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Engaging Casual Games That Frustrate You: An Exploration on Understanding Engaging Frustrating Casual Games

This paper is an exploration on why is it possible to have gameplay experiences that are perceived to be simultane-ously engaging and frustrating. Particularly, the paper leverages psychological theories on rewards, frustration, and its neurobiology. In the paper (1) distinct types of (posi-tive) frustration are informally classiﬁed. (2) The neurobi-ology of rewards is explained in the casual gaming context, in combination with the idea that neurobiologically wanting something does not imply liking it. (3) The game-design principles of slot machines are stated in the context of ad-diction, and linked to design principles in casual games. (4) The previous perspectives are synthesised into a case study in which the casual game Flappy Bird is analysed through the lens of neurobiology and ﬁndings from research on cog-nitive biases. Derived from the presented perspectives and the investigated psychological theories, we suggest that a potent explanation for some games being perceived as simul-taneously engaging and frustrating, is a (purposely?) disso-ciated neural activation of the liking- and wanting-pathways. That is, the current state of psychological literature suggests that in engaging frustrating casual games, the neurobiolog-ical conditions may be created in which, informally speak-ing, the dopaminergic wanting-pathways are being stimu-lated (e.g., via operant conditioning and the eﬀects of near misses), while the liking-pathways are not being stimulated. We discuss that such behavioural conditioning may be en-forced via several important cognitive biases. Indeed, this calls for drawing another parallel between drug addiction, and play behaviour in which liking may be barely exhibited (cf. [16, 38, 40]).