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And, importantly, none of those early experiences you had were psychologically engineered to manipulate you into spending as much time on the screen as possible

And, importantly, none of those early experiences you had were psychologically engineered to manipulate you into spending as much time on the screen as possible.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
This is such a massively important point. Back when I was growing up (Apple ][ / 8086 PC) the software was basically written by one or two people. Not entire teams of people scheming addictive manipulation with slot-machine payout rates tuned to precise dopamine chemistries and social networking pressures using models that have been tuned and proven to be frighteningly effective over two decades of experimentation. I played a machine zone game, thankfully only lost about 60 bucks on that crap between me and my GF, and by then I became wise to what they were doing, and shocked on all the levels of manipulation they were using for what is essentially a nag game that strongly rewards bullying for those people that pay to win. The history of these games goes back at least to the mid2000s (anyone remember Civony/Evony and "Come Play My Lord" Ads? Those are basically the same game as Machine Zone). They've been honing the various mechanisms (false advertising about what the game entails, grooming whale players, addictive gameplay) using mechanics from civilization, tamagochi, and whatever else works. Children's mobile games show a shocking amount of manipulative mechanics for the "free with ads" tier which for 90% of people (you know, the ones that aren't rich) will be what they use. Then again, this is the world they will be living in, so exposure to the manipulation may be good for them in limited doses, but "adult supervision" is more needed than ever.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
Indeed, they were something better! They induced my spending as much time on the screen as possible, because the machine would do anything I could figure out how to tell it to do. Something as rule-laden and consequential (or so it seemed to single-digit-aged me) as the physical world itself, except I was allowed to do pretty much anything because no one understood what I was doing! Modernity presents the superstimuli parent is referring to but removes all the interesting paths into the machine, the better to shear us. If the gameplay was reading O'Reilly books and the lootboxes were full of code snippets, it'd be one thing, but that's not what's happening.

And, importantly, none of those early experiences you had were psychologically engineered to manipulate you into spending as much time on the screen as possible.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

This is such a massively important point. Back when I was growing up (Apple ][ / 8086 PC) the software was basically written by one or two people. Not entire teams of people scheming addictive manipulation with slot-machine payout rates tuned to precise dopamine chemistries and social networking pressures using models that have been tuned and proven to be frighteningly effective over two decades of experimentation. I played a machine zone game, thankfully only lost about 60 bucks on that crap between me and my GF, and by then I became wise to what they were doing, and shocked on all the levels of manipulation they were using for what is essentially a nag game that strongly rewards bullying for those people that pay to win. The history of these games goes back at least to the mid2000s (anyone remember Civony/Evony and "Come Play My Lord" Ads? Those are basically the same game as Machine Zone). They've been honing the various mechanisms (false advertising about what the game entails, grooming whale players, addictive gameplay) using mechanics from civilization, tamagochi, and whatever else works. Children's mobile games show a shocking amount of manipulative mechanics for the "free with ads" tier which for 90% of people (you know, the ones that aren't rich) will be what they use. Then again, this is the world they will be living in, so exposure to the manipulation may be good for them in limited doses, but "adult supervision" is more needed than ever.

revolvingocelot 5y ago

Indeed, they were something better! They induced my spending as much time on the screen as possible, because the machine would do anything I could figure out how to tell it to do. Something as rule-laden and consequential (or so it seemed to single-digit-aged me) as the physical world itself, except I was allowed to do pretty much anything because no one understood what I was doing! Modernity presents the superstimuli parent is referring to but removes all the interesting paths into the machine, the better to shear us. If the gameplay was reading O'Reilly books and the lootboxes were full of code snippets, it'd be one thing, but that's not what's happening.