OddballGreg - What Makes A Game Addictive?

Image is a screenshot of Factorio, which is produced by a devoted team of developers based in Prague.

What makes a game addicting? If you're among the millions of gamers in the world at this point, then it's entirely possible that you've played some game or other that just seemed to maintain grip on your attention for a seemingly ridiculous amount of time. What exactly is it that causes that?

Time. It's not something most of us have a lot of usually. Between work, school, studies, hobbies, relationships, sleep, and whatever else tickles your fancy, finding time for everything we want to do can occasionally be a little difficult. Especially when you start playing certain games. We've all experienced it at one point or another I'm sure. You started playing Borderlands 2 with your best friends, you picked up Factorio for a steal, or downloaded Dwarf Fortress to find out what the zany, ASCII font craziness was all about, and before you knew it, you were 200 hours down on the game, and still begging for more while your exhausted body begged you to go to sleep. Considering it's 6 in the morning and you have work in 30 minutes... that may or may not have been a good thing. (Probably not.)

So how does it get to that point? And I'm not talking about the easy, default "because it's fun" answer that you're probably thinking right now either, I'm talking about the basis of that fun. What is it about these games that makes us sit and play them for far longer than is actually a good idea and still consider it fun? I will point out that what I'm about to talk about is mostly opinion and conjecture based on logical thought, so feel free to consider and offer your own causes or thoughts on the subjects down in the comments below.

Consider, for a moment, what it is that makes these games so incredibly fun and addictive. The basis of their gameplay. (I'm sorry, graphics do not make for an addictive game, Crysis is only cool the first time.) Factorio is a game about building a factory on an alien planet. Dwarf Fortress is about settling some forsaken location in the hopes of making what is likely to be a very short-lived home for your civilization and Borderlands 2 is about going on insane adventures, preferably with friends, while you loot and kill your way across an entire planet.

Now, you may be sitting there thinking: "but none of those have anything in common." 5 points to a house of your choice, since you're entirely correct. They don't have the same ideas, same gameplay, same appeal or same anything really. Which is why they do admittedly appeal to different kinds of people. There is no one fits all solution to making an addicting game, as people are inherently different with their tastes. However, these 3 games do have something about them that makes them addicting to people who enjoy their appeal.

Factorio appeals to a person's enjoyment of perfection, or at least the journey to it. It's extremely difficult to design an efficient factory in the game, and there is more than one way to go about doing, which can be influenced by the environment the player needs to deal with. Suffice to say, it's hard to run out of things to do in the game, yet every time you get the right combination of factories and smelters right, the game offers the satisfaction of running like a well oiled machine. It's hard not to play this game for hundreds of hours when your'e constantly thinking of new and creative solutions to  a fun problems. Some people would find all that thought somewhat arduous, but strange people like me enjoy it, so it's unsurprising that Factorio is a very popular and somewhat overplayed game. (Not that anyone's complaining.)

Then we have Dwarf Fortress. This game is insane quite frankly. What is it's appeal? That's a difficult question to answer when it has more than a few. Problem solving and efficient designs make an appearance as Dwarf Fortress's appeal as well, with the creation of efficiently designed fortresses being a point of pride for some. But what's perhaps more interesting about Dwarf Fortress is it's ideals for how a game should be played. First and foremost, there is not actually any way to win. Your fortress will inevitably end in disaster, either as a result of a "Catsplosion", "Tantrum Spiral", "Goblin Siege", or as it is so commonly referred to among the more veteran players: "Fun".

Catsplosion? Tantrum Spiral? What the hell? Precisely. This game is so full of ridiculous ways to lose, and seemingly absurd things that can happen, that it's impossible to not want to play again just to see what happens next. Some of my favorite stories include a soldier that wrestles a werewolf to the ground by grabbing it's teeth and biting it to pieces, an unfortunate colonist who's arms get ripped of by a giant badger 2 days after her arrival at the new fortress, a fortress filling up endlessly with particularly frisky cats to the point of crashing the game due to lack of RAM, and many, many more. My advice, if you want to laugh uncontrollably, I suggest both going here to read the EPIC tale of Boatmurdered, the most infamously messed up story of Dwarf Fortress I've ever heard with tales of murderous elephants that like besieging goblins, elf slaughter by lavaspill, a generation of cheese and death infatuated dwarves and a long list of fortress mayors who had no idea what they were doing. After that, watch the equally funny but slightly more tame playthroughs by my favorite YouTube commentator, Quill18, in which the earlier mentioned events, and many more, took place.

And then, of course, Borderlands 2. What's not appealing about this game? Endless loot ala Diablo. Check. Endless hordes of enemies to shoot ala Diablo. Check. Incredibly weird and just downright crazy yet very funny dialogue, jokes and wise cracks throughout the somewhat rather absurdly violent game. Check. Most importantly, it's about as much fun as you can have playing with friends. The crazy, over the top humor and action, combined with the unending want for better loot, strangely permeats the game and inspires equally absurd and hilarious commentary from the people playing it. Basically, this game unapologetically makes you act like a funny psychopath with your friends, which is about as much fun as the game itself is. It is essentially appealing because it makes people act strange and preys upon human greed for more. Not that I'm complaining. A good 100 hours later, I don't feel like my time was wasted in the least.

Remember how I said that these games didn't have anything in common? I may have left out one thing. The simple fact that they prey upon human vices in clever ways. Factorio and Dwarf Fortress prey upon the human search for perfection. We want the best, and these games abuse that want to make us keep looking for better and better ways to play them. The leveling system in Borderland does this as well to a fair extent, but Borderlands is more effective at preying upon the human need for acceptance. If you and your friends are all acting like idiot and laughing at over the top gunfights, you're connecting socially. Subconsciously, humans crave that connection, so it makes sense that you'd want to keep doing that.

Basically, what makes a game addictive? Manipulation of subconscious desires. (Phew... and I thought this would be a lighthearted article. If you're feeling a little down, here's a video of cats acting stupid, with my compliments.) They manipulate us into achieving goals that are hardcoded to give us an endorphin release in our brains, which we want more of, and thus come back to experience again. Which is, interestingly enough, the definition of addiction. So yes, games can be addictive, and are addictive for the same reason as anything else that is addictive. Because it makes you feel good.

In any case, that's all I've got for the subject. If you've got your own opinions or thoughts on the subject, then feel free to share them down in the comments below or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear from you guys. If you have friends who enjoy pondering the human mind and games, then consider sharing this article with them too. They may appreciate the interesting topic to ponder. If you yourself would like to read more interesting articles like this one, perhaps consider liking the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or following us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left so that you can get the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this article; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy gaming my friends.

JovailJman - Motorcycles

Because adventure bikes are awesome for road trips.

Riding is such a very fun and entertaining activity. You see so many places, traffic is no problem, and it is free. Bikes are very different compared to cars, so lets talk about that.

The way you control a bike, (motorbike) is very different compared to a car. The common bike will have the rear brakes at the right foot, while the front brakes are on the right handle along with the start switch, kill switch and accelerator. The gears are at the left foot while the indicators, hooter, switch for the brights and clutch are all on the left handle. To turn, most think that you just turn the handle bars and it will turn, but since a bike has 2 wheels, you cannot just turn safely. You have to lean into the turn, wherein the force is what turns you way more then what you do with the wheel. Once you start learning to ride, counter steering is a very effective thing that you just seem to do after riding it for a bit, despite the concept being really strange.

Some of the pros for using a bike over the general car, is that the fuel consumption is about half or less that of cars. This saves so much on fuel, but just like a car, all bikes will have different consumption rates, with bigger engines it is more likely the fuel consumption will be high, but how you drive factors as well. You can slip through traffic when it is going slow, (Which is a dream, believe me), but doing this does tend to aggravate some drivers, as they cannot do it and feel you shouldn't either, but what they do not realize is that if all the bikes did not slip through, then the traffic jam will be just a little bit worse. When going in the middle of 2 lanes, it is called split laneing, and is something almost no beginner does when still learning all the components to riding safely.

There are some cons though as well, the riding gear being one of them. To ride safely, you must legally wear a helmet, but it is recommended that you wear way more than that. You should wear a jacket that has padding around the elbows and back, gloves with padding around the bottom of the palms, pants that are padded around the knees and boots made from leather that goes past your ankle. There are other things that you can wear to increase your protection as well which is advisable as all the protection is for another con, and that is safety. Since bikes are so open, if you have an accident, there are no airbags to cushion your impact, and there is no shell to stop you from sliding on the road, so if you crash with no protection, you can kiss your posterior goodbye in most cases. Rain is another problem. You get very, very wet...  and riding is horrible, your back tire can slip out very easily, and since the bike is so light, braking can cause the tires to slip as well, due to the low traction.

Now you also have different types of bikes for different purposes:
 Superbikes - These are the bikes that are go really fast, and have the most aerodynamic shape.
Cruisers - These are for the longer travels and are made for comfort and a bit for looks. (this includes Harley Davidsons)
GS - Tthese are semi-off road bikes for trips to go camping out in the middle of nowhere, but have really comfortable seats for the journey. They usually have very flat seats and are often used for delivery of goods.
There are, of course, many more styles and types of bike, all of which have their own unique challenges to riding, and uses that make them all unique and interesting.

Anyways, do you have any biking stories that you would like to share, or would you like to hear any of mine, please let us know down in the comments or on Facebook/Twitter, as we here at TCSA love to hear from you. Do you have any biking buddies, or have friends that are thinking of learning how to bike, please share this with them, as I am sure they would find something of interest. Also, if you would like to see more posts like this as they come out? If so, then please consider liking us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post, and I hope you have/had a really awesome day. I shall write again overmorrow.

Ride safe mates.