Good vs Addictive

Here’s a fun experiment that you can all do at home.  Get a small rodent and a degree in Neurophysiology.  Then pop the rodent’s head open and put a few cuts on the ventromedial hypothalmus.  If you haven’t botched the job and killed the poor thing, what you will discover is that the rodent will binge and binge, continually eating whatever food is available, regardless of how full it gets. 

There are other similar experiments you can do such as getting your younger siblings addicted to cocaine, but they all illustrate a rather fundamental neurological principal: Craving something and enjoying something are not the same thing, they are related, but more or less independant, in so far as anything is in that mush of cerebral goo upstairs.

The reason I bring this up is that it has ramifications for games.  While not necessarly as direct as chemical or physical intervention, it is possible to trigger the same pathways that twitchy crack addicts get to live with every day in a more mild manner using behavioral stimuli.  What drug dealers and Daniel Cook have figured out is that it is extremely profitable to do so, if you can get the formula right.  Where Danc and I disagree is that I don’t think all games are drugs, only the ones who have the addiction tricks down proper. 

There are companies who specialize in this unique blend of addiction.  Blizzard has a strong history of getting this right with games like Diablo and its larger, more voractious soul-sucking older brother World of Warcraft.  Blizzard is, in fact, so good at this, that the only thing that seems to limit their ability to create maniacly addictive games is the amount of time they have to develop them - not something most can say.  Casual Gaming generally falls into this category as well.  The more popular games in this genre such as the oft quoted Bejeweled are not a particularly thrilling experience.  Nobody is deriving actual pleasure from playing Solitaire.  People play these games because they kill time and they’re innovative only in the sense that they’ve got the addcition formula down to a fine art, a formula which can be easily cloned from clone to dreary clone.

Blizzard is in a relatively unique position of making games which are highly addictive and at the same time very enjoyable to play.  Most game designers are generally aiming for the latter.  From a business perspective, there’s not much real advantage to aiming for the addiction formula if you’re selling premium retail games - by the time they’re addicted they’ve already purchased the title.  In cases where you have an opportunity to give them the first hit for free - and to tell them to come back to get more - the addiction is key to the survival of the business model. 

This doesn’t mean you have an excuse for making shitty games.  An enjoyable and addictive game is always going to win out over an addictive game, all other things being equal.  It’s notable that companies like Infinite Interactive have attempted to take the highly successful match 3 formula and inject it with some real enjoyment by adding RPG elements (and somehow making gamer crack all the more potent at the same time).

The point I’m rambling slowly towards here is that games that are popular are not the same that games that are good.  The philosophy that large groups of people can’t be wrong has never been even remotely true, and it’s certainly not here.  If casual games are going to be a hallmark industry in the future, we need to start seeing more of an approach that takes both of these into consideration.