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I have seen a few games, like the new The Sims for Facebook that have the concept of energy in them. In order to do stuff in the game, one uses energy and the energy recharges slowly over time. This means that one cannot play the games for hours non-stop without paying, but what is the rationale behind this? Why don't they let everyone play for as long as they want, but say that one has to pay for example for items in the game? Isn't one of the goals to have people spend as much time in the game as possible, to get them more hooked and thus more likely to spend money?

I would also be very interested in any research on this topic, where this is explained carefully with statistics?

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Hi David, welcome to Gaming! Unfortunately, your question is off-topic for our site, as we focus on Q&A for problems faced while playing games, not the theories behind development. Check our FAQ for what is on-topic here. You can try checking out the Game Development SE, but make sure you read their FAQ to see if your topic is on-topic there. If you're in any doubt, check out their meta. – FAE Sep 15 '11 at 10:10
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In the interest of science, the reason behind this is to get users to spend money to purchase more energy, thus enabling them to do more stuff in the game. This has become common practice in 'freemium' games of late. – GnomeSlice Sep 15 '11 at 12:59
Before you run off and ask this question on gamedev.SE, this question: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/14584/… is very similar to what you're asking, and has some good answers already. – thedaian Sep 15 '11 at 14:09

closed as off topic by FAE, Oak♦, ChrisF, Wipqozn, badp♦ Sep 15 '11 at 11:03

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