Penetrating Peggle's Appeal

Keane Ng

New member
Sep 11, 2008
5,892
0
0
Penetrating Peggle's Appeal



Why do both hardcore and casual gamers alike love the peg popping action of PopCap [http://www.popcap.com/]'s Peggle so much? It might have to do with luck, or, rather, the lack thereof.

Why exactly Peggle [http://www.popcap.com/games/peggle-nights] is so damn addictive is a worthy question in and of itself, but just as intriguing is the mystery of how a game so clearly aimed at casual gamers has gained such a strong following among the hardcore. Your mom likes Peggle. That guy you know who talks about "Prestiges" in Call of Duty loves Peggle, probably more than your mom. Seems weird, doesn't it?

Wired's Clive Thompson investigated [http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2009/03/gamesfrontiers_0309] this phenomenon, and the results are fairly fascinating. Turns out PopCap themselves have put a decent amount of thought into figuring out why such different groups of people like this game so much. They actually see Peggle as being bigger with hardcores than casuals. This might be because the crazy psychedelic colors scare off casuals or because the "passive" nature of the game, which only requires you to move your mouse and click every so often, doesn't have the same non-stop click-fest appeal of something like Solitaire or Bejeweled.

PopCap vice president Greg Canessa has another theory, though. He thinks it has to do with luck, or, at least, how we perceive it. For casual gamers, he thinks, winning in Peggle is too luck-based: you just shoot the ball and hope for the best. Conversely, it's the exact opposite for hardcore gamers, who see the game as a complex system of cause-and-effect.

"They'll be sitting there thinking, 'Oh, if I bounce the ball off that peg it'll hit this other peg and jump over here, where it'll take out two other colored pegs," Canessa said.

It's not just that hardcore gamers are seeing complex systems, there's actually a surprising amount of thought and analysis that goes into the making of each morsel of these bite-sized games as addictive as possible. PopCap titles are full of "non-intuitive little things that just work with gamer psychology for some reason," like raising the pitch for successive sound cues during combos or never awarding point increments higher than ten, the developer revealed in an interview [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/01/30/rps-interview-popcap-on-casual-peggle-valve/] with Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

For Thompson, the crowning irony is that "casual players are misperceiving the role of luck in the game." He points out the example of Bejeweled, a game that's actually more luck-based than Peggle but also far more popular among the casual gamers who supposedly dislike Peggle because there's too much chance involved.

"Maybe this is another way that hard-core and soft-core gamers are psychologically different," Thompson ponders. "When you look at a game -- hell, maybe when you look at life -- do you see everything governed by chance and fate? Or are things up to you?"

Peggle. It's like, deep, man.

[Via Offworld [http://www.offworld.com/2009/03/on-peggles-peculiar-appeal.html]]


Permalink
 

HobbesMkii

Hold Me Closer Tony Danza
Jun 7, 2008
856
0
0
I sense a book title coming on here... How about Philosophy of PopCap or The Zen of Peggle?
 

FistsOfTinsel

New member
Jun 23, 2008
83
0
0
Peggle is addictive, but I hate myself when I'm done playing it - I feel like I've wasted my life more than any other game experience. As for luck, there is certainly skill in learning how to aim & time shots, but as The AV Club said in their review, "No mortal intellect could possibly calculate the permutations of each launched ball." (http://www.avclub.com/articles/peggle,7862/). You're lucky if you can predict where the ball will be two bounces from launch, maybe less on the levels with moving elements; the best you can hope for is a kind of probabilistic approach, hoping that your successes will ultimately counteract your inevitable failures.
 

BeeRye

New member
Mar 4, 2009
327
0
0
Perhaps it has such an appeal to hardcore types because they want to believe they can completely control the ball and leave nearly nothing to chance. For me it's the challenges that make it, especially the way one good or bad shot can set you up for the big score or ruin your run on decathlon on the final level.
 

reaper_2k9

Keeper of the Beer
Oct 22, 2008
493
0
0
I have yet to fall into the clutches of Peggle but the more I hear and see of it the more I want to play it....must...resist....arghhh!!
 

grinklehi

New member
Sep 10, 2008
117
0
0
I have only played the demo for classic Peggle and the Peggle Extreme that came with my copy of the Orange Box, and what little I played has had me pining for more, but that's gonna have to wait till the next paycheck I guess. :( However, it appealed to me as more of a mind-wash that I can use to A) Forget whatever I just saw, or B) Waste a perfectly good sunny day inside, then as a complex physics simulator, so maybe I haven't caught Peggle Fever yet, so there might still be hope for me.
 

lordxar3

New member
Nov 25, 2008
4
0
0
I have played this game at PopCap before and I still don't see the appeal. It's fun for about 10 minutes and then I am ready to move onto something else. Just like all of PopCaps games.