Psychological components of Petville?

Question

Can someone (preferably someone with a background in psychology) tell me what makes a game like Petville (Facebook game) appealing?

I know there must be certain quantifiable factors that a game like this must be playing on to get its audience to continue coming back, but I would like to get a professional outlook if possible.

Asked by Nekoyoubi Games

Answer

I don't play Petville, but it is another Zynga game. Zynga also created Farmville, the infamously "most popular" game on Facebook (which I also do not play) and CafeWorld (which I do play, despite myself). The idea behind Zynga's games, and, ironically, the stack sites, is leveling. You keep playing because you start to feel like you have to reach the next level. These games operate on our needs to complete tasks (no matter how meaningless they are) and be better than other people.

We ask and answer questions on the stack sites for completely arbitrary "reputation" and "badges". These are not physical things, and they have no monetary value. Yet, we all want them and work to get them.

Another aspect of Zynga games is time-delay. There's only so much you can do in a single sitting, so you keep coming back each day to complete the latter part of your task. In Cafe World, it's all about cooking. You start a dish cooking and have to come back later to serve it. If you wait too long, the dish will spoil and you lose all the potential experience and "coins" from your customers.

Zynga games also have no real skill requirements. If you can move and click a mouse, you can play. So, it's very easy to get started. The challenges of the games typically revolve around choosing actions that will reap the greatest yield based on when you can return to play again.

The infectious nature of Zynga games (and most Facebook games) is not really part of this question, but I will add that it's usually based on giving the players rewards for sending requests to all of their Facebook friends to participate in the game in some way as well.

Answered by Artemis

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