Tiny Tower: Why Irrational Elements Are Fun

Welcome to Tiny Tower!

We have a lot of work to do now!

Although human was severely punished in the story of Babel, destroyed by God’s burning anger, it’s forever part of human nature trying to reach beyond the clouds to explore the sky above. History always repeats itself for we humans are forgetful creatures.

As the almighty lord of Tiny Tower, what players can do is not actually so much. When sufficient coins are earned to expand new floors upwards, players have 6 floor types to choose: Residential, Creative, Retail, Recreation, Service and Food.

You have 6 floor types to choose

Let's do some Cosplay!

There’s not much room left for players to carry out their strategies. Most of the outcomes depend on your luck and the randomness. If you are the type of player who used to play traditional games, I bet you won’t be very comfortable with it. “Hey, I thought games are about interaction and choice, aren’t they?”

Compared with strategy-centric core games, the elements in lightweight games are usually composed of much more ‘luck’. When luck plays the central role in the game, everyone has a good chance to win, whether he is skilled or not.



This game is not really about testing your controlling skill or reaction. ‘Anyone can be in luck and hit the jackpot’ is the reason why this genre of games can always draw in players.

Jamie Madigan introduced a psychological term called ‘benign envy’ in one of his articles. He claimed that seeing friends owning the floor we want excites our will to spend real money to buy it, and it may greatly help increasing Tiny Tower revenues.

Yes, I believe it could help NimbleBit to earn big money in a short period of time; however, it might cause an opposite effect of losing players very quickly as well. It doesn’t matter what players’ goal is; as long as it could be achieved simply by the money players have, they will spend what they can afford to get it, and then lose the motivation to keep playing the game.

Randomness is the core foundation of game mechanism in Tiny Tower. Players have to ‘get lucky’ to build the floor they desperately want, and it is exactly the reason why they’re willing to keep playing and playing.


Retension Strategy

From the aspect of its basic gameplay, Tiny Tower seems to be no different from other common social games. If it was just another ordinary social game, the steps players are expected to take will be: launch the game, tap, tap, tap, done, and leave the game.

Conversely, why do players keep coming back to play it? Some essential motives are:

We want you. We need you. We love you!

Dude, use your Bux to speed up things.

Those in-game activities (getting the tips, fully stocking a shop and finding Bitizens) are the main attraction of the game that gets players hooked, and makes them willing to repeatedly bring the elevator users to their correct floor, which is quite a monotonous and tedious job.

The catch here is that time durations for delivering different items varies widely. The deliveries of goods can take 2 minutes to 12 hours, and even when new items have finally been delivered, they can’t be sold until the player returns to the game to stock them. It makes players feel obligated to constantly return to the game to keep stores stocked.

All these well-designed ‘unscheduled rewards’ added up brings players unique stimulation and joy, which is strong and hard to resist.


Monetizing Options

Unlike most social games, Tiny Tower provides players with only 3 price options for purchase:

$0.99 option is for impulse buyers. Any player who enjoys the game more than 30 minutes would agree that it is not a hard task to earn 10 Bux or more – the only thing you need is a little bit of patience. However, when our desire defeats our intellect, for we want to get what we want right away, this is the best option for us.

$4.99 option is for rational analysts. You just need a quick analysis to figure out that this is the most reasonable option for general players. Some people might argue that $4.99 is too expensive and it would be better if it priced $2.99. However, when we decide to spend money on what we want, just a few dollars more doesn’t matter much.

$29.99 option is for whale players. Although most of us will never spend that much money on a mobile game, and may consider it as a ridiculous behavior, we should be aware that we are simply not the so-called whale players. Whales are very rare, but a large part of profit often comes from them.

Which one will you purchase?

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