Self-control in casual games: The relationship between Candy Crush Saga™ players’ in-app purchases and self-control

Casual Games and free-to-play games have recently rapidly increased in popularity, perhaps in part because of the success of in-app purchases and micro-transactions as an economic model. While these games are often touted for their success in the gaming market, the effect on players when faced with such frequent purchasing decisions in-game is not well-studied. Theories of self-control suggest that people have limited resource pools of self-control, and facing frequent frustration and purchasing decisions may deplete this resource. In this paper, we present the results of a Mechanical Turk study on a popular casual game, Candy Crush Saga\™, to investigate various factors impacting player behaviour, with a specific focus on self-control. Our study reveals that the amount players spend on in-app purchases is correlated with lower levels of self-control. On the other hand, purchases and self-control levels were not significantly correlated with the amount of time people play, game addiction, or problem video game playing. We present design recommendations which can be applied to existing or new game designs in terms of both the economics of games and the psychology of games, including mechanics to account for low self-control and to avoid negative effects on self-control.