Loss Aversion and the Crackdown 2 Demo

One of the first articles I wrote for this site was about how to use loss aversion to get people to buy Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network games. The idea was that during the demo for the game you award people achievements or trophies, then threaten to take them away unless they buy the…

Loss Aversion, Achievements, and Trial Conversions

How could publishers get way more people to buy an Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network game after trying the trial version? Let me glue on my goatee and practice my maniacal laugh a few times and then I’ll tell you my idea. But first, let me ask you a couple of hypothetical questions made…

Conan the Loss Averse Barbarian

I wrote just the other day about how loss aversion could be used to increase conversion rates on trial games. You can read that article for more details and a neat experiment illustrating the effect, but the gist of it is that people hate to lose things more than they like to gain them. Losing…

Endowed Progress Effect and Game Quests

Imagine that two people, Kim and Carlos, notice that their cars are filthy and both go to the same car wash to make things right. With their wash they each receive a special card that lets them earn a free car wash if they get the card stamped enough times during future visits. Kim’s card…

APB: All Points Bulletin or Aggregated Payment Bias? Both.

Back in April of this year, Realtime Worlds announced the pricing model for its soon to be released MMO, All Points Bulletin, or “APB” as the cool kids say. A lot of people were looking forward to the futuristic cops vs. robbers game, but the announcement about the pricing elicited jeers from a lot of…

Et Cetera, February 2010

And now for some things that aren’t worth a post by themselves, but which I can dump together. ONE: Hey, did you know that some of the content here is being syndicated by Gamasutra.com and GameSetWatch? You can see my article on loss aversion here, and new stuff will appear bi-weekly. They actually want me…

Sunk Costs, Pre-Orders, and Game Over

Let’s say you’re compelled to pre-order a game, maybe because the cashier at GameStop got you in a head lock and wouldn’t let you out until you agreed to. So you put down $10 towards Game A and go home, vowing to work out more so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. Weeks later…

The Psychology of Sony’s Playstation Move Announcement

Last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or “E3” if you’re in a hurry) the two big stories for console makers were 3D and new motion controllers. As I watched Sony’s press conference where they pitched the Playstation Move something struck me about the way that they presented the pricing for the product. Peter Dille,…