Brandwashed (13 page)

Nearly nine thousand miles away, in Perth, Australia, a fifteen-year-old boy sits by himself in a dark room, playing a game called RuneScape, one of the most popular fantasy
online games in the world, for up to sixteen hours a day. A community college student, bright and formerly (before he discovered video games, that is) outdoorsy and sports-mad, the boy hasn’t attended classes in over two months, fooling his parents by dressing each morning in his school uniform, then changing back into his bathrobe after his mother leaves for work.

“He displays all the characteristics of a heroin addict,” his father later said. “You haven’t got someone putting a needle in their arm and having a high, but you’ve got all the telltale collateral damage of a heroin addict: withdrawal from his family, withdrawal from his friends, lies to cover his addiction. He’ll do anything.”
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While these are extreme cases, the point is that games can be extraordinarily addictive. Whether we’re playing against our friends, a stranger in Tokyo, or even ourselves, and whether the objective is to beat the high score, unlock the most “badges,” or build the biggest virtual farm, games are deliberately designed to be hard to quit; according to
Gamer Segmentation Report 2010
, a trade publication, “extreme gamers” spend roughly two full days a week playing video games,
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and according to a recent Harris Interactive survey, the average eight- to twelve-year-old plays fourteen hours of video games per week, while 8.5 percent of gamers between the ages of eight and eighteen can be classified as “pathological, or clinically ‘addicted’ to video games.”
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So I suppose it shouldn’t come as a huge shock that marketers and advertisers have picked up on this and, taking a page from the gaming playbook, are using games and gamelike tactics to persuade us to buy.

Before we look at how they do this, we should first ask, Are games truly addictive, in the strictest sense of the word? After all, as we’ve seen, a true addiction is physiological, rewiring our brain in such a way that we need more and more of that substance or behavior to release the amount of
dopamine needed to satisfy our craving or deliver that “high.” Does playing a video or online game really qualify? Well, according to a 1999 study, our brains do respond to game playing in much the same way they do to drugs, alcohol, and fatty foods—by releasing more pleasure-inducing dopamine.
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In fact, the study found that any kind of repetitive activity that becomes increasingly more difficult to carry out—which is, as any gamer knows, the key to a successful game—increases the amount of dopamine in our brains. A new study in the
Journal of Neuroscience
shows that we actually get a surge of dopamine from playing games that we feel we’ve almost won but have lost by a small margin. When we play games (or enter
online auctions, something we’ll read more about in a minute), the authors of the study explain, near-miss outcomes stimulate the brain’s reward system, particularly those regions known as the ventral striatum and the anterior insula—the same thing happens when we gamble. “These brain regions are also linked to learning, meaning our brains may be duped into believing we’re gathering new information with each near miss.”
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And according to another study, games such as World of Warcraft “are
designed to be filled with challenges that deliver powerfully articulated rewards, and seem to be engineered specifically to get players’ dopaminergic pathways (pathways that mediate interest, focus and reward) activated and resonating.”
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But this means a lot more for companies and marketers than spiking sales of PlayStations and Wiis. Because as clever marketers have discovered, when games are designed the right way, repeated playing doesn’t only hook us on that game itself; it can actually rewire our brains to addict us to
the act of buying and shopping
.

T
hat’s right, marketers are using games to make shopping addicts out of us, and like any brandwashing strategy, it starts at a very tender young age. According to one study, “When habitual gaming teaches the brain to rewire its reward mechanism, the brain changes its motivation stimulus. The brain releases dopamine to reward the individual for a beneficial activity—such as natural habits like eating [or] sex … or habits like injecting a chemical substance, or participating in a stimulating behavior like gambling or Internet shopping.”
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Take
Club Penguin, a multiplayer online virtual world that uses cute and cuddly penguins as avatars and is designed for children aged six to fourteen (though most of its users are on the younger end). Club Penguin advertises itself to parents as a “safe space”—a way to keep kids away from the seedy underbelly of the Internet (the site is password protected, there are online moderators, and any inappropriate language is blocked via a sophisticated filtration system). What’s more, joining is free! In fact, Club Penguin actually
gives
its mini-shopaholics what more or less amounts to their very first credit card: “virtual coins” they are encouraged to spend freely on virtual things.

The “free money” lasts until the moment the children realize their penguins have to eat. And that they need an igloo over their heads. And that their igloos need furniture and decorations! That their penguins need clothing! And toys! And that penguins sometimes get lonely and need their own pets (known on the site as “puffles”). And so on. Once
these kids get going, you’d be amazed at how many things they realize their virtual penguins (i.e.,
they
) need. But wait, it turns out children can’t spend their virtual coins unless they’re full-fledged members of the club.

No big deal; Club Penguin costs only $5.95 a month! If you’re a parent, that’s not so bad, right? A small price to keep your children away from online pornography and YouTube (and get some peace and quiet). But hold on, what happens when the free coins run out? Your child can earn more . . . by playing. The more you earn, the more you can buy. The more you buy, the more you want to earn. The site may be keeping kids relatively safe, but it’s also schooling them in the pain and pleasures of compulsive shopping.

Of course, there are games like this for grown-ups, too, like the highly addictive
Facebook game
Mafia Wars, which has so far grossed over $100 million and, as of August 2010, had 45.5 million active monthly accounts. Here, completing missions and “jobs”—like “icing” an enemy or unseating a “boss” or pulling off a successful heist—wins you cash and “experience points.” The more points you win, the more levels magically unlock, keeping you in the never-ending pursuit of higher and higher highs and bigger and better rewards.

Then, of course, there’s Mafia Wars’ equally addictive cousin,
FarmVille, another virtual-world phenomenon that, as of June 2010, was the most popular game on Facebook, with over 61.6 million active users and over 24.1 million fans. At time of writing, 20 million players checked into the game daily, according to the
New York Times
.
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The structure of the game is more or less the same, only here, you win cash and unlock levels through activities like planting pumpkins, picking apples, and harvesting chicken eggs (though of course, as with Mafia Wars, you can also purchase virtual currency with real dollars). And the more levels you unlock, the bigger and better things you can buy; one self-proclaimed FarmVille addict once told me (and I swear, I saw stars in her eyes) that it was her “dream in life” to someday be able to afford what is apparently the most coveted purchase in this virtual world: the FarmVille Villa (priced at, in case you’re wondering, one million FarmVille coins). Sure, it may sound monumentally tedious, but it is in fact utterly mesmerizing. So much so that today, according to Carnegie Mellon professor and game
designer Jesse Schell, at the time of writing there were far more FarmVille members on Facebook than there were Twitter accounts,
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and according to a new Nielsen report, social networks and online games eat up roughly a third of our Internet time.
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Of course, in addition to sending us shots of dopamine every time we buy a new tractor or renovate our barn, these games are also hard at work persuading us to buy real-world things. Let’s not forget that while we’re racking up all those “experience” points in pursuit of that dopamine high, we’re also being exposed to a whole lot of targeted advertising. In fact,
Zynga, the parent company that publishes both
Mafia Wars and FarmVille, got into hot water in 2009 for its direct-marketing program that invited users to amass virtual currency in exchange for clicking on various offers, filling out surveys, and downloading applications (a Mother’s Day ad campaign in which FarmVille players could earn virtual currency if they clicked on an offer promising that they would send someone real flowers).
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And in 2010, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that ten popular Facebook applications, including FarmVille, may have been passing on users’ personal information to marketing companies.
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It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Facebook itself can be just as addictive as the games people play on it. I’ve spoken to teenagers and college-aged men and women who have attempted to go off the site, or rather, tried to take a break from it during, say, final exams. They can’t. For most users, particularly adolescents, it’s all or nothing. Like alcoholics who can trust themselves not to drink only by emptying the liquor cabinet, they find they can trust themselves not to log on only if they deactivate their accounts. Believe it or not, part of the reason the whole Facebook experience is so addictive is that it’s deliberately designed to be that way. According to
Time
magazine, Facebook has intentionally created what it calls “aha moments,” which reporter Dan Fletcher describes as “an observable emotional connection, like stumbling on the profile of a long-lost friend from grade school, seeing a picture of a newborn niece for the first time, or catching up with an ex-boyfriend.”

And the company knows exactly how many of these moments users must have before they are good and truly hooked (though the site will
not divulge the magic number, at least publicly). How do they know? “Because they’ve videotaped the expressions of test users as they navigate the site for the first time,” says Fletcher.
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Last but not least there’s
Foursquare, in which users earn points and badges by “checking in” at bars, stores, and restaurants and compete viciously for “mayorship” of their most-frequented establishments (giving those establishments free advertising in the process). Foursquare is hailed as the next big thing in
social media (at the time of writing, there were some 2.5 million users), and I’ve spoken to aficionados who describe it as being “like a drug” and admit to feeling uneasy and on edge if they go somewhere and fail to “check in.” A recent
New York Times
article reveals the extent of players’ obsession with the game, describing one Philadelphia man who was competing with his girlfriend over mayorship of
her own home
and another man who became so obsessed with gaining mayorship of an alley (yes, an alley) that he developed a computer program that helped him cheat by automatically checking him in to the alley every day at 1:23 p.m. To explain this baffling phenomenon, the article quotes Alexander R. Galloway, an associate professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, who noted that “Foursquare taps into our urge to win when placed in a competitive environment, especially in front of our peers” and that “Foursquare turns spaces into a game, and part of its allure is the gamelike aspect.”
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A similar game is
SCVNGR, an app you can download to your iPhone or BlackBerry (and some five hundred thousand users already have). As with Foursquare, you earn points and unlock badges by telling friends where you are and what you’re up to. But taking the game one step further, you also earn points for completing bizarre challenges. Want four points? Fold the aluminum in which your burrito was served into an origami bird! According to
FastCompany
, SCVNGR is even testing out a partnership with Citibank to roll out a card that is “a game itself, with two buttons and tiny lights that allow users to choose at checkout whether to pay with credit or rewards points.”
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Lately, Web sites that make a game out of real-life shopping are cropping up all over. I’m talking about social “flash shopping” sites like Gilt, HauteLook, Rue La La, Woot, and
ideeli, which hold “limited time
only” sales of items from top luxury designers. If you visit one of these sites in the next twenty minutes, the breathless e-mail in your in-box might say that you’ll get 75 percent off a Coach handbag or a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses. The thrill of the hunt! The joy of discovery! The satisfaction of scoring a deal! How could that not be addicting? These sites are increasingly gaining traction, too. At the time of writing, Gilt had two million members,
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and according to Hitwise data tracker, HauteLook’s online market share grew 750 percent in 2010, while Gilt Groupe and Rue La La grew their shares by 200 percent and 160 percent respectively.
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So how can a computer game or gambling addiction migrate over into a shopping addiction? Very simple: Once we shut down one dopamine supply, we desperately, and unconsciously, seek another source of the feel-good chemical. In short, once we’ve activated addiction in our brains, it stays with us forever.

Groupon (an amalgam of “group” and “coupon”) is a similar and equally ingenious gamelike site that is catching on fast, with, at time of writing, a staggering four million members and a rumored market value of $15 billion.
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As most people know, Groupon delivers daily specials in your city via an e-mail offering, for example, an 82 percent discount for a one-month membership at Gymboree. But hurry. The deal will take place only if, say, 150 members take advantage of it before time runs out.