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Can you please link to evidence that Dota 2 has been "hyper-optimized to be addictive"? Because I've never seen any indication that that's what Value is doing t

Can you please link to evidence that Dota 2 has been "hyper-optimized to be addictive"? Because I've never seen any indication that that's what Value is doing to it, and that is highly inconsistent with my personal experience playing the game and interacting with its community.

vanderZwan 4y ago
I suppose it's all relative. Sure, it's not slot machine or [any recent lootbox game] levels of vile tricks, but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked. I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives (although I do happen to know quite a few game devs, being a programmer living in Malmö, so that's a skewed demographic of gamer-oriented people). At the very least there is a vulnerable segment of society that should avoid these types of games.
- throw10920 4y ago
  > I suppose it's all relative. No, it's not relative. "This game has been optimized for the explicit purpose of "engagement"/addiction"" is a statement that can be factually known to be true or false. > but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked. That's an appeal to emotion without a logical argument behind it. The logical argument is that the survival of free-to-play games depends on the microtransaction revenue being higher than the cost to run the game. You know what directly contributes to the cost of running the game? People using the servers. Unlike social media platforms that monetize through time spent = ad impressions, free-to-play games do not want to maximize the amount of time spent playing the game, they want to maximize the amount of cosmetics that people buy, which is very different, and is not obviously connected with playtime in any research I'm aware of. > I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives ...which happened to me! But, as someone who is struggling with an HN addicition: something can be addicting without being purposefully designed to be that way - addictive traits do not imply that something was designed to be addictive.

vanderZwan 4y ago

I suppose it's all relative. Sure, it's not slot machine or [any recent lootbox game] levels of vile tricks, but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked. I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives (although I do happen to know quite a few game devs, being a programmer living in Malmö, so that's a skewed demographic of gamer-oriented people). At the very least there is a vulnerable segment of society that should avoid these types of games.

throw10920 4y ago
> I suppose it's all relative. No, it's not relative. "This game has been optimized for the explicit purpose of "engagement"/addiction"" is a statement that can be factually known to be true or false. > but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked. That's an appeal to emotion without a logical argument behind it. The logical argument is that the survival of free-to-play games depends on the microtransaction revenue being higher than the cost to run the game. You know what directly contributes to the cost of running the game? People using the servers. Unlike social media platforms that monetize through time spent = ad impressions, free-to-play games do not want to maximize the amount of time spent playing the game, they want to maximize the amount of cosmetics that people buy, which is very different, and is not obviously connected with playtime in any research I'm aware of. > I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives ...which happened to me! But, as someone who is struggling with an HN addicition: something can be addicting without being purposefully designed to be that way - addictive traits do not imply that something was designed to be addictive.