Brawl Stars is a game developed by Supercell and played on mobile with iOS or Android. Its target audience is primarily teens and young adults and it exemplifies a “vampire” live service game, meaning it hooks players with great gameplay but keeps dragging things out so the story or progression never really ends. Through my critical play experience, I discovered how Supercell masterfully employs randomness not just as a game mechanic, but as a planned psychological hook that transforms, even manipulates, casual players into compulsive spenders trapped in what feels like an endless pursuit of upgrades and unlocks.
Post-victory and main home page of Brawl Stars — I was overwhelmed with so many options of upgrades, notifications, reward pop-ups, increased XP, skin changes, etc.
Firstly, Brawl Stars creates addiction risk through three distinct layers of chance that work synergistically to maintain player engagement. The first layer involves matchmaking randomness: players never know which opponents they’ll face, creating what game designer Jesse Schell would recognize as variable ratio reinforcement. This uncertainty generates excitement and keeps players queuing for “just one more match.”
The second layer emerges from the risk and reward mechanics embedded in combat. As I noted during play, “several times I was able to kill someone, but their final shot also killed me.” This creates a “near-miss” experience, moments where victory and defeat occur simultaneously, triggering dopamine responses similar to those found in gambling addiction. It’s almost as if players become conditioned to chase these high-stakes encounters.
Entering enemy (red) territory in order to kill my opponent but taking damage in the process.
The third and most insidious layer involves the monetized randomness of the progression system. Brawl Stars constantly displays locked content, similar to Fortnite, as we saw in section: new brawlers, skins, and upgrades, while offering randomized “boxes” as the primary unlock mechanism. During my play session, I observed that “so many things to unlock [are] constantly flexing in my face,” creating what game addiction researcher Dr. Ryan Dwyer calls “manufactured FOMO”.
A box I unlocked after winning a round — made me want to continue playing.
Unlike traditional gambling, Brawl Stars amplifies addiction risk through social mechanics. When playing with friends who have invested more money, skill disparities become glaringly apparent. I played with a friend that was an avid Brawl Stars player, and as I experienced, “if you play with friends that are better than you or have much better skins than you, you will feel like you are at an unfair disadvantage,” – largely because you and your teammates are matched up with opponents that are at your average skill level, so if you play with a friend that is much better than you, your opponents will likely be objectively better than you as I feel as though this is a game of investment, not one of just skill. This creates peer pressure to spend money, not just for personal progression, but to avoid being a burden to teammates.
This social dynamic transforms individual addiction into collective addiction. Players don’t just chase personal satisfaction; they chase social acceptance within their friend groups. The game’s matchmaking algorithm ensures that upgraded players consistently outperform free-to-play users, creating a feedback loop where spending becomes necessary for maintaining social relationships within the game. From this, compared to traditional casino games, Brawl Stars employs more sophisticated psychological manipulation. While slot machines rely primarily on variable ratio reinforcement, Brawl Stars adds social pressure, skill-based gameplay that creates illusions of control, and a progression system that makes spending feel like “investment” rather than gambling. As my friend rationalized during our play, “spending money on games that I play regularly is not a bad investment; if I know I’m going to keep playing it and buying some stuff would make it more fun, it’s totally worth it.” This shows that players know that they have fallen into a spending trap, but are okay with it since they have fun playing the game, so it’s worth it. Overall, Brawl Stars is a game that maintains a strong balance between player enjoyment and using that enjoyment to encourage them to spend money without feeling forced.
Unlike other mobile games such as Candy Crush, which rely heavily on artificial difficulty spikes, Brawl Stars maintains the illusion that progression comes primarily through skill improvement. This creates what researchers call “attribution bias”, players credit wins to skill while attributing losses to inadequate equipment, justifying purchases as tools for fair competition rather than gambling expenditures.
Furthermore, the moral permissibility of chance in games depends on transparency, fairness, and the vulnerability of the target audience. Chance becomes ethically problematic when it exploits psychological vulnerabilities for profit, particularly among minors who lack fully developed impulse control. Brawl Stars crosses ethical lines by obscuring the true costs of progression, using social pressure to drive spending, and targeting children with sophisticated behavioral manipulation techniques. The game would be more ethically sound if it provided clear information about odds, separated cosmetic purchases from gameplay advantages, and implemented spending limits for younger players.
However, randomness isn’t inherently unethical in games. When used to create variety, surprise, and emergent gameplay experiences, rather than to extract money, chance can enhance player enjoyment without exploitation. The key distinction lies in whether randomness serves the player’s experience or the developer’s revenue stream.
Therefore, Brawl Stars demonstrates how modern live service games have evolved beyond simple “pay-to-win” models into sophisticated addiction machines that exploit multiple psychological vulnerabilities simultaneously. By layering matchmaking uncertainty, combat risk-reward cycles, and monetized progression systems, Supercell has created a vampiric experience, one that feeds indefinitely on player time, money, and social relationships to make profit while providing just enough satisfaction to maintain the illusion of fair play. The game’s success reveals how chance, when weaponized through careful psychological design, can transform entertainment into exploitation. As the industry grapples with increasing scrutiny over predatory monetization, games like Brawl Stars serve as cautionary tales about the need for ethical boundaries in game design, particularly when targeting vulnerable populations with sophisticated behavioral manipulation techniques disguised as harmless fun.
