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

positech.co.uk

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

#161

Post by [deleted] »

ethbro wrote: post #122
WalterBright wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're getting pretty damn good at it I'm not so sure. I play a video game, and invariably get bored to tears within 30 seconds or so. It might have something to do with when I was a student, I had a job that involved play testing video games. It's also true that my old game Empire was well known to be addictive. I'd play it myself, but would rarely get too far into a game before I'd go back to tweaking the AI, whic…

Ironic username, given the conversation topic. ;) While yours may be a true experience: statistics. I'm not sure a personal experience poll on an entrepreneurial technology news site is the best place for a representative sample of people with low willpower. And social psych findings have born out that are a lot of easily manipulated levers to reliably influence people's behavior in an intentional way. To me, it's no…

[deleted]

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

#162

Post by fbbbbb »

njharman wrote: post #128

> have an incredibly fine tuned and skillful marketing department bent on psychological manipulation. This. This is not specific to games industry. In fact they are rather late bloomers and amateurish. This is consumerism. This is production driven economy (in which goods are produced and post facto demand is manufactured). This is inevitable in any market with unequal ownership of resources (that is any market syste…

I think they mostly see the ads (read: products) as things that will influence their life positively. While this is true in the short term, brief entertainment in compensation for their money, it makes the life less significant in the long term, because their time was wasted not improving themselves. You are not the car you drive, you are not the contents of you wallet... Most people are short sighted.

(I'm not pretending that this fully answers the question.)

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

#163

Post by gbog »

adrtessier wrote: post #12

> "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…

> take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry

What would be wrong with that?

Anyways, I agree that there is no use asking the State to stop the marketters. It is not efficient. The State can only constrain people using laws, which are not suitable for limiting these kinds of evil behaviors.

So we need to call for morality. We need to make it so that anyone who has managed to sell something useless to someone weak should feel ashame to the level of seriously pondering suicide.

That's the only way it can work: I won't do this evil, not because it is forbidden, but because I am worth something, I have self-esteem. Evil here ranges from peeing in the neighbour's roses to participating in genocides, and this obviously includes stealing money from the weaks with unfair weapons of persuasions.

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

#164

Post by klenwell »

LukeB_UK wrote: post #30

A lot of people here seem to be missing the main point of this post. It's not about crowdfunding or advertising, it's about using hugely manipulative tactics within the games to get people to basically throw money at them. The reason they're called microtransactions is because they're small, usually priced at a point that's negligible. Using these tactics, they entice people to buy over and over again, each time the…

The gambling industry has had a term for this sort of exploitation via microtransaction for a long time: "cherry dribbling".

First came across it in this New York Times article from 2004:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/magazine/chrome-shiny-ligh...

[The Price Is Right video slot machine] is what slot pros call "a cherry dribbler," a machine that dispenses lots of small payouts while it nibbles at your stash rather than biting off large chunks of it.

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

#165

Post by TeMPOraL »

morgante wrote: post #50
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". So if people are interested in Ponzi schemes or magical remedies, the state should not interfere, right?

There's a massive difference between fraud (promising impossible returns or cures) and advertising. Game makers aim to addict you, but they don't lie and they do give you exactly what they say they will.

I'd say it's a difference of degree, not of kind. Generally, fraud is a deliberate deception to secure an unfair gain. Advertising is this too, but usually it's harmless enough that we don't mind. Sometimes though it crosses the line.

As the quote goes, "Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941)

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

#166

Post by Pyxl101 »

ethbro wrote: post #122
WalterBright wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're getting pretty damn good at it I'm not so sure. I play a video game, and invariably get bored to tears within 30 seconds or so. It might have something to do with when I was a student, I had a job that involved play testing video games. It's also true that my old game Empire was well known to be addictive. I'd play it myself, but would rarely get too far into a game before I'd go back to tweaking the AI, whic…

Ironic username, given the conversation topic. ;) While yours may be a true experience: statistics. I'm not sure a personal experience poll on an entrepreneurial technology news site is the best place for a representative sample of people with low willpower. And social psych findings have born out that are a lot of easily manipulated levers to reliably influence people's behavior in an intentional way. To me, it's no…

What's ironic about his username? His name's Walter Bright.

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

#168

Post by bduerst »

wildmusings wrote: post #147
bduerst wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason we have "paternalistic" organizations like the FTC and SEC is because many parties make informed, consenting agreements, and don't obligate them. How are you going to enforce your $100k agreement without a "paternalistic" organization? Consumer rights and protections are what creates scalable trade by enabling trust in our society.

Laws that arm people with more information are great. I'm a big fan. I'm not a fan of laws that prohibit certain contracts no matter how informed both parties are. It's sometimes necessary when there's a huge asymmetry in power, like in landlord-tenant relationships and in standard-form contracts that waive all liability (interestingly, this is something courts have recognized as a matter of common law, even in the a…

> Civil court enforcement

You had just said it's not appropriate for governments to insert itself between two informed, consenting parties, because it is paternalistic and not part of a free society.

Also what does market efficiency have to do with anything? There are always going to be asymmetrical distributions of power because information is asymmetrical.

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

#169

Post by wturner »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #135
wturner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what about the gambling apps that, from top to bottom are exactly a slot machine with the only difference being that you can't get money out, only facebook trophies?

As I said, the reason these things get thrown out of court is because it isn't gambling since no money is expected by the user. If you're asking me a legal opinion I'm not a lawyer. I'm just telling you what I've read. I'm not advocating free to play.

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

#170

Post by ethbro »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #166
ethbro wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic username, given the conversation topic. ;) While yours may be a true experience: statistics. I'm not sure a personal experience poll on an entrepreneurial technology news site is the best place for a representative sample of people with low willpower. And social psych findings have born out that are a lot of easily manipulated levers to reliably influence people's behavior in an intentional way. To me, it's no…

What's ironic about his username? His name's Walter Bright.

Ironic in the context of a discussion of vices and addiction, though now understandable (apologies for my lack of knowledge of 70s games & compiler names!)

echo "WalterBright" | sed 's/Bright/White/'

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