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Introduction
Gamers’ demands, expectations and willingness to spend money on video games have changed profoundly from the days of buying cardboard boxes filled with disks and manuals in a store. We now live in an age of stunning free-to-play games integrated as apps in your social media platform or smartphone. The video game industry is finding new ways to earn money, advertise and persuade players to commit to playing their games for hours when there is a jungle of distractions just a mouse-click away. On top of this, potential gamers increasingly expect to constantly multi-task between windows and screens, instantly load any application without installation and not to leave the web browser except for firing up an app on the smartphone or tablet (Bothun et al., 2012; Radwanick and Aquino, 2011). Game companies are facing a reality where their old marketing strategies may not work anymore and the prospects of making their game stick out and make any form of profit is dwindling. How can game companies survive this climate, and how is it possible that we still have very simple yet tremendously successful games like Angry Birds, Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga? The answers may lie in psychology: the gamers’ psychology and the game companies’ implicit or explicit exploitation thereof. The purpose of this paper is threefold:
to outline some important principles, findings and practices from behavioral psychology and behavioral economics that can be exploited in video game design;
to discuss their ethical justifiability; and
to propose constructive ways in which to counteract the most unethical forms of exploitation.
The use of psychology in video games
According to Mike Ambinder, Senior Experimental Psychologist at game developer company Valve, “More and more companies are starting to see the value in hiring psychologists or folks with a background in psychology” (Clay, 2012, p. 16). Indeed, the American Psychological Association now lists “video game psychology” as a “hot career”, stating that game companies regularly hire psychologists to consult on game design and conduct research on player experiences (Clay, 2012). If it is the case that psychologists increasingly assist game developers in game design, then this is good news insofar as psychological tools, findings and principles are used to create a more enjoyable and...