Psychological Facets of Users’ Mobile Gaming Motivation

Game is a fundamental element of human’s life. Latest psychological studies have proved that game it not just what small kids do with their toys while the parents are busy. Game is an important cultural mechanism helping pass experience between generations and orientate in the world. By winning contests, humans learn how to behave in their environment and find its values, beliefs and conduct patterns. But even with they’ve adult, people continue playing psychological games by performing roles in their private and social life.

However, game has received one more essential sense recently. It has become not a way to adjust to the world around us and to act there, but instead to escape from it. More and more people replace their real needs, achievements, friends, and even Stickman Parkour Skyland lives by virtual ones and disappear in game industrys. This phenomenon called game reliance is widely discussed; and psychologists want to explain and to overcome it. That article uses some link between these studies and has a nearer look at psychological facets of people’s gaming motivation. It considers what basic human needs can be transferred in your neighborhood of virtual games and satisfied there.

The particular topic of this article is mobile games. It ought to be pointed out that the situation with mobile gaming is not as serious as with computer gaming. People don’t tend to spend long time with their touch screen phones, and it’s really good so. That’s why this article won’t instruct people how to make a “bomb” obtaining gamers from their families. It should rather be a guideline for mobile software developers to help them create an involving and exciting product being able to “hook” users.

Need for achievement.

One of the most significant temptations of a game is giving usual people the likelihood to become anyone they want to. The opportunities of game plot and its characters are endless, and the likelihood qualifying measure is only optional. So, an unremarkable manager returns, turns his PC on, starts the game — and becomes an incredible god in a fantastic universe. The longer he plays the more skills, experience and points he gets; and these rewards are highly valuable for him. A game gives its player a chance to become something else, a better, more important person, and to are more successful than he possibly is in its real life. Achievements in a mobile game are more “salient” than in real life: they can be made more easily and quickly than in reality; and their results are much more visual (unfortunately, no one receives golden coins or stars after having performed something well in his real life). This attractive process of gathering game achievements may very well be as a kind of substitute for real life self-development.

Why is this aspect important for a mobile software developer? By creating a game, he should reward the user for his progress nicely. Stars, coins, additional resources, bonus levels etc. make players feel their success, enjoy it — and come back to the game again and again in order to refresh these feelings.

Need for respect.

Being respected and appreciated by other people is an important side of people’s social life. Playing alone is good. Playing with other people, demonstrate achievements to them, win different competitive events and being shown admiration for and regarded by other players is just perfect. Winning feels especially good. There are two main kinds of competitive events in mobile games: direct and roundabout. In a direct competition, players fight with online adversaries, or play matches against online opponents face-to-face. In an roundabout competition, the game is completed in a single-player-mode, but there are leader boards showing the names of the most effective players. In that way, a person can always estimate his game success and compare it to the progress of his friends.

But even apart from any competitive events, free online games use a significant social side by creating virtual communities. Being part of a clan or detachment evokes a strong feeling of owed and cooperation. When we do something for cause, perform our are very effective, and contribute to the prosperity by this, we are respected and appreciated.

Need for knowledge.

Learning new things is cool. It doesn’t mean that a mobile game should immediately be a side of school on users’ touch screen phones. But gathering new experience, finding out exciting facts, discovering a foreign world, or exploring an interesting topic is fun. Being thirsty for knowledge has always been pushing the human race forward; it is in the human nature. That’s why the process of resolving problems and vague ideas and any other kind of intelligent activity can be an important source of gaming motivation.