Merge games as a fulfillment of the American Dream

gamesindustry.biz:

Jason Mai landed a job as VP of creative with Big Fish about six months ago, and while his history in casual and mobile games is extensive, he had never actually made a merge game along the lines of his new employer's hit EverMerge.

In a 'Game Designer's Notebook' session at the Game Developers Conference Tuesday, Mai acknowledged he landed the job without actually knowing much about the genre specifically.

"Once I got the job, I had to dive in and do what you always do: dig in, deconstruct the game, build some spreadsheets, read all the studies, the player surveys, talk to the designers and talk to the players," Mai said.

Merge games, as he explained, are built on a "pyramid of consumption." A player starts with, for example, an empty coffee cup. If they collect another empty coffee cup, they can combine them to make a full coffee cup. Two full cups of coffee become a fancy cup of coffee, and every new level of progression added to that pyramid dramatically increases the amount of merging required to reach the highest level.

"It takes something like 16,000 merges to get to the 14th level golden tea service," Mai said. "I don't expect you to tap 16,000 times, but it does cement the value of speed-ups, accelerators, any shortcut they can take to save 3,000 taps? 'Great, I'll pay a dollar for that.'"

Merge games come in a variety of flavors, Mai said, but he said they have something they in common besides the merging mechanic.

"I think at its core, all these merge games are trying to deliver a player fantasy about the American Dream," Mai said. "Specifically, I just mean that merge games are sort of rags-to-riches stories. You start with these junk items – literally an empty, discarded coffee cup – and you work your