The Anatomy of Addictive Gameplay

I saw a lot of good things and many more bad things in my time there. Kids failing school, people getting screwed over in relationships, parents neglecting children, all to play the game. However I also saw people co-operating, people looking out for one another (in one case, my group helped a member get out of an abusive relationship by helping her with her self-confidence so that she was able to confront her partner and ultimately move out), friendships bloom, some relationships that did work out, and lots of positive times as well.

So I'm really torn about it. I think the line for me is when the games start making you pay for the addictive qualities. With the MMO I played there was just the monthly flat fee, and the cost of expansion packs (which were not very frequent). With some of these games coming out now, you pay for items, equipment, horses, farms, etc. and how much money you put in directly influences what you get out of it. And I think that is the definite line for me, crossing into wrong territory.

The issues in the first part that I saw are very difficult to regulate. It's hard to tell whether someone is going to become addicted to the point where they have serious life issues going on. Plenty of people can maintain a casual relationship with these sorts of games. But when you start tying money to direct actions like these new "social" games do, it's directly profiting from these vulnerable people. And that for me is wrong.

Remember, morality is not limited to legality. It can be both more lenient and more strict.

In the earlier analogy, the bartender saw the troubling behavior. Game design is not just analogous to how the drinks are mixed, but also the behavior of the bartender. If one is programming the bartender-AI and one can, but doesn't, include the ability to be watchful in that way, and the reason one makes that omission is to increase drink sales... well, that seems pretty morally wrong to me.

You don't see how choosing to only include in a game's design the things that undermine user intentions of self-control and never any of the things that support those intentions, how that is a moral issue of game design?

Games can perhaps be used to help teach or reinforce the helpful skill of self-control and other better angels of our minds. So possibilities of moral good are also clear. Instead, are you saying moral metrics don't apply at all? That there are no moral issues with how one designs games which treat their players little different from saps at a carnival? No moral issues with making games that better and better undermine the player's will and take advantage of systematic mistakes in the way that player's discriminate, while having regard only for the metric of sales and no other effects. Using someone else's weakness for gain is a moral issue.

In the second category . . . well, my choices are going to reveal my age and biases, but here goes. Starcraft, Nethack, and Descent are the big three that have eaten whole years of my life through simply excellent and deep gameplay, so they're my standby examples. Any of the Civ games would count. Deadly Rooms Of Death is a puzzle game that's a genuinely tasty hacker snack. And one of the most direcly addictive games I've ever played was Starscape.

I agree with your distinction between in-game and out-of-game work. Bad games convert time into progress. Good games convert time into skill into progress. Great games convert concerted mental effort into progress.