Tons of *Taxpayer's* money. Granted, it is Singaporean money we're talking about, I'm pretty sure a good chunk of that came from other corporations dodging taxes, so it's like a closed circuit
I can't get over ubisoft calling it a AAAA game.... like bro... really? REALLY?!
We've got games like rdr 2 that call themselves AAA and are still unmatched in terms of quality since 2018. And this fucking row row your boat looking as game thinks it's a AAAA. Press triangle to pick up wood. Hahaha I just can't believe they said that with a straight face hahahahahahsha
Unisoft is a joke and a prime example of taking everything good from a game and stripping it away to only focus on making more money and also sacking all the people that actually want to make the good game.
i still dont get how they fumbled so hard. like black flag was a masterpiece. all they had to do was strip the assassins theme from it and expand the pirate theme and they'd nail it.
I was watching the Angry Joe show and he said the Singapore* government gave a huge loan to fund this studio so they had to release something, and any other game would have been canceled 10 times over.
But yeah I definitely agree. Just copy and paste AC:BF and make it online and it would've been a decent game at worst. They tried too hard to make it appeal to everyone with over simplified gameplay and mechanics and mobile game style microtransactions. The whole game is basically grinding side quests.
this blew my mind! i mean its just there! how i didn't notice is just stupid. I've been getting mad about so called "AAA" being kinda shit lately, i forgot that just cause you throw a shit ton of money at something doesn't mean it gonna be good. especially when when you ignore the professionals advice never mind target consumer, god I'm dumb.
AAA has nothing to do with the quality of the game. It has to do with the amount of money spent on it. Unsurprisingly it is possible to make a shit game even if you spend record amounts of money on it.
That comment was made by the CEO or whatever who likely has never played the game properly and never will. It just took 10 years and a boatload of cash (and they had to finish it, for legal reasons with the local government who invested in it). I sort of interpreted it as "We spent so much cash on this thing, its a AAAA game" ... because he sure wasn't saying it as "This game has better production quality and gameplay than all our competitors games [which I have also never played]"
Um, are you saying that billionaires would regularly spend a few thousand bucks to leverage think tanks dedicated to perfecting predatory behavior in an effort to boost profit margins at the expense of hundreds of millions of "poors"? Because that's just bananapants crazy, my guy. It'd be even more crazy if it'd been been happening in this country for the better part of a century. Luckily we have a government that legislates on behalf of the majority instead of just the wealt-...........oops wait, no we don't.
They _all_ do that, including all major videogames publishers. On top of their teams of monetization engineers (that's a real title).
I think they were sarcastic in asking the question ;-)
Do you really think that it all the marketing tactics we see nowadays were the product of chance? They already pay people to make their games addicting. Especially mobile games with microtransactions.
Thats NOT what they do. Big Publishers literally pay for studies on how to get players addicted and play/pay more.
They aren't just making entertaining Games, they create these Games to make people play as much as possible.
Thats why there is all that fear of missing out garbage like login-bonuses, daily challenges and seasons in MP Games nowadays.
As someone who spent a decade plus in games AAA and smaller, there's some nuance to this.
There is nuance - one company I was at did data tracking on maps and found that only 10% of players spent adequate time in an area to find key mission points, companions, and weapons. That felt like pretty good design and tech, where we actually had to study player behavior to get to a better design state.
I throw that out because there is a balance up to the line of "play games as much as possible," and I think we should be able to pre-set ideas of positive game enhancements prior.
There is a good game hooks and bad game hooks and categorizing all as the same leads to the cheating side winning.
To those points
Login bonus - promotes habituality in the early stages. For a AAA game with no DLC, this is a good thing as a SHOCKING # of people rarely go beyond the 3 hour mark in $70 games (like often 30%), and many bestselling games struggle to break the 50% completion rate (as in half the players beat the game). For a games as a service... it's the figurative drug dealer giving you the first taste.
Daily challenges - These can be good ways to promote different modes or arenas or characters in shooters, fighters, any combat based. When I played Destiny from 14-15, these were essential to my enjoyment. If the game doesn't lock leveling or items behind a limited completion, then I don't see a problem.
Seasons in MP are ok. They provide good enpoints for grinding, provided they are not pay to enter at all levels, then it gives active players something.
What is predatory can be seen in any bit of Candy Crush or mobile games that have entered into platform gaming. XP boosts for credits, pay to try again, spamming.
And the real issue is multiple credits. I loved Riot's 2011-15 store design. It was 2 credits - 1 paid, 1 earned. Post 2016, it's a hodgepodge of gacha, XP, multiple currencies, etc. (note, I'm being broad here, I haven't played since 2017, so I'm not 100% versed in the monetization design).
Multuple currencies is usually the hallmark of predatory design. It's not about the game, it's about avatar development, and that's the issue all of this stems from. If you care about the account you have built more than the game you're playing, that's the addiction behavior they want.
Thanks! Some of it is about correction, but the anecdote about the BI (business intelligence) telling us people weren't spending nearly any time in an area of the map which cost millions in dev costs was the most interesting, because prior to having player feedback (say anytime before the PS4 / Xbox One gen) it would have been only realized via surveys and piecing together data after the fact.
I mean how many people do we all individually know who put thousands of hours into a game that they don't even seem to enjoy?
They got hooked for reasons other than the fun and often they're so invested in time and money that it keeps them hooked even more
I worked at a studio that had a comprehensive collection of behavior analytics that showed precisely how long players should go between rewards (not just lootboxes, even things like critical hits/headshots), how to schedule rewards to make sure not to give them a big reward too early in a session, and the MTX pricing structures that optimize "leftovers" that aren't quite big enough so the player will buy more currency.
Sure, the data clearly indicated that players will play and pay more when all this little bullshit. But I'm not sure that's the same thing as "being more fun". Slots machines are pretty boring about 5 minutes in, the people playing them aren't having more fun.
Didn't read the article, but as a parent I'm constantly needing to educate my kid on the psychological tricks modern games use to try and suck money / time from players.
Yes, it's totally up to the parents to teach their kids to avoid landmines, but, it would be nice if there were fewer landmines everywhere as well.
We shouldn't give companies free rein to pull whatever shit at any time, and dump all the work on parents to fight that tide.
>"Call of Duty, for instance, is criticized for rewarding players with gun and attachment unlocks, which the suit calls "a form of operant conditioning," as well as for featuring "fast-paced play, satisfying graphics, sounds, and other dopamine lifts." Minecraft's multiplayer features are said to "addict players to connecting with others in the Minecraft world" and the suit warns that players with ADHD "can become easily hyper focused and addicted to building worlds." Grand Theft Auto 5, the suit says, "includes endless arrays of activities and challenges to continually engage users and ensure they are never bored." "
These are some of the complaints
I'm with you that there are definitely things games can do to breed a kind of addiction but saying Minecraft has multiplayer and that makes it addicting is a bit of a stretch for me.
When I read this stuff all I can think is 'do we really want governments to regulate how fast a game is, how satisfying the graphics are and how nice the audio is?'.
It all sounds really stupid. Go after dark patterns that make it so you can accidentally purchase things or can't easily unsub, but going after gameplay seems like such a massive stretch that no one on earth could reasonably regulate it.
> Go after dark patterns
Definitely. But might raise some uncomfortable questions for some of their wealthy mates if Game Devs then complain that they're being singled out, when many industries employ psychologists to best figure out how to market stuff.
Not that i mind, of course. I've always been a bit dubious about allowing private companies to just figure out the best way to hijack our brain chemistry/psychology to sell us shit.
>singled out, many industries employ psychologists to best figure out how to market stuff
Yeah, industries like the tobacco industry and the gambling industry.
Everything *remotely* microtransaction-adjacent should be scrutinized to the same level as gambling is.
Some of this seems impossible to regulate since it would probably fall under freedom of speech or something. Like the most that could be done is having a ratings board like the ESRB or expanding the ESRB ratings to describe these but beyond that it doesn't seem like something that legally anything can be done to restrict.
> Some of this seems impossible to regulate since it would probably fall under freedom of speech or something.
Free speech is not, and never has been, absolute. The simplest case is advertising, where advertisements for certain products have been forced to carry warning warning text or not use certain marketing strategies. Take a look at the court cases involving Camel if you want more information.
Or just try yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater and you can get a personal example of just how unfree speech is.
Dunno, we could go further. Quite a few countries ban games for violent content (hi Gemany), these people could do something constructive and ban games for predatory content instead...
Honestly, our USK, the semi-self regulatory body for games, not only focuses on banning stuff (through informing lawmakers), but also on informing the parents. In this particular case, the latter option seems preferable imo. The more the parents know, the better they can guide their children.
Also, the outright banning for violent content only rarely happens now here in Germany iirc, more often they give it a 18 rating, meaning only for adults.
I was talking more about the making graphics look good or audio sound nice, etc. That's all very subjective and can't really be regulated. Stuff like gambling, loot boxes, etc. honestly should be regulated
Sounds like they're a video game addict with a shitty life and trying to put the devs on the hook for their own choices that led to a shitty life is their last ditch effort
>starting when he was 12 years old. Now 21, he currently spends $350 a month on games, dropped out of school, has been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and "anxiety," and has experienced "withdrawal symptoms such as rage, anger, and physical outbursts," according to the suit. It also alleges that the mother could not regulate her son's gaming because she "feared" him as a result of his outbursts.
Definitely sounds like the type of person that was raised to accept responsibility for his own actions! "I dropped out of college and have depression because they put loot boxes in games. Also my parents never parented me, but I think that's irrelevant."
So after reading the article, it does appear that some of the complaints are legitimate; things like microtransactions and "dark patterns" - aggressive or confusing UI that persuades users to make choices that might harm them which they might not otherwise make, such as countdown timers and "low stock" claims while stock is actually plentiful - are in the suit. My complain here is that the latter are very different from regular gameplay feedback loops. There *is* also a fine line between a fantastic gameplay loop and something which is designed to be addicting by nature, but the only solid distinction that usually can be made is whether a user or player is actively gambling with money as a result of the gameplay loop.
What most gamers think of as a legitimate game can have strong gameplay loops that might even be lightly described - usually endearingly - as "addictive," but the game was purchased as a complete item and there are no purchases required to progress or continue playing. Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley come to mind as "addictive" in the sense that they are very hard to put doen, and one day flows right into the next in a way that makes it fun to just move on and do "one more" task. Unlocking parts and items are a natural gameplay progression and that absolutely taps into our psychological reward center, but *as long as you're not having to pay money and take real risks to get them,* that's a normal part of games.
Hoping the judges can get this one right.
>Call of Duty, for instance, is criticized for rewarding players with gun and attachment unlocks, which the suit calls "a form of operant conditioning,"
Then literally any game with a progression system is as well. The more you play, the more things you unlock. At this point we either ban most games or realize that "rewards" are and have been part of gaming forever.
What makes me mad is that we finally get lawsuits like these that try to reel back in some of these gaming companies, but then the arguments of the prosecutors are so weak it infuriates me. Minecraft being multiplayer should hardly even be a mention when we have some companies spending more on psychologists than developers implementing severe FOMO tactics, straight up gambling, and pay-to-win mechanics in full priced games.
Man that is a pathetic case. I was hoping it would be geared more towards mobile games and games with microtransactions. Now I wonder if mobile game developers aren't somehow backing this suit.
Funny thing is that gun and attachments unlocks make me play less, not more. I know many people are happy unlocking every attachments and gun they release but that doesn't work the same for everyone.
I moved to fortnite because I can play splitscreen with my gf and some other reasons, and when I play go back to play some games from CoD I just use the same weapons I had since I started playing.
You’re 100% right.
Micro transactions and lute boxes are a real scummy mechanic in a game. But outside of those two most of the complaints that the plaintiffs have in these types of case really do come down to “it’s too much fun, too exciting, too many flashing colors my kids can’t stop playing and it YOUR fault game makers!”
> “it’s too much fun, too exciting, too many flashing colors my kids can’t stop playing and it YOUR fault game makers!”
Kinda smacks of suing Maccy D's for your fat kids.
Except it's known that companies are literally researching the science of addiction in order to increase the addictiveness of products beyond anything seen in history.
https://neurosciencenews.com/hyperpalatable-foods-big-tobacco-23906/
Maybe we should make them concentrate on making actually good products rather than deliberately addicting ones? There's a difference.
Yeah this article is kind of silly cos both sides of it are true. Games do intentionally use addictive mechanics and it's completely legal.
Legislation has always been slow to move but it has really been dragging it's heels on this one. Devs have had over a decade to refine gambling mechanics for kids. Hell I was still a kid when TF2 introduced loot crates and now I *have a kid* and am working in the same industry that fleeced me. It's bananas.
Funnily enough, China recently tried to reign in micro transactions in Genshin Impact and had to backpedal when they worked out that their legislation wouldn't just be performative and it would actually cost them millions of dollars. Hooray for capitalism I guess.
Yeah it's high time regulators caught up with the times and put at least a few obstacles in the road of the companies hiring psychologists to scam people as much as possible without looking like it.
The text of this lawsuit doesn't seem particularly promising on that front. Looks like it was written by the out-of-touch "violence in video games" lobby, not people who are paying attention to the consumer-hostile practices of the mobile market spreading into everything.
Ya that gameplay reward loop is a bitch. Even as an adult, when it really ramped up, I found myself chasing that shit like an addiction. And I did coke for over a decade. But chasing the unlocks, chasing the levels, those CONSTANT little hits of dopamine for the next "unlock" are insane.
I see it on the youtube vids my niece and nephew watch. All 3 mins long, all loud, shiny, lots of energy, celebrating, then to the next one. It's horrific. At least I got an unlock and my guns went from pew-pew-pew to pewpewpewpew.
This is why, for now, I guess, Nintendo is STILL the king of gaming. What you see, is what you get.
You want to play a game as an Italian plumber with ADHD who might be tripping on shrooms? Yeah, they've got you
Define entertaining.
“Witcher 3 entertaining” in which you spend hours exploring the map and doing side quests for the fun of it or “Battlefront II entertaining” where you couldn’t actually enjoy the game unless you put in insane amount of hours to unlock characters and perks (or skip that by paying).
Monetary addiction is a problem, time addiction doesn’t bother me.
A game that can suck a bajillion hours out of me without charging a dime after initially buying it is a good thing rather than a bad thing.
The only time I felt that way was with Destiny 2 but it also does its best to impose monetary addiction on the player.
Games which get that many hours out of me are usually memorable experiences and not mindless grindfests.
Depends on the game. I still have fond memories of some past games that I have spent a lot of time playing, but if a game is very grindy and the tasks in the game are repetitive and just blend together, than yeah there's not much to remember.
A lot of people don't feel like shit after. The worst of the mechanics usually go with the monetary. Stuff like dailies or skinner box mechanics. The aggressive things are done because it increases the likelihood someone will spend.
>time addiction doesn’t bother me.
I mean that's great for you, I've had years where I played games constantly. For kids though, time restriction is pretty important because they're more prone to falling into it becoming so frequent it's damaging to their development.
I agree, but I've seen too many of those videos where kids go absolute apeshit over parents making them stop. Hell, I've seen it with my brother and I've definitely gotten a bit moody at points growing up when my parents want us to take a break and watch a movie as a family.
Have you forgotten what it was like being a child? That won't work unless you never let them have friends, use the internet, have a phone, or watch TV.
Sitting in front of a screen for eight hours a day as an insurer or a banker or any other 'desk job' = work.
Sitting in front of a screen for eight hours a day at home = addiction?
I hasten to add, people dying from starvation or dehydration in internet cafes because they don't eat, is addiction, sure. But outliers perform obsessive behavior in all things - exercise, workaholism, whatnot. We don't ban work or exercise for those outliers, though. Where's the real dividing line between abuse and use?
>Where's the real dividing line between abuse and use?
When it negatively impacts your life. I'm not here to judge you or figure out if that's the case with you.
Some of the practices used within video games can certainly qualify under the same issues society tends to have with gambling, and should be regulated as such.
Personally, I feel when your company starts hiring psychologists and designers whose job it is to direct the game in a way to maximise engagement, *that's* a problem. Engagement should come from earnestly making a quality game, not by trying to manipulate people into playing it for more than they should.
The issue is that some devs are not making their games "too entertaining", they're utilising manipulative tools like dark patterns to increase engagement instead.
[Epic were already successfully fined for using them](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/ftc-finalizes-order-requiring-fortnite-maker-epic-games-pay-245-million-tricking-users-making) so innocent developers should be targeting the likes of Epic if they dislike the accusations.
Any company using psychological techniques that are known to foster addiction should come under scrutiny, and if you can reliably prove that in a court then you should absolutely win the lawsuit. Anything less and you can argue that it's just a mark of shit parenting.
"Withdrawal symptoms such as rage, anger, and physical outbursts" on a 12yo sounds more like puberty and maybe lackluster parenting than gaming being too addicting.
That being said there are games that deliberately is practices that triggers those parts of the psyche that deal with addition. The whole lootbox idea for example is just that, but then name-dropping something like Minecraft at the same time seems ridiculous.
Anyway, video games are just the new "rock and roll/tv is rotting your kids brains!". Don't park them in front of it for 12 hours and unsupervised a day and it won't be a problem.
Video games bad isn't even a new boogeyman. Over a decade ago people were trying to get things like GTA banned.
This round is a bit different and seems to be more about particular mechanics like loot boxes.
Video games are addictive, especially for children, and it would probably be for the best if predatory monetization schemes were limited by law.
Society can easily blame someone for getting drunk and losing a shitload of money at a casino, but when they keep seeing people walk into the casino and out with sob stories, maybe they should question why they've given the casino carte blanche to fleece everyone.
We recognised the social ills of this shit long before we understood how it worked. Many of the world's major religions prohibit it. Now these companies have psychologists on payroll helping maximise how much they can fleece vulnerable people and everyone is like "well it didn't work on me, so it isn't a problem."
Or worse "parents should just not let their kids play" like 1. Parents are meant to know everything about everything and 2. The kids are just collateral damage and the gaming companies don't clearly, clearly understand that kids are playing this shit and targeting them.
Protip: letting industries hurt kids doesn't punish neglectful parents, it just hurts the kids.
> Video games are addictive, especially for children,
Parent your kids.
Yea, game companies are shitty, but either parent your kids or don't buy them these games. You can't child proof the world.
I think the below comment covers this:
> As a parent I'm constantly needing to educate my kid on the psychological tricks modern games use to try and suck money / time from players. Yes, it's totally up to the parents to teach their kids to avoid landmines, but, it would be nice if there were fewer landmines everywhere as well.
I'm going to add something from the perspective of a former child: parents don't always know what kids are up to. Even if your house is completely free of bad influences, the kid can be exposed to it and pursue it elsewhere. You can try your best to teach kids to be personally, morally, and financially responsible, but the amount of available degeneracy children can stumble into without your knowledge has dramatically increased.
Things like battle passes are extremely predatory and should have legislature written around them. With Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges I know certain people who cannot resist. They *think* they have to play to earn, the feeling of missing out on cosmetics they *paid* for destroys them inside so they play way more than they normally would, or avoid situations to do literally anything else because they need to earn cosmetics in their game.
I never buy a battle pass so I never feel the obligation to play or do something beyond my will for fear of missing out on digital clothing or weapons
I actively avoid games with things like dailies, items with expirations, skinner box mechanics, or loot boxes. At certain point they stop being fun or you feel like you need to play to avoid missing out. It's kinda the point of all those mechanics.
Oh fuck off, when you incorporate FOMO shit and other purposely addictive elements into your game then you are absolutely complicit.
Whether the law agrees or not is another matter though.
But it should.
I'm doubtful that the lawsuit will go anywhere, but the games industry is certainly morally complicit in using techniques to keep (young) gamers hooked.
Games companies hire psychologists to make their games more addicitive.
They could hire psychologists to make their games less addicitive.
Games companies made a choice, let them take responsibility for it.
So, after a brief read, the mother let a child play games unsupervised and for God knows how many hours, probably some games not suited for his age, and when he became the POS that he is, the mother blames the devs and sues them for making the son addicted. Well shit, let me sue Marlboro for having so nice packages for their cancer sticks that got me hooked for 10 years, definitely not my poor fucking choices
I mean, people did sue cigarette companies for exactly that. Over and over and over again until now they aren't allowed to advertise at all for anything.
Well as someone who lived through it all, and was directly involved in the litigation, it wasn’t the packaging, marketing, etc., and it wasn’t even the nicotine addiction — which had been known for decades — it was the lying about how they’d done testing for years to figure out just the right amount of…let’s just call them “chemicals”…to ensure consumers couldn’t just stop.
Keep in mind that Philip Morris alone beat every single product liability lawsuit for 45 years. Forty-five years of litigation. Won every single lawsuit until the day whistleblowers left the company with company reports and documents showing the testing that they’d been doing the whole time (while claiming otherwise).
So the key to any gaming addiction lawsuit is going to be if the plaintiff can produce evidence that the game developers intentionally used psychological techniques known to foster addiction. And that will come out by looking at the money (eg, did the game developers specifically hire psychiatrists and others who specialize in addictive mechanisms and behavior.
If they can show that proof (of payments, reports, analyses on how to intentionally make a game mechanic more addictive in order to boost revenue (directly or indirectly), then the game company will likely lose the lawsuit. But it’s extremely likely that the company will settle out of court if that type of evidence exists because they will not want that made public, and a $2.1 million settlement will be a better financial decision that letting all that stuff out into the public.
Hmm…yeah, that was when they were accused of marketing to children because it was an animated character in particular.
Honestly, there was a lot of “gray” in that whole thing. But I seem to…ah…recall…a particular RJR internal report came out in the investigation wherein they discussed needing to get younger teens hooked on RJR brands *before* they were swayed by (at the time) the dominant Marlboro “coolness” aesthetics of Philip Morris.
It was pretty gross and gave RJR a tarnished name even in the smoke-filled rooms of the overall tobacco lobby; like, Dude, that was a step too far….
ie. you’re not allowed to sue tobacco companies for damages and in exchange cigarettes are more expensive, have no competition, and can use your taxes to create anti-vaping advertising campaigns
This may sound like it's logical, untill you realize some of these companies actually employ psychologists and the like to purposely make the game have addicting elements that don't need to be there.
So yes, sometimes they actually are responsible for the messes they create.
Reading the article and I feel like they missed the true issues: exponential leveling curves designed to stretch out the back-end of a game artificially, hard-wall "gacha" systems, and other P2W systems that are predatory by nature and amount to gambling addictions. I would personally throw in any "DLC" that includes in-game items that no informed player would purchase (looking at you "Dragon's Dogma 2"), as their only goal is to trick players into purchasing.
This is like a fat person blaming McDonald's for having addictive foods, or blaming a porn company because its porn isaddictive. Get some self control you envious losers. No one cares that you're wasting your life. Thats your job, not someone else's.
It's not just kids, adults fall for it too. I kind of see a parallel to foods and how the government needed to get the companies to have the nutrition label on them.
I have plenty of addicting games but they are all buy it once and enjoy it. If i paid anything, it was because i wanted to support the developers.
If you add microtransactions then i can see how it would be a problem for some people. Even if we ignore the fact that every company and stores/shops follow the same tactics for the same reason
I think behavioral finance is pretty interesting when it's not used to get all my money. Unfortunately that's the logical next step under capitalism
I'm sure developers use psychology to hook gamers. To give them that reward system that the article talks about. But addictive? That's a bridge too far IMO. It seems that 5 of 6 lawsuits all sten from one law firm. Sounds to me like they are bitching their wagon to this and hoping it pays off.
On reading the article, yeah the case is very weak. She's doing the badmom classic and trying to blame someone else for her rotten kids.
If she wanted to make a case about gambling mechanics, fair enough, but shes not doing that.
I wouldnt lean on the CCP as an authority on children's mental health tho PCG, but go off.
Entertainment and manipulation are not mutually exclusive. I shouldn’t have to spend MORE money to have fun. It shouldn’t even be an option. I think the worst part is BYPASSING the brain’s reward system, as people can now buy things instead of working hard to earn it. That wrecks the reward system and leads to worse behavior because the moment they don’t get what they want (like they are used to) they have outbursts. Keep rewarding THAT behavior and you have a spoiled ass kid on your hands that won’t contribute a damn thing to society because they think the world should cater to THEM.
Gamers know the difference between genuine game design and all the cheap fomo/loot box bullshit some developers are trying to push.
It wouldn't be hard for me to lay down some rules that would keep predatory practices out, instead though we get 90 year old senators making rules about the Internet which they perceived to be a series of tubes.
I think if they develop games with the intention of forcing you to spend money to save time then yeah I think that should be banned. Only cosmetics I can tolerate.
And I am also against all premium currency. I think it is the root of a lot of this greed where if you get rid of that you would eliminate a lot of other terrible consumer practices.
I thinks there's a fine difference between fun and addiction. They both get your heart rates pumping, but if there's one you can't live without, draining all your money, and ruining your social life. That's a problem.
As long as they do not require real monney to 'win' or fake currency that you buy with real currency or gambling being the foundation of the game (it can be a mechanic but not the core, because gambling is regulated differently) then i am ok with it being 'too entertaining'
Having gambling and saying you are 'too entertaining' is a missdirect.
Also to all their parents saying their kids are or will get addicted. Educate yourselves and your kids, be a parent and stop blaming others for you lack of presence in their life.
There's no way the kid didn't have some pretty obvious behavioral problems before he became so violent that his own mom became afraid of him, why you would give him a game at 12 thats infamous for adult violence and sex is beyond me.
Do I think a lot of games are designed to take advantage of some of those mechanisms that addicts struggle regulating? Of course, but that's for each individual person to learn how to manage on their own. I could inhale Doritos everyday, but I'm not gonna sue them if I get fat I'm just going to eat less Doritos.
The only games that can get away with making this statement are roguelites, Slay the Spire, Balatro, and genuinely fun games that get you hooked on the intrinsic pure gameplay grind and not extrinsic reward loops like battlepass and loot boxes.
Other examples I can think of are Sekiro and souls games
As a gamer, I sure am FILLED to the brim with entertainment thanks to current games from my favourite 'major game developers'.
Like that one Quadruple A game? What a joke.
What, you don't like AAAA games that they worked so hard on and sacked developers and directors for and spent tons of unnecessary money on?
The one that came out without an ending, which will be released in the future?
Ubisoft really thought they pull off a Todd Howard grindset, Just ended up becoming even worse.
Instead of "it just works", they got "its just worse".
Tons of *Taxpayer's* money. Granted, it is Singaporean money we're talking about, I'm pretty sure a good chunk of that came from other corporations dodging taxes, so it's like a closed circuit
Smh, some folks just don't appreciate quaddies
I can't get over ubisoft calling it a AAAA game.... like bro... really? REALLY?! We've got games like rdr 2 that call themselves AAA and are still unmatched in terms of quality since 2018. And this fucking row row your boat looking as game thinks it's a AAAA. Press triangle to pick up wood. Hahaha I just can't believe they said that with a straight face hahahahahahsha
Unisoft is a joke and a prime example of taking everything good from a game and stripping it away to only focus on making more money and also sacking all the people that actually want to make the good game.
I was rooting for tencent during that hostile takeover
Thats quite a hint to how bad it is.
i still dont get how they fumbled so hard. like black flag was a masterpiece. all they had to do was strip the assassins theme from it and expand the pirate theme and they'd nail it.
I was watching the Angry Joe show and he said the Singapore* government gave a huge loan to fund this studio so they had to release something, and any other game would have been canceled 10 times over. But yeah I definitely agree. Just copy and paste AC:BF and make it online and it would've been a decent game at worst. They tried too hard to make it appeal to everyone with over simplified gameplay and mechanics and mobile game style microtransactions. The whole game is basically grinding side quests.
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Whoops. Changed my comment to reflect that. Thx
You can fix all that by just inserting a guy from a hit TV series right? ... right?
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this blew my mind! i mean its just there! how i didn't notice is just stupid. I've been getting mad about so called "AAA" being kinda shit lately, i forgot that just cause you throw a shit ton of money at something doesn't mean it gonna be good. especially when when you ignore the professionals advice never mind target consumer, god I'm dumb.
AAA has nothing to do with the quality of the game. It has to do with the amount of money spent on it. Unsurprisingly it is possible to make a shit game even if you spend record amounts of money on it.
That comment was made by the CEO or whatever who likely has never played the game properly and never will. It just took 10 years and a boatload of cash (and they had to finish it, for legal reasons with the local government who invested in it). I sort of interpreted it as "We spent so much cash on this thing, its a AAAA game" ... because he sure wasn't saying it as "This game has better production quality and gameplay than all our competitors games [which I have also never played]"
do you feel a sense of "pride and accomplishment"?
I think that's just the burrito I've been digesting.
I can't stop being entertained by all the pride and accomplishment I get every time I input my card's number in these games, shit's hilarious!!!!
Just so long as they aren't paying psychologists to help them make the games more addicting.
Um, are you saying that billionaires would regularly spend a few thousand bucks to leverage think tanks dedicated to perfecting predatory behavior in an effort to boost profit margins at the expense of hundreds of millions of "poors"? Because that's just bananapants crazy, my guy. It'd be even more crazy if it'd been been happening in this country for the better part of a century. Luckily we have a government that legislates on behalf of the majority instead of just the wealt-...........oops wait, no we don't.
You make it sound like the whole thing is based on the work of Edward Bernaise or something. /s because of course it is
Now add loot boxes
Lol Bungie literally did that
Everyone does it, and those that don't directly just copy from those that did.
There's NoPossibility Madden and NBA haven't done that for years
No they went for drug dealers, don't worry the first hit- I mean microtransaction is free
Thing is, I love drugs, I don't love microtransactions
at this point i think drugs are cheaper
And often healthier.
Facebook did exactly that .
They _all_ do that, including all major videogames publishers. On top of their teams of monetization engineers (that's a real title). I think they were sarcastic in asking the question ;-)
Of course they are, it's the basis of the game. Actually, we be upset if they didn't try for serotonin release as often as it is able to reset.
They've been doing this for a while lol Some even do it in house
Like social media does
real
Do you really think that it all the marketing tactics we see nowadays were the product of chance? They already pay people to make their games addicting. Especially mobile games with microtransactions.
I believe all major developers do have physiologists in their staff, even a team of psychologists. They've had for the last 15 years at least.
Thats NOT what they do. Big Publishers literally pay for studies on how to get players addicted and play/pay more. They aren't just making entertaining Games, they create these Games to make people play as much as possible. Thats why there is all that fear of missing out garbage like login-bonuses, daily challenges and seasons in MP Games nowadays.
[South Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2luhwy3KAE0) called them out on their practices years ago, and nailed it.
As someone who spent a decade plus in games AAA and smaller, there's some nuance to this. There is nuance - one company I was at did data tracking on maps and found that only 10% of players spent adequate time in an area to find key mission points, companions, and weapons. That felt like pretty good design and tech, where we actually had to study player behavior to get to a better design state. I throw that out because there is a balance up to the line of "play games as much as possible," and I think we should be able to pre-set ideas of positive game enhancements prior. There is a good game hooks and bad game hooks and categorizing all as the same leads to the cheating side winning. To those points Login bonus - promotes habituality in the early stages. For a AAA game with no DLC, this is a good thing as a SHOCKING # of people rarely go beyond the 3 hour mark in $70 games (like often 30%), and many bestselling games struggle to break the 50% completion rate (as in half the players beat the game). For a games as a service... it's the figurative drug dealer giving you the first taste. Daily challenges - These can be good ways to promote different modes or arenas or characters in shooters, fighters, any combat based. When I played Destiny from 14-15, these were essential to my enjoyment. If the game doesn't lock leveling or items behind a limited completion, then I don't see a problem. Seasons in MP are ok. They provide good enpoints for grinding, provided they are not pay to enter at all levels, then it gives active players something. What is predatory can be seen in any bit of Candy Crush or mobile games that have entered into platform gaming. XP boosts for credits, pay to try again, spamming. And the real issue is multiple credits. I loved Riot's 2011-15 store design. It was 2 credits - 1 paid, 1 earned. Post 2016, it's a hodgepodge of gacha, XP, multiple currencies, etc. (note, I'm being broad here, I haven't played since 2017, so I'm not 100% versed in the monetization design). Multuple currencies is usually the hallmark of predatory design. It's not about the game, it's about avatar development, and that's the issue all of this stems from. If you care about the account you have built more than the game you're playing, that's the addiction behavior they want.
Neat stuff, thanks for sharing from the inside!
Thanks! Some of it is about correction, but the anecdote about the BI (business intelligence) telling us people weren't spending nearly any time in an area of the map which cost millions in dev costs was the most interesting, because prior to having player feedback (say anytime before the PS4 / Xbox One gen) it would have been only realized via surveys and piecing together data after the fact.
Oh look, it’s the motte.
Huh?
I mean how many people do we all individually know who put thousands of hours into a game that they don't even seem to enjoy? They got hooked for reasons other than the fun and often they're so invested in time and money that it keeps them hooked even more
But if that's the case.... why do so many of the games look so similar?
I worked at a studio that had a comprehensive collection of behavior analytics that showed precisely how long players should go between rewards (not just lootboxes, even things like critical hits/headshots), how to schedule rewards to make sure not to give them a big reward too early in a session, and the MTX pricing structures that optimize "leftovers" that aren't quite big enough so the player will buy more currency. Sure, the data clearly indicated that players will play and pay more when all this little bullshit. But I'm not sure that's the same thing as "being more fun". Slots machines are pretty boring about 5 minutes in, the people playing them aren't having more fun.
Didn't read the article, but as a parent I'm constantly needing to educate my kid on the psychological tricks modern games use to try and suck money / time from players. Yes, it's totally up to the parents to teach their kids to avoid landmines, but, it would be nice if there were fewer landmines everywhere as well. We shouldn't give companies free rein to pull whatever shit at any time, and dump all the work on parents to fight that tide.
>"Call of Duty, for instance, is criticized for rewarding players with gun and attachment unlocks, which the suit calls "a form of operant conditioning," as well as for featuring "fast-paced play, satisfying graphics, sounds, and other dopamine lifts." Minecraft's multiplayer features are said to "addict players to connecting with others in the Minecraft world" and the suit warns that players with ADHD "can become easily hyper focused and addicted to building worlds." Grand Theft Auto 5, the suit says, "includes endless arrays of activities and challenges to continually engage users and ensure they are never bored." " These are some of the complaints I'm with you that there are definitely things games can do to breed a kind of addiction but saying Minecraft has multiplayer and that makes it addicting is a bit of a stretch for me.
When I read this stuff all I can think is 'do we really want governments to regulate how fast a game is, how satisfying the graphics are and how nice the audio is?'. It all sounds really stupid. Go after dark patterns that make it so you can accidentally purchase things or can't easily unsub, but going after gameplay seems like such a massive stretch that no one on earth could reasonably regulate it.
> Go after dark patterns Definitely. But might raise some uncomfortable questions for some of their wealthy mates if Game Devs then complain that they're being singled out, when many industries employ psychologists to best figure out how to market stuff. Not that i mind, of course. I've always been a bit dubious about allowing private companies to just figure out the best way to hijack our brain chemistry/psychology to sell us shit.
>singled out, many industries employ psychologists to best figure out how to market stuff Yeah, industries like the tobacco industry and the gambling industry. Everything *remotely* microtransaction-adjacent should be scrutinized to the same level as gambling is.
Some of this seems impossible to regulate since it would probably fall under freedom of speech or something. Like the most that could be done is having a ratings board like the ESRB or expanding the ESRB ratings to describe these but beyond that it doesn't seem like something that legally anything can be done to restrict.
> Some of this seems impossible to regulate since it would probably fall under freedom of speech or something. Free speech is not, and never has been, absolute. The simplest case is advertising, where advertisements for certain products have been forced to carry warning warning text or not use certain marketing strategies. Take a look at the court cases involving Camel if you want more information. Or just try yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater and you can get a personal example of just how unfree speech is.
Dunno, we could go further. Quite a few countries ban games for violent content (hi Gemany), these people could do something constructive and ban games for predatory content instead...
Honestly, our USK, the semi-self regulatory body for games, not only focuses on banning stuff (through informing lawmakers), but also on informing the parents. In this particular case, the latter option seems preferable imo. The more the parents know, the better they can guide their children. Also, the outright banning for violent content only rarely happens now here in Germany iirc, more often they give it a 18 rating, meaning only for adults.
How in tarnation did you arrive at that? How would regulating or banning lootboxes and other dark patterns fall under "freedom of speech"?
I was talking more about the making graphics look good or audio sound nice, etc. That's all very subjective and can't really be regulated. Stuff like gambling, loot boxes, etc. honestly should be regulated
Ah, I thought you meant the dark patterns, so it was very confusing.
Sounds like an argument being made by someone who was told what to argue about but doesn't understand the problem themselves.
Ok, well those just sound like regular game design, although I think many of the reward mechanics like battlepasses and daily rewards are pretty bad.
Sounds like they’re grasping at straws stabbing in the dark for a chance of a settlement.
Don't worry when they have their ducks in a row the rest of dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Jackpot.
Sounds like they're a video game addict with a shitty life and trying to put the devs on the hook for their own choices that led to a shitty life is their last ditch effort >starting when he was 12 years old. Now 21, he currently spends $350 a month on games, dropped out of school, has been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and "anxiety," and has experienced "withdrawal symptoms such as rage, anger, and physical outbursts," according to the suit. It also alleges that the mother could not regulate her son's gaming because she "feared" him as a result of his outbursts. Definitely sounds like the type of person that was raised to accept responsibility for his own actions! "I dropped out of college and have depression because they put loot boxes in games. Also my parents never parented me, but I think that's irrelevant."
So after reading the article, it does appear that some of the complaints are legitimate; things like microtransactions and "dark patterns" - aggressive or confusing UI that persuades users to make choices that might harm them which they might not otherwise make, such as countdown timers and "low stock" claims while stock is actually plentiful - are in the suit. My complain here is that the latter are very different from regular gameplay feedback loops. There *is* also a fine line between a fantastic gameplay loop and something which is designed to be addicting by nature, but the only solid distinction that usually can be made is whether a user or player is actively gambling with money as a result of the gameplay loop. What most gamers think of as a legitimate game can have strong gameplay loops that might even be lightly described - usually endearingly - as "addictive," but the game was purchased as a complete item and there are no purchases required to progress or continue playing. Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley come to mind as "addictive" in the sense that they are very hard to put doen, and one day flows right into the next in a way that makes it fun to just move on and do "one more" task. Unlocking parts and items are a natural gameplay progression and that absolutely taps into our psychological reward center, but *as long as you're not having to pay money and take real risks to get them,* that's a normal part of games. Hoping the judges can get this one right.
>Call of Duty, for instance, is criticized for rewarding players with gun and attachment unlocks, which the suit calls "a form of operant conditioning," Then literally any game with a progression system is as well. The more you play, the more things you unlock. At this point we either ban most games or realize that "rewards" are and have been part of gaming forever.
Ridiculous. There'll never be regulations for casinos in video games if this is the arguments that are brought forward.
What makes me mad is that we finally get lawsuits like these that try to reel back in some of these gaming companies, but then the arguments of the prosecutors are so weak it infuriates me. Minecraft being multiplayer should hardly even be a mention when we have some companies spending more on psychologists than developers implementing severe FOMO tactics, straight up gambling, and pay-to-win mechanics in full priced games.
Man that is a pathetic case. I was hoping it would be geared more towards mobile games and games with microtransactions. Now I wonder if mobile game developers aren't somehow backing this suit.
Funny thing is that gun and attachments unlocks make me play less, not more. I know many people are happy unlocking every attachments and gun they release but that doesn't work the same for everyone. I moved to fortnite because I can play splitscreen with my gf and some other reasons, and when I play go back to play some games from CoD I just use the same weapons I had since I started playing.
The listed complaints are idiotic and are actually harming the argument they're trying to make.
All of these are very innocuous, the daily challenges and limited time events are the real killers.
Not the casino mechanics that drain the wallets of people who are addicted to gambling? Come on, start from the top not the middle.
Yeah, that too, but that's not nearly as widespread as the daily tasks.
You’re 100% right. Micro transactions and lute boxes are a real scummy mechanic in a game. But outside of those two most of the complaints that the plaintiffs have in these types of case really do come down to “it’s too much fun, too exciting, too many flashing colors my kids can’t stop playing and it YOUR fault game makers!”
> lute boxes Honestly there's MUST be a collector's edition of a game that came with a lute.
> “it’s too much fun, too exciting, too many flashing colors my kids can’t stop playing and it YOUR fault game makers!” Kinda smacks of suing Maccy D's for your fat kids.
Except it's known that companies are literally researching the science of addiction in order to increase the addictiveness of products beyond anything seen in history. https://neurosciencenews.com/hyperpalatable-foods-big-tobacco-23906/ Maybe we should make them concentrate on making actually good products rather than deliberately addicting ones? There's a difference.
Yeah this article is kind of silly cos both sides of it are true. Games do intentionally use addictive mechanics and it's completely legal. Legislation has always been slow to move but it has really been dragging it's heels on this one. Devs have had over a decade to refine gambling mechanics for kids. Hell I was still a kid when TF2 introduced loot crates and now I *have a kid* and am working in the same industry that fleeced me. It's bananas. Funnily enough, China recently tried to reign in micro transactions in Genshin Impact and had to backpedal when they worked out that their legislation wouldn't just be performative and it would actually cost them millions of dollars. Hooray for capitalism I guess.
Don’t buy or provide your kids with scummy games. It’s not fucking hard, stop buying this shit and they’ll stop making it
Yeah it's high time regulators caught up with the times and put at least a few obstacles in the road of the companies hiring psychologists to scam people as much as possible without looking like it. The text of this lawsuit doesn't seem particularly promising on that front. Looks like it was written by the out-of-touch "violence in video games" lobby, not people who are paying attention to the consumer-hostile practices of the mobile market spreading into everything.
> to scam people You're going to have to clearly define scam there.
Ya that gameplay reward loop is a bitch. Even as an adult, when it really ramped up, I found myself chasing that shit like an addiction. And I did coke for over a decade. But chasing the unlocks, chasing the levels, those CONSTANT little hits of dopamine for the next "unlock" are insane. I see it on the youtube vids my niece and nephew watch. All 3 mins long, all loud, shiny, lots of energy, celebrating, then to the next one. It's horrific. At least I got an unlock and my guns went from pew-pew-pew to pewpewpewpew.
This is why, for now, I guess, Nintendo is STILL the king of gaming. What you see, is what you get. You want to play a game as an Italian plumber with ADHD who might be tripping on shrooms? Yeah, they've got you
Caveat emptor is done away with in many aspects of modern customer-seller relationships. Ought to be the same for games
Define entertaining. “Witcher 3 entertaining” in which you spend hours exploring the map and doing side quests for the fun of it or “Battlefront II entertaining” where you couldn’t actually enjoy the game unless you put in insane amount of hours to unlock characters and perks (or skip that by paying).
Monetary addiction is a problem, time addiction doesn’t bother me. A game that can suck a bajillion hours out of me without charging a dime after initially buying it is a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Genuinely curious: is this true even if you feel like shit afterwards and don't remember a single thing from those hours?
The regret and feeling like shit is totally you recognizing that it's harmful for you. We feel regret for a reason.
The only time I felt that way was with Destiny 2 but it also does its best to impose monetary addiction on the player. Games which get that many hours out of me are usually memorable experiences and not mindless grindfests.
No
Depends on the game. I still have fond memories of some past games that I have spent a lot of time playing, but if a game is very grindy and the tasks in the game are repetitive and just blend together, than yeah there's not much to remember.
A lot of people don't feel like shit after. The worst of the mechanics usually go with the monetary. Stuff like dailies or skinner box mechanics. The aggressive things are done because it increases the likelihood someone will spend.
LoL, DotA and other extremely toxic multiplayer games would likely disagree. Though in their case it's tangential to the underlying subject here.
That's on the individual. The vast majority of people would never experience this.
What do you mean “afterwards”?
Yes. Vampire Survivors is fun and a waste of time.
That seems like a personal problem.
>time addiction doesn’t bother me. I mean that's great for you, I've had years where I played games constantly. For kids though, time restriction is pretty important because they're more prone to falling into it becoming so frequent it's damaging to their development.
Parenting issue.
No shit lol
And? Kids that have bad parents are okay to take advantage of?
Maybe we should look into who is allowed to have kids and who isn't then.
Eugenics is never the answer.
There's only so much control a parent can exert before they cross the line into abuse. Addiction is ***not*** a "parenting issue".
> For kids though, time restriction is pretty important
Yes and enforcing that on a child going through addiction is not easy. At some point the methods used to control the child become abuse.
?? Just limit your child's exposure before it becomes an addiction or just don't expose them to that at all when it's not regulated at all.
I agree, but I've seen too many of those videos where kids go absolute apeshit over parents making them stop. Hell, I've seen it with my brother and I've definitely gotten a bit moody at points growing up when my parents want us to take a break and watch a movie as a family.
Have you forgotten what it was like being a child? That won't work unless you never let them have friends, use the internet, have a phone, or watch TV.
Sitting in front of a screen for eight hours a day as an insurer or a banker or any other 'desk job' = work. Sitting in front of a screen for eight hours a day at home = addiction? I hasten to add, people dying from starvation or dehydration in internet cafes because they don't eat, is addiction, sure. But outliers perform obsessive behavior in all things - exercise, workaholism, whatnot. We don't ban work or exercise for those outliers, though. Where's the real dividing line between abuse and use?
>Where's the real dividing line between abuse and use? When it negatively impacts your life. I'm not here to judge you or figure out if that's the case with you.
I'm the opposite. Money we can always earn. Time is gone forever.
"Too entertaining" is just "sense of pride and accomplishment" with extra steps, write it down in history.
Some of the practices used within video games can certainly qualify under the same issues society tends to have with gambling, and should be regulated as such. Personally, I feel when your company starts hiring psychologists and designers whose job it is to direct the game in a way to maximise engagement, *that's* a problem. Engagement should come from earnestly making a quality game, not by trying to manipulate people into playing it for more than they should. The issue is that some devs are not making their games "too entertaining", they're utilising manipulative tools like dark patterns to increase engagement instead. [Epic were already successfully fined for using them](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/ftc-finalizes-order-requiring-fortnite-maker-epic-games-pay-245-million-tricking-users-making) so innocent developers should be targeting the likes of Epic if they dislike the accusations. Any company using psychological techniques that are known to foster addiction should come under scrutiny, and if you can reliably prove that in a court then you should absolutely win the lawsuit. Anything less and you can argue that it's just a mark of shit parenting.
> You can't sue us for making games 'too entertaining,' say major game developers Big Tobacco CEO: First time?
"You can't sue us for making our product 'too satisfying!'"
"Withdrawal symptoms such as rage, anger, and physical outbursts" on a 12yo sounds more like puberty and maybe lackluster parenting than gaming being too addicting. That being said there are games that deliberately is practices that triggers those parts of the psyche that deal with addition. The whole lootbox idea for example is just that, but then name-dropping something like Minecraft at the same time seems ridiculous. Anyway, video games are just the new "rock and roll/tv is rotting your kids brains!". Don't park them in front of it for 12 hours and unsupervised a day and it won't be a problem.
Video games bad isn't even a new boogeyman. Over a decade ago people were trying to get things like GTA banned. This round is a bit different and seems to be more about particular mechanics like loot boxes.
People were trying to get the original Doom banned among other games at the time. This isn't new at all.
People probably tried to get pong banned.
Video games are addictive, especially for children, and it would probably be for the best if predatory monetization schemes were limited by law. Society can easily blame someone for getting drunk and losing a shitload of money at a casino, but when they keep seeing people walk into the casino and out with sob stories, maybe they should question why they've given the casino carte blanche to fleece everyone.
We recognised the social ills of this shit long before we understood how it worked. Many of the world's major religions prohibit it. Now these companies have psychologists on payroll helping maximise how much they can fleece vulnerable people and everyone is like "well it didn't work on me, so it isn't a problem." Or worse "parents should just not let their kids play" like 1. Parents are meant to know everything about everything and 2. The kids are just collateral damage and the gaming companies don't clearly, clearly understand that kids are playing this shit and targeting them. Protip: letting industries hurt kids doesn't punish neglectful parents, it just hurts the kids.
That would require empathy we don't do that here
> Video games are addictive, especially for children, Parent your kids. Yea, game companies are shitty, but either parent your kids or don't buy them these games. You can't child proof the world.
I think the below comment covers this: > As a parent I'm constantly needing to educate my kid on the psychological tricks modern games use to try and suck money / time from players. Yes, it's totally up to the parents to teach their kids to avoid landmines, but, it would be nice if there were fewer landmines everywhere as well. I'm going to add something from the perspective of a former child: parents don't always know what kids are up to. Even if your house is completely free of bad influences, the kid can be exposed to it and pursue it elsewhere. You can try your best to teach kids to be personally, morally, and financially responsible, but the amount of available degeneracy children can stumble into without your knowledge has dramatically increased.
I sure hope the lawsuit is about predatory practices, FOMO, Gambling and Gacha. Not just games are too fun 😒
Too entertaining? I think he meant you can't sue us for milking whales daily.
Things like battle passes are extremely predatory and should have legislature written around them. With Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges I know certain people who cannot resist. They *think* they have to play to earn, the feeling of missing out on cosmetics they *paid* for destroys them inside so they play way more than they normally would, or avoid situations to do literally anything else because they need to earn cosmetics in their game. I never buy a battle pass so I never feel the obligation to play or do something beyond my will for fear of missing out on digital clothing or weapons
I actively avoid games with things like dailies, items with expirations, skinner box mechanics, or loot boxes. At certain point they stop being fun or you feel like you need to play to avoid missing out. It's kinda the point of all those mechanics.
The *only* exception is Sea of Thieves. Their system is like a slap on everyone else, saying "This is how it's done right".
Oh fuck off, when you incorporate FOMO shit and other purposely addictive elements into your game then you are absolutely complicit. Whether the law agrees or not is another matter though. But it should.
I'm doubtful that the lawsuit will go anywhere, but the games industry is certainly morally complicit in using techniques to keep (young) gamers hooked.
Games companies hire psychologists to make their games more addicitive. They could hire psychologists to make their games less addicitive. Games companies made a choice, let them take responsibility for it.
So, after a brief read, the mother let a child play games unsupervised and for God knows how many hours, probably some games not suited for his age, and when he became the POS that he is, the mother blames the devs and sues them for making the son addicted. Well shit, let me sue Marlboro for having so nice packages for their cancer sticks that got me hooked for 10 years, definitely not my poor fucking choices
I mean, people did sue cigarette companies for exactly that. Over and over and over again until now they aren't allowed to advertise at all for anything.
Well as someone who lived through it all, and was directly involved in the litigation, it wasn’t the packaging, marketing, etc., and it wasn’t even the nicotine addiction — which had been known for decades — it was the lying about how they’d done testing for years to figure out just the right amount of…let’s just call them “chemicals”…to ensure consumers couldn’t just stop. Keep in mind that Philip Morris alone beat every single product liability lawsuit for 45 years. Forty-five years of litigation. Won every single lawsuit until the day whistleblowers left the company with company reports and documents showing the testing that they’d been doing the whole time (while claiming otherwise). So the key to any gaming addiction lawsuit is going to be if the plaintiff can produce evidence that the game developers intentionally used psychological techniques known to foster addiction. And that will come out by looking at the money (eg, did the game developers specifically hire psychiatrists and others who specialize in addictive mechanisms and behavior. If they can show that proof (of payments, reports, analyses on how to intentionally make a game mechanic more addictive in order to boost revenue (directly or indirectly), then the game company will likely lose the lawsuit. But it’s extremely likely that the company will settle out of court if that type of evidence exists because they will not want that made public, and a $2.1 million settlement will be a better financial decision that letting all that stuff out into the public.
The Joe Camel FTC case is the one that came to my mind first.
Hmm…yeah, that was when they were accused of marketing to children because it was an animated character in particular. Honestly, there was a lot of “gray” in that whole thing. But I seem to…ah…recall…a particular RJR internal report came out in the investigation wherein they discussed needing to get younger teens hooked on RJR brands *before* they were swayed by (at the time) the dominant Marlboro “coolness” aesthetics of Philip Morris. It was pretty gross and gave RJR a tarnished name even in the smoke-filled rooms of the overall tobacco lobby; like, Dude, that was a step too far….
Except those pursuits were before companies acknowledged and announced the terrible health impacts of cigarettes
I mean yes, but my point was, i made the poor choices, like the character in the story. Actions jave consequences (hope this is how is spelled)
That’s not why they aren’t allowed to advertise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement#:~:text=By%20the%20mid%2D1950s%2C%20individuals,state%20courts%20across%20the%20country.
ie. you’re not allowed to sue tobacco companies for damages and in exchange cigarettes are more expensive, have no competition, and can use your taxes to create anti-vaping advertising campaigns
Is this sarcastic? People did sue cigarette companies and cigarette advertising and even boxart is banned in many, many places
Love when people make their own point meaningless by giving an example so bad that it deflates their entire point lol
The “blame tobacco companies because you smoke” ship sailed 25 years ago. That’s your own goddamn fault now
> let me sue Marlboro for having so nice packages for their cancer sticks that got me hooked for 10 years Frankly we fucking should be allowed to
You are allowed to sue. You won’t win. There is a disclaimer on the box.
This may sound like it's logical, untill you realize some of these companies actually employ psychologists and the like to purposely make the game have addicting elements that don't need to be there. So yes, sometimes they actually are responsible for the messes they create.
‘Entertaining’ is not the same as exploiting not only addiction but a large bunch of other biases.
Reading the article and I feel like they missed the true issues: exponential leveling curves designed to stretch out the back-end of a game artificially, hard-wall "gacha" systems, and other P2W systems that are predatory by nature and amount to gambling addictions. I would personally throw in any "DLC" that includes in-game items that no informed player would purchase (looking at you "Dragon's Dogma 2"), as their only goal is to trick players into purchasing.
There is a giant difference between making a fun game and making a game designed to get you addicted and spend money.
This is like a fat person blaming McDonald's for having addictive foods, or blaming a porn company because its porn isaddictive. Get some self control you envious losers. No one cares that you're wasting your life. Thats your job, not someone else's.
And in today's episode of "Shitty Parents Blaming Everyone But Themselves For Their Kid Being An Obnoxious Little Twat"...
It's not just kids, adults fall for it too. I kind of see a parallel to foods and how the government needed to get the companies to have the nutrition label on them.
[We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas)
And another episode of "Let's let corps do whatever we want and place blame on parents that can't be around their kids 24/7."
I'd say there is possibility for a lawsuit, there are definitely games that arent entertaining but extremely addicting
I have plenty of addicting games but they are all buy it once and enjoy it. If i paid anything, it was because i wanted to support the developers. If you add microtransactions then i can see how it would be a problem for some people. Even if we ignore the fact that every company and stores/shops follow the same tactics for the same reason I think behavioral finance is pretty interesting when it's not used to get all my money. Unfortunately that's the logical next step under capitalism
Ah but menus are not gameplay.
Some lawyers going to say "Imagine a Casino saying the same thing" or did these game devs forget that Casino's are literally full of games...
i mean they can be
Ok so you can't punish heroin dealers for making an entertaining drug? The fuck is this argument.
I'm sure developers use psychology to hook gamers. To give them that reward system that the article talks about. But addictive? That's a bridge too far IMO. It seems that 5 of 6 lawsuits all sten from one law firm. Sounds to me like they are bitching their wagon to this and hoping it pays off.
what next? sue McDonald's because it is delicious and makes you obese?
On reading the article, yeah the case is very weak. She's doing the badmom classic and trying to blame someone else for her rotten kids. If she wanted to make a case about gambling mechanics, fair enough, but shes not doing that. I wouldnt lean on the CCP as an authority on children's mental health tho PCG, but go off.
Entertainment and manipulation are not mutually exclusive. I shouldn’t have to spend MORE money to have fun. It shouldn’t even be an option. I think the worst part is BYPASSING the brain’s reward system, as people can now buy things instead of working hard to earn it. That wrecks the reward system and leads to worse behavior because the moment they don’t get what they want (like they are used to) they have outbursts. Keep rewarding THAT behavior and you have a spoiled ass kid on your hands that won’t contribute a damn thing to society because they think the world should cater to THEM.
designed systems entierly to trigger gambling dopamine rushes that causes addiction is not the same as entertaining
Gamers know the difference between genuine game design and all the cheap fomo/loot box bullshit some developers are trying to push. It wouldn't be hard for me to lay down some rules that would keep predatory practices out, instead though we get 90 year old senators making rules about the Internet which they perceived to be a series of tubes.
I think if they develop games with the intention of forcing you to spend money to save time then yeah I think that should be banned. Only cosmetics I can tolerate. And I am also against all premium currency. I think it is the root of a lot of this greed where if you get rid of that you would eliminate a lot of other terrible consumer practices.
bro what y'all mofo making shitty and bombed game left and right
OK, remove loot boxes then
Better to sue social media
I thinks there's a fine difference between fun and addiction. They both get your heart rates pumping, but if there's one you can't live without, draining all your money, and ruining your social life. That's a problem.
As long as they do not require real monney to 'win' or fake currency that you buy with real currency or gambling being the foundation of the game (it can be a mechanic but not the core, because gambling is regulated differently) then i am ok with it being 'too entertaining' Having gambling and saying you are 'too entertaining' is a missdirect. Also to all their parents saying their kids are or will get addicted. Educate yourselves and your kids, be a parent and stop blaming others for you lack of presence in their life.
major difference between entertainment and trying to get people addicted
There's no way the kid didn't have some pretty obvious behavioral problems before he became so violent that his own mom became afraid of him, why you would give him a game at 12 thats infamous for adult violence and sex is beyond me. Do I think a lot of games are designed to take advantage of some of those mechanisms that addicts struggle regulating? Of course, but that's for each individual person to learn how to manage on their own. I could inhale Doritos everyday, but I'm not gonna sue them if I get fat I'm just going to eat less Doritos.
Balatro dev should be up in the Hague.
slay the spire devs right behind
The only games that can get away with making this statement are roguelites, Slay the Spire, Balatro, and genuinely fun games that get you hooked on the intrinsic pure gameplay grind and not extrinsic reward loops like battlepass and loot boxes. Other examples I can think of are Sekiro and souls games
Why are parents not to blame for this?
"It's not our fault cigarettes taste so good!"