Paper-machine’s answer is right on target. The first example of a casual game built on psychological addiction tricks to entrap the masses that comes to mind would be Farmville.
The tricks are simple enough. The crops you grow can wither and die if you don’t return to them on time, for example, there are a few articles going into more detail about how this uses people’s emotional fear of loss to help ensure that they are back by the set time to save their crops.
Over time, people also get so invested in the farm, both in measures of time and real money spent on virtual items that they can’t quit easily, especially with all their friends sending them gifts or messages related to the game and encouraging you to send something back.
People also start competing with each other, fueling the urges to stay there and try to have a nicer farm than those around you.
However, even with all these tricks the game itself feels more like a chore than like a game and is not really very interesting.
This is not to say that simple games that really have effort put into them can’t be fun or have hidden beauties (Touhou is simple enough to get into) or that all complicated games or games heavy on math are good (FATAL was complex...or so it seemed looking at the manual)...
Quick Edit: I wouldn’t call more complex games “hardcore”, a game can have deep mechanics to some extent while also making them very intuitive. I don’t really feel it would be adequate to call -any- game “hardcore” myself, I feel some better word might be more appropiate depending on what kind of game it is.
A game with simple gameplay can still have a detailed lore and world (World of Warcraft?) and a dificult game can have a simple gameplay and story too (Classic Megaman?). I don’t think it would be good to use the same label for all of them.
Paper-machine’s answer is right on target. The first example of a casual game built on psychological addiction tricks to entrap the masses that comes to mind would be Farmville.
The tricks are simple enough. The crops you grow can wither and die if you don’t return to them on time, for example, there are a few articles going into more detail about how this uses people’s emotional fear of loss to help ensure that they are back by the set time to save their crops.
Over time, people also get so invested in the farm, both in measures of time and real money spent on virtual items that they can’t quit easily, especially with all their friends sending them gifts or messages related to the game and encouraging you to send something back.
People also start competing with each other, fueling the urges to stay there and try to have a nicer farm than those around you.
However, even with all these tricks the game itself feels more like a chore than like a game and is not really very interesting.
This is not to say that simple games that really have effort put into them can’t be fun or have hidden beauties (Touhou is simple enough to get into) or that all complicated games or games heavy on math are good (FATAL was complex...or so it seemed looking at the manual)...
Quick Edit: I wouldn’t call more complex games “hardcore”, a game can have deep mechanics to some extent while also making them very intuitive. I don’t really feel it would be adequate to call -any- game “hardcore” myself, I feel some better word might be more appropiate depending on what kind of game it is.
A game with simple gameplay can still have a detailed lore and world (World of Warcraft?) and a dificult game can have a simple gameplay and story too (Classic Megaman?). I don’t think it would be good to use the same label for all of them.