What is the benefit of in-game delays & stallings??

In the new social phone & tablet games, game developers intend to put in-game delays and stalling, and it is really annoying for a gamer who is in love with the game. As an example, let's take Clash of Clans as an example, when you got to upgrade or train army a certain time must pass before you can get it. like if you upgrade town hall to level 4 it need around a whole day! Which means you are obliged to wait and leave the game to check it next day.

The point is: What is the benefit that the new game developers get from their in-game delays & stallings??

Let's discuss this Topic, because it is important for every game developer.

Clash of Clans seems like an MMO which aims for a casual audience. In order to keep the game "fair" to people who don't play very often I could imagine that as a positive aspect of putting the delay.

If the delay can be bypassed by paying or "asking a friend for help" then the goal is to get more people playing and sharing their data or cash with Clash of Clans.

It seems strange to turn the player away, but it seems even the players who don't like the delay come back to play longer.

Naji Jayjay : this is a characteristic mechanism of free to play games. It's effectively partly meant to have the player come back on a daily basis, but it's more than than. At first, the player gets a sense of rapid growth, the game advances fast. The player gets invested into the game, and the game stays rewarding. The gameplay is then artificially slowed down. The player, who has now spent a couple of hours into the game, is now more likely to spend a bit of money to keep the pace going or to compete with other players. And, as you said, it forces the player to come back and check everyday. There are generally many complementary mechanisms, like the player being rewarded for coming back every single day.

Anyway, on mobiles and social networks, the average player tends to spend only a couple minutes per game session. In transports, between to mails... those free to play games are also optimized to give the casual player a bite-sized set of actions to take at multiple time intervals.

Valerian

Good summary! Athough I figured out, that nearly every game gets to a point, something like a critical mass, where you HAVE to spend money to be able to compete with the others!

Yep, it's all about the money.

They addict you trough anticipation, just like old games ( movies and music ) did too. In old games you would be building up satisfaction with every good move you'd do ( in other words the further you'd go the more satisfaction you'd feel but the more challenging the game would be), while in new games that element of satisfaction is gone, because of how stretched those game get. It seams to me like this new model is based of heroin addiction, where with every shot you're getting less and less satisfaction, but you keep on doing it because you're hooked.

megatronx Wise Words! yeahj I felt that since I'm playing Clash of clans MMO Game, I can't live a day without checking it!

You´ll never catch the dragon heroin-heroes!