This is what Candy Crush Saga does to your brain
How Candy Crush Is Controlling Your Brain – The Psychology Behind Addictive Computer Games
I was once a
successful and happy family man. I had a wife and two children (Dilbert
and Egbert), a high-paying job, a house, friends…
Then Candy Crush happened…
Now
I'm a vagrant who travels from city to city, begging for money so I can
get my fix of coloured puzzle gaming. I keep telling myself I can quit
whenever I want, get it all back, but I know deep down that that's just a
lie I tell myself. Long ago I gave my soul to Candy Crush…
Okay,
so none of that is true. At all. But if you look at some of the rather
unhealthy relationships that people have with Candy Crush then you
quickly realise that it very easily
could be true. This is an
addictive game, so much so that many people seem to lose all
self-control when it comes to playing it. People are
paying to
have one more go on a badly made puzzle game (come on it is, you can
even hear where the music loops every three seconds!) and it's not like
you can even potentially win any money
back in return.
It's like being addicted to a slot machine that you can't win any money on. What gives?
Clearly
there are some strange psychological phenomena at play here, so let's
take a look at what it is that makes addictive games so impossible to
put down. And how 'King' (Candy Crush's developers) have pulled the
ultimate trick in getting us to pay to play…
The Reward Effect
If
you've ever studied any basic-level psychology, then you will probably
be familiar with the concept of conditioning, as described in Pavlov's
famous study involving dogs and a bell.
In case you
haven't heard of it, the basic idea is that you can condition an animal (even a
human
animal) into wanting something by getting them to associate that
stimulus with a good feeling. In the case of the dogs, treats were
handed out every time a bell rang, and those dogs then ended up
salivating at the sound of the bell. In the case of your brain and Candy
Crush, the game 'rewards' you by staying easy at the start and giving
you that sense of achievement. This isn't just a theoretical 'feel good'
effect either, completing challenges like this will trigger an actual
chemical response in your brain causing it to release 'dopamine'. This
is the 'reward' chemical that our brain uses to motivate us, and as with
any other nice feeling it can actually be addictive. In short you come
to realise that you can get a 'buzz' from playing Candy Crush and
winning so you keep wanting to play more – even as it starts to get
tougher.
'Just One More Go'
Another reason
that Candy Crush and other games like it are so addictive is that
there's a big element of chance involved (as with those slot machines).
This means that you can very easily convince yourself that you're going
to win next time or at least in the next few goes… you just need one
more try to get that fix of dopamine. Which is precisely when you run
out of lives…
This is actually a cognitive bias that affects a lot
of our decision making. We think that because we've played something a
lot times, that we will thus be more likely to win the next time. Throw
heads five times in a row and you've
got to throw tails the
next time, right? Wrong: the odds reset back to 50/50 every time you
throw, only your silly brain is too caught up to realise that. Just one
more spin of the wheel…
Pay to Play
This is
where the option to 'pay to play' comes in, and it seems like a good
deal at the time: just a few cents and you get another however many
lives. It's hardly going to put you into debt…
But then this is
all part of King's evil scheme too: because the amount of money is so
small you don't notice it add up. Your expenditure increases
'incrementally' which allows it to get in under the radar: it's an
effect that has proven successful in a number of classic studies
(include Milgram's study on obedience in which participants were fooled
into administering potentially lethal electrical shocks to strangers).
Lose, Lose
And actually, even if you have enough willpower to resist paying for another few lives, King
still
win in the overall scheme of things. That's because the fact that you
are being denied the right to play will actually make you want to play
more.
Think about it – you probably played Angry Birds to death
when it first came out, but when was the last time you gave it a go
recently? That's because you played it to death in one sitting and got
tired of it. But because you
can't play Candy Crush for hours in a go, you find yourself wanting to all the more… and thus considering paying.
As
you can see it's all very diabolical on the part of King, but also all
rather genius. Now that you understand the mechanisms compelling you to
waste your money though, hopefully you can resist the next time you're
invited to pay for more lives. After all there are plenty of great games
on iOS and Android that actually
are completely free to play. Why not try one of those instead for a while?
I am on level 140 (not something I’m proud of), even after deleting
the app once because I couldn’t stop playing. So what is it about this
game that makes it so addictive?
First off, it’s simple. The premise of Candy Crush is basic enough
for a preschooler – just match three candies of the same colour.
Initially, the game allows us to win and pass levels with ease, giving a
strong sense of satisfaction. These accomplishments are experienced as mini rewards in our brains,
releasing the neurochemical dopamine and tapping into the same
neuro-circuitry involved in addiction, reinforcing our actions. Despite
its reputation as a pleasure chemical, dopamine also plays a crucial
role in learning, cementing our behaviours and training us to continue
performing them.
If the game remained this easy, however, we’d quickly tire of the
jellybeans and gum drops, becoming bored after a couple of binge
sessions. But Candy Crush keeps us coming back in several ways. As we
play, the game gets harder, the wins (and those bursts of dopamine)
becoming more intermittent.
Also, despite what you may think – and what the developers of the
game claim – Candy Crush is essentially a game of luck, your success
dependent on the array of colours you have randomly been given rather
than your swiping skills. This means that the reward schedule becomes
unexpected: we lose more often than we win and we never know when the
next triumph will come. Rather than discouraging us from playing, this
actually makes the game even more enticing than if we won easily.
This
strategy is known as a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement and is
the same tactic used in slot machines; you can never predict
when you’re going to win, but you win just often enough to keep you coming back for more.
Steve Sharman, a PhD student in psychology at the University of
Cambridge researching gambling addiction, explains that the impression
that we are in control of a game is key to its addictive nature and is
vital when playing a slot machine, for example. “The illusion of control
is a crucial element in the maintenance of gambling addiction … [as it]
instills a feeling of skill or control," he says. "There are a number
of in-game features [such as the boosters in Candy Crush] that allow
players to believe they are affecting the outcome of the game, and in
some cases they are, but those instances are rare.”
I approached the game's maker, King Digital Entertainment, for a
comment, but the company declined my request for a formal interview.
However, in its recent F-1 filing documents King disputes this assertion, claiming that while gambling is a game of chance, its games are
casual games that are “easy to learn but hard to master".
It believes that Candy Crush is predicated on players reaching a
certain level of skill and ability, and that you have to be strategic in
how you move the candies around.
Another feature of the game that strongly affects how we respond is
the limit on how much we can play at any given time. Candy Crush
effectively puts you into "time out" after five losses. This means you
can never be completely satiated when playing and always leaves you
wanting more. And by not letting you play, the game actually becomes
even more rewarding
when you are let back into Candyland. This is also how Candy Crush
makes its money, letting you buy back into the game if you’re willing to
purchase extra lives.
Researchers from Harvard and the University of British Columbia have demonstrated this effect, called hedonic adaptation,
in a study using real-life candy bars. Participants were divided into
two groups: one was told to abstain from eating chocolate for a week,
while the other was given pounds of the stuff and told to go wild. After
one week, the participants were brought back into the lab and given a
piece of chocolate to savour.
The results? Those who had been deprived rated the chocolate as
significantly more pleasurable than those who had been able to eat it
freely. So it seems the deprivation makes the reward that much sweeter
in the end.
Finally, it is no coincidence that the game is played with pieces of
candy. As Sharman points out, food is often used in gambling games
(think of the infamous fruit machine), tying our happy associations and
the pleasure we derive from eating into the game. King acknowledges that
candy's positive associations help make the game more fun and relaxing.
