Name: Why Is Angry Birds So Addictive? - Instant Egghead #41
Uploaded: 2021-05-15T13:18:24.000Z
Duration: 2 min 38 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

With nearly 300 million active users and more than one billion downloads.

Angry Birds is one of the most successful  mobile games created so far.

What exactly makes Angry Birds  so popular and so addictive?

Psychologists, user interface experts, and game designers

We'll explore them in this  virtual environment

which is modeled after the same principles  as the Angry Birds world.

It doesn't take much time or effort  to get the hang of it.

And develop what psychologists call a "schema".

A mental model of the game  and all of it's rules.

You use your finger to pull a slingshot  and fling one animal — in this case me,

at another less likeable animal's  fortresses until they crumble.

that the pigs were stealing the birds' eggs.

Second, the game obeys  the laws of physics,

Our brains evolve to recognize cause and effect.

that our actions  have predictable consequences.

but the angle  at which you pull matters too.

The slingshot in Angry Birds works in exactly the same way.

The game even traces the arcs of birds flying through the air,

helping you improve your slingshot skills.

Similarly, the different structural  materials in the game

— wood, glass, stone — splinter, shatter and crumble in realistic ways.

Angry Birds also keeps us hooked with instant gratification

Buildings topple within seconds of releasing the slingshot,

and as soon as we finish one level there's another one

there will probably soon be  a new version for you to download.

For Scientific American's Instant Egghead, I'm Ferris Jabr.

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Why Is Angry Birds So Addictive? - Instant Egghead #41

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