Candy Crush’s Addictive Psychology
and why I now hate chocolate…
Hey bro, spare some change for a Lollipop Hammer?
We’ve all heard about the addictive digital confection known as Candy Crush Saga (CCS). But there is much more to this game than meets the eye. To set the table for why you should care about the genius psychology behind its massive appeal, a few facts and figures.
CCS:
> Cost — free to download and play.
> Players — 90% age 21+, split approx. 50/50 male/female.
> Thus Far — 150 billion plays in less than a year after its 2012 launch.
> Currently—played by 93 million people, more than 1 billion times/day.
>> Delivering—In-app purchases averaging more than $875,000 per day.
Collectively, this makes CCS one of the top three grossing iOS games of all-time. So they’ve hit on a model that works, to the tune of nearly $1 million/day. Whether it’s sustainable, or if the game’s designer (King) can produce another hit game with similar success, is yet to be seen.
They had an IPO, and the performance was fair to middling. But the psychology behind the game mechanics is what I find particularly intriguing. A combination of factors produces an addictive experience, which I contend deserves the credit for the rapid, widespread, and prolonged success.
Most prevalent is the encouragement, i.e. reward system. Keise Izuma’s 2008 study showed audible reinforcement from a computer (e.g. “Good job!”) lights up the same regions of the brain as would a financial windfall of some kind. This is similar to the findings, enabled by fMRI technology, showing that our minds (and bodies) respond to physically perceived stimuli the same as if we closed our eyes and just envisioned those same stimuli. In other words, if you look at a banana, then close your eyes and imagine/visualize a banana, you’re activating the same regions of your brain. Your mind/body do not know the difference between actual and imagined (or remembered) experience. This is why nightmares make you sweat or cry out, and why PTSD is so insidious — remembered experiences mentally surfaced and processed as though they are happening in real-time.
In the case of CCS, the reward system is pretty simple. With a minor accomplishment (i.e. a well-chosen move), the bass-baritone voice of the game encourages you,
“Sweet!”
A better move gets you a throaty,
“Divine!”
Those verbal kisses for your cognitive reward center, combined with bright musical sound effects result in subtle sensations of success. You learn to love and eagerly chase another dash of audible reassurance from your new Isaac-Hayes soundalike friend. If you’re not paying conscious attention, absorbed in the game, all you know is you want to keep playing to get that feeling again.
But here’s where the real genius surfaces. Beyond the friendly verbal cheerleader, with only two offerings, there are other silent characters that populate your journey.
First, there is the douchey coach with terrible advice. I call it a coach as he/she/it is ostensibly offering you help when you get stuck, here defined as a long pause between moves. Once your pause is longer than average, this unseen helper highlights a particular move on the board with flashing pieces of candy. In the early stages of the game, this coach (helper) does in fact make some good suggestions. Based on those experiences, you build a certain level of trust. You assume that those hints are coming from a helpful resource.
What happens down the line at some point is the hints become tricks or traps. If you take the coach’s suggestion, it creates a chain reaction that either makes the board much more difficult to complete, or even ends your current life completely. This entity that you always assumed was your buddy, is screwing you over. Sometimes the suggestions are good ones, but many times not. This coach is pretty much the worst kind of friend, totally unreliable. Total douche.
Then there is the dickish chocolate. Sharing space on the game board with the hard candy pieces are squares of chocolate. Whereas our coach is revealed to be a flaky douchebag, similarly, otherwise delicious chocolate is personified as a terrible roommate.
First, it needs constant attention. If you don’t immediately attend to the chocolate (by using your moves to break up and remove it) it multiplies, setting you back further from your goal of clearing the board. When it does multiply (each time you don’t pay it attention), it erases the most valuable candies in its vicinity. Just like the classic bad roommate who eats your favorite cookies while you’re at class, the chocolate consumes the best stuff when you’re not looking.
Finally, the musical and messaging components. The third and fourth members of the Addiction Team. We looked at the positive reinforcement with sound effects in certain cases, but the music plays a different role. As you might have noticed, movie soundtracks function like emotional cue cards, subconsciously signaling how you’re meant to feel during any given scene. Similarly, as soon as you reach a failure point (loss of life), the musical sting is a familiar “wah-wah-wahhhh” in descending tones. Remember Debbie Downer? Like that, her bummer theme song. It’s a musical bummer. You feel let down, disappointed, frustrated even.
Now immediately you’re presented with two options: try again, or don’t. But the genius is in the framing and language. Would you prefer to,
“Play On!”
or
“Give Up”
So… are you a dirty low-down quitter, or are you tough enough to continue playing?
“Pay me, or quit,” That’s the mentality of the messaging, and let’s admit it, it’s powerful. Nobody wants to be a quitter, right?
But now it really gets interesting (diabolical?) when you run out of lives. If you decide to “Give Up,” this translates as “try again,” if you have more lives to use. If you don’t, the failure screen doesn’t remind you or mention that. Instead, you’re presented another message screen, with only two options: “Retry” or, well that’s it. The other option is to tap the red ‘X’ close button on the message window, but no indication what that option does.
Well, I want to try again, sure, and click “Retry”. Now I’m confronted by a giant frowning heart, weeping. Oh, man. Visual bummer — Too bad, what you want you can’t have — with a timer showing how long until your next life, 30 minutes and counting, along with two options:
Beg
or
Pay
You can either pay cash money to buy another life, or, you can beg your friends on Facebook. I’m sure you’ve seen them, those semi-pathetic pleas from the game, posted to your friend’s page, on your behalf, with your face and a request to help. This is the addict’s dilemma, right? (We’ve all seen Intervention by now.) To avoid the horror of running out of one’s drug of choice, one must either find/pay money to buy more, or look to others for help.
Hello, my name is Chris, and I’m a Candy Crush addict.
Spare some change for a Lollipop Hammer?
And so I say to you, King Digital Entertainment plc, well-done, sirs (and madams.) Through counterbalanced entities residing in the mechanics of the UI, plenty of subconsciously-active visual and auditory cues, and a drug-dealer’s approach to incentives and monetization, you’ve created one of the most addictive game experiences ever created in the mobile digital space.
Thank you, King, and eff you very much.
Off to buy more color bombs… ☺
