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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

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Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#211

Post by huijzer »

luplex wrote: post #41

I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing" It was a great workplace, but I don't think it w…

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

- Upton Sinclair

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#212

Post by djoldman »

soledades wrote: post #194
djoldman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think a lot of what we see on social media is a reflection of who we are as humans, and what we desire and want to see. Agreed. I'm curious why there aren't deep discussions about WHY people want to __insert convenient social media action__. Isn't the flaw that we have a fear of missing out, want to appear to have high status, want to belong to a group whose identity is tied into being against another group, etc.?…

Telling people to be different is simply not a viable mechanism for making the world a better place. You can inquire after however many chickens and eggs you like about why the world is the way it is, but I think most people are more interested in what can be done to improve things.

>Telling people to be different is simply not a viable mechanism for making the world a better place.

Perhaps. However this reminds me of the credit cards that are offered on college campuses. They're signed up for like hotcakes sometimes. Later in life people learn that perhaps it isn't such a good idea. Can't people be given information showing the potential effects of decisions that then helps them better make choices?

>You can inquire after however many chickens and eggs you like about why the world is the way it is, but I think most people are more interested in what can be done to improve things.

My point exactly. Let's stop talking about social media, which takes advantage of a root flaw. Let's talk about the root flaw.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#213

Post by dillondoyle »

luplex wrote: post #41

I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing" It was a great workplace, but I don't think it w…

Yesterday I saw on Cardi B's stories she did a paid post promotion for a game that is literally a slot machine..

It's designed with childlike graphics and her followers are very young. It's marked as teen in google store.

God even the first review shows how blatant this is:

"I'm really not big on games but this game is the truth. I cant stop playing it. I go to sleep to it. Wake to it. My day is filled with ways of finding new ways to get coins and spins (mainly spins, lol)"

I'm all for legal, regulated online gambling. This not even disguised style of game should be called what it is. Some type of Pachinko in that you don't get money back but some other token. But even worse since you probably can't walk around the corner to exchange easily for real world value.

Call it gambling, verified 18+, and regulate it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonactive...

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#214

Post by akhosravian »

luplex wrote: post #41

I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing" It was a great workplace, but I don't think it w…

I worked for a VP in mobile games who described the central loop as “giving the players a job and having them pay us [the makers of the game] for it”. I respected his candor on what we are doing, but this was past the point when I had realized it wasn’t something I was proud to have spent time on.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#215

Post by andrewla »

csallen wrote: post #193
andrewla wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all seems a bit silly. Go work for an *unprofitable* mobile game company (or start your own!) to see how quickly your model breaks down. The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a silly concept. That games en masse are evolving for maximal "addictiveness" is unquestionable, but has entirely different implications.

The fact that some people fail to accomplish a thing doesn't mean others can't. Of course you can engineer addictive games. We know quite a lot about addiction. What do you think casinos are, exactly?

Tell me this -- do casinos fail?

If you look only at examples of successful things and say "it is addictive" but don't look at the same principles as applied to failed examples of the same thing, then you're being intellectually lazy.

In order to establish some facet as "addictive" it needs to work both ways, otherwise you're just using "addictive" as a synonym for "successful" -- Edison's light bulb was "addictive" and people were "addicted" to Pullman cars. But you get to carry all the negative connotations of "addictive"; you're trying to let the informal do all the work while positing nonsensical equivalences.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#218

Post by Vektorweg »

dleslie wrote: post #170
mysterydip wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustrating part is there are lots of people making games to tell stories and explore worlds, but they fall into the void almost inmediately after launch due to the slot machine games taking the lion's share of the attention and money.

Thankfully, PC Gaming strangely hasn't been dominated by this phenomenon, despite EA's, Activision's, and Epic's best efforts. Fortnite is addiction-tuned F2P casinowear, and it's done gangbusters, but the industry hasn't managed to copy that formula with great success.

Epic picked literally the most vulnerable target audience. That's what made Fortnite a hit.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#219

Post by ryandrake »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #189
RandallBrown wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't... I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any evil intent, even if they have evil results. 1. Relative timestamps are just a more useful way of telling people when something happened. It's how most humans communicate time to each other. 2. Infinite scrolling is just what happens when you're not constrained by physical pages. The only reason we used to see paged content was because it was tech…

The medium is the message. We've been talking about this for decades - the structure of the thing you are interacting with determines how you interact with it. Substantive debate is difficult in 140 characters, so substantive debate does not often happen on Twitter. Infinite scroll and auto-play video eliminates the "decision points" where people would otherwise reconsider if they want to continue, so people spend mo…

Also, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You judge a system by its outcome, not by the intentions of the people who built it.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#220

Post by aspaceman »

RandallBrown wrote: post #176
deeeeplearning wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I did not see any evidence of malicious intent towards our users but a genuine belief we were enabling them to be more productive. The Banality of Evil, this is just a version of "We were just following orders"

No it isn't... I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any evil intent, even if they have evil results. 1. Relative timestamps are just a more useful way of telling people when something happened. It's how most humans communicate time to each other. 2. Infinite scrolling is just what happens when you're not constrained by physical pages. The only reason we used to see paged content was because it was tech…

> I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any evil intent, even if they have evil results.

Evil is committed in actions - not intent. That's part of the whole banality of evil.

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