO's are specifically designed to be long. A lot of games that people play nonstop won't be considered addictive because they get beaten quickly. A normal linear story-based RPG, like Final Fantasy, WILL cause a lot of people to play without sleeping for a week straight, but then they've beaten the game and move onto a new game. MMO's can't afford to make their gameplay that short since they run on a subscription model.