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I'm not sure I can relate to her stance. It's very possible I'm getting it wrong, but what I understand from what she is saying: - It's not that games are add

I'm not sure I can relate to her stance. It's very possible I'm getting it wrong, but what I understand from what she is saying: - It's not that games are addictive, it's that addicts are playing games -If you aren't an addict then any negative consequences from playing games you experience are your own responsibility - Parents need to balance their children's potential for overplaying games with a legitimate need to socialise online (and in games). - Game companies can't reasonably opt out of offering "engaging" behaviour because if their competition offers it, they will lose money. It's not really the narrative that I expect when I see someone discussing ethics ;-) It's not so much that I disagree with the points from a practical perspective, I just think that they have completely dodged all of the ethical implications of the behaviour of the game companies. It's well known that strategies for engaging players can lead to negative consequences. Even if you can't make money unless you let players choose those negative consequences, it doesn't really absolve you of the ethical issue. As described by the person being interviewed, actual "addiction" talks about a compulsion for repeated self-harm. Even if the player is not an addict, it doesn't mean that they don't sometimes engage in self-harm. Giving them that option because there is no other profitable way to create the game, still results in self-harm by your player base. One could write a lot about these kinds of issues, but I find it disturbing that someone apparently interested in discussing ethics in the gaming industry seems to be saying, "Yeah, there are problems, but they totally aren't my fault".

tcbawo 7y ago
It's been a long time since I played the Ultima series, but it would be refreshing if they could incorporate character-building (in the moral sense) into a modern game.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  That's a really cool idea. As I am secretly (read: slowly to the point that nobody could tell that I was actually doing it) writing a game, I wonder if you wouldn't mind expanding on that idea. I probably only ever played the first Ultima game and I totally forget it :-) I'd be grateful for some insight since it's a mechanism I was hoping to incorporate. Feel free to ping me at my email address in my profile.
  - tcbawo 7y ago
    It's been a long time and I worry that looking back, the material might not hold up. Here is a short interview I found about some of the machinations behind the series (although it doesn't seem very subtle): https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-ultima-s-morality-1827298253 https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-ultima-s-morality-182729...
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      Wow! That article is gold! Thank you so much for linking it. I'm going to have to find a way to play at least Ultima IV (Edit: GOG has Ultima IV available for free. It seems to work well under wine, but you have to use the offline installer list just under the "Download" button). Some choice quotes: - I realized that in all three Ultimas [before IV], I had created games in which the best way to min-max the game was to be un-virtuous. [...] I was not going to allow that ever again! - I have and continue to find that headlines, and especially things that give me a sense of moral outrage happening in the world around me, are the best sources of plot ideas for the games I work on. - Most game villains, he said, just “wait in the final level for you to come kill them,” sitting patiently on their thrones while you min-max and level up by killing NPCs. “I wanted my new villains to be worthy of your hatred!” - Far too many perpetual conflicts in the world are sustained generation after generation due to these deeply held beliefs and grudges that prevent any real progress from being made [...] Honestly I don’t know how we are going to solve this in the real world, but I think it’s important to play out in a fictional world, so we think about it. This is pretty much exactly what motivates me to write a game. I remember someone (probably on HN) saying that they had to kill some insects as a child before they understood what death was. You can't learn without experience, but there are some things that you don't want to learn from experience (as my ex-paratrooper friend likes to say, "like how to pack a parachute"). I really want to create a safe place for people to experiment and learn, but most games actually reward being a jerk ;-) I also find it interesting that he singles out "outrage" as being the best way to create villains. It's one of the things we are explicitly encouraged to avoid in conversations on HN. The conflict and drama in the game comes from the justified hatred and outrage in the villains. I'm sure there is a lesson in there somewhere...
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  And healthy behaviors like eating fruits and vegetables.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    Minecraft has some of this mechanic built in as the benefit from eating sugary foods (cake, pumpkin pie, etc.) is much shorter than eating protein-rich foods. Since players stop healing as they experience hunger there is a real benefit to having better foods to eat.
- Animats 7y ago
  "America's Army" has that.
monocasa 7y ago
> It's not that games are addictive, it's that addicts are playing games Don't companies like Blizzard keep psychologists on staff specifically to make the games more addictive?
- IceWreck 7y ago
  That, and they purposely match people who buy lootboxes, etc to people who don't so that those people, being at a disadvantage, loose and are then pressurised to buy them.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    I don't believe Epic or Blizzard have any games with non cosmetic items in loot boxes. Perhaps they "purposely match players with cool skins with those who don't" to make them want to buy them though.
    - sfotm 7y ago
      Hearthstone packs definitely affect gameplay. Most of their other games are cosmetic-only, though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
keerthiko 7y ago
> - Game companies can't reasonably opt out of offering "engaging" behaviour because if their competition offers it, they will lose money. Excellent summary. This, at least is the excuse capitalism has used since the beginning of time for every unethical practice harming humanity, whether it's privacy invasion, environmental ruination, lazy worker protections, poor compensation for talent, or providing addictive services.
- LoSboccacc 7y ago
  the problem is also people expecting company to "self-regulate" instead of going directly to the legislative branch and pushing the issue there.
ydb 7y ago
As a young girl, I was absolutely addicted to playing games. My drug of choice was Final Fantasy, because it allowed me an entirely new world to explore. I could escape the bullies; I could escape my father. Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. Take for example the microtransactions that so many gamers lament. What of a beautiful narrative, empathetic characters, and engaging gameplay (since they are games after all)? I'm not entirely certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium for the masses that so many hoped it could be.
- beenBoutIT 7y ago
  The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    But in some cases, recent past. Fallout 4 comes to mind.
  - uxcolumbo 7y ago
    What about recent games like: - Heavy Rain - Beyond 2 Souls - Detroit: Become Human - Witcher 3 - Horizon Zero Dawn - Mass Effect Series And then there are classic adventure type games from http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com Those don't include any micro transaction and you pay once upfront.
    - jason46 7y ago
      While Horizon Zero Dawn is an Awesome game, and I did play it mostly on a PC through remote play, it does require a PS4 to play.
  - maccard 7y ago
    > For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past. I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead. They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman, Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech, Into the Breach. All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p (Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right now.
pndy 7y ago
> Parents need to balance their children's potential for overplaying games with a legitimate need to socialise online (and in games). I doubt that current and upcoming generations of parents will be able to easily address the problems because they're already inside players group, because computer gaming is even more integral part of our entertainment than ever before and adults are first to struggle with the issues including addiction. She seems to be ignoring that and overall, still talking more as the industry member than one who gracefully decided to fight it and show the problems that exist.
- djaychela 7y ago
  I think it's also an issue because everyone in a kid's friend group will be playing online all the time. If you try to regulate their time in game, you risk them becoming ostracised in the group of friends they have at school. Unless -everyone- does the same thing, it's going to be extremely difficult to do anything about it. I say this as a step-parent of four, two of who are male and game a lot, and one of whom I now think is suffering the consequences of being online too much - despite my best attempts to teach (and demonstrate) what I consider to be a decent balance between on and offline. I hate to think what the effect on the younger boy will be as everything is even more weaponised against him than the older (they are 17 and 12).
  - jerf 7y ago
    "If you try to regulate their time in game, you risk them becoming ostracised in the group of friends they have at school." I acknowledge this isn't 100% fair, but I don't know how to put words together to shape the exact point I'm trying to make, but: This sounds perilously close to me to "If you try to regulate the drugs your children do, they risk becoming ostracized in the group of friends they have at school." Well... yeah. It will. That's overdoing it, because I don't think these games are quite on par with drugs... although as they continue to be tuned and refined by lots of smart people with effectively unlimited budgets to make more addictive things, combined with the less-developed brains of people in school (human brains aren't really fully grown until 25 years or so), I get less certain in that assessment. Still, I'm going to go with saying it's overdoing it at least a little. Nothing I would consider precisely analogous to gaming leaps to mind. But, well... maybe that's part of my job as a parent, to exercise and instill the judgment my children don't yet have, even if all the other parents decline to do it themselves? I don't isolate my kids from everything that didn't exist in my youth by any means, but I do find myself exercising a lot of judgment. I do steer pretty hard away from anything that involves a lot of advertising, which has gotten a lot smarter and more targeted since I was a kid. I steer away from anything involving many microtransactions. And that's not 100% either; they've put their toes in and bought a couple of Minecraft packs, but I'm regulating this so they don't go crazy one day and buy all the things with all their money, but have time to evaluate what they really purchased and how satisfactory the purchase was based on their limited funds. I tend to focus on the still-multitudinous games that are up-front purchases. I don't really see this as any sort of Puritanism, though; the mental image that comes to mind is shielding them from a pack of wolves more than shielding them from evil, morality-rotting pleasures or something. The advertisers and crafters of addictive experiences have gotten wildly more powerful since my youth, and I think parenting practice has not caught up to that. Not only that, but the gap is opening wider every day, too; the first derivative of this difference is still solidly in the advertiser's favor. I'm not trying to isolate them, but I am trying to guide them down the paths where the bang-for-the-buck is much, much greater.
fenwick67 7y ago
It's classic 4 dog defense. My dog couldn't have bit you, I don't even have a dog. Okay well I do have a dog but it never bit anyone. Okay it had bitten other people but it didn't bite you. Okay it did bite you but you must have provoked it.
zaarn 7y ago
From what I recall correctly, Cigarette corporations also argued that only addicts would become addicted to cigarettes. Casinos and the gambling industry is also trying to argue only addicts will become addicted to their products. I don't think we should believe the people who make a product or are paid by said people when they say the product isn't addictive or not harmful. We need independent research.
- devit 7y ago
  That's probably true, but the issue is that everyone is an addict to some extent.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tomgp 7y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Having recently finished reading Natash Dow Schüll's excellent _Addiction By Design_ it's startling to read this take on where ethical responsibility lies; it's startlingly similar to the attitudes of the machine gambling industry (and the alcohol industry for that matter) customers are pathologized in favour of addressing the toxic choice architecture that the systems confront their users with.
weirdkid 7y ago
Yet some products are clearly, specifically designed and marketed to addicts. Consider fortified wines (aka “bum wines”). Night train. MD2020. Thunderbird. I think it's possible to do the same with any product, including video games.

tcbawo 7y ago

It's been a long time since I played the Ultima series, but it would be refreshing if they could incorporate character-building (in the moral sense) into a modern game.

mikekchar 7y ago
That's a really cool idea. As I am secretly (read: slowly to the point that nobody could tell that I was actually doing it) writing a game, I wonder if you wouldn't mind expanding on that idea. I probably only ever played the first Ultima game and I totally forget it :-) I'd be grateful for some insight since it's a mechanism I was hoping to incorporate. Feel free to ping me at my email address in my profile.
- tcbawo 7y ago
  It's been a long time and I worry that looking back, the material might not hold up. Here is a short interview I found about some of the machinations behind the series (although it doesn't seem very subtle): https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-ultima-s-morality-1827298253 https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-ultima-s-morality-182729...
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    Wow! That article is gold! Thank you so much for linking it. I'm going to have to find a way to play at least Ultima IV (Edit: GOG has Ultima IV available for free. It seems to work well under wine, but you have to use the offline installer list just under the "Download" button). Some choice quotes: - I realized that in all three Ultimas [before IV], I had created games in which the best way to min-max the game was to be un-virtuous. [...] I was not going to allow that ever again! - I have and continue to find that headlines, and especially things that give me a sense of moral outrage happening in the world around me, are the best sources of plot ideas for the games I work on. - Most game villains, he said, just “wait in the final level for you to come kill them,” sitting patiently on their thrones while you min-max and level up by killing NPCs. “I wanted my new villains to be worthy of your hatred!” - Far too many perpetual conflicts in the world are sustained generation after generation due to these deeply held beliefs and grudges that prevent any real progress from being made [...] Honestly I don’t know how we are going to solve this in the real world, but I think it’s important to play out in a fictional world, so we think about it. This is pretty much exactly what motivates me to write a game. I remember someone (probably on HN) saying that they had to kill some insects as a child before they understood what death was. You can't learn without experience, but there are some things that you don't want to learn from experience (as my ex-paratrooper friend likes to say, "like how to pack a parachute"). I really want to create a safe place for people to experiment and learn, but most games actually reward being a jerk ;-) I also find it interesting that he singles out "outrage" as being the best way to create villains. It's one of the things we are explicitly encouraged to avoid in conversations on HN. The conflict and drama in the game comes from the justified hatred and outrage in the villains. I'm sure there is a lesson in there somewhere...
DonHopkins 7y ago
And healthy behaviors like eating fruits and vegetables.
- itronitron 7y ago
  Minecraft has some of this mechanic built in as the benefit from eating sugary foods (cake, pumpkin pie, etc.) is much shorter than eating protein-rich foods. Since players stop healing as they experience hunger there is a real benefit to having better foods to eat.
Animats 7y ago
"America's Army" has that.

monocasa 7y ago

> It's not that games are addictive, it's that addicts are playing games Don't companies like Blizzard keep psychologists on staff specifically to make the games more addictive?

IceWreck 7y ago
That, and they purposely match people who buy lootboxes, etc to people who don't so that those people, being at a disadvantage, loose and are then pressurised to buy them.
- p1necone 7y ago
  I don't believe Epic or Blizzard have any games with non cosmetic items in loot boxes. Perhaps they "purposely match players with cool skins with those who don't" to make them want to buy them though.
  - sfotm 7y ago
    Hearthstone packs definitely affect gameplay. Most of their other games are cosmetic-only, though.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

keerthiko 7y ago

> - Game companies can't reasonably opt out of offering "engaging" behaviour because if their competition offers it, they will lose money. Excellent summary. This, at least is the excuse capitalism has used since the beginning of time for every unethical practice harming humanity, whether it's privacy invasion, environmental ruination, lazy worker protections, poor compensation for talent, or providing addictive services.

LoSboccacc 7y ago
the problem is also people expecting company to "self-regulate" instead of going directly to the legislative branch and pushing the issue there.

ydb 7y ago

As a young girl, I was absolutely addicted to playing games. My drug of choice was Final Fantasy, because it allowed me an entirely new world to explore. I could escape the bullies; I could escape my father. Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. Take for example the microtransactions that so many gamers lament. What of a beautiful narrative, empathetic characters, and engaging gameplay (since they are games after all)? I'm not entirely certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium for the masses that so many hoped it could be.

beenBoutIT 7y ago
The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.
- jacobush 7y ago
  But in some cases, recent past. Fallout 4 comes to mind.
- uxcolumbo 7y ago
  What about recent games like: - Heavy Rain - Beyond 2 Souls - Detroit: Become Human - Witcher 3 - Horizon Zero Dawn - Mass Effect Series And then there are classic adventure type games from http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com Those don't include any micro transaction and you pay once upfront.
  - jason46 7y ago
    While Horizon Zero Dawn is an Awesome game, and I did play it mostly on a PC through remote play, it does require a PS4 to play.
- maccard 7y ago
  > For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past. I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead. They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman, Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech, Into the Breach. All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p (Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right now.

pndy 7y ago

> Parents need to balance their children's potential for overplaying games with a legitimate need to socialise online (and in games). I doubt that current and upcoming generations of parents will be able to easily address the problems because they're already inside players group, because computer gaming is even more integral part of our entertainment than ever before and adults are first to struggle with the issues including addiction. She seems to be ignoring that and overall, still talking more as the industry member than one who gracefully decided to fight it and show the problems that exist.

djaychela 7y ago
I think it's also an issue because everyone in a kid's friend group will be playing online all the time. If you try to regulate their time in game, you risk them becoming ostracised in the group of friends they have at school. Unless -everyone- does the same thing, it's going to be extremely difficult to do anything about it. I say this as a step-parent of four, two of who are male and game a lot, and one of whom I now think is suffering the consequences of being online too much - despite my best attempts to teach (and demonstrate) what I consider to be a decent balance between on and offline. I hate to think what the effect on the younger boy will be as everything is even more weaponised against him than the older (they are 17 and 12).
- jerf 7y ago
  "If you try to regulate their time in game, you risk them becoming ostracised in the group of friends they have at school." I acknowledge this isn't 100% fair, but I don't know how to put words together to shape the exact point I'm trying to make, but: This sounds perilously close to me to "If you try to regulate the drugs your children do, they risk becoming ostracized in the group of friends they have at school." Well... yeah. It will. That's overdoing it, because I don't think these games are quite on par with drugs... although as they continue to be tuned and refined by lots of smart people with effectively unlimited budgets to make more addictive things, combined with the less-developed brains of people in school (human brains aren't really fully grown until 25 years or so), I get less certain in that assessment. Still, I'm going to go with saying it's overdoing it at least a little. Nothing I would consider precisely analogous to gaming leaps to mind. But, well... maybe that's part of my job as a parent, to exercise and instill the judgment my children don't yet have, even if all the other parents decline to do it themselves? I don't isolate my kids from everything that didn't exist in my youth by any means, but I do find myself exercising a lot of judgment. I do steer pretty hard away from anything that involves a lot of advertising, which has gotten a lot smarter and more targeted since I was a kid. I steer away from anything involving many microtransactions. And that's not 100% either; they've put their toes in and bought a couple of Minecraft packs, but I'm regulating this so they don't go crazy one day and buy all the things with all their money, but have time to evaluate what they really purchased and how satisfactory the purchase was based on their limited funds. I tend to focus on the still-multitudinous games that are up-front purchases. I don't really see this as any sort of Puritanism, though; the mental image that comes to mind is shielding them from a pack of wolves more than shielding them from evil, morality-rotting pleasures or something. The advertisers and crafters of addictive experiences have gotten wildly more powerful since my youth, and I think parenting practice has not caught up to that. Not only that, but the gap is opening wider every day, too; the first derivative of this difference is still solidly in the advertiser's favor. I'm not trying to isolate them, but I am trying to guide them down the paths where the bang-for-the-buck is much, much greater.

fenwick67 7y ago

It's classic 4 dog defense. My dog couldn't have bit you, I don't even have a dog. Okay well I do have a dog but it never bit anyone. Okay it had bitten other people but it didn't bite you. Okay it did bite you but you must have provoked it.

zaarn 7y ago

From what I recall correctly, Cigarette corporations also argued that only addicts would become addicted to cigarettes. Casinos and the gambling industry is also trying to argue only addicts will become addicted to their products. I don't think we should believe the people who make a product or are paid by said people when they say the product isn't addictive or not harmful. We need independent research.

devit 7y ago
That's probably true, but the issue is that everyone is an addict to some extent.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tomgp 7y ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Having recently finished reading Natash Dow Schüll's excellent _Addiction By Design_ it's startling to read this take on where ethical responsibility lies; it's startlingly similar to the attitudes of the machine gambling industry (and the alcohol industry for that matter) customers are pathologized in favour of addressing the toxic choice architecture that the systems confront their users with.

weirdkid 7y ago

Yet some products are clearly, specifically designed and marketed to addicts. Consider fortified wines (aka “bum wines”). Night train. MD2020. Thunderbird. I think it's possible to do the same with any product, including video games.