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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

by luplex 6y ago

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 was adding much value to the world.

drchopchop 6y ago
Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few into the 6's. And that's on one single game. The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach. The monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99! Only for the next 60 minutes!") It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now that I've left the industry.
- brnt 6y ago
  It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind, common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I wonder what it will take to pull it out.
  - kingkawn 6y ago
    This division is on the verge of self destruction under the own weight of its inconsistencies.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    There are plenty of people hooked on this stuff in the east. Addiction doesn't care about your philosophy. Some people are just more mentally available to addiction in all it's myriad forms.
    - brnt 6y ago
      I was refering to the tendency to not treat psychological issues as serious as physical ones. Obviously addiction knows no boundaries.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I left casual games because of this; every partner and publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing, and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible. When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards" for continued engagement. It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now. I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not to sell dope.
  - mysterydip 6y ago
    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.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      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.
      - jsmith45 6y ago
        At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact (although not zero impact). It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player). This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competitive advantage. (There are far too many of the latter to even list.) But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of microtransaction model. I've no real issue with meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a game should either be a one time cost, or a simple subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has become all too common.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing to me. But from the perspective of the company I could imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and can stop themselves from spending too much). I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible. The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.
  - luplex 6y ago
    Addiction is more perverse than that: I'm sure the players could stop if they wanted to. But they just don't want to. They too start rationalizing "it relieves so much stress", "it calms me down" etc. F2P games are nowhere near as dangerous as casinos. 90% of players waste nothing more but their time. They're more similar to social media. Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.
    - ayyy 6y ago
      > Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet. That is what's happening. It's a strip club model where the biggest tippers get the most attention. It is super effective, at least for live streams (see: all of twitch, every adult cam site). If someone wanted to monetize this with static content, you could probably get people to pay for comment responses from content creators, but I haven't seen that done yet.
- hogFeast 6y ago
  Addiction by Design by Dow Schull is an interesting book on this.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. This is an accurate description. So many games where people have to pay for the chance to get something. It's even worse than actual gambling since the prize isn't even money. All people get is some numbers in a database. Another oppressive feature found in most exploitative games is the timer. Through a timer, the progression of free players is rate-limited. There's almost always some kind of resource that's used up whenever players do anything and when they run out of it the timer reveals itself. The game refills the resource on a regular basis. This creates habits in players. People start out playing normally and next thing they know they're setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM to do game tasks because that's when the timer resets. This is done deliberately with the goal to increase the number of players who login every day through a mix of positive and negative reinforcement. The timed refills themselves act as a periodic reward which is simple enough. More insidious however is how usually the timers will not start counting down to the next reward until players play the game. Every second the timer is not running is wasted and delays the next reward. Paying customers can reset this timer at will. They are therefore able to progress at an uncapped rate. This implies the game's true form is a spending competition: the whale who gives the most money to the company for the longest time will win. Video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis. I have no doubt this trash is at least partly responsible for that. The reputation of the games industry is only gonna go downhill from there.
ethbr0 6y ago
F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.
  - PhillyG 6y ago
    In some countries, games are legally required to do state rarity of items in lootboxes, so it may just be so that they are compliant with all countries. I forget which countries, but I think they're in central europe
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It is also pretty useless. Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery. If you have a list of 20 items with non-uniform chances, can you tell how long you need to play before it's likely you'll get an item you want? You and me can, by doing little math in head; most people can't (and it's another question whether one has the willpower to do such math and follow it through while tired, unwindng in front of a casual game). What would be more useful if they listed the expected number of loot boxes you need to buy to get an item. "2% chance" reads differently than "you'll need to buy about 50 loot boxes, on average, to get that item".
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      I'd prefer “you'll need to buy about 50 more loot boxes, on average, to get that item” as wording. Bonus if there's a question mark next to it that explains probability (specifically, why the gambler's fallacy is wrong – though not necessarily mentioning the fallacy).
red-montaigne 6y ago
Great example of how language is a tool for thinking, but it's also a tool for not thinking. If you want to ignore or obfuscate something, you can seal it off with euphemisms and misrepresentations, kind of like putting an interface in front of an implementation. And as you pointed out, you can use this tactic to deceive not only others but also yourself.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  Let's say language is a tool to convey information regardless of truth or precision. You can disguise negative information giving it the appearance of a usual positive one (the fake discount). It's more a property of information than of language, or rather a property of our information processor, so lazy it doesn't check every single piece 3 times but instead rely on habit and context
  - red-montaigne 6y ago
    I'm thinking more of a writer sitting down and struggling to choose the correct word to identify a thought. I wouldn't say they're "conveying information." At that point they don't have information. I would say rather that they're attempting to refine the raw material of the flow of their thought-consciousness by using language. You can use words to assist that refinement. (I'm doing it now, for example.) But you can also use words to divert your thought stream away from potentially uncomfortable ideas, or someone else can do that to you.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Casual game design uses many of the same nouns as casino operators.
  - techer 6y ago
    “Compelling”
- hakeberio 6y ago
  Definitely. It reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984- although the novel itself shows that having a "clean" vocabulary doesn't completely prevent "unclean" thought deemed by the authorities, having a censored set of language can "nudge" people to certain propaganda.
lordnacho 6y ago
Plausible deniability is such a wonderful idea. There's a lot of things that fall on a spectrum, and this fact can be used to pretend that motivations are different to what they really are. For instance, where is the line between investing and gambling? A friend of mine was looking into setting up a spreadbetting firm once, so he went talking to insiders. It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact, they say they're offering training videos the teach you how to invest in the market, just like proper investors. And it's not even a lie, a lot of the content makes perfect sense and would be found in any "proper" investment house. The real deal is of course that they offer a buzz from massive leverage, and everything about the UI is to make you blow yourself up. The same story applies for social media. A place to keep in touch with your old friends is a great thing, but realistically, how often are you going to write to your classmates on a classmates-only forum? And how is classmatesforum going to make any money doing that? So we get the ML-powered feed of news/funnies/cutesies reactions that seems to be the modern social web.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact" They do in the UK; the first one I googled is https://pepperstone.com/en-gb/trading/spread-betting/ https://pepperstone.com/en-gb/trading/spread-betting/ and it has a banner accross the top of the page (like a cookie banner, above the header) saying "Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79.8% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.". This is typical here on sites and adverts for sites.
bostik 6y ago
This has been going on for more than a decade. I recommend to read at least the opening chapter: https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/ https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-... Yep, I've pasted that link in the past. It's now a proper classic.
piva00 6y ago
From my experience, knowing people who works at King this is definitely a thing. The doublethink due to having a pretty great workplace is stark.
bromuro 6y ago
Gaming today is not that different than gambling. I started playing some games on iOS recently, I got addicted too and spent way too much money I should have. Meanwhile ads displayed in the app offer me “real money” and “millions each month” playing cards or by “putting my finance at risk” or playing similar addictive games. (Yes, I paid for the game but there are ads for extra scores)
- luplex 6y ago
  Except that with gambling, you get a rush and a chance of profit. In games, it's only a sad and short-lived rush.
  - bromuro 6y ago
    ...which is why i like video games and not gambling :)
Funes- 6y ago
>I don't think it was adding much value to the world I believe this statement can be applied to the vast majority of jobs, or capitalistic endeavors in general. Not to defend them in any sort of way, as I abhor these practices, but I think we should acknowledge that reality (and perhaps work our way out of it, somehow)
andrewla 6y ago
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.
- csallen 6y ago
  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?
  - andrewla 6y ago
    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.
    - karpierz 6y ago
      Do bars fail?
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        Yes, and so do casinos. That is the point
        karpierz 6y ago
        The original point was: "The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a silly concept." The rebuttal was: "this is literally what casinos do" The rebuttal to that was: "well, some casinos fail" Which isn't really a point. Some casinos fail, that doesn't show that they don't optimize for addiction. It just indicates that optimizing for addiction is necessary but not sufficient for a casino to maintain solvency.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PoignardAzur 6y ago
I once read "The best game developers are like weed dealers: they sell you something they love. The worst game developers are like heroin dealers: they would never, ever touch the stuff, or let their own children get within a mile of it."
huijzer 6y ago
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  Not really applicable. In this case, everyone understands it but they don’t talk about it due to legal reasons
dillondoyle 6y ago
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.coinmaster&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonactive...
- luplex 6y ago
  Why does this type of ad work? Do people want to be addicted to something so badly? Don't they have something better to do?
  - lvturner 6y ago
    Escape.
  - raindropm 6y ago
    People just don't have "free", quiet time to think or to reflect about things anymore, stolen by various things, social media mostly. You'll operate in automatic, always-consuming mode, rigged by algorithm, and that doesn't help you thinking critically when this kind of ads comes up. and companies exploit these things and make tons of money, sad.
akhosravian 6y ago
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.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
It can be even seen in design of offices. I once joined a meetup at what turned out to be a sports gambling software company (William Hill I think), and there was no mention or suggestion of gambling at any place in their offices - it was about "celebration of sports" and other bullshit.
gww 6y ago
Even before mobile gaming and in-game purchases was a thing. I remember there was a very wealthy player on Asheron's Call Frostfell who paid players to feed his XP chain, bought all of the rarest items such as nexus armour etc etc. There was a huge botting scene that sort of ruined the game but forced me to learn C++ and made me a bit of money as a teenager selling accounts.
spoonjim 6y ago
Companies involved in bad faith dealing often have this kind of NewSpeak.

by luplex 6y ago

drchopchop 6y ago

Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few into the 6's. And that's on one single game. The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach. The monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99! Only for the next 60 minutes!") It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now that I've left the industry.

brnt 6y ago
It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind, common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I wonder what it will take to pull it out.
- kingkawn 6y ago
  This division is on the verge of self destruction under the own weight of its inconsistencies.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  There are plenty of people hooked on this stuff in the east. Addiction doesn't care about your philosophy. Some people are just more mentally available to addiction in all it's myriad forms.
  - brnt 6y ago
    I was refering to the tendency to not treat psychological issues as serious as physical ones. Obviously addiction knows no boundaries.
dleslie 6y ago
I left casual games because of this; every partner and publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing, and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible. When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards" for continued engagement. It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now. I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not to sell dope.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  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.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    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.
    - jsmith45 6y ago
      At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact (although not zero impact). It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player). This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competitive advantage. (There are far too many of the latter to even list.) But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of microtransaction model. I've no real issue with meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a game should either be a one time cost, or a simple subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has become all too common.
nonbirithm 6y ago
I was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing to me. But from the perspective of the company I could imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and can stop themselves from spending too much). I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible. The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.
- luplex 6y ago
  Addiction is more perverse than that: I'm sure the players could stop if they wanted to. But they just don't want to. They too start rationalizing "it relieves so much stress", "it calms me down" etc. F2P games are nowhere near as dangerous as casinos. 90% of players waste nothing more but their time. They're more similar to social media. Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.
  - ayyy 6y ago
    > Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet. That is what's happening. It's a strip club model where the biggest tippers get the most attention. It is super effective, at least for live streams (see: all of twitch, every adult cam site). If someone wanted to monetize this with static content, you could probably get people to pay for comment responses from content creators, but I haven't seen that done yet.
hogFeast 6y ago
Addiction by Design by Dow Schull is an interesting book on this.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. This is an accurate description. So many games where people have to pay for the chance to get something. It's even worse than actual gambling since the prize isn't even money. All people get is some numbers in a database. Another oppressive feature found in most exploitative games is the timer. Through a timer, the progression of free players is rate-limited. There's almost always some kind of resource that's used up whenever players do anything and when they run out of it the timer reveals itself. The game refills the resource on a regular basis. This creates habits in players. People start out playing normally and next thing they know they're setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM to do game tasks because that's when the timer resets. This is done deliberately with the goal to increase the number of players who login every day through a mix of positive and negative reinforcement. The timed refills themselves act as a periodic reward which is simple enough. More insidious however is how usually the timers will not start counting down to the next reward until players play the game. Every second the timer is not running is wasted and delays the next reward. Paying customers can reset this timer at will. They are therefore able to progress at an uncapped rate. This implies the game's true form is a spending competition: the whale who gives the most money to the company for the longest time will win. Video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis. I have no doubt this trash is at least partly responsible for that. The reputation of the games industry is only gonna go downhill from there.

ethbr0 6y ago

F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).

Kaze404 6y ago
I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.
- PhillyG 6y ago
  In some countries, games are legally required to do state rarity of items in lootboxes, so it may just be so that they are compliant with all countries. I forget which countries, but I think they're in central europe
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It is also pretty useless. Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery. If you have a list of 20 items with non-uniform chances, can you tell how long you need to play before it's likely you'll get an item you want? You and me can, by doing little math in head; most people can't (and it's another question whether one has the willpower to do such math and follow it through while tired, unwindng in front of a casual game). What would be more useful if they listed the expected number of loot boxes you need to buy to get an item. "2% chance" reads differently than "you'll need to buy about 50 loot boxes, on average, to get that item".
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    I'd prefer “you'll need to buy about 50 more loot boxes, on average, to get that item” as wording. Bonus if there's a question mark next to it that explains probability (specifically, why the gambler's fallacy is wrong – though not necessarily mentioning the fallacy).

red-montaigne 6y ago

Great example of how language is a tool for thinking, but it's also a tool for not thinking. If you want to ignore or obfuscate something, you can seal it off with euphemisms and misrepresentations, kind of like putting an interface in front of an implementation. And as you pointed out, you can use this tactic to deceive not only others but also yourself.

xwolfi 6y ago
Let's say language is a tool to convey information regardless of truth or precision. You can disguise negative information giving it the appearance of a usual positive one (the fake discount). It's more a property of information than of language, or rather a property of our information processor, so lazy it doesn't check every single piece 3 times but instead rely on habit and context
- red-montaigne 6y ago
  I'm thinking more of a writer sitting down and struggling to choose the correct word to identify a thought. I wouldn't say they're "conveying information." At that point they don't have information. I would say rather that they're attempting to refine the raw material of the flow of their thought-consciousness by using language. You can use words to assist that refinement. (I'm doing it now, for example.) But you can also use words to divert your thought stream away from potentially uncomfortable ideas, or someone else can do that to you.
dleslie 6y ago
Casual game design uses many of the same nouns as casino operators.
- techer 6y ago
  “Compelling”
hakeberio 6y ago
Definitely. It reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984- although the novel itself shows that having a "clean" vocabulary doesn't completely prevent "unclean" thought deemed by the authorities, having a censored set of language can "nudge" people to certain propaganda.

lordnacho 6y ago

Plausible deniability is such a wonderful idea. There's a lot of things that fall on a spectrum, and this fact can be used to pretend that motivations are different to what they really are. For instance, where is the line between investing and gambling? A friend of mine was looking into setting up a spreadbetting firm once, so he went talking to insiders. It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact, they say they're offering training videos the teach you how to invest in the market, just like proper investors. And it's not even a lie, a lot of the content makes perfect sense and would be found in any "proper" investment house. The real deal is of course that they offer a buzz from massive leverage, and everything about the UI is to make you blow yourself up. The same story applies for social media. A place to keep in touch with your old friends is a great thing, but realistically, how often are you going to write to your classmates on a classmates-only forum? And how is classmatesforum going to make any money doing that? So we get the ML-powered feed of news/funnies/cutesies reactions that seems to be the modern social web.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact" They do in the UK; the first one I googled is https://pepperstone.com/en-gb/trading/spread-betting/ https://pepperstone.com/en-gb/trading/spread-betting/ and it has a banner accross the top of the page (like a cookie banner, above the header) saying "Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79.8% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.". This is typical here on sites and adverts for sites.

bostik 6y ago

This has been going on for more than a decade. I recommend to read at least the opening chapter: https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/ https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-... Yep, I've pasted that link in the past. It's now a proper classic.

piva00 6y ago

From my experience, knowing people who works at King this is definitely a thing. The doublethink due to having a pretty great workplace is stark.

bromuro 6y ago

Gaming today is not that different than gambling. I started playing some games on iOS recently, I got addicted too and spent way too much money I should have. Meanwhile ads displayed in the app offer me “real money” and “millions each month” playing cards or by “putting my finance at risk” or playing similar addictive games. (Yes, I paid for the game but there are ads for extra scores)

luplex 6y ago
Except that with gambling, you get a rush and a chance of profit. In games, it's only a sad and short-lived rush.
- bromuro 6y ago
  ...which is why i like video games and not gambling :)

Funes- 6y ago

>I don't think it was adding much value to the world I believe this statement can be applied to the vast majority of jobs, or capitalistic endeavors in general. Not to defend them in any sort of way, as I abhor these practices, but I think we should acknowledge that reality (and perhaps work our way out of it, somehow)

andrewla 6y ago

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.

csallen 6y ago
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?
- andrewla 6y ago
  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.
  - karpierz 6y ago
    Do bars fail?
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      Yes, and so do casinos. That is the point
      - karpierz 6y ago
        The original point was: "The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a silly concept." The rebuttal was: "this is literally what casinos do" The rebuttal to that was: "well, some casinos fail" Which isn't really a point. Some casinos fail, that doesn't show that they don't optimize for addiction. It just indicates that optimizing for addiction is necessary but not sufficient for a casino to maintain solvency.

deleted 6y ago

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PoignardAzur 6y ago

I once read "The best game developers are like weed dealers: they sell you something they love. The worst game developers are like heroin dealers: they would never, ever touch the stuff, or let their own children get within a mile of it."

huijzer 6y ago

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

s1artibartfast 6y ago
Not really applicable. In this case, everyone understands it but they don’t talk about it due to legal reasons

dillondoyle 6y ago

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.coinmaster&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonactive...

luplex 6y ago
Why does this type of ad work? Do people want to be addicted to something so badly? Don't they have something better to do?
- lvturner 6y ago
  Escape.
- raindropm 6y ago
  People just don't have "free", quiet time to think or to reflect about things anymore, stolen by various things, social media mostly. You'll operate in automatic, always-consuming mode, rigged by algorithm, and that doesn't help you thinking critically when this kind of ads comes up. and companies exploit these things and make tons of money, sad.

akhosravian 6y ago

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.

isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago

It can be even seen in design of offices. I once joined a meetup at what turned out to be a sports gambling software company (William Hill I think), and there was no mention or suggestion of gambling at any place in their offices - it was about "celebration of sports" and other bullshit.

gww 6y ago

Even before mobile gaming and in-game purchases was a thing. I remember there was a very wealthy player on Asheron's Call Frostfell who paid players to feed his XP chain, bought all of the rarest items such as nexus armour etc etc. There was a huge botting scene that sort of ruined the game but forced me to learn C++ and made me a bit of money as a teenager selling accounts.

spoonjim 6y ago

Companies involved in bad faith dealing often have this kind of NewSpeak.