I donât remember how long Iâve been here. Has it been minutes, hours, months? Iâve lost all track of time. Oh gosh, have I forgotten to feed my cat? Do I have a cat?
Iâve been laying in bed procrastinating contributing to society in any meaningful way for hours. Actual hours. The culprit? Those insidious, kiddie-pool-shallow Buzzfeed personality quizzes that wonât stop popping up in your Facebook feed.
Iâve just discovered that Iâm Xander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (duh, I already knew that) when it hits me: there must be something about these dumb probes into my psyche that keeps me coming back. Something structural. Something intrinsic. Something diabolical. A simpering evil that should probably be banned from schools, public spaces, and store shelves.
Then I think a little more: video games!
Seriously though, Buzzfeed quizzes (and others of that ilk) draw their appeal from some particularly potent game design techniques. For example:
Player ExpressionâThis oneâs obvious, but itâs also the core of the whole enterprise. The best video games put player agency and expressionâthat is, the ability to do your thing and see the game world meaningfully change to reflect thatâfront-and-center. In effect, they end up telling us a bit about ourselves. Do you prefer to play shooters like a devil-may-care blender mutant of ceaseless violence, or are you more methodical in your approach? Are you a sharp-tongued charmer in RPGs, or do you prefer swinging swords to slinging words? What does that say about you, if anything?
Rapid-fire personality quizzes are player expression distilled down to its most basic form. You put in information, and you receive a simple, pop-culture-relevant evaluation of your characteristics. Quick and easy. No muss, no fuss, no other pesky game mechanics getting in the way or making things roundabout. Youâre mainlining that aspect of player expression, basically. Speaking ofâŠ
Immediately Satisfying Cause-and-EffectâItâs the foundation of nearly every video game genre â from pulling the trigger in an FPS to making a hyper-roundabout play in a turn-based strategy like Civilization â but these stupid quizzes make it so fast. Itâs like the character development portion of an RPG, only you get the full effect of all those branching conversations in under a minute (or maybe a bit more if you reeeeeally need to think about which sandwich condiment depicted in a Ryan Gosling movie is your favorite). Itâs just a few actions off from playing a slot machine, and thatâs the brilliance of it. Push some buttons, pull a lever, get a prize. But thereâs also more to it than thatâŠ
Massively MultiplayerâThe stupid, dumb, terrible (HELP ME STOP) quiz game doesnât truly begin until after youâve gotten your result. At that point, itâs about imagination and speculation. Which answer led to which result? Was the quiz spot-on or so wide of the mark that it looped back aroundâboomerang-styleâand hit its creator in the face? Regardless, itâs a jump-off point for thought and self-reflection. These terrible quizzes give direction to something weâre often very bad at: considering ourselves from multiple angles.
Discussions, of course, spawn from that. The inevitable multiplayer mode occurs in quizzesâ aftermath. Sharing with people in your inner circle, especially, is utterly compulsive given that thereâs an inherent appeal to finding out what other people think of you. Humans are social creatures, and exceedingly curious ones at that. We want to understand everything, especially ourselves. The latter is something we simply canât do alone. Our perceptions are too limited. These quizzesâsilly and even trashy as they sometimes areâpush our buttons with surgical precision.
45 Seconds of FunâThereâs a school of thought in the world of game design that says most massively successful games center around a core loop of anywhere from 15-45 seconds. Just a few extremely satisfying actions, repeated endlessly. Often, the loop manifests as that aspect of a game you âcraveâ when youâre hopelessly addicted to it. That ache in your bones you feel for, say, the ballet-like grace of Titanfallâs brutality. Movement, running, climbing, shooting. All simple actions that play out over and over and over in every match. And yet, they donât get boring because of the way they come together to form a far more elaborate whole.
Quizzes leverage a similar structure, but it unfolds in a far simpler fashion. You can knock out a single quiz in no time flat and then leap right into another. Which leads to my last pointâŠ
Just Five More MinutesâItâs the classic refrain of so-called âaddictiveâ video games. âOh, Iâll only play for another five minutes. Just five more. Yep, five. After that, Iâll totally pay my taxes and walk the dog and do the dishes and tell those debt collectors to stop repossessing my house and negotiate with the pack of wolves thatâs taken up residence in my bathroom.â
But itâs so easy to put in another five minutes, so inevitably you do. And then five more after that. And then five after that, and so on until you are bearded, homeless, and breaking into wolvesâ homes to sleep in their bathrooms.
Quizzes offer an immediate, gratifying action (considering/answering questions about yourself) that produces an immediate, gratifying result (âYou are⊠this thing! Here is what that says about youâ) with an immediate, gratifying chance to do it all again in seconds. More quizzes! Theyâre right there. Just a single click away.
Buzzfeed-style personality quizzes are dumb, yes, but the systems surrounding them arenât. Itâs a feast of instant gratification, a dinner plate piled high with food thatâs absolutely awful for you, but goodness does it ever taste good. So you gorge yourself, because youâre only human.
