The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction • Hacker News Board

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#21

Post by inlined » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #4

> Now, of course, we designers know to make the upgrades come in a constant flow of smaller improvements. A host of bars slowly filling up and numbers increasing, so that the warm feeling never stops. I don't think that's necessarily true. WoW moved more and more towards this model and all it did was make the game predictable and grindy. You need big chunks of uncertainty (will we kill the boss? will it drop what I'm…

Randomness of rewards has been repeatedly shown to increase duration spent with skinner boxes. There seems to be a magic middle spot where the small rewards are frequent enough to avoid disillusionment and the big rewards are infrequent & random enough to feed addiction

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#22

Post by Kapura » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #4

> Now, of course, we designers know to make the upgrades come in a constant flow of smaller improvements. A host of bars slowly filling up and numbers increasing, so that the warm feeling never stops. I don't think that's necessarily true. WoW moved more and more towards this model and all it did was make the game predictable and grindy. You need big chunks of uncertainty (will we kill the boss? will it drop what I'm…

mmm, almost all of the most addicting games I know are some variation of small bars filling up over time to unlock more small bars to fill up. I'll give one specific example:

Destiny is a loot shooter (or "looty shooty" if you're in polite company) which has rare drops as part of it's core gameplay. Certain rare guns can only come from high-level activities, and some weapons have randomised rolls that encourage people to re-play those activities to get gear that is marginally better. A lot of the best parts of the gear drop design are lifted from peak WoW. But that alone isn't what makes destiny addictive.

Destiny 1 had "gun leveling" where you would need to get kills on certain rare weapons to unlock the rare features that made them useful, along with individual numbered levels for each gear slot, and that's before you get into the quests and bounties. There was always a reason to hop on, because you always had some new weapon that you could power up to see what it did. Tiny bars filling up.

When Destiny 2 shipped, they dramatically improved the loot system, simplifying the ways people would get drops and making them more consistent overall. But they also tried to remove a lot of the other "grindy" aspects of the game like gun leveling, but the result was the game didn't feel like you had compelling reasons to log in. Fewer bars = fewer hooks.

It's only now that the game has had several significant expansions and added a host of new quests (many of which simply require using certain types of gear in certain activities) that the game is approaching those same levels of addictive.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#23

Post by inlined » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 5:34 AM UTC

akozak wrote: post #6

A lot of what we do can be explained (or "reduced") to chemical processes that reward or reinforce behavior. Is there a chemical difference between this and the pleasure some get from reading great literary works, building a birdhouse, playing with your kids, etc? A key question on the ethics of it all is - I think - whether there is some externality from the behavior that leads to social utility. Reading literature…

But modern games are often much more like casino machines than books. There are countless studies over the last decade to make games more addictive. The key step that I hate most is the intentional use of grinding. Not only does it stretch out gameplay, but doing your “chores” (eg gathering materials for hundreds of hours) makes the reward feel more earned. This makes the virtual sword feel more tangible and feeds into a sunk cost fallacy when we consider quitting.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#24

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #20

rosser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you saw a bit of a dopamine spike when that message came in. Was it enough to mitigate the physical symptoms at all, or was that purely mental, I wonder?

Genuinely mitigated the runny nose, aches and pains in my back, etc.

[deleted]

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#25

Post by sien » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #18

jancsika wrote: post #15

> Look, if an ADULT spends $500 of their hard earned money to buy Fortnitebux or Smurfberries or whatever, I don't know what business it is of yours. If an adult wants to spend cash on beer or DLC or opera tickets or loot boxes, it's their right. I was ready to write an angry 10,000 word response on the importance of private property and the free market system. But reading this paragraph de-escalated the situation en…

Well, the article provides some good points why a free market system does not work. The basis of free markets is that participants act rational and have full knowledge. Yet here we are researching increasingly sophisticated ways to undercut their rationality...

The basis of free markets is that on balance people with radically different preferences will make better choices more aligned with their preferences and local knowledge than other systems do.

Markets perform better than other allocation systems for many things. It's an observed principle rather than something that was directed from above.

Some economic models assume people are rational because on aggregate it works for those models.

Mostly market systems have substantially outperformed centrally controlled systems.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#26

Post by seventhtiger » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility.

If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad.

If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting them for money.

If you sell time, like a subscription, then players think you are trying to force them to grind to pay money

If you sell in-game items, like weapons or maps, the players think you are intentionally weakening the free items in favor of the power you can buy.

If you sell in-game cosmetics, like skins, which have no impact on gameplay, the players think you are trying to make every look stupid and you have to pay to look cool.

Video games are inherently manipulative in the sense that the game is designed for you to behave in fun ways and do fun things. Once monetization is in the picture it completely poisons the whole dynamic. It doesn't help that the audience skews young.

If you want to make a game just for the passion of it, if you want to have a healthy relationship with gamers, you are literally not allowed to monetize. You have to give it away fully for free.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#27

Post by seventhtiger » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 7:00 AM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #14

Suppose the people who hate free to play games win the argument and get rid of microtransactions. Suppose they change the laws so you have to get your looter shooter Destiny/Anthem/Division dopamine drip for one fair fixed price. So you're grinding hundreds of hours to get better armor, but you aren't spending more money. Just time. If it’s a single fixed price, what is incentivizing the developer to make the game mo…

The incentive will be to hype the game up, encourage people to preorder, go on a massive marketing spend, and then don't fix anything broken about it after launch to make sure it's dead within 2 years in time for the new hype cycle.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#28

Post by rimliu » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 7:05 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #18

jancsika wrote: post #15

> Look, if an ADULT spends $500 of their hard earned money to buy Fortnitebux or Smurfberries or whatever, I don't know what business it is of yours. If an adult wants to spend cash on beer or DLC or opera tickets or loot boxes, it's their right. I was ready to write an angry 10,000 word response on the importance of private property and the free market system. But reading this paragraph de-escalated the situation en…

Well, the article provides some good points why a free market system does not work. The basis of free markets is that participants act rational and have full knowledge. Yet here we are researching increasingly sophisticated ways to undercut their rationality...

Was there rationality in the first place, ever? Just a casual glance at the stock markets gives an answer.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#29

Post by ps101 » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 7:06 AM UTC

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

Upfront sale is not like the others at all because it doesn't interact with addictive behaviour in the same way.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#30

Post by seventhtiger » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

ps101 wrote: post #29

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

Upfront sale is not like the others at all because it doesn't interact with addictive behaviour in the same way.

It doesn't relate to addictive behavior, but there's still continuous uproar about deceptive marketing and lack of support. Developer interviews are picked around and lists of promises are made. Any monetary incentive a developer has will be viewed through a bad faith lens at every turn. That can't win.