IKEA effect
The cognitive bias in which people assign disproportionately higher value to something they had a hand in creating, compared to an equivalent thing they didn’t build themselves — named after the Swedish furniture retailer whose products require self-assembly. Identified by Norton, Mochon, and Ariely, “The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love” (2012, Journal of Consumer Psychology).
Application to games
Per The Gamer’s Brain (book) (Chapter 12), Hodent introduces the IKEA effect as a mechanism supporting the Autonomy pillar of Game engage-ability: when players participate in creating something — customizing an avatar’s appearance, naming a base, choosing a banner, building a structure — they’re likely to attribute more value to that creation than to an equivalent element they were simply handed. Minecraft is her go-to example of autonomy taken to its logical extreme: nearly unlimited creative and constructive freedom, tied directly to this effect.
Her caveat is important: the customization has to be meaningful to actually trigger the effect. If a player spends time tweaking a character’s appearance they’ll rarely even see (say, because the game only uses a first-person camera), that investment may not register as valuable — unless the game gives them some way to actually perceive the result (a third-person camera during emotes, replay features that show off a customized avatar in action).
Related
- Game engage-ability — the IKEA effect is one of the supporting mechanisms for its Autonomy pillar
- Self-Determination Theory — autonomy is one of SDT’s three core psychological needs, which the IKEA effect helps satisfy through creative investment
- Endowment effect — a related but distinct bias: the IKEA effect is about valuing what you built, the endowment effect about overvaluing what you already own, built or not