Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

craigwritescode.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 349 posts

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

#241

Post by naravara »

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.

The reward loop works much better when it can be in your pocket and be accessed during moments of boredom/idleness. The lack of friction before getting pulled in is at least as much of a causative factor as the three issues the article highlights. Every little bit of friction diminishes its effectiveness.

One thing that's ironic with a lot of mainstream AAA gaming though, is that even though they aren't copying the revenue model the game design conventions still tend to focus on length of engagement and playtime. I'm sure there's a reason compelling it but I'm not sure what.

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

#242

Post by slothtrop »

ohdannyboy wrote: post #228
slothtrop wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy content.

Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search redirections. Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtu…

Just yesterday I got recommendations for Sky News, some preacher, and conspiracy clips. All it took was to watch a couple of music videos with several million views. This is what the algorithm is shoveling to people.

One evening of video surfing and you'll practically trip over them. I have no idea how it is one could never notice this stuff. I clear cookies and have no account.

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

#243

Post by s1artibartfast »

huijzer wrote: post #211
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

Not really applicable. In this case, everyone understands it but they don’t talk about it due to legal reasons

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

#244

Post by reducesuffering »

ketzo wrote: post #172
thecupisblue wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixing bullshit left by others, refactoring parts of the machine, copying other apps, working on pointless panels and ideas that will be killed in a hot minute or forgotten about, working on internal tools or mostly - fighting internal political battles to get a promotion/more money/authority/status. Most of the people are not there to innovate but to earn money and status for themselves by working at the big F***K

You sound like you're speaking from experience, so I wanna ask: How genuinely true do you think this is? I'm always curious, about the FAANGs in general but Facebook in particular. Divorced from as much cynicism as possible, what % of level I-III software employees are just there for their resumes?

From Amazon, and according to my extensive experience with the other FANG in Blind, I would very seriously say 90% are there simply for resume and money.

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

#245

Post by s1artibartfast »

karpierz wrote: post #223
andrewla wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Do bars fail?

Yes, and so do casinos. That is the point

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

#247

Post by rconti »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #8

I'd add that algorithmic feeds are another part of the triad (quartet?), and probably the worst offender. Personalized addictive content is on the rise (tiktok, YouTube, even Facebook and Twitter curate your newsfeed "for you" ), and these ml-determined feeds drive engagement to the highest possible levels, leading to an incredible waste of time, a distorted world view (mostly the posts with the highest engagement wi…

I liked Facebook much more when I could scroll back far enough and my perfectionist mind would see where I previously left off and I'd feel "caught up". You can still do it, but the content changes a bit every time. Twitter seems a lot worse; you'll never be able to "go back" and find that thing you just saw a minute ago before you closed the app, and it's just infinite.

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

#248

Post by ohdannyboy »

slothtrop wrote: post #242
ohdannyboy wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search redirections. Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtu…

Just yesterday I got recommendations for Sky News, some preacher, and conspiracy clips. All it took was to watch a couple of music videos with several million views. This is what the algorithm is shoveling to people. One evening of video surfing and you'll practically trip over them. I have no idea how it is one could never notice this stuff. I clear cookies and have no account.

Interesting. I do look at related videos so it's not about noticing anything... We clearly have different experiences.

The difference I see is that I have an account with subscriptions and years of activity data. I guess the algorithm knows I don't click on that stuff so they stopped trying to show it to me. I'm very surprised to learn they are giving users these recommendations by default.

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

#249

Post by wizzwizz4 »

bordercases wrote: post #163
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Objective absolute indifferent thing, has bias towards patchy intersubjective historically situated thing" sounds a lot less catchy when you unpack it.

It's a joke. Mainstream right-wing socioeconomic theories are falsified by reality more often than mainstream left-wing socioeconomic theories. (Of course, left-wing v.s. right-wing is a bad way to judge a socioeconomic theory; better to check whether it's right.)

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

#250

Post by watwut »

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.

Pretty much all people I ever heard about or new who has issue with gaming were addicted to something like lol, wow or pubg.

The people who play whole night and that are irritable and underperforming during day, who made gaming their whole life, are not playing causual games. They are playing console and pc games.

Post reply on HN