Analyzing House Flipper – The Unexpected Joy of Decorating Houses
There are thousands of games out there and more are released by the day. If you want to play good games, you don’t even have to purchase them some of the times. I have hundreds of games that are completely unplayed in my library, because I get new ones faster than I can play the ones I have. A problem I didn’t have as a kid.
Hence, as a player today, you need to pick and choose the game carefully. But what game will give you the most entertainment value? Most likely you will pick something within your known taste.
Personally, the games I are drawn to are generally adventure, strategy or rpg games. In addition to that, if there’s a fantasy setting involved, the better. Complete realism is usually not my cup of tea. I don’t dislike other games, but it’s more in the lines of that I’d rather play Mass Effect instead of Farming Simulator.
However, as a game developer, I feel it’s crucial to try and understand these games and the players that play them. What is it in them that people are attracted to? What made them buy it? And most importantly, where is the fun?
House Flipper feels to me like one of those games. I briefly played Train Station Renovation a couple of months ago. I thought it was surprisingly satisfying and now I wanted to play one of these games that had very good reviews.
What is House Flipper?
For those of you uninitiated folks that never heard of House Flipper before, it’s a simulation game where you buy run-down houses, fix them up, and sell them for profit. You can also take on smaller jobs for other people to increase your income.
It got tons of DLC that expands the game in different directions that lets you renovate everything from luxury houses to apocalypse preparation bunkers. At the time of writing this post (Oct 2021) the game has a whopping 44 thousand reviews on steam which are deemed to be “Very Positive”. The most recent 1000 reviews are even “Overwhelmingly Positive”.
By that measurement alone, it felt like a game I had to try out! Worth noting is that I’ve only tried the base game, I did not purchase any DLCs.
Picking the lenses of fun
For this analysis, I will use some of the tools that I described in my earlier posts about finding the fun in different ways by looking at the game through a lens. First, I will create a Taste Map on what tastes I think House Flipper satisfies and show where my personal tastes lie according to an O.C.E.A.N personality test.
After that, I will have a deeper look at the long term retention and continued play using Self-Determination Theory.
Taste Map
This is the taste map I believe House Flipper has in its current state and I will go through each one and why in the following subsections. For those of you that is unaware what a taste map is, I suggest you read my earlier post first.
Novelty
Builds / Exploration
Building is the big one in House Flipper. By the click of a button, you can buy and place basically anything, tear down any walls, build new ones and paint them. There are few things you cannot build within the restrictions of reality and whats available for purchase.
If you are a fan of home decoration, it lets you build and try out hundreds (if not thousands) of different designs. The sky is the limit. An absolutely fantastic experience.
In regards to Exploration, whenever you buy a house or take on a new job, you get to explore the house and delve into the adventure of fixing a new house. It’s not much, but there’s certainly a component of it.
Realism / Fantasy
This game obviously aims to be very realistic. You have a range of tools that you get to use by hand to change, alter and design your houses. You even get to install the electrical outlets and bathroom pipes in very much detail.
However, It cuts some corners in the realism department in favor of a better building experience. Personally, I think it’s the correct decision, but it also means it won’t reach all the way to the edge in realism in the taste map.
For example, when painting you don’t have to move any furniture in order to reach with the roller. You can also instantly sell objects with a type of sell gun.
Trash that you pick up is instantly gone and you don’t have to throw it in a container
Fantasy is pretty much non-existent in House Flipper. I’m sure one could argue that the corner cutting in realism is a type of fantasy, but I choose to see that as just less realism.
Challenge
Skilled / Less Skilled
There’s certainly ways to put your designer and decoration skills to the test in this game. Not any that is enforced by the game. But if you want to, you can really set up a challenge for yourself here. Also if you want to sell your houses to a really high price, you better study the potential buyers in what they like. However, I feel that it does not cater to people who like a real challenge that much, which is why I wouldn’t stretch it all the way to the edge.
And on the contrary, it’s super easy if you just want to build and tick all the objective boxes. Just place most furniture wherever they fit and you will complete the mission with some extra money at hand.
Not Work / Work
In House Flipper, you need to grind in order to achieve anything. There’s no other option than to work for it. They’ve implemented some positive feedback loops enabling you to level up your tools the more you use them, but in the end you need to put in the time.
They’ve really put some effort into this feature, making it super a super meditative experience. Perfect game to play while you listen to podcasts or audio books. As far as “work” goes – it’s a top notch experience.
Stimulation
Multiplayer / Solo
There’s no multiplayer but there’s an excellent solo experience. This is a game that you put on when you want to easily induce a state of flow and just have a great solo experience.
Calm / Thrill
I see no thrill experience in this game, but it’s one of the calmest, meditative flow-inducing games I’ve played. I think it definitely deserves to be all the way to the edge of the map in this regard.
Harmony
Cooperation / Conflict
This was a tough one to add to the map, since I don’t see much of any of them. You could however argue that it has some form of co-operation with the NPC players that “help” you build better houses for them. And that you are renovating houses for a better neighbourhood. I agree that it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’d still argue that it’s there.
Mechanics / Context
For context driven players who needs a good reason on why they are flipping these houses don’t get much help from the game. In order to unlock all the tools you can build with, you need to check your email for new jobs. As far as campaign goes, that seems to be pretty much it.
I don’t see the game facilitate user-driven internal stories that much either -e.g. that you can easily create context in your mind by the mechanics/dynamics of the game.
On the contrary, I find that a player can delve quite deep into the rules and mechanics of the game. There are a lot of tools and a multitude of ways and objects to buy to renovate your houses.
Where do I fit in?
After adding my scores from 8 facets the O.C.E.A.N personality test to the taste map, we can see that while this game has some overlap in my taste it’s not something I generally would buy. I’d say it’s fairly accurate. I don’t think I would’ve bought this game if I weren’t a game developer and wanted the challenge. This is not to say I dislike any games outside of my own map, it just shows what games I tend to buy. Because I clearly like this game.
To me, this shows what a powerful tool taste maps can be for analyzing a game in correlation with yourself and your own biases, and thus becoming a better game designer. Investigating the very subjective experience of how fun a game is and going the extra lengths to try and understand a creation that other people love really broadens your perspective.
Self-Determination Theory
Putting why one would start playing the game aside for a moment – we need to start looking at the long term retention and what drives players to pick this gem up over and over again. Because if Civilization has a “just one more turn” feeling to it, this game certainly has a “I just need to clean up this corner before I stop” feeling that is worth exploring.
Let’s break it down in each component of the Self-Determination Theory and see what the game does well, and where I think it could improve.
Autonomy
Autonomy is the “Desire to be causal agents of one’s own life and act in harmony with one’s integrated self”
source: wikipedia
House Flipper has a lot of autonomy. After you’ve done the first few jobs and aquired all your tools, you can pretty much go in any direction you want. You can take on more jobs by checking your email, stick around and renovate your office, our start flipping houses by purchasing new ones! You can start working on any room you want in any order with any tool.
Once you get to a new house, you usually have full control over the renovation. If you are working on a contract job, you can still choose where to put the furniture and what exact look you think fits the room. It always feels like I’m in control. I think that is one of the big reasons it feels so calming.
Where Autonomy Could be Improved
While autonomy is the sense of fully endorsing the path you are on (regardless of degrees of linearity), another important aspect is the evidence of my decisions. Until I have completed my renovation, I can just visit the house but there is no way of checking the beautiful results of your hard work after you’ve finished! I have to be proactive and take a bunch of screenshot on my own.
In this type of game, I want to bask in the glory of my decisions. When I press sell, I want a Ty Pennington character outside that house screaming with a whole crowd of people chanting – “Move that bus!” “Move that bus!”.
And then I want to see auto-generated photos or a video of before and after pictures. Like you see in most home makeover TV-shows. A video that I can rewatch at anytime and share.
However, I hear that something similar of this feature exists in a dlc – but I don’t know the extent of it.
Competence/Mastery
Competence is to “Seek to control the outcome and experience mastery“
source:wikipedia
One way of providing a sense of competence is to make the game progressively more difficult over time and balance it with your increased mastery of the skills over time. Always giving the player an optimal challenge that is not too difficult and not too easy.
House Flipper has some of that. When you first boot up the game and start up a new profile, you do not have any tools. Then, you start up your in-game laptop and check your email for jobs, and completing the jobs will introduce you to more tools.
Which is very good! It’s super easy to get into the game and it’s an enjoyable experience getting to know each tool. Just as I think it should be.
When you are venturing out in the wilderness of buying your own houses, away from contract work, you get some advice from potential buyers that will comment if they like what you are doing.
As you progress, we also have a number of feedback loops that gives us the sense of growth over time. Because mastery is not restricted to just difficulty. It’s all about providing growth over time.
One of the feedback loops is that the more you use a tool, the easier it gets to use when you level it up.
Another one is when you flip a house, you (hopefully) earn a profit and can buy bigger houses the next time. All playing in to the fantasy that you are the greatest house flipper on the planet.
Where Mastery Could be Improved
The big untapped potential for internal growth in this game is the area of home decoration. In House Flipper, you can create beautiful designs, but there’s no one really there to appreciate it! I could just put a massive bookshelf in the middle of the room, blocking the pathway and still complete my mission.
In order to really grow as a designer, I have to show my designs (by right now taking my own screens manually) to another human to get any real evaluation.
Also, when doing contract work, I can skip entire rooms as long as the percentage value is over a threshold. In real life, I would be quite angry if someone just skipped a room that I payed them to fix.
How could we bring the feedback of how good of a home designer you are more into the game? A couple of ideas could be these:
- Add a grading of sorts on how “good” your designs are. Could be divided into categories like Safety, Cleanliness, Adherence to Style etc. Could possibly be done on a per-room basis.
- Get bonus points for choosing colors that match, furnitures within a collection, and within a style (Scandinavian, Industrial, Contemporary etc.)
- Double down on the potential buyers functionality. Add more, let them be more critical and give them even more personality.
As a programmer, I imagine these systems could be quite difficult to implement, but I would think that improving this could really cement the longevity of this game. And a grading system does not have to be super advanced to be effective. It could be in the lines of what Pokemon Snap does when evaluating photos.
The game could also benefit from greater difficulty. But I think that is only a viable development path if they would want to introduce the game to a new audience (higher up in the challenge taste map).
From the top of my head, the following things could be considered to be introduced in new game modes. The current mode should probably stay as is (or be regarded as easy/normal difficulty).
- Starting the game with little to no cash, only be able to buy the cheapest objects. Requiring you to really plan your renovation.
- Make it harder to turn a profit, and have pickier/grumpier potential buyers.
- When you complete a job, have them deduct the price or they write you an angry email if you for example forgot to renovate the bathroom.
- Introduce costly events that you need to take care of termites, storms, water damages to the house. (an increase in Thrill)
Relatedness/Purpose
Relatedness is the“Will to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others”
source:wikipedia
Out of the three areas in SDT, I feel relatedness is probably the weakest one. There are communities outside of the game where you can get a sense of connection and purpose, but other than that – your designs are lost when you are done.
You can get a sense of I matter in this world by checking who you’ve sold houses too, but I couldn’t find much else.
Where Relatedness Could be Improved
This one could be improved in a similar way as I mentioned with Autonomy above. Keep some proof around that you’ve been there and what you’ve done. Have them send emails thanking you for your expertise or even sending angry emails of things you forgot.
A voting system in game, where other players can vote on designs you are particularly proud of could also help cementing that you matter.
It could also be added a feature where you could walk around in your neighborhood and slowly seeing a roughly looking neighbourhood becoming the luxurious suburbs you’ve always dreamed of living in. Maybe a neighbour or two shouts at you from a distance – “Look! it’s the amazing house flipper. Thank you for giving me my dream house!”
Or a career mode, where the fantasy of becoming famous and a real pillar in your community would help both your feeling of mastery and autonomy.
Conclusion
Going in, I was sceptical. I didn’t really think I would like this game. I think it’s safe to say that I was wrong. House Flipper was a pleasant surprise that opened up a new world of games to me. As I mentioned above, I found it being a particularly good activity to do while I was listening to a podcast or an audiobook. Sometimes you want to do something while your ears are busy listening.
They got a new fan of the game in me, and I will probably return to flip some houses many times over. I might even splurge and buy some of the DLCs in the future.
As you can see, the lenses of fun can be used in other areas than when developing your own game. Taste Maps & SDT in particular is immensely powerful to pin point what important areas could be improved and force you to think in different ways.
Have you played House Flipper? What did you think of it? Are there any DLCs that you think is worth getting?
Thank you for reading! If you liked this type of analysis, please let me know! That way I can get a sense if I should do more of them. Also, If you have any comments, observations or perspectives about this – please talk to me on twitter!
References & Further Reading
- Taste Maps – The lenses of fun part 2
- Self-Determination Theory – The lenses of fun part 3
- House Flipper website
- Free O.C.E.A.N Test
