And Then You Wait: The Issue of Dead Time in Social Network Games

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
The paper's central thesis is that persistent, asynchronous social network games extend play into the player's absence, making waiting a structural feature rather than an incidental one, with "dead time" as the core framework (drawing on Juul).
02
The author attributes the experience of dead time to a mismatch between game engine time, which continues running while the player is away, and playing time, which is paused.
03
Play halts once a player exhausts energy or actions, creating forced pauses, while the need to return promptly to avoid losing crops or energy makes these "casual" games feel less flexible than their label implies.
04
The subjective experience of waiting varies across players: some find it relaxing, while others find it frustrating, so the paper treats waiting as a core design ingredient rather than a peripheral flaw.
05
The argument is conceptual and illustrative rather than empirical; the author explicitly acknowledges that data on how players actually experience dead time is needed to strengthen the claims.
06
The analysis focuses on late-2000s and early-2010s Zynga-era titles such as FarmVille, Café World, and CityVille, with FarmVille's user base reportedly reaching roughly 80 million at the time.

Summary

"And Then You Wait" examines how waiting functions as a design element in social network games such as FarmVille, CityVille, and Café World, using Juul's concept of "dead time" as its central framework. The paper's core thesis is that the persistent, asynchronous states of these games extend play into the player's absence, so that periods of unchallenging waiting, such as crops growing or energy refilling, become a structural feature rather than an incidental one. Drawing on multi-layer models of time in games developed by Hitchens and by Tychsen and Hitchens, along with work by Zagal and Mateas, the author argues that game engine time continues while playing time is paused, a mismatch that accounts for the experience of dead time.

The analysis identifies two central consequences of this design. First, play halts once a player exhausts energy or actions, creating forced pauses. Second, the need to return promptly to avoid losing crops or energy makes these games feel less flexible than their "casual" label implies. The author contends that the subjective experience of this waiting is not uniform: some players find it relaxing, while others experience it as frustrating. On this basis, the paper concludes that waiting is a core ingredient of social network game design rather than a peripheral flaw.

The argument rests on conceptual analysis and illustrative examples rather than empirical evidence, and the author explicitly acknowledges that data on how players actually experience dead time is needed to strengthen the claims. The scope is therefore theoretical, centered on a set of prominent Zynga-era titles from the late 2000s and early 2010s, including FarmVille, whose user base at the time reportedly reached roughly 80 million, situating the work within the emergence of asynchronous social gaming.