How Games Tempt You to Keep Playing (and Pull Out Your Wallet)?
Video games are bringing in more money than ever – over $100 billion last year. We played Fortnite, GTA Online, online roulette games, and Candy Crush and saw which psychological tricks games try to earn extra money.
‘Now I have to be careful that I don’t like it too much. There goes my weekend.’ Tony van Rooij, an expert in the field of game addiction at the Trimbos Institute, is sitting in his attic room in Utrecht. His left hand is on the keyboard, his right hand is gripping the mouse. On the screen in front of him, a figure in a teal suit runs through a cartoonish world. Past rustic towns, vast lawns, a Viking ship on a snowy mountain top.
This is the world of Fortnite, visited by tens of millions of players every month. They fight with guns, grenade launchers, self-built walls and booby traps. Hundreds of people participate in each game, the last one left wins. All without blood or visible suffering, making the game extremely popular with children.
Fortnite was the highest-earning game ever with 2.4 billion dollars in revenue in 2018, research agency SuperData recently announced. Not thanks to people buying the game, because Fortnite is free. The makers earn money by selling packages and dances for the doll you play with. And selling challenges that, upon completion, lead to even more suits and dances.
Just buy a game and play? That is no longer the standard. Game makers make a good chunk of their money these days with additional in-game purchases. It is not without reason that ‘free’ games brought in just under $88 billion (77 billion euros) in 2018, 80 percent of all money earned from video games, according to SuperData. Offering additional features for a fee has also become standard practice for non-free games.
Game builders sometimes use cunning tactics, which we notice from behind the computer at Van Rooij. That doesn’t just apply to Fortnite. We also play the free phone game Candy Crush where you have to slide candies in rows to clear them. And we bought Grand Theft Auto Online for 12 euros, where you take on the role of a villain and do criminal jobs together with other players. With these six tricks, these video games try to keep players hooked and pull the wallet.
Trick 1: Drag Friends into the Game Too
The very first screen that Fortnite presents, encourages Van Rooij to add friends, ‘to supplement your team’.
Of course, that attracts more people to the game, but also has an important purpose, explains Van Rooij. “You play more when your friends play along.”
According to him, this is the reason why Candy Crush shows scores from other players after every game round. GTA Online encourages you to join a ‘crew’, a kind of club with other players that same game awards extra points if you complete missions with a friend.
After all, social connection is one of the psychological needs that games can provide, he explains. Others are a sense of competence, it feels good to face challenges, autonomy, a sense of control and freedom of choice. Whether you stealthily approach the opponent through the bushes or by rushing towards them at full speed, for example.
Trick 2: Have Players Dress Up
The sense of autonomy and social connectedness are stronger if you have your own identity in the game, according to Canadian research from 2016, among other things. The researchers got subjects to play a game in which they ran endlessly along a path to collect coins. Players who ran around with a custom avatar, the doll you play with, played longer than those who didn’t.
GTA Online makes use of this by offering clothing for a fee. After the first race and the first mission, your navigation system will direct you to a clothing store, Van Rooij points out. To get the outfits you got when you bought the game. “And to show you what other cool stuff you can buy.”
Yet at GTA Online the attempts at control are subtle compared to Fortnite. “Your avatar always appears pontifically at Fortnite,” says Van Rooij. ‘This is the online extension of yourself, that’s how you portray yourself.’ His own avatar is wearing a shirt, camouflage pants and a pair of sturdy boots. Rather boring, there are players walking around in shark suits, hamburger heads and black armour.
Anyone who looks like Van Rooij is somewhat disparagingly called a ‘no skinner’, someone who apparently has not spent any money on the game. He dives into his digital wardrobe and changes his avatar into a blue-green commando. “I don’t like the game, but I do look tough now.”
Trick 3: Put Players Under Time Pressure
How do you get ‘skins’, as outfits are called in Fortnite? You can also buy a part here in the store.
Look out for the “13 hours left.” After that, the pickaxe that looks like a squid is no longer available. ‘They consciously create scarcity’, says Van Rooij. With an exclusive look you want to be seen on the battlefield. You have to pull out your wallet now, of course.
A second way to get skins is to win them by collecting points. This is done, among other things, by achieving goals, along the lines of ‘shoot seven people with a gun’. Paying players are offered a large number of rewards. ‘The coolest is at the end’, Van Rooij points out. ‘Then you can play as the Ice King and he is really cool’:
But here too there is time pressure, he shows. After about three months, a new season starts with new packages and new assignments; so it is important to play a lot now. Regularly, because there are daily and weekly challenges to complete.
‘That’s how they try to build a habit. If you are a child in an exam period, and you are not on Fortnite for a day, then you are missing challenges. Suppose your friends don’t do their homework, and you do, then you have less stuff than they do.’ Such a mechanism is also common in mobile games. Like Candy Crush, which lures you back with a daily bonus in the form of an in-game resource.