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This is disgusting. I've turned down job opportunities based solely on the feeling that it would compromise my values / principals. So whether you just need to

by oneJob 11y ago

This is disgusting. I've turned down job opportunities based solely on the feeling that it would compromise my values / principals. So whether you just need to pay the mortgage, your school loans, or for the booze and clothes you're going to wow all your friends with tonight, if you're one of the many people building these sort of companies and normalizing these type of practices, I say to you, this is wrong. And if you choose to keep on keepin' on, don't expect me to associate with you; expect me to do what I can to roll back the mess and harm you're producing. If you do this kind of work and, god bless you, you stop, then I say to you, thank you and please share your experiences / stories with us. This sort of stuff doesn't just mean I feel my privacy bubble is popped. This is the stuff that changes the way we live and who we become. We have more productive capacity now than in all of human history, let's do something beautiful and good with it.

nothrabannosir 11y ago
I know "+1" comments are against HN policy, and if you had contact info in your profile I'd have sent you a mail instead. But you don't, and this has to be said: thank you.
doctorpangloss 11y ago
I worked in mobile gaming and left it, so I'm hoping to give a nuanced response here. Obviously virtual slot machines aren't good for players, for the gaming ecosystem or the software ecosystem. Virtual slot machines are proof positive that they exploit people psychologically, since there's absolutely no rational reason to play a zero-payout gambling game. More importantly, these apps make up 1/11th of the top 200 grossing on the App Store, sucking money and talent out of riskier and more rewarding pursuits. It's unfair though to look at what the producer describes and say free to play gaming is this huge existential crisis of conscious. Anything near the end (i.e., end user) of the value chain is going to be dealing with people's demographics, their wants and needs, etc. Of course game developers are interested in their player's features, no more differently than stores use loyalty cards, magazines survey their readership, etc. There's a consequence to what you're saying: The only honest work doesn't deal with the end user. Maybe if you're building database testing tools you're doing a total social positive. Well, we can't all work for infrastructure companies messing around with Haskell libraries all day. Who do you think is using all those elegant hierarchies, those pickaxes in the app goldrush? The producer says they integrate forty SDKs! That's forty different tech startups, some of them with billion dollar valuations. What created AWS? The intensive, pathological tracking of people's preferences in book buying. What created all of Google's server infrastructure? The intensive tracking of people's searches. I'm not saying forfeit your values or principals. But the alternatives to free to play gaming are just less obviously exploitative.
- blub 11y ago
  I see you've found a way to rationalize everything. Honest work is software which doesn't violate the customer's rights and privacy. There's no bonus points for merely not breaking the law and I can guarantee you that this producer is breaking the law big time in the EU. There's always the choice of selling software for money, but you and many other producers have given up your morals a long time ago in exchange for IAP and ad dollars, so you're blind when it comes to recognizing them. There are many companies in this world, some will succeed, a lot won't. If the alternative is having human beings treated like rats in a maze, it would be better for society that those startups creating SDKs would simply die.
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    Yup. That's why this "final thought" doesn't add up: > You want to put a stop to this? Stop playing free games. Buy a game for 4.99 or 9.99. No. The only solution is to stop playing games that exploit people's privacy in such a way. No matter what you pay for them. What about people who can't tell how bad they're being exploited? Well, for starters, paying 4.99 is not going to suddenly make them able to tell. Surely paying may make them believe the game is more honourable, but that's really the same spiel all over again, is it not? No it's much simpler. Just get your games from a company in a jurisdiction where this shit is illegal. Like in the EU. Just like people are sometimes wary of certain foreign brand electronics having cheaper chips or whatnot in them, now you know what US-based game companies are legally allowed to do to their users. And the lengths they will go to do it. > We don’t want to be making games like this, and we don’t want another meeting about retention, cohorts or churn. And please. "Look at what you made us do!", have some personal responsibility.

by oneJob 11y ago

nothrabannosir 11y ago

I know "+1" comments are against HN policy, and if you had contact info in your profile I'd have sent you a mail instead. But you don't, and this has to be said: thank you.

doctorpangloss 11y ago

I worked in mobile gaming and left it, so I'm hoping to give a nuanced response here. Obviously virtual slot machines aren't good for players, for the gaming ecosystem or the software ecosystem. Virtual slot machines are proof positive that they exploit people psychologically, since there's absolutely no rational reason to play a zero-payout gambling game. More importantly, these apps make up 1/11th of the top 200 grossing on the App Store, sucking money and talent out of riskier and more rewarding pursuits. It's unfair though to look at what the producer describes and say free to play gaming is this huge existential crisis of conscious. Anything near the end (i.e., end user) of the value chain is going to be dealing with people's demographics, their wants and needs, etc. Of course game developers are interested in their player's features, no more differently than stores use loyalty cards, magazines survey their readership, etc. There's a consequence to what you're saying: The only honest work doesn't deal with the end user. Maybe if you're building database testing tools you're doing a total social positive. Well, we can't all work for infrastructure companies messing around with Haskell libraries all day. Who do you think is using all those elegant hierarchies, those pickaxes in the app goldrush? The producer says they integrate forty SDKs! That's forty different tech startups, some of them with billion dollar valuations. What created AWS? The intensive, pathological tracking of people's preferences in book buying. What created all of Google's server infrastructure? The intensive tracking of people's searches. I'm not saying forfeit your values or principals. But the alternatives to free to play gaming are just less obviously exploitative.

blub 11y ago
I see you've found a way to rationalize everything. Honest work is software which doesn't violate the customer's rights and privacy. There's no bonus points for merely not breaking the law and I can guarantee you that this producer is breaking the law big time in the EU. There's always the choice of selling software for money, but you and many other producers have given up your morals a long time ago in exchange for IAP and ad dollars, so you're blind when it comes to recognizing them. There are many companies in this world, some will succeed, a lot won't. If the alternative is having human beings treated like rats in a maze, it would be better for society that those startups creating SDKs would simply die.
- tripzilch 11y ago
  Yup. That's why this "final thought" doesn't add up: > You want to put a stop to this? Stop playing free games. Buy a game for 4.99 or 9.99. No. The only solution is to stop playing games that exploit people's privacy in such a way. No matter what you pay for them. What about people who can't tell how bad they're being exploited? Well, for starters, paying 4.99 is not going to suddenly make them able to tell. Surely paying may make them believe the game is more honourable, but that's really the same spiel all over again, is it not? No it's much simpler. Just get your games from a company in a jurisdiction where this shit is illegal. Like in the EU. Just like people are sometimes wary of certain foreign brand electronics having cheaper chips or whatnot in them, now you know what US-based game companies are legally allowed to do to their users. And the lengths they will go to do it. > We don’t want to be making games like this, and we don’t want another meeting about retention, cohorts or churn. And please. "Look at what you made us do!", have some personal responsibility.