Do you know what I hate?

I hate addictive games… This might strike you as odd, but it is seriously a pain in the assembler.

Games like World of Warcraft is extremely addictive. I just cannot stop playing it. I luckily managed to take a break from it to finish Roach Toaster 2, but I will most likely continuing succumbing to it after Roach Toaster 2’s completion.
Why do I hate it? It keeps me from making my games and just being generally productive.

This leads to moral issues on my (developer’s) side. Do I really want to create an addictive game that will eat the soul of my players? Do I want them to relinquish their social lives and life for my game/s?
OF COURSE!

With this in mind, I have assembled a very short list of things to make your game MORE ADDICTIVE:

1.) Put in a “what if” factor:

This means that if a player did something wrong, ie die or lose the level, he should have the thought of “what if I did something different?”. Of course, to achieve this, the gameplay should be siphoned into smaller section, ie shorter levels, since having a big level with lots of variables, will not induce the “what if” factor, simply because the player wouldn’t completely know what caused him to really fail… Was it the bats at the start of the level? Or the ogres near the middle?

2.) Give them Candy! Lots of it!

If your core gameplay is solid and challenging, you shouldn’t stop giving the player rewards that does not necesarilly affect the gameplay! With this I mean, meta-rewards like an item that is nearly the same as the item you currently have, ie.

Item 1 has +7 Agility and +8 Stamina.

Give the player a reward of an item of +8 Agility and +7 stamina. The player will still be stoked because he received something!

Well, that covers my super-short list. I have to leave now, since I am addicted to (ADD GAME NAME).