model. Both of these are already eliciting vast amounts of time and cash from the public and, given the propensity for video games to become the object of addiction, it is important that we make ourselves aware of the potential that this more recent form of gaming has to consume our lives.
Appointment Gameplay
Casual (and thereby most mobile) games typically follow the appointment model of gameplay. This simply means that there is a real-time delay between the action and the reward, the classic example from “Farmville” being that once you have planted your seeds (action), you need to wait a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, before you are able to return and harvest your crops (reward). This style of gameplay is prolific on mobiles and sets up gamers for a new and accessible trap within which they can find themselves addicted.
As with most successful games, the appointment system is anything but ‘instant gratification’. In fact, it is, by design, the opposite. I’ve noticed that you can often spot an academic, non-gamer talking about games by their frequent references to concepts such as ‘instant gratification’ and ‘constant rewards’ – it doesn’t take long playing any successful game (beyond the tutorials which are always full of rewards) to realise that games, certainly at a more dedicated level, are predominantly about failure and denial (Juul 2013). In appointment-based games you are forced to wait; playing “Clash of Clans” I frequently had to wait days, sometimes even weeks for certain rewards to filter through. In addition, you are regularly denied the option to continue playing after you have performed a certain number of other actions, ranging from laughably trivial to downright invasively difficult.
Many people I encountered in the world of game design hate the appointment gaming model with a passion, seeing it as the anathema of good gaming. Much of the hatred is that this withdrawal of gameplay from the user is seen as a move solely designed to force people into choosing between paying and waiting. In my opinion and experience, this model of design is inherently attractive to a certain type of player. Whether there is a payment scheme or not, they are going find considerable enjoyment in this system.
Because appointment dynamics work around brief periods of gameplay followed by longer periods of waiting, it makes an excellent fit with mobile players. When I was designing these types of games our audience was primarily seen to be female, Japanese commuters in their late 30s and early 40s. This demographic was considered to be spending much of their time either travelling through urban environments or working hard in high-powered, demanding and/or oppressive jobs. Appointment gaming on their mobile phones offered them a way to turn the hiatuses in their day into colourful, rewarding bursts of gaming. The knock-on effect being that they could spend the next stretch of work/travelling/meetings covertly looking forward to their next ‘visit’ to the game when they could pick up their rewards. They might feed their baby cow before an important meeting, knowing that by the time said meeting had ended, they could check in to see it fully grown and rewarding them with a pail of milk.
This is a stark example of a form of gameplay that is becoming increasingly common, particularly with the rise of always-on, always-connected portable devices such as tablets and smart phones. Increasingly we are offered a way to fill in ‘gaps’ in our day. Every aspect of phones and tablets is designed to create a sense of attachment and pleasure in the user, leading to the simple act of holding and checking the phone acting as a comforting and rewarding act in itself (Thompson 2013). Not only this, but due to the widely accepted behaviour of looking at one’s phone more than one’s surroundings, it is relatively easy to wrap many hours of this type of gameplay into a working day without anyone ever even knowing that you’re doing so, including you. This goes some way to explaining the infrequency with which such casual gamers see themselves as being gamers. All in all, appointment gameplay, especially on mobiles, is an increasingly ripe source of addiction.
Historically, the days of shelling out £40 – £50 on a single, complete game and then going off and enjoying it at no further cost are diminishing. Sales figures point to an acutely sharp decline in the number of big gaming publishing houses producing Triple A titles (Robinson 2013). That said, “Grand Theft Auto V” became the fastest selling game of all time in 2013 and the end of the previous year saw the release of Sony and Microsoft’s next generation of consoles, so we can safely say that we will continue to see this sales model over the next few years, at least.
From the wings, however, the free-to-play model has blossomed, initially being a hit on mobiles and social networks, and now being increasingly popular on PCs. Free-to-play games are, shockingly, actually free-to-play, with additional features, resources, power-ups and customization available to all gamers… provided they are prepared to pay. Typically these virtual goods will be inexpensive and transient; you pay a seemingly insignificant amount of money, get a temporary boost that you can use once or twice in the game and then it’s gone. A common combination is to offer a free-to-play game with an appointment system, such that players are frequently asked to wait in order to progress, but have the option to pay in order to speed things along. Some powerful examples of current free-to-play games are “Candy Crush Saga” (whose otherworldly revenue we have already mentioned), “Planetside 2” and “World of Tanks”.
Free-to-play relies partly upon a small number of users making frequent, minimal purchases. More importantly, it relies upon an even smaller number of users, termed ‘whales’, sinking an inordinate amount of money into virtual goods. It is widely understood that in order to make a game such as this profitable, there needs to be an infinite number of huge purchases that a minority of gamers can make without them running out of content to play through. This is typically achieved by pitching said gamers against one another, culminating in an arms race where, arguably, only the developers are victorious. “Clash of Clans” is an excellent example of a game that uses this model, with some users dropping literally thousands of dollars a month into the game (Rigney 2012).
The sinister undertone of the free-to-play business model is that it potentially depends upon pathological or addictive gaming in order to reach financial success. This is a growing concern, particularly in Japan, where they have begun to create laws to catch some of what they consider to be more devious mechanics within free-to-play games. Increasingly, attention is drawn to the huge amounts of money that users can easily pump into these games. For many players, this is a potential criterion for addiction – increasing numbers of gamers are finding that their need to compensate for what is missing in their lives through their gaming is now resulting in a hefty financial cost, much like pathological gambling.
These new forms of gaming, appointment and free-to-play, are arguably not problematic in themselves, much the same as hardcore gaming. Someone stealing several hours of their day to play “Clash of Clans” on their tablet is not a problem, per se, and we need to be aware that the bulk of the existing (although potentially outdated) research out there points the finger at the young male playing online hardcore games as the most frequent of the video game addicts. However, if that person fails to pick up their daughter because they need to raid that last bit of gold, or finds themselves unable to heat their house because they have spent increasingly more on virtual gems to grow their clan, then there is a serious issue that needs resolving. For those few that can’t control the way they interact with these new forms of gaming, they will need to address their lifestyle just as any hardcore gamer would.
Is This Just About Men?
While it is less and less the case that gaming is a male only pastime, boys that game to addicted levels still outnumber the equivalent girls by a whopping 50 percent (Gentile et al 2009). This forms part of a wider picture described by thinkers such as Sax and Zimbardo who believe there to be a large-scale disillusionment in the young men of today; both these writers consider video games to be one of the core reasons for this.
Games are still largely made by men for men. Women still feature relatively scarcely in game design teams. I remember a woman joining our team after about a year of my working as a game designer in Brighton. This
