Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by JabavuAdams » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #220

JabavuAdams wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to have this conversation.

I wouldn't call it "blind". From a capitalist POV, they're doing their job very well.

Well, devs generally admit that there's a spectrum of coerciveness and intrusiveness. It's just that all the devs I've talked to generally believe themselves to be on the "not as bad" end. So it's not purely A) devs don't think they're doing anything wrong or B) they don't care. It's the usual cognitive dissonance of "those other guys are doing something wrong, but we're not as bad, and we need to pay the bills."

There is a real problem -- 98-99% of people will play your game but won't pay for it. So, that other 1-2% has to subsidize everyone else.

Some other points that I rarely see discussed...

Game developers don't have some inalienable right to make games AND be financially successful (unless we as a society decide they do and regulate them and the market).

Here I'm drawing an analogy to other jobs that HN readers may be less sympathetic to, e.g. cab drivers or fishermen. They got disrupted. There's no reason why technical creatives are immune to disruption.

Second, there's a black-hat / white-hat argument. Humans shipped with mental bugs. Many of these are exploitable. The gambling and game monetization industries basically identify, study, and exploit these bugs. Individuals have a choice to make -- do I work for the black-hats, or do I work for the white-hats? What about studying these mental bugs and inoculating users against being exploited? I know there are some resources for this out there, but this post is long enough and I'm getting too lazy to link.

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

#232

Post by norea-armozel » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

brohoolio wrote: post #41

I was totally and completely addicted to WoW for two years. Almost lost my girlfriend, friends, etc. When I finally quit I had the shakes. Literally. One thing though is I've never saved more money than when I was playing WoW because I never went out. These newer games do seem to have a different financial model that exploits addiction in potentially a much more dangerous fashion.

Was this before or after Blizzard turned WoW into the semi-F2P crapfest?

Because I'll admit I love MMOs and certain other games (single player mostly) where I can spend most of my weekend stuck in front of my PC clicking away like a fool (Damn you, Minecraft!) but I've never had 'shakes' or anything close to a withdraw symptom. Maybe I'm the odd one out here in this regard.

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

#233

Post by norea-armozel » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #22

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…

I think he picked Star Citizen since you can spend close to thousands of real dollars (US) on items that don't physically exist. It's really no different than running an unregulated lottery since you can't be sure if Star Citizen will ever reach published state (It's been alpha close to two years IIRC). So, I think his comparison is close enough to question the validity of at least Kickerstarting projects like this.

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

#234

Post by JabavuAdams » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

Terrible article, but raises some good issues. Would like to see a better discussion of those issues.

One problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that in my experience a large proportion of people in the games industry are essentially game addicts.

They've forgone other opportunities, higher pay, IRL social interactions, family duties, etc. due to their passion for games.

It's hard to have a serious conversation about games and addiction without examining this further.

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

#235

Post by wfo » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #125

bduerst wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not putting money into his hobby. If you buy $30k worth of golf clubs, you have $30k worth of golf clubs. If you put $30k into a kickstarter project for some digital assets exclusively in a piece of software that isn't even written yet, you don't own that. That's not putting $30k into a hobby, but giving $30k to someone without even a contractual obligation for delivery. It's exactly why the SEC won't let non-a…

If I want to spend $100,000 on ephemeral virtual items in a video game that might never actually be released, that's my problem, not the government's. I'm the one that earned the money, so I'm the one that decides how to spend it. It's totally inappropriate for the government to insert itself between two informed and consenting parties. A paternalist government is not compatible with a free society.

Actually, a free society is impossible without a paternalistic government. The government does a lot of work to craft the free and open society we all enjoy, and enforce certain norms of acceptable behavior; primarily to prevent abuse and exploitation in one sided asymmetric power relationships. Like the relationship between a consumer and a team of trained psychologists using everything they know about the human brain to maliciously manipulate people with mental illnesses into parting with their money against their best interests.

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

#236

Post by justinhj » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #234

Terrible article, but raises some good issues. Would like to see a better discussion of those issues. One problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that in my experience a large proportion of people in the games industry are essentially game addicts. They've forgone other opportunities, higher pay, IRL social interactions, family duties, etc. due to their passion for games. It's hard to have a serious conver…

I've been in the game industry for 20 years and I don't recognize this image you've painted at all

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

#237

Post by Paradigma11 » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

stephentmcm wrote: post #141

ethbro wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both the original article's and your points are valid. Especially when you start to see games/virtual items as a "thing" (which probably started with UO/WoW) as opposed to a "fake thing". That said, as a thought experiment, I disagree with the fact that government and regulation have no place in the way a society consumes things like this. If you accept that our knowledge of psychology, biochemistry, and neur…

>b) We overturn the majority of our current social psychology knowledge and realize that yes, people actually do have absolute free will Err... All current research suggests that you have almost no free will and are little more than a complex set of reactions to external stimulus.

So there is no unexplained variance in behaviour and we have models that explain and predict it as good as let's say classical mechanics?

Free will is just a conceptual mistake based on metaphysics.

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

#238

Post by CM30 » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #234

Terrible article, but raises some good issues. Would like to see a better discussion of those issues. One problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that in my experience a large proportion of people in the games industry are essentially game addicts. They've forgone other opportunities, higher pay, IRL social interactions, family duties, etc. due to their passion for games. It's hard to have a serious conver…

If they've foregone other opporunities, it might well be because working conditions in the games industry are (apparently) pretty awful, especially in large development houses. There seems to be an attitude going around that endless crunch is somehow a 'good' thing, so you get massive amounts of overtime and ridiculous working hours.

Presumably, this then selects for people who like games so much that they're somewhat able to give up just about everything to make them. If the conditions were more stable and... normal, then you'd probably get a more 'diverse' group in the industry and likely also better games in general.

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

#239

Post by CM30 » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

fbbbbb wrote: post #91

petke wrote: post #69

I think there would be a better case for regulating in game purchases. Some kind of limit, or a at least a warning at the beginning so people know what they are in for. "This game contains purchasable items. You may spend more than 10 000 dollars in this game." Marketing on the other hand is a different story. We cant really ban that.

And why not? There are cases over the world where advertising was banned with success. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5338 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1125... This is just the first step.

Random related question then; how do smaller companies and individuals starting out in business for the first time compete? Because as much as advertising and marketing can be sleazy in its execution, it's also potentially a way that smaller companies can compete with incumbents. Remove that, and what's left? Brand recognition and word of mouth. The former is great for multinational corporations, but kind of bad for anyone trying to dethrone them. The latter can be good for smaller companies and individuals, but can take decades to become effective.

Banning certain types of advertising is a good idea, but trying to ban all of it would kill competition.

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

#240

Post by biafra » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #134

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing like respecting individual rights by bringing the wrath of the criminal justice system on anyone who dares exercise their right to self-ownership by altering their state of consciousness. The purpose of a drug policy is not to reduce consumption rates. Consumption is not intrinsically bad. My use of the dangerous and potent drug known as theobromine (translation: I eat chocolate) is not itself the problem. A…

I believe you mistook my comment for support of the current drug control system in the United States, when I really said nothing of the sort. The purpose of a drug policy is (ostensibly) and has always been to reduce consumption rates -- look at any of the public support / speeches since the policies were begun (going back to Temperance / Prohibition). That that purpose is ill served by the current effective policy h…

No drug should be illegal. People should be educated about drug effects. Addicts should get help, not be thrown in jail. Those of us who can handle drugs should be left alone. Is that so hard to understand? Regarding addictive games: Is it beneficial to criminalize players?