"To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game."<p>A while back when I was working on a roguelike (i.e. dungeon crawl RPG) I stumbled onto the same realization: assured incremental improvement + random chance for something awesome = addictive gameplay.<p>This is how almost every RPG works at its core: every battle ends with a little guaranteed experience and gold plus a small random chance of an awesome loot drop.
Very interesting, it's the same mechanism behind email/Twitter addiction: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addiction" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addic...</a>
I think this article is ridiculous.<p>"The biggest thing that unequivocally separates social gaming from gambling is that the players have no ability to tangibly recoup the money put into the game."<p>Oh you mean like the video games I used to play in arcades? Like Gauntlet, which was one of the first quarter suckers? How many days did I go without a lunch so that I could play Spyhunter, Elevator Action, or Gauntlet? But I had fun. That's the whole point of gaming, isn't it?<p>When you buy a video game like Doom, Call of Duty, etc, aren't those same elements present? The only difference is that there is a front-loaded payment as opposed to something like Farmville where there are micropayments, which, by the way, you don't even have to pay if you don't want to!!<p>The comparison to gambling is a complete stretch. Sure they may use similar tactics, but so what? There's no gambling element in the sense that there there is risk vs reward. That's like saying that in Plants Vs. Zombies, when I buy a "mystery plant" for my zen garden, it's some form of gambling. It's not!<p>With games like Farmville, you are paying to play, like old school arcades. To compare "social" gaming to gambling is just wrong. (Even the term "social" gaming to Farmville is misplaced, there's nothing social about it except the ability to visit other people's farms. Nothing about the game is enhanced via the social aspect.)