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> the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addicti

> the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start learning". Says who? What if they don't?

wodenokoto 12y ago
The big ones have people with psychology major or minors on staff to help research into recurrent behavior of user interactions, and many of the smaller ones probably just copy patterns from the big ones. Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".
michaelt 12y ago
Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. If a car is reliable, is it because of the highly paid expert engineers who improve the design; or the multi-billion-dollar company that hires those engineers; or the free market competition that discourages unreliability? I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"
- brc 12y ago
  The free market is the biggest driver in this case. We know this to be true because cars designed by companies who have lost their way and don't car anymore are typically poor. And cars designed as national projects are typically terrible. The engineers do the work, but it's the fussy and fickle customers who are their ever present, unrelenting boss.
  - kweinber 12y ago
    The free market also prefers awful and addictive things like Mcdonalds, cigarettes, and Facebook. When personal profit and easy gratification are the main drivers of a system then don't solely expect good things to pop out... good AND bad things arise.
vixsomnis 12y ago
Not all kids. Not everyone is self-driven or naturally curious (although I believe anyone can practice these). I was homeschooled until high school and I had a tremendous amount of freedom in my learning after I had gotten the harder and less interesting subjects out of the way (for me, spelling and creative writing). I graduated nearly at the top of my class, but I hated how high school felt like prison. No free speech. Led by incompetent adults. Some of these adults went on power trips. The school system is broken, at least it was for me. College is fine though, surprisingly. Maybe it was just my high school that was terrible...

wodenokoto 12y ago

The big ones have people with psychology major or minors on staff to help research into recurrent behavior of user interactions, and many of the smaller ones probably just copy patterns from the big ones. Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".

michaelt 12y ago

Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. If a car is reliable, is it because of the highly paid expert engineers who improve the design; or the multi-billion-dollar company that hires those engineers; or the free market competition that discourages unreliability? I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"

brc 12y ago
The free market is the biggest driver in this case. We know this to be true because cars designed by companies who have lost their way and don't car anymore are typically poor. And cars designed as national projects are typically terrible. The engineers do the work, but it's the fussy and fickle customers who are their ever present, unrelenting boss.
- kweinber 12y ago
  The free market also prefers awful and addictive things like Mcdonalds, cigarettes, and Facebook. When personal profit and easy gratification are the main drivers of a system then don't solely expect good things to pop out... good AND bad things arise.

vixsomnis 12y ago

Not all kids. Not everyone is self-driven or naturally curious (although I believe anyone can practice these). I was homeschooled until high school and I had a tremendous amount of freedom in my learning after I had gotten the harder and less interesting subjects out of the way (for me, spelling and creative writing). I graduated nearly at the top of my class, but I hated how high school felt like prison. No free speech. Led by incompetent adults. Some of these adults went on power trips. The school system is broken, at least it was for me. College is fine though, surprisingly. Maybe it was just my high school that was terrible...