This Call of Duty opening screen gets rid of the friction out of buying the $60 game.
This Call of Duty opening screen gets rid of the friction out of buying the $60 game.
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The DeanBeat: How fun finds a way around friction

In an old Saturday Night Live skit, actor Garrett Morris rubbed two balloons on his sweater, and they stuck to his chest. It was a science experiment he called “fun with friction.”

In video games, friction isn’t fun. We have seen over and over that friction is the enemy that gets in the way of people playing, paying for, and finishing playing games. As Akamai’s Nelson Rodriguez wrote in GamesBeat in 2017, friction is anything that prompts your player to leave your game and look elsewhere.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.