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

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#101

Post by Balgair » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #11

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…

Note: This is likely not as neat an analogy/example as I would like, but it seems relevant. I used to be an actual heroin addict, many many years ago. Finding the next hit every day/every couple of days was nearly as satisfying as the actual rush of the drug itself. In fact, this effect was so powerful, that the "come thru" message from my dealer, and driving over to his, would make my withdrawal symptoms subside nea…

> In fact, this effect was so powerful, that the "come thru" message from my dealer, and driving over to his, would make my withdrawal symptoms subside nearly entirely, well before I'd actually taken the drug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system#Anatomy

Though I've not read any articles on heroin or these long lengths of time specifically, opitates are known to have these anticipatory responses in the brain like the one you describe.

Brains are indeed totally crazy.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#102

Post by leetcrew » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

einr wrote: post #78

leetcrew wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an upfront price made sense in the old days when a relatively polished product was released at launch, perhaps with a couple patches to fix bugs, and with users running their own multiplayer servers. for better or for worse, the norm has shifted to longer periods of support and servers hosted by the company. it's hard to commit to supporting a game this way when each user only pays once. personally I like the approac…

I will fully admit that I have only the faintest idea of how modern multiplayer games work, but I agree from my understanding that the old business model of selling a complete game once seems ill suited to that style of game. (Although, counterexample: Mojang made a fortune out of selling Minecraft, a complete multiplayer game, where you host your own servers, with no paid DLC or hidden catches, but then later came o…

to be clear, I'm not saying it's totally not viable to just release a good game and charge for it upfront. there is a small number of studios/publishers who have such good brand recognition (or just consistently ship really good games) that they can actually make money this way. it can still work well for games with little ongoing maintenance cost from established companies making AAA titles or indie devs who don't have the same upfront costs.

all I'm saying is that there are other "game-as-a-service" models that can align incentives well between players and devs for ongoing projects without necessarily being abusive.

GGP is sort of right though. gamers are a notoriously difficult group of customers to please, and they don't really have a way to understand the business or technical constraints faced by the makers of their favorite games. the worst of them will be uncharitable and hostile, no matter what you do.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#103

Post by taneq » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #70

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…

100% agree on your point about WoW and MMORPGs in general. Progress shouldn't be so formulaic and you need "asymmetries" of sorts between classes and tiers of progression to make every step memorable. I remember how grand raiding and high end content felt in the past but with how accessible that stuff is today( in fact you are expected to raid) the whole game just feels so much smaller despite having more stuff to do…

Yeah, basically every decision from the early game that they later 'smoothed over' turned out to be important somehow. Except for spell and ability scaling with gear, they messed that one right up at the start and didn't fully fix it til the end of Burning Crusade.

I could write an essay on this subject but the two I'll mention now are cross-server dungeon/BG finder (which destroyed much of the social aspect to the game) and loot tokens instead of loot drops.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#104

Post by taneq » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

madog wrote: post #86

inlined wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's called a variable ratio reward schedule [1]. It's at play in slot machines for example. Very effective at getting rapid and persistent responses. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Gambling_%E2%80%...

Huh, I've always heard "intermittent reinforcement" used to mean this, rather than just any not-every-time reinforcement. Thanks!

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#105

Post by stubish » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

seventhtiger wrote: post #48

cthor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Between Steam's refund policy and review system this is basically a solved problem.

No Man's Sky developers can't say the same.

No Man's Sky's developers sold a promise upfront, not a game upfront. You see the same thing with pretty much all pre-orders and early access games, not just the crowd funded stuff. It is completely different to selling a complete game for $60 with the customers able to read reviews before purchasing or get refunds after purchasing.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#106

Post by ahaferburg » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #51

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…

> Is there a chemical difference between this and the pleasure some get from reading great literary works Yes, and that difference is the whole point of art vs entertainment. After consuming entertainment, you want more entertainment. But after consuming art - after reading The Great Gatsby - your eyes get yanked back to your own life. You start thinking "what doomed dreams do I have?", not "when will they release Gr…

Note that the comment didn't say books vs games. A video game can be art, and a book can be entertainment.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#107

Post by ahaferburg » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

Great talk from the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs

> In this GDC 2018 talk, Spiderweb Software's Jeff Vogel presents a retrospective on his company's history and how they've managed to stay in the game-making business since 1994.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#108

Post by m463 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:52 AM UTC

Gimpei wrote: post #43

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…

I'd argue that the upfront model leads to higher quality games. They're actually fun to play rather than simply being addiction machines.

What if you end the game on a cliffhanger and sell a sequel?

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#109

Post by relativeadv » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 1:08 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…

Meanwhile, Jeff Vogel (author of this article), has always had a 1-year refund policy on his games. He says it is rarely used.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#110

Post by Jorsiem » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:17 PM 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…

The only method you listed that people automatically are hostile to is selling in game items that unbalance a game in the buyers advantage

> players think you are intentionally weakening the free items in favor of the power you can buy.

Players dont just think this, time after time this has proven true. If the buyable item wasnt better why would anyone buy it?

None of the other monetization methods you lists are objectionable if done right.

If enough people are complaining about the value of your $60 game then maybe it's because you got your price point off and should have instead sold it at a lower price. Not every game is a AAA title.