Social Gaming - Good Job on Getting Us Addicted

So for the past month or so I've been sorta obsessed with this new game called Candy Crush. I remember seeing on my Facebook newsfeed that more and more of my friends were playing it and it looked to me that it was just a weird version of Bejeweled. But I was wrong. I also thought that it was just another one of Zanga's games. But I was wrong again. Candy Crush was made by King, another social gaming company. So how does Candy Crush, just like other mobile games get money out of us?

Well that's easy: first, they make a great game that gets you hooked, and then, they only give you a minimum amount of lives or turns and you either have to wait to play, ask friends for lives (here's your social aspect - how to show your entire Facebook entourage that you spend hours playing a dumb game), or make you pay for them. Additionally, after each turn, you have to see a 5 second ad on either a product or another game form that same company. And if you click on it by mistake you're taken straight to a browser or to the app store.


Now, you probably think that if something is offered for free then most people wouldn't dare paying .99cents for 3 lives...well I think you're wrong. Candy Crush came out with a commercial! What? A TV spot for a phone game that's free? Doesn't it sound crazy? And there's more....Words With Friends actually made a board game out of the app game...I mean what happened to the good ol' Scrabble? Oh yah, it's the exact same thing except the new generation has never seen a Scrabble commercial but they sure have seen one fore Words With Friends.

So the trend this day is to take the physical and make it virtual..but what if we start doing the opposite? Words With Friends did it. I guess well have to see...