That a mere five minutes of virtual role-play as either hero or villain was enough to cause people to change their behaviour-to reward or punish anonymous strangers-is surprising enough. Observers’ behaviour was much less affected by their experience: those merely trying to take the perspective of villains poured less chilli than those playing them, while those doing likewise for heroes poured less chocolate. In a further study, the researchers tested whether actually playing the game for five minutes produced different results from simply “observing” it-viewers were told to watch a game demonstration for five minutes and “put themselves in the shoes” of either hero or villain. The degree to which each participant identified with their avatar appeared irrelevant to the outcome-in fact most didn’t strongly identify with their online character. Neutral avatars seemed conflicted, but on balance handed out a little more chocolate.
Heroes, meanwhile, poured almost twice as much chocolate. The researchers found that participants who had had spent their five minutes as villains poured about twice as much chilli sauce as those who played a hero.
In the “food additive” test, the same participants were instructed to taste both chocolate and chilli sauce, then pour an unspecified amount of one or the other into a bowl for a (fictional) future participant-who, they were told, would have to eat all of what was provided. They then battled enemies as their avatar for five minutes, after which they were asked to rate how closely they identified with their online character. In the first, participants were randomly assigned an avatar: either a good guy (Superman), bad guy (Voldemort) or neutral character. To find out, 194 participants were told they would be taking part in two unrelated experiments: one a test of online-game usability, the other a blind taste test of food additives. Gunwoo Yoon and Patrick Vargas, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, asked a very different question: would a paltry five minutes of immersive gaming promote prosocial or antisocial actions in everyday behaviour? All this, however, largely applies to long-term (that is, addicted) gamers. Online superheroes, then, are more likely to perform good deeds in real life villains, less likely. The heroic or villainous characters that gamers adopt as online avatars have long been known to affect how they feel about themselves and how they behave offline. Research published in the journal Psychological Science finds that avatar-based games can do so even in the brief “few minutes” that Mr Dong had hoped his own game would occupy people. More sophisticated online games, however, don’t seem to need hours or days to influence people’s real-life behaviours. Many grew increasingly angry with their own feeble scores, and with Mr Dong (some even threatened to kill him for making the game so hard). Its engaging mix of simplicity and difficulty kept players hooked for hours and even days on end. “I just wanted to create a game that people could enjoy for a few minutes.”Ī quick look at reviews suggests that Mr Dong was right about his game’s addictiveness. “It was just too addictive,” he finally told the Wall Street Journal. But Mr Dong, who has rejected almost all requests for interviews, believed Flappy Bird needed its wings clipped.
Flappy Bird had swiftly become the most downloaded game on both iPhones and Android phones, and was making some $50,000 a day in advertising revenues-the kind of success most game developers can barely envisage.
WHEN Dong Nguyen, a Vietnamese software whizz, pulled his frustratingly enjoyable game “Flappy Bird” from mobile app stores last Sunday, it left both players and industry insiders scratching their heads.