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Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

positech.co.uk

51–60 of 245 posts

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#51

I don't see any problem with games or any other product spending that much on advertisement if it's beneficial for them. I don't understand what people have against targeted advertisement? So what if the advertisements are tuned for your interests. Wouldn't you rather see relevant ads, rather than the something completely irrelevant to your life? I actually wish, they had more information and were better targetted. R…

> Wouldn't you rather see relevant ads, rather than the something completely irrelevant to your life?

Absolutely not. The cost to my limited time & attention span is not worth it. If I feel there is a problem in my life that I can solve with a product, I am perfectly capable of finding it using sources I trust.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#52

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

>Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. Individual freedom part of me would agree but in reality governments do this all the time and I can't say it's all bad either. A good example is drug control - while it's currently taken to the extreme there's no doubt in my mind that fully l…

there's no doubt in my mind that fully legalizing drugs would lead to a more volatile society

Many hard drugs (including cocaine and heroin) were legal in the United States prior to the 1920s.

To the best of my knowledge, there was no massive social breakdown as a result.

The ultimate irony is that a major motivation for the criminalization of cocaine was, for poor rural whites, a fear that drugged up blacks would start raping white women. [1] Needless to say, this did not materialize and there is no reason it will if we lift the ban.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-too...

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is nothing that can be done due to the fact that its all opt-in and is based on ( as the article points out ) psychology. Free to play has gamed the inherit structure of the world wide web.

Gambling is the same yet there are a whole host of things that governments have done to try and help protect consumers.

Gambling isn't the same because the money users spend isn't used as a bet for a real-world money return. That is why when this stuff goes to court it gets thrown out.F2P relies on pure psychology and large sums of marketing dollars.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#54

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

It's strange to me that a group of people that is sometimes stereotyped as being too preoccupied with logical fallacies will still invoke slippery slopes. Making good decisions now does not remove our capability to make good decisions in the future. Nor is it particularly reasonable to draw parallels between "don't fake users to befriend key targets" and "we may as well ban alcohol".

The status quo isn't as black and white as you've made it out. Advertisements and marketing have developed along with their regulations throughout modern history. Most countries restrict advertisements for prescription medicines. Many restrict advertising aimed at children directly. In the US, advertising is explicitly excluded from the first amendment.

A free market works only when people act rationally. That's one of the underlying hypotheses. Psychological manipulation and the Zynga Skinner box causes people to act out of alignment with their rational preferences.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#55

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them.

Out of genuine curiosity, do you feel the same about state intervention in other situations, away from gaming, that involve a more knowledgeable or deliberate party taking advantage of a less knowledgeable or deliberate one?

For example, what about full-on gambling where the potential exists to win big but players will probably lose, and having already lost, aggressive tactics are then used to get them to try again? Does it matter whether the person gambling understands the situation they are being steered into?

Is it OK for bars or clubs to offer a happy hour early in the evening to get patrons going, then turn up the heat and make it hard to find water so those patrons keep ordering more drinks and getting more and more drunk throughout the evening?

What about phishing attacks? If someone is ignorant of the possibilities for impersonating e-mail from someone else they know, should we turn a blind eye to those who would send such e-mails to trick someone who thinks they're helping a friend in need into parting with their money?

What about confidence tricksters who do similar things on the doorstep of old people who may not be familiar with what sort of credentials a genuine representative of their water or electricity supplier would carry today?

Or payday loan companies, who will offer what looks like a lifeline to those who have fallen on hard times, yet charge astronomical rates of interest that can rapidly lead into a vicious and sometimes devastating cycle of debt and despair?

How about law firms in jurisdictions where everyone normally pays their own legal costs after a court case, who send threatening letters alleging infringements of copyright and offer to settle for just less than it's likely to cost to go to court to challenge the allegations?

What about outright grooming of children or other vulnerable people for the purposes of sexual exploitation?

For these and many other similar reasons, I think it is appropriate for the state to regulate industries where one party may flagrantly take advantage of another. No-one can possibly be an expert on all areas of society, and laws exist to protect us all from those who would otherwise unfairly take advantage of those weaknesses. Of course there are sometimes grey areas, but the principle that governments should never step in to protect the vulnerable from exploitation seems a very bad one to me.

Also, I dispute your characterisation of the entire marketing and advertising industry as if everyone does these things. Of course all ads are hoping to engage someone in the target market and pique their interest, but IMHO that is a far cry from the kind of active and disproportionate exploitation we're talking about with some of these games companies.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#56
Look, this is just commerce at work. People are going to use whatever edge they can get to make more money. These edges only go so far. If you think the only reason Game of War is popular because of the million dollar ads, then why isn't every single product, everywhere using these ads?

These games fulfill more than just some need to mindlessly click on shit. Just because doesn't do anything for you, that doesn't make the people it does work for stupid or rubes. As soon as something better comes along, all of these games companies are going to be toast, way, way deader than disco.

Assuming that any massive success is due to nefarious attention-gaming is pretty much categorically wrong. Video gaming, by the standards of global commerce, is a ridiculously tiny niche. There are billions of people who have never played a video game in their entire life. Game of War is the largest player in a sub-niche of this small niche. Big enough to buy ads on the Super Bowl, sure, but that says a lot more about the declining power of television and advertising in general than it does about the size of the gaming market.

That this market needs political attention to curb abuse is utterly laughable. How about we fix oil drilling, or pharmaceutical production first?

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#57
post #43

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

So in your opinion there's nothing a gaming or marketing company can do that's legal now, but really shouldn't be? I'm also not buying that it's a slippery slope and banning, say, cross compiling profiles on customers from different, unrelated platforms would "take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry". In capitalism, companies will do everything within the legal framework to make more money.…

Take a look at someone who spent $30k on ships in Star Citizen.

http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-sta...

He seems like a reasonable person to me. He's not in financial ruin. He doesn't seem to regret his purchase. He's just putting money into his hobby, the same way a different 40 year old would buy an "unproductive" boat or an "unproductive" Rolex.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#59

Cliff's comparison of Star Citizen's preorder process to gambling, painted in royal we , is obscene. I don't like to be dismissive, but it sounds like he's mostly upset that their slimy marketing actually works; while meanwhile people haven't even heard of his company. For kicks I looked at his company's website, and their top two titles are "Democracy 3", and "Big Pharma". i.e. he makes video games about regulation…

Perhaps there's a new product idea for Cliff: opt-in self-regulation. Whenever your urges become too strong, phone-a-friend for in-game counseling. Fight the pernicious Facebook-stalking fire with healthier Facebook-stalking fire.

Alternatively, a new game called Slimy-Game-Developer, which simulates mind-control of millions of players while you optimise your revenues using too-effective psychological techniques.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#60
This is supposedly irresistible "psychological warfare" and yet not one of these shady games companies has gotten a penny from me.

At the end of the day the only one who decides to spend your money on stupid shit is you. Nut up and take responsibility for your own choices.

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