Mobile games are designed to keep you playing. Bright colors, flashy animations, and vivid visual feedback all contribute to making the experience feel rewarding. A 2025 study published in the Proceedings of the ACM looked at what happens when you take that color away.
The experiment
Nakamura and colleagues conducted an experiment titled "Ethical Disengagement in Mobile Games: The Effects of Loading Delay and Grayscale." The researchers tested two interventions designed to help players disengage from mobile games: adding a loading delay before the game starts, and displaying the game in grayscale.
Both interventions were tested independently to measure their effect on player retention (whether people kept coming back) and daily playtime (how long each session lasted).
What grayscale did to gameplay
The results showed that a grayscale display significantly reduced both player retention and daily playtime. When the game was rendered without color, players found it less visually engaging and were less likely to return for another session.
The researchers described this as breaking "immersion." Mobile games rely heavily on aesthetic rewards: colorful explosions, shiny collectibles, vibrant character designs. When all of that becomes gray, the emotional payoff drops. The game still functions identically, but the experience feels flat.
Why this is called "ethical disengagement"
The researchers framed grayscale as a tool for "ethical disengagement." The idea is that game designers use color and visual rewards to maximize engagement, sometimes at the expense of the player's time and wellbeing. Grayscale reverses that dynamic by neutralizing the visual hooks without removing the player's freedom to play.
This approach is different from blocking or restricting access. It does not take anything away. Instead, it reduces the artificial pull that keeps people playing longer than they intended.
What this means beyond games
If grayscale can reduce engagement with mobile games, which are among the most carefully optimized digital experiences for retention, the same principle applies to other apps that rely on visual stimulation. Social media feeds, shopping apps, and news aggregators all use color to draw you in and keep you scrolling.
The findings support the broader idea that grayscale is an effective, low-friction way to reduce time spent on visually stimulating phone activities. It works not by blocking content but by making the content less rewarding to consume passively.
Practical takeaway
If you find yourself losing time to mobile games or other visually rich apps, grayscale can act as a simple countermeasure. With StayGray, you can keep grayscale on as your default display mode and add exceptions only for apps where color is genuinely needed, like maps or photo editing. Games and social media apps stay functional but become less addictive by default.
Reference: Nakamura, Y., et al. (2025). Ethical Disengagement in Mobile Games: The Effects of Loading Delay and Grayscale. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol., 9(1). doi.org/10.1145/3712281