9 ms·

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, which was released, oh, 58 years ago. People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". Marketing and advertising might seem to be refined in this dopamine-heavy, short-attention-span social gaming age, but this shit has been around as long as humanity itself has existed. Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. It's a slippery slope that would take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry, an industry which is pretty much necessary for the vast majority of the citizenry to even know what is out there to purchase. Furthermore, how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? Some people want to own all the capital ships; they have some social hierarchy in some subculture standing upon it. Should I regulate that, too, and force them to have the same consumption values and preferences that I do? Should we take this a step further and ban all vices? Let's see how fast American society would fall apart if we banned alcohol again. FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big branded items, I don't know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just because I feel this way, I don't go around trying to violently force that opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me.

pascalxus 11y ago
Well Said.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Funny that this comes up. Donald J. Boudreaux wrote an entry just earlier on the same topic in response to Akerlof and Shiller's recent book: http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/the-role-of-market-forces-in-protecting-against-phishing.html http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/the-role-of-market-forces-in-pr... There's also a bit of a double standard about how advertising is perceived. Banner ads, editorials and similar are frowned upon. Yet it's quite likely you'll interpret someone promoting a work in the comments section of a site you frequent as a friendly recommendation, never mind it's still signaling availability of something in a manner identical to many less invasive ads.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > Yet it's quite likely you'll interpret someone promoting a work in the comments section of a site you frequent as a friendly recommendation The difference is intent. People directly advertising in comments get downvoted, promoting something relevant as a friendly favour are upvoted, and people doing the former while pretending to do the latter are considered sleazy bastards and subject to being pruned from community if it is to stay healthy. It really is simple. It's about trust.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    The difference is actually subjective gauging of intent. Particularly your latter case of the "sleazy bastards" is often an intrinsic gray area and of course in the best case indistinguishable from a mere recommendation without special interests.
- makomk 11y ago
  There's a subtle but critical mistake in the very first paragraph of that blog post. It doesn't create profitable opportunities for entrepreneurs to help consumers avoid being phished for phools, it creates profitable opportunities for entrepreneurs who can convince consumers that they're helping them avoid being phished for phools. This is an important distinction because consumers suffer from the same information asymmetries when deciding who to trust as they do when deciding what to buy.
chejazi 11y ago
To take your question a step further, and into legal territory, where is the line between social signaling and false advertising? Alcohol commercials also fall in this weird conflict space.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". So if people are interested in Ponzi schemes or magical remedies, the state should not interfere, right?
- necessity 11y ago
  Ponzi schemes and magical remedies promise you something in exchange for your money and do not deliver. If they were advertising a game in which for $x you get A and B and you don't in fact get it, then yeah, intervention is required. That is not what the article is supporting, though.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jabgrabdthrow 11y ago
  Those are fraud, not just "manipulation".
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    When the game is released I think there would be a better case for 'not fraud'.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  There's plenty of legal Ponzi and pyramid schemes out there right now. Amway and plenty of other multi-level marketing enterprises, for instance. As long as you're (sort of) honest about it, it isn't even fraudulent to run one. "Magical remedies". I assume you mean alternative medicine. Does this mean you're going to ban various herbs, or what?
  - lemming 11y ago
    I would be in favour of anyone selling homeopathic "remedies" being banned from calling themselves a health professional.
guntars 11y ago
So in your opinion there's nothing a gaming or marketing company can do that's legal now, but really shouldn't be? I'm also not buying that it's a slippery slope and banning, say, cross compiling profiles on customers from different, unrelated platforms would "take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry". In capitalism, companies will do everything within the legal framework to make more money. That's their job. Ours is to set and adjust those bounds to keep the whole system productive.
- nostromo 11y ago
  Take a look at someone who spent $30k on ships in Star Citizen. http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-star-citizen-ships/ http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-sta... He seems like a reasonable person to me. He's not in financial ruin. He doesn't seem to regret his purchase. He's just putting money into his hobby, the same way a different 40 year old would buy an "unproductive" boat or an "unproductive" Rolex.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    I think both the original article's and your points are valid. Especially when you start to see games/virtual items as a "thing" (which probably started with UO/WoW) as opposed to a "fake thing". That said, as a thought experiment, I disagree with the fact that government and regulation have no place in the way a society consumes things like this. If you accept that our knowledge of psychology, biochemistry, and neuroscience are improving and likely to continue doing so, and that calibrated external actions are capable of influencing our behavior, and that progress in the former begets progress in the latter, then either: a) We will reach a point where we will stop making progress in those fields b) We overturn the majority of our current social psychology knowledge and realize that yes, people actually do have absolute free will c) We will develop techniques so sophisticated and reliable to influence behavior that it becomes unreasonable to expect an average person to resist them As I (and the original article seems to) see it, the current free-for-all that is "freemium"/casual gaming basically targets all of capitalism's motivation and resources on arriving at (c) as quickly as possible. And... we're getting pretty damn good at it. PS: Positech Games makes great stuff, btw! GSB had several free expansions just because Cliff Harris is cool [he == Positech]. He absolutely could have charged for the content if he'd felt like milking more money out of his users.
moonchrome 11y ago
>Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. Individual freedom part of me would agree but in reality governments do this all the time and I can't say it's all bad either. A good example is drug control - while it's currently taken to the extreme there's no doubt in my mind that fully legalizing drugs would lead to a more volatile society - even if drugs were legal they would still cost money, as would other basic necessities - and hard addicts aren't in any position to be productive. At best they will be a burden on their community. At worst they turn to crime. Not to mention the increased number of psychotic breakdowns. I value a society which is based on individual freedom but I don't like the idea of living in a society where I have to be afraid of a junky robbing me if I step outside of my house or dying in a random guns blazing suicide shooter spree. >but this shit has been around as long as humanity itself has existed Interesting and somewhat obvious point that gets overlooked a lot. For example the "mainstream media conspiracy" argument (which is rather accepted considering how implausible the argument is on the grand scale) of dumbing down the population and intentionally shoving superficial crap/shocking stories as a part of some coordinated conspiracy to divert attention from "important issues". I don't doubt that there is plenty of media manipulation from political and private circles - in the grand scheme of things a far more plausible explanation for the media we have is that they cater to their audience and know which buttons need to be pressed to get viewership. And their profit model is not aligned with quality content either.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  there's no doubt in my mind that fully legalizing drugs would lead to a more volatile society Many hard drugs (including cocaine and heroin) were legal in the United States prior to the 1920s. To the best of my knowledge, there was no massive social breakdown as a result. The ultimate irony is that a major motivation for the criminalization of cocaine was, for poor rural whites, a fear that drugged up blacks would start raping white women. [1] Needless to say, this did not materialize and there is no reason it will if we lift the ban. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-too...
chiaro 11y ago
It's strange to me that a group of people that is sometimes stereotyped as being too preoccupied with logical fallacies will still invoke slippery slopes. Making good decisions now does not remove our capability to make good decisions in the future. Nor is it particularly reasonable to draw parallels between "don't fake users to befriend key targets" and "we may as well ban alcohol". The status quo isn't as black and white as you've made it out. Advertisements and marketing have developed along with their regulations throughout modern history. Most countries restrict advertisements for prescription medicines. Many restrict advertising aimed at children directly. In the US, advertising is explicitly excluded from the first amendment. A free market works only when people act rationally. That's one of the underlying hypotheses. Psychological manipulation and the Zynga Skinner box causes people to act out of alignment with their rational preferences.
- njharman 11y ago
  It's strange to me that anyone believes humans are rational and that logic can be applied to their behavior. Esp in the face of innumerable studies showing that we are exceptionally irrational. It simply is not logical.
Silhouette 11y ago
Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. Out of genuine curiosity, do you feel the same about state intervention in other situations, away from gaming, that involve a more knowledgeable or deliberate party taking advantage of a less knowledgeable or deliberate one? For example, what about full-on gambling where the potential exists to win big but players will probably lose, and having already lost, aggressive tactics are then used to get them to try again? Does it matter whether the person gambling understands the situation they are being steered into? Is it OK for bars or clubs to offer a happy hour early in the evening to get patrons going, then turn up the heat and make it hard to find water so those patrons keep ordering more drinks and getting more and more drunk throughout the evening? What about phishing attacks? If someone is ignorant of the possibilities for impersonating e-mail from someone else they know, should we turn a blind eye to those who would send such e-mails to trick someone who thinks they're helping a friend in need into parting with their money? What about confidence tricksters who do similar things on the doorstep of old people who may not be familiar with what sort of credentials a genuine representative of their water or electricity supplier would carry today? Or payday loan companies, who will offer what looks like a lifeline to those who have fallen on hard times, yet charge astronomical rates of interest that can rapidly lead into a vicious and sometimes devastating cycle of debt and despair? How about law firms in jurisdictions where everyone normally pays their own legal costs after a court case, who send threatening letters alleging infringements of copyright and offer to settle for just less than it's likely to cost to go to court to challenge the allegations? What about outright grooming of children or other vulnerable people for the purposes of sexual exploitation? For these and many other similar reasons, I think it is appropriate for the state to regulate industries where one party may flagrantly take advantage of another. No-one can possibly be an expert on all areas of society, and laws exist to protect us all from those who would otherwise unfairly take advantage of those weaknesses. Of course there are sometimes grey areas, but the principle that governments should never step in to protect the vulnerable from exploitation seems a very bad one to me. Also, I dispute your characterisation of the entire marketing and advertising industry as if everyone does these things. Of course all ads are hoping to engage someone in the target market and pique their interest, but IMHO that is a far cry from the kind of active and disproportionate exploitation we're talking about with some of these games companies.
6d0debc071 11y ago
> People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". The same argument can apply to people who stay in abusive relationships. I'm not taking a side on whether you're right or wrong in the whole, but there is a danger here that people seem to have some sorts of action linked mechanisms that do not necessarily favour their happiness.
peterashford 11y ago
The whole free-to-play market is premised on exploiting the psychology of a few people with cash and very little self control ("whales"). As a game developer, I think it's pretty slimy.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I'm no fan of these games, but is it fundamentally different from, say, Harley-Davidson?
  - peterashford 11y ago
    Yes. When HD advertises to you, you buy a bike and you're done. And you have an actual, existent bike. And you could sell it later should you feel like you made a mistake. With whales, they spend and spend and spend - way more than a Harley costs them. And what do they end up with? Sweet FA.
    - adrtessier 11y ago
      I don't think that is his point; that's not what Harley does, at all. H-D markets themselves as a "lifestyle brand". You don't just buy a motorcycle and you're done. You are aggressively marketed toward for a bunch of different pieces of clothing, spare parts, co-branded partnerships with automobile companies, et cetera, ad nauseum. You are effectively buying into a subculture. Furthermore, Harley-Davidson has been known to use almost identical sales tactics. IIRC and I can't find it now, but sometime last year a sales guidelines book was leaked that actually did things like put attractive models at gas stations to tell the prospective buyer "nice bike" or the like on their test rides.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        One difference I see is that H-D subculture is not ephemeral. If H-D decided to wrap up their business and disappear tomorrow, the bikes will still be there. The clothes will still be there. The brand, the culture created around it over the years, will still exist. Contrast with the "value" whales purchase for their games that could cease to exist the moment the game company decides to shut down their servers.
RodericDay 11y ago
> FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big branded items, I don't know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just because I feel this way, I don't go around trying to violently force that opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me. huh? this literally sounds like "fuck you, got mine" but spun as a benevolent positive, somehow. You had the education and the know-how to be able to learn to defend yourself from ads, and out of some sense of modesty, you're going to keep it to yourself?
- adrtessier 11y ago
  > You had the education and the know-how to be able to learn to defend yourself from ads, and out of some sense of modesty, you're going to keep it to yourself? I'm unsure how it is that you draw this as the conclusion. What am I keeping to myself? The OP's argument is about banning specific types of games because some people can't control themselves. I believe there is a strong difference between asking the government to ban an action versus sharing information on the risks of an action. I've generally nothing against the government issuing required warnings on vices, assuming the information is scientifically accurate (e.g. the warnings on tobacco boxes, etc.)
eecks 11y ago
As a counter point, I've never even heard of that book. I may go read it now though.
ajuc 11y ago
When a new addictive thing happens - people aren't adapted to it at first. Both individuals, and whole civilizations have to learn how to use the thing responsibly. Sometimes state control may help to limit the damage until natural adaptation occurs. As time pass, people learn to use the thing without too much harm, and then it may be OK to lift the ban: completely, or for adults only (like with alcohol - notice that it's still controlled, just not outright forbidden for everybody). There's no reason we have to think in absolutes ("state control in one case was bad = all state control is bad", or "particular measure of state control was bad at one point, therefore it was bad since the beggining and will be bad forever"). It's possible that a good policy in one circumstances became bad policy later. I think war on drugs is the example of this. And consider the harm strong alcohol did among native Americans when it was introduced. I think prohibition for a few decades would be net positive for them, if they could enforce it. Slippery slope arguments are tricky, they often lead you to overgeneralize. As for particulary addictive games (like ogame etc) - I think it would be beneficial if they were regulated similary to gambling. I am open to arguments.
wpietri 11y ago
You should probably work out your contradictions before you froth like this. Consider: > necessary for the vast majority of the citizenry to even know what is out there to purchase and > I block ads everywhere So you are stumbling around unable to buy things you need, totally uninformed about what products and services are available? Poor kid. Want me to bring you a sandwich? If only you had access to some sort of information network that contained the collective opinions of a large and growing portion of humanity. If we gradually banned advertising, nothing particularly bad would happen. Advertising is an arms race; most of it is done only because competitors do it too. We'd still find things to buy, and we might do it more easily if we weren't distracted by paid messages. As a bonus, we'd have half a trillion dollars of people's time and brainpower to spend on something that mattered.
zouhair 11y ago
Why the death of advertising could be a bad thing? Its usefulness is way overrated when it comes to the common good.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Ads are inefficient, but are still useful as a information distribution method across inefficient markets. The perfect ad will lead to a mutually-beneficial transaction between a buyer and a seller. There is also a cognitive bias with ads, where people on attribute negative ad experiences to advertising, never the good ones (except in super bowls or other outliers).
  - zouhair 11y ago
    You can also extract water from feces, that doesn't make them a good thing.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Well I certainly haven't had a cognitive bias or enjoyable experiences with feces, but if you have then sure, that analogy works for you.
purpled_haze 11y ago
> how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? The mean amount of money spent and time played per week per user would be a good place to start. If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game or more than 20 hours/week playing a game, it's a problem.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- RHSeeger 11y ago
  > If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game So, we'll ban all professional sports events because some people pay more than that to go to every game for their team? Or pay more than that to be able to watch lots of sports on TV? I know a fair number of perfectly normal people that pay thousands of dollars for season tickets. I'd rather see the government help people that have a problem, rather than put limits on people that don't.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game or more than 20 hours/week playing a game, it's a problem. A small handful of surprisingly successful people spend a significant amount on games, record themselves playing them for 40+ hours a week, and make money getting others to watch. Problem?
  - purpled_haze 11y ago
    That's an occupation. Similarly, athletes in school may spend that much time or much more playing games of one sort or another, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, if a game or its marketing was created to be addictive and that is causing harm- that's a problem.
gbog 11y ago
> take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry What would be wrong with that? Anyways, I agree that there is no use asking the State to stop the marketters. It is not efficient. The State can only constrain people using laws, which are not suitable for limiting these kinds of evil behaviors. So we need to call for morality. We need to make it so that anyone who has managed to sell something useless to someone weak should feel ashame to the level of seriously pondering suicide. That's the only way it can work: I won't do this evil, not because it is forbidden, but because I am worth something, I have self-esteem. Evil here ranges from peeing in the neighbour's roses to participating in genocides, and this obviously includes stealing money from the weaks with unfair weapons of persuasions.

pascalxus 11y ago

Well Said.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Funny that this comes up. Donald J. Boudreaux wrote an entry just earlier on the same topic in response to Akerlof and Shiller's recent book: http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/the-role-of-market-forces-in-protecting-against-phishing.html http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/the-role-of-market-forces-in-pr... There's also a bit of a double standard about how advertising is perceived. Banner ads, editorials and similar are frowned upon. Yet it's quite likely you'll interpret someone promoting a work in the comments section of a site you frequent as a friendly recommendation, never mind it's still signaling availability of something in a manner identical to many less invasive ads.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> Yet it's quite likely you'll interpret someone promoting a work in the comments section of a site you frequent as a friendly recommendation The difference is intent. People directly advertising in comments get downvoted, promoting something relevant as a friendly favour are upvoted, and people doing the former while pretending to do the latter are considered sleazy bastards and subject to being pruned from community if it is to stay healthy. It really is simple. It's about trust.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  The difference is actually subjective gauging of intent. Particularly your latter case of the "sleazy bastards" is often an intrinsic gray area and of course in the best case indistinguishable from a mere recommendation without special interests.
makomk 11y ago
There's a subtle but critical mistake in the very first paragraph of that blog post. It doesn't create profitable opportunities for entrepreneurs to help consumers avoid being phished for phools, it creates profitable opportunities for entrepreneurs who can convince consumers that they're helping them avoid being phished for phools. This is an important distinction because consumers suffer from the same information asymmetries when deciding who to trust as they do when deciding what to buy.

chejazi 11y ago

To take your question a step further, and into legal territory, where is the line between social signaling and false advertising? Alcohol commercials also fall in this weird conflict space.

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

> People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". So if people are interested in Ponzi schemes or magical remedies, the state should not interfere, right?

necessity 11y ago
Ponzi schemes and magical remedies promise you something in exchange for your money and do not deliver. If they were advertising a game in which for $x you get A and B and you don't in fact get it, then yeah, intervention is required. That is not what the article is supporting, though.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jabgrabdthrow 11y ago
Those are fraud, not just "manipulation".
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  When the game is released I think there would be a better case for 'not fraud'.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
There's plenty of legal Ponzi and pyramid schemes out there right now. Amway and plenty of other multi-level marketing enterprises, for instance. As long as you're (sort of) honest about it, it isn't even fraudulent to run one. "Magical remedies". I assume you mean alternative medicine. Does this mean you're going to ban various herbs, or what?
- lemming 11y ago
  I would be in favour of anyone selling homeopathic "remedies" being banned from calling themselves a health professional.

guntars 11y ago

So in your opinion there's nothing a gaming or marketing company can do that's legal now, but really shouldn't be? I'm also not buying that it's a slippery slope and banning, say, cross compiling profiles on customers from different, unrelated platforms would "take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry". In capitalism, companies will do everything within the legal framework to make more money. That's their job. Ours is to set and adjust those bounds to keep the whole system productive.

nostromo 11y ago
Take a look at someone who spent $30k on ships in Star Citizen. http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-star-citizen-ships/ http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-sta... He seems like a reasonable person to me. He's not in financial ruin. He doesn't seem to regret his purchase. He's just putting money into his hobby, the same way a different 40 year old would buy an "unproductive" boat or an "unproductive" Rolex.
- ethbro 11y ago
  I think both the original article's and your points are valid. Especially when you start to see games/virtual items as a "thing" (which probably started with UO/WoW) as opposed to a "fake thing". That said, as a thought experiment, I disagree with the fact that government and regulation have no place in the way a society consumes things like this. If you accept that our knowledge of psychology, biochemistry, and neuroscience are improving and likely to continue doing so, and that calibrated external actions are capable of influencing our behavior, and that progress in the former begets progress in the latter, then either: a) We will reach a point where we will stop making progress in those fields b) We overturn the majority of our current social psychology knowledge and realize that yes, people actually do have absolute free will c) We will develop techniques so sophisticated and reliable to influence behavior that it becomes unreasonable to expect an average person to resist them As I (and the original article seems to) see it, the current free-for-all that is "freemium"/casual gaming basically targets all of capitalism's motivation and resources on arriving at (c) as quickly as possible. And... we're getting pretty damn good at it. PS: Positech Games makes great stuff, btw! GSB had several free expansions just because Cliff Harris is cool [he == Positech]. He absolutely could have charged for the content if he'd felt like milking more money out of his users.

moonchrome 11y ago

>Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. Individual freedom part of me would agree but in reality governments do this all the time and I can't say it's all bad either. A good example is drug control - while it's currently taken to the extreme there's no doubt in my mind that fully legalizing drugs would lead to a more volatile society - even if drugs were legal they would still cost money, as would other basic necessities - and hard addicts aren't in any position to be productive. At best they will be a burden on their community. At worst they turn to crime. Not to mention the increased number of psychotic breakdowns. I value a society which is based on individual freedom but I don't like the idea of living in a society where I have to be afraid of a junky robbing me if I step outside of my house or dying in a random guns blazing suicide shooter spree. >but this shit has been around as long as humanity itself has existed Interesting and somewhat obvious point that gets overlooked a lot. For example the "mainstream media conspiracy" argument (which is rather accepted considering how implausible the argument is on the grand scale) of dumbing down the population and intentionally shoving superficial crap/shocking stories as a part of some coordinated conspiracy to divert attention from "important issues". I don't doubt that there is plenty of media manipulation from political and private circles - in the grand scheme of things a far more plausible explanation for the media we have is that they cater to their audience and know which buttons need to be pressed to get viewership. And their profit model is not aligned with quality content either.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
there's no doubt in my mind that fully legalizing drugs would lead to a more volatile society Many hard drugs (including cocaine and heroin) were legal in the United States prior to the 1920s. To the best of my knowledge, there was no massive social breakdown as a result. The ultimate irony is that a major motivation for the criminalization of cocaine was, for poor rural whites, a fear that drugged up blacks would start raping white women. [1] Needless to say, this did not materialize and there is no reason it will if we lift the ban. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-too...

chiaro 11y ago

It's strange to me that a group of people that is sometimes stereotyped as being too preoccupied with logical fallacies will still invoke slippery slopes. Making good decisions now does not remove our capability to make good decisions in the future. Nor is it particularly reasonable to draw parallels between "don't fake users to befriend key targets" and "we may as well ban alcohol". The status quo isn't as black and white as you've made it out. Advertisements and marketing have developed along with their regulations throughout modern history. Most countries restrict advertisements for prescription medicines. Many restrict advertising aimed at children directly. In the US, advertising is explicitly excluded from the first amendment. A free market works only when people act rationally. That's one of the underlying hypotheses. Psychological manipulation and the Zynga Skinner box causes people to act out of alignment with their rational preferences.

njharman 11y ago
It's strange to me that anyone believes humans are rational and that logic can be applied to their behavior. Esp in the face of innumerable studies showing that we are exceptionally irrational. It simply is not logical.

Silhouette 11y ago

Some people have better impulse control than others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. Out of genuine curiosity, do you feel the same about state intervention in other situations, away from gaming, that involve a more knowledgeable or deliberate party taking advantage of a less knowledgeable or deliberate one? For example, what about full-on gambling where the potential exists to win big but players will probably lose, and having already lost, aggressive tactics are then used to get them to try again? Does it matter whether the person gambling understands the situation they are being steered into? Is it OK for bars or clubs to offer a happy hour early in the evening to get patrons going, then turn up the heat and make it hard to find water so those patrons keep ordering more drinks and getting more and more drunk throughout the evening? What about phishing attacks? If someone is ignorant of the possibilities for impersonating e-mail from someone else they know, should we turn a blind eye to those who would send such e-mails to trick someone who thinks they're helping a friend in need into parting with their money? What about confidence tricksters who do similar things on the doorstep of old people who may not be familiar with what sort of credentials a genuine representative of their water or electricity supplier would carry today? Or payday loan companies, who will offer what looks like a lifeline to those who have fallen on hard times, yet charge astronomical rates of interest that can rapidly lead into a vicious and sometimes devastating cycle of debt and despair? How about law firms in jurisdictions where everyone normally pays their own legal costs after a court case, who send threatening letters alleging infringements of copyright and offer to settle for just less than it's likely to cost to go to court to challenge the allegations? What about outright grooming of children or other vulnerable people for the purposes of sexual exploitation? For these and many other similar reasons, I think it is appropriate for the state to regulate industries where one party may flagrantly take advantage of another. No-one can possibly be an expert on all areas of society, and laws exist to protect us all from those who would otherwise unfairly take advantage of those weaknesses. Of course there are sometimes grey areas, but the principle that governments should never step in to protect the vulnerable from exploitation seems a very bad one to me. Also, I dispute your characterisation of the entire marketing and advertising industry as if everyone does these things. Of course all ads are hoping to engage someone in the target market and pique their interest, but IMHO that is a far cry from the kind of active and disproportionate exploitation we're talking about with some of these games companies.

6d0debc071 11y ago

> People know what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: interest. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological warfare". The same argument can apply to people who stay in abusive relationships. I'm not taking a side on whether you're right or wrong in the whole, but there is a danger here that people seem to have some sorts of action linked mechanisms that do not necessarily favour their happiness.

peterashford 11y ago

The whole free-to-play market is premised on exploiting the psychology of a few people with cash and very little self control ("whales"). As a game developer, I think it's pretty slimy.

mikeash 11y ago
I'm no fan of these games, but is it fundamentally different from, say, Harley-Davidson?
- peterashford 11y ago
  Yes. When HD advertises to you, you buy a bike and you're done. And you have an actual, existent bike. And you could sell it later should you feel like you made a mistake. With whales, they spend and spend and spend - way more than a Harley costs them. And what do they end up with? Sweet FA.
  - adrtessier 11y ago
    I don't think that is his point; that's not what Harley does, at all. H-D markets themselves as a "lifestyle brand". You don't just buy a motorcycle and you're done. You are aggressively marketed toward for a bunch of different pieces of clothing, spare parts, co-branded partnerships with automobile companies, et cetera, ad nauseum. You are effectively buying into a subculture. Furthermore, Harley-Davidson has been known to use almost identical sales tactics. IIRC and I can't find it now, but sometime last year a sales guidelines book was leaked that actually did things like put attractive models at gas stations to tell the prospective buyer "nice bike" or the like on their test rides.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      One difference I see is that H-D subculture is not ephemeral. If H-D decided to wrap up their business and disappear tomorrow, the bikes will still be there. The clothes will still be there. The brand, the culture created around it over the years, will still exist. Contrast with the "value" whales purchase for their games that could cease to exist the moment the game company decides to shut down their servers.

RodericDay 11y ago

> FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big branded items, I don't know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just because I feel this way, I don't go around trying to violently force that opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me. huh? this literally sounds like "fuck you, got mine" but spun as a benevolent positive, somehow. You had the education and the know-how to be able to learn to defend yourself from ads, and out of some sense of modesty, you're going to keep it to yourself?

adrtessier 11y ago
> You had the education and the know-how to be able to learn to defend yourself from ads, and out of some sense of modesty, you're going to keep it to yourself? I'm unsure how it is that you draw this as the conclusion. What am I keeping to myself? The OP's argument is about banning specific types of games because some people can't control themselves. I believe there is a strong difference between asking the government to ban an action versus sharing information on the risks of an action. I've generally nothing against the government issuing required warnings on vices, assuming the information is scientifically accurate (e.g. the warnings on tobacco boxes, etc.)

eecks 11y ago

As a counter point, I've never even heard of that book. I may go read it now though.

ajuc 11y ago

When a new addictive thing happens - people aren't adapted to it at first. Both individuals, and whole civilizations have to learn how to use the thing responsibly. Sometimes state control may help to limit the damage until natural adaptation occurs. As time pass, people learn to use the thing without too much harm, and then it may be OK to lift the ban: completely, or for adults only (like with alcohol - notice that it's still controlled, just not outright forbidden for everybody). There's no reason we have to think in absolutes ("state control in one case was bad = all state control is bad", or "particular measure of state control was bad at one point, therefore it was bad since the beggining and will be bad forever"). It's possible that a good policy in one circumstances became bad policy later. I think war on drugs is the example of this. And consider the harm strong alcohol did among native Americans when it was introduced. I think prohibition for a few decades would be net positive for them, if they could enforce it. Slippery slope arguments are tricky, they often lead you to overgeneralize. As for particulary addictive games (like ogame etc) - I think it would be beneficial if they were regulated similary to gambling. I am open to arguments.

wpietri 11y ago

You should probably work out your contradictions before you froth like this. Consider: > necessary for the vast majority of the citizenry to even know what is out there to purchase and > I block ads everywhere So you are stumbling around unable to buy things you need, totally uninformed about what products and services are available? Poor kid. Want me to bring you a sandwich? If only you had access to some sort of information network that contained the collective opinions of a large and growing portion of humanity. If we gradually banned advertising, nothing particularly bad would happen. Advertising is an arms race; most of it is done only because competitors do it too. We'd still find things to buy, and we might do it more easily if we weren't distracted by paid messages. As a bonus, we'd have half a trillion dollars of people's time and brainpower to spend on something that mattered.

zouhair 11y ago

Why the death of advertising could be a bad thing? Its usefulness is way overrated when it comes to the common good.

bduerst 11y ago
Ads are inefficient, but are still useful as a information distribution method across inefficient markets. The perfect ad will lead to a mutually-beneficial transaction between a buyer and a seller. There is also a cognitive bias with ads, where people on attribute negative ad experiences to advertising, never the good ones (except in super bowls or other outliers).
- zouhair 11y ago
  You can also extract water from feces, that doesn't make them a good thing.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Well I certainly haven't had a cognitive bias or enjoyable experiences with feces, but if you have then sure, that analogy works for you.

purpled_haze 11y ago

> how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? The mean amount of money spent and time played per week per user would be a good place to start. If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game or more than 20 hours/week playing a game, it's a problem.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
RHSeeger 11y ago
> If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game So, we'll ban all professional sports events because some people pay more than that to go to every game for their team? Or pay more than that to be able to watch lots of sports on TV? I know a fair number of perfectly normal people that pay thousands of dollars for season tickets. I'd rather see the government help people that have a problem, rather than put limits on people that don't.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
> If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game or more than 20 hours/week playing a game, it's a problem. A small handful of surprisingly successful people spend a significant amount on games, record themselves playing them for 40+ hours a week, and make money getting others to watch. Problem?
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  That's an occupation. Similarly, athletes in school may spend that much time or much more playing games of one sort or another, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, if a game or its marketing was created to be addictive and that is causing harm- that's a problem.

gbog 11y ago

> take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry What would be wrong with that? Anyways, I agree that there is no use asking the State to stop the marketters. It is not efficient. The State can only constrain people using laws, which are not suitable for limiting these kinds of evil behaviors. So we need to call for morality. We need to make it so that anyone who has managed to sell something useless to someone weak should feel ashame to the level of seriously pondering suicide. That's the only way it can work: I won't do this evil, not because it is forbidden, but because I am worth something, I have self-esteem. Evil here ranges from peeing in the neighbour's roses to participating in genocides, and this obviously includes stealing money from the weaks with unfair weapons of persuasions.