Mark Griffiths is a professor of psychology who...

Mark Griffiths is a professor of psychology who also heads the International Gaming Research unit at Nottingham Trent University. “It’s very similar to the research I do on gambling,” he says. “When you can pinpoint where you went wrong, this is called a near miss. It’s used all the time in terms of how scratch cards and slot machines are designed. When we fail to win, we create a reason in our mind why we didn’t. The losses effectively become near-wins and feel ‘cognitively frustrating’. And the only way you can get rid of that frustration is to go back to the start and play again.” A 2008 study, conducted by Carmen Rusiello, director of the East Carolina University psychophysiology department, and funded by games developer Popcap, found that the “cognitive distraction” provided by casual mobile games such as Bejeweled significantly improved players’ moods and stress levels among the 134 tested. “It’s also incredibly simple,” says Griffiths. “If it were too complicated, people wouldn’t persist. Addictions in the true sense are about constant rewards. I’ve never met anyone addicted to a bi-weekly national lottery, because there’s only two chances a week. On a slot machine, when you can gamble 30 times a minute, that’s very rewarding. On a game like Angry Birds, it’s every few seconds.

“How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner (and what’s next)” par Tom Cheshire sur Wired UK (March 7th, 2011)

Wow, truly fascinating. Suddenly I understand why Pachinko better.

Meanwhile I had just thought AngryBirds made a different version of Balloons and a bunch of other games.

wired.co.uk