Same with Hades by Supergiant Games. Its an amazing game and the company is proudly kicking people out if they try to stay after hours.

It is possible but you can also squeeze the life out of your replaceable staff and hold them guilt hostage (if you don't work as hard as everyone else then you are making them work harder). If the project has crunch time for the most development time then its not a crunch its the norm.

Disclaimer: Supergiant also sold out to Epic Games, one of the game industry harbingers of doom and workplace abuse(together with Activision-Blizzard). Might not want to give those any money.

What a truly bizarre disclaimer.

Supergiant took the timed exclusive deal so they could afford to avoid crunch while developing one of their games. Do you take issue with them treating their employees well?

If you have an issue with how Epic treats its game developers then don't buy Epic games. If you avoid buying games from other developers out of some bizarre logic that this will somehow "teach them" to deal with Epic, you'll just end up driving them out of business or toward the crunch deathmarches they were trying to avoid.

Otherwise, by your logic, you should avoid buying games from any AAA developer, or from any digital storefront (including Steam), or for any console. Basically, you would need to avoid buying games at all except from a very small set of indie developers.

I waited and got it on steam.

You can't blame them for taking time exclusive money, they are a business afterall. And its not like they support their practices.

>You can't blame them for taking time exclusive money, they are a business afterall.

Yes, I can blame them for that. When running a business you have to decide what your core principles are and which ones, if any, you are willing to compromise for money.

>And its not like they support their practices.

Taking their money and listing their game on the Epic store is an endorsement of Epic's business practices, just like listing your app on the Apple App Store is an endorsement of Apple's business practices.

They absolutely support their practices by doing business with them. Not only did they list their game for sale on their store, they took their money (earned via those business practices) to give them the exclusive right to sell the game on their store for a period of time. This has the goal of driving even more customers to Epic. They don’t do these deals out of benevolence.

Have you bought a Nestle product? Is so you support child slavery.

By your logic:

> You absolutely support their practices by doing business with them.

Life is not black and white.

> Have you bought a Nestle product? Is so you support child slavery.

If Nestle is engaging in child slavery and you buy their products then yes you obviously are supporting child slavery through indirect material cooperation. Behaving morally isn't easy, which is why it's so rare.

I try to avoid Nestlé products and would not enter into a major business relationship with them if I had the choice. The extent to which I decided to entangle my life or business of theirs would change the degree to which I felt like I’d be supporting their business practices. I agree, it’s not black and white, but I don’t understand how you can say a company doesn’t support Epic’s business practices when they choose to accept their money and help expand their share of the marketplace they operate in.

This seems like a pretty cut and dry example though. It’s a direct financial relationship where Epic profits off of Supergiants games. That money is support. It allows Epic to propagate their views and business model.

Whether or not you choose to adapt your purchasing decisions based on this knowledge is a separate question of your ethics and other factors.

By this logic, should we avoid any game that uses Unreal Engine?

You should discourage the use of Unreal Engine and avoid it wherever possible if you believe that Epic is an unethical company, of course.

How far does that chain extend though? If I buy a tuna melt from the local sandwich shop, and the owner of that shop goes and buys a video game, and the game company paid Epic for Unreal Engine, did I just support Epic?

And what do you believe in?

Taking their money is absolutely supporting Epic and what they do. Supergiant have every right to chose money above everything else but a few gamers won't take it and will just not buy their game at all. I didn't buy it and I'm aware I make no difference to them but if I had bought it I'd be part of the problem.

How exactly is getting a better rate for game distribution "selling out?" Supergiant benefitted themselves and their developers by getting more money for the game.

I don't understand the vocal support for Steam over Epic Games. Steam literally charges you more and there are no competitors as big as Steam. I'd rather have a de facto duopoly vs a monopoly. And yes, I'm aware of GMG, Origin, Blizzard, etc.

You can't both be amazing and have sold out to Epic. It is one or the other.

I hate to be that guy, but there is a massive difference between a game like Factorio and a game like Cyberpunk. Of course we all know that, but it has an impact on the quality, etc. The technical complexity of CP requires many different technologies to work together, and that draws a large amount of gamers-- Factorio is and will remain rather niche.

I love Factorio and I don't doubt that happy free-range game developers exist. But that's not what I would expect the typical game developer experience to be like.

Factorio is awesome. It's kind of funny-ironic that a counter-example to "making games as addictive as possible" is an indie game addictive enough to be called "cracktorio" by its fans.

It's a different kind of addiction. Factorio is the ultimate nerd-snipe[0] for a large class of people who enjoy flexing their brains. The addictiveness is a side effect the developers maximizing having fun (for the aforementioned subset of the population).

When people talk about "making games as addictive as possible" in the general and pejorative sense, they usually mean something else: they mean that the optimization goal is not "fun", but "making money off players". That very often involves making games less fun on purpose, to exploit player's psychology against them. You keep frustrating them on purpose - but not hard enough for them to abandon the game entirely - in hopes that over time, enough of them will break and buy the paid content or unfrustration features, to relieve their psychological pain. Explicitly additive aspects get included to maximize the time the player is exposed to these monetization opportunities.

Addictiveness is ultimately a red herring in these discussions. Factorio is designed as a win-win game, the devs wants to give their players the best experience in the game's category. Modern, pay-to-win, addictive games are designed by malicious people with no moral compass, who want to extract as much money as possible from people, as cheaply as possible.

(Like with many of the big problems in our industry, focusing on tech or immediate "sciency-sounding" consequences is missing the forest for the trees. These problems all stem from people being allowed to exploit others for money. Solutions to mitigate immediate consequences will be worked around very quickly. Real solutions need to involve restrictions on the types of business that can be done.)

--

[0] - https://xkcd.com/356/

Yes, exactly.

I just played a mobile game, and as usual it has a hundred different in-game currencies that you can buy with real money. Every time I finish a level there's an endless parade of meaningless "rewards", and I see some coins going into a piggybank. When it was full, I clicked it, and the game congratulated me for now being eligible to buy the contents.

The game is a clone of puzzle bobble. Like you said, none of that is making puzzle bobble a "better game". It's saying "Wow, you won/earned something! It's almost yours now, you just have to pay this tiny fee to actually have it...". I don't feel like I'm on the same side as the developer, and this is worlds apart from how Factorio treats players.

Since "addictive" still has positive connotations in gaming, I'll just call it "manipulative" from now on.

I wonder if there is a business to be made out of taking these pay to play mobile games and straight up cloning them (not ripping off the graphics, that would land one in legal hot water, but just making the exact same game) and sell them for a one off payment. If there were companies that did that, and they would be known for making high quality puzzle games that are not pay to play, I would buy from them without even trying out their new games (after they gained my trust with the first few games). Technically it would be easy (most of these games are simple), you need graphics people who don't mind just grinding out content without needing to be very artsy, so I would imagine part of the lost revenue that the lootbox companies do get, could be offset by not having to spend a bunch of time thinking about what sort of game you really want to make and make decisions about gameplay etc. Just copy from existing games and sell to the 'don't like pay for play' crowd.

Maybe there just arent' many of us who don't mind paying for games as long as we don't have to buy hearts and diamonds and coins and what not.

I think a tell-tale feature of manipulative games is Farmville-style time-gating. They structure their progress around meaningless actions like clicking upgrade buttons, but you can only press that button every couple hours. So playing optimally isn't so much about strategy or skill, but more about incorporating the game into your daily routine.

The intent is of course to form a habit, so that players habitually play the game no matter if it is still fun. Combine that with a good reward system that gives you positive reinforcement at random intervals, and you get something that is designed to addict you to the game.

Why is this kind of manipulation bad but RNG-gated content, such as in most roguelikes, which are loved by lots of people, not bad? These value judgements are always arbitrary and hiding the biases of the speaker.

You, personally, don't like time-gated content. That's fine. But it's another thing entirely to say that because you don't like it it's morally wrong. Tons of people have no problem with it and in fact enjoy being limited by how much time they can play a game per day and to slowly build up their progress over time.

Plus, for many games these things are this way for multiple reasons. For instance, Genshin Impact, a very popular game released recently has time-gated content in the way you mentioned. But it's also a game made in China, where there are rules stating that kids can't play games for too many hours during a single day. In such an environment, time-gating is a perfect solution for both the legal problem of not encouraging people to play for too long in a single day, but also as a way to prevent people from levelling too fast beyond what the game has to offer. In this latter case it's just another way of keeping people engaged until you release new content.

It depends on the rogue-like. I first noticed this addictive quality in the original Diablo. Once I took a couple psych 101 courses, it became pretty clear that Diablo was addicting because of the random loot drops. In other words, they were a variable interval schedule of reinforcement. You don't know when you next good loot drop is going to be, so keep playing indefinitely. (In this sense, this system is identical to a slot machine) Diablo was the first game that I truly "lost hours" to. It's not as if I didn't play other games for long periods of time, none had ever dilated my time or put me in a haze before Diablo. The next game to do this (for me) was Diablo II, then much later, Borderlands.

I've seen a lot of people struggle with this concept over the years. so I want to clarify a few things:

- People equivocate the word "addicting." That is, they switch between two meanings: "specific behavioral addiction, as defined by a schedule of reinforcement," vs. "something I enjoy a lot of an spend a lot of time doing."

- I've also seen people confuse any kind of reward in a video game (eg: beating a boss, winning in multiplayer, obtaining a high score, etc.) as being "addicting" and equivalent to various skinner box techniques noted above. (schedules of reinforcement, time gating, etc.) The problem is of course, that these things are not equivalent at all. Someone addicted to Space Invaders high scores is very much not the same as someone who threw their life away to play World of Warcraft.

- Not all games that have loot drops should be considered addicting in this sense. I would say that in hindsight, this is pretty clear. Diablo II is very addicting, but look at the forums, and check out some gameplay videos. No one is highlighting the gameplay, or boss fights, or music, or setting. They're all talking about loot drops. Whatever the developer's original intent, the gameplay of Diablo II is loot drops. Compare this with something like Dark Souls. Yes, there is loot in this game, and enemies do drop it. But except for a few achievement hunters, no one is talking about all their time spent grinding in Dark Souls. Really, the core of Dark Souls' gameplay revolves around overcoming the various challenges presented to the player.

> For instance, Genshin Impact, a very popular game released recently has time-gated content in the way you mentioned. But it's also a game made in China, where there are rules stating that kids can't play games for too many hours during a single day.

That's an interesting point I've never heard of before, thanks for bringing it up.

Still, I think there's more to tease apart about time-gating. As a high-schooler, I spent plenty of time on time-gated games (AstroWars and OGame). From that experience I know this mechanic alone is very addictive, and I make a conscious decision to avoid these types of games now. I had my fun (particularly social type, my fiends were hooked in just as much as I was). And, I don't consider this mechanic to be a problem alone. What matters is why it's there. Is it to make the game fun, in its particular way? Or is it to maximize the players' exposure to monetization opportunities?

The root of my point is this: particular mechanics a game employs don't matter; what matters is why those particular mechanics were chosen. Intent, not engineering.

I disagree with this notion. The primary reason why Factorio doesn't feel unethical or exploitative is because the kind of addictiveness it exploits is one that uses your brain, whereas the kind of addictiveness these "unethical" games exploit is one that feels more dumb and low brow. It has nothing to do with it being win-win like you mentioned.

There's this bias where games that are extremely addicting but that appeal to intelligence, the perceived most important trait in our society currently, are OK, whereas games that are addicting and appeal to other traits, like the ability to do the same thing over and over, are morally wrong. Both types of appeal are manipulative in the same way, but one is cast as morally wrong because it doesn't appeal to what the elites in our society (such as you, dear HN reader) value.

And I disagree with your take. I've played a lot of videogames in my life, plenty of them feeling "more dumb and low brow".

For instance, as a kid, I've spent some ridiculous amount of hours playing Unreal Tournament (and to the lesser degree, Quake 3 Arena) - some of it with friends in an Internet cafe, but a lot in single-player mode too. I'd consider these two games to be pretty addictive for their time. But they were addictive because they were fun. Not because they tried to lure me in with skinner boxes, keep me in with time-gating, and monetize me with microtransactions.

Or, more recently, I've spent countless of hours playing 2048. At some point it became my go-to activity for every moment I wasn't actively concentrating on something. It may sound like an "intellectual" game, but in reality it's pretty braindead once you get the gist of it. You could probably say that the time I spent with it was unhealthy, but again, at no point it tried to be anything but fun. There were no features in there designed with exploitation in mind.

Or, roguelikes and roguelites. Between Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and RimWorld, I'm probably approaching some 1000 hours of total play time. Both are fun and addictive, in the positive sense. Neither has any of the addictive money-making features in them.

I could go on. But the point is, I maintain that ill intent is a better way to categorize games than "addictiveness". And I hate to invoke the "you'll know it when you see it" cliche, but the difference between the games designed to be fun and the games designed to milk you is glaringly obvious. Entertainment has value, and good entertainment tends to be addictive (it's pretty much a tautology). But it takes more than good entertainment to create a problem.

Well, I still disagree. I've also played lots of games in my life so I also think I know what I'm talking about.

You view roguelikes and roguelites as positively addicting because of your personality and the fact that those games test for the traits you care about, not because they're objectively better than other games that focus on another trait.

You probably don't view MMORPGs where the entire point of the game is just grinding mindlessly for months or years as positively addicting because your personality isn't the type that would like that, but there are tons of people in the world who aren't like you and like the average HN reader who would agree with you.

I've written more extensively about this before so I feel like keeping arguing here might be pointless, but in case you're curious for a more full version of the argument: https://github.com/a327ex/blog/issues/66

I mean there's an old anecdote about how Chess was seen as dangerously addictive.

In any case, I think making something that is emergently addictive or addictive because it is fun is different from engineering something to be addictive by liberally lifting from all the years of research that went into slot machine design.

I don't know whether you frequent casinos but if you sit in the slot area for a while then compare that to big budget mobile p2w games (including Clash Royale which is actually also fun) is quite alarming. There are so many design similarities that lootbox games are basically slot machines without needing to pay out money...

MMORPGs are only seen as an issue to the degree they cause harm. It’s nothing to do with being “low brow” but entirely down to the subscription model. Keep the customer logging in to keep the subscription revenue rolling.

If this is done by being fun and enjoyable, and the developer doesn’t cross the line into preying on addictive behaviour, no problem.

If the developer implements mechanics that are designed to “hook” the player to the detriment of the enjoyment and their health, then we have a problem.

It's good that you wrote your thoughts in a longer form, and thanks for sharing it. It's an interesting argument, and one I will think about more, but based on my first reading, I find it lacking. I feel the part about Gacha Games doesn't fit well in this framework. Also, I find it hard to categorize my personality along the lines you described:

- Static/dynamic typing: borders -- I prefer static typing to dynamic typing; this is a change from preference for dynamic typing in the past; today, I find "mixing and matching" of types to almost always cause runtime errors, not new insights

- Engines/frameworks: no borders -- I dislike frameworks in general, gamedev or otherwise, I much prefer to compose libraries myself

- Roguelike/Roguelite: ??? -- I don't care about a strict definition, but having a somewhat clear definition is useful for managing expectations

- Progression/No progression: ??? -- I like both

- Grinding/No grinding: no borders -- Grinding is boring, though I'll do it if you hang a nice enough carrot in front of me

- Gacha Games: no borders -- As expressed above, I consider them immoral, and that has less to do with mechanics and more with why they're employed. That said, I don't think Gacha mechanics have any sort of special borders compared to many other fun, well-defined mechanics.

- Professions: ??? -- My professional software dev is mostly a borderful experience, but I also do gamedev on the side...

- Easy Modes: ??? -- I don't see how it fits in your argument at all, or how is it even a topic at all (except for competitive multiplayer games, about which I don't care all that much). Most games have "easy mode" in form of a wide variety of cheats to choose from.

It seems I'm leaning a bit towards "no borders", but then I think this borders/no borders split isn't really "carving nature at its joints". It does not factor personality cleanly.

Also, as additional objection, I think you could use this argument to justify getting people addicted to gambling as a matter of "personality difference". I feel this explains too much.

>Not because they tried to lure me in with skinner boxes, keep me in with time-gating, and monetize me with microtransactions.

I'm familiar with all of these except for "time-gating." What is it?

I'm not sure if this is the correct industry term, but 'wongarsu used it and explained it here[0], so I just picked it up. Basically, it's forcing you to wait hours to do the next step in the game - so that you'll start scheduling your day around the game.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26076702

Time gating is basically any kind of mechanic that requires real-world time to pass before progression can happen.

Mobile games use time gating for "lives" or "energy" or something so you can only play so much then you have to wait. Then they try and get you to spend real money to circumvent the time gate.

MMOs use time gating to slow player progression, with mechanics where you can only earn certain rewards once per day or once per week or something. It slows players becoming too powerful too quickly, or from completing their collections too quickly or from grinding the new rare drop in the first week.

This type of stuff is even creeping into other types of games, unfortunately. Especially with every game nowadays being an online game, even the single player ones.

Wube is not predatory. The actions of a benevolent developer is much different than the actions of a predatory one.

If you want to see a company that really walks the line: look at Digital Extremes.

Is there a better word to use than "addictive" to describe the brainy one over the unethical one?

Enthralling

Engrossing

Captivating

If there is one it shouldn't be used. Both types of games are addicting in fundamentally the same way. The only thing that differs is the main trait which each game is using as its primary host. The "unethical" type of game is as unethical as the other, which means they're either both very unethical or both very not unethical, depending on how you want to look at it.

Addictive for games can just be shorthand for "you want to play it again and again". I don't see anything wrong with it when there isn't a more appropriate shorthand to use, except when used with games that are designed to make you pay more and more to play.

The difference between AAA and indie games seems to be night and day in terms of working conditions

I'll take "boring" (but not too boring) and pays the bills any day before "cool but will be unhealthy mentally/physically"

If they released a $50 DLC that just adds a bunch of super difficult achievements I'd pick that up just to support them. I've sunk 4 figures of hours into that game and I regret not having any of my goals left to achieve. I've done speedrunning, mega factories, difficult map settings, etc.

Just figured out that I can start a custom map and turn off the biters.

Been playing into the wee mornings for a week now. Got into the logic system heavily.

I'm optimising production in my sleep now. Send help. Can't stop.

You joke, but I think that this is why "addicting" is never a quality you want in a game, even one like Factorio where it is a product of good-intention game design and isn't just rent-seeking. Addiction is destructive.

Off topic: what do you use logic for? I am at a loss on how to use it effectively.

I run a logistic robot based system with individual buildings receiving and sending items with chests.

With logic I can connect the input or output inserter to the roboport and only feed items to the chests if the total number of items in the robot network is under a certain amount.

The other big use is cycling power between solar and steam. Plug in the steam power's water pump to an accumulator and set it to turn off when the accumulator capacity is over, say, 50%. This way you won't feed excess power to the network and waste fuel.

At what stage do you find "wasting fuel" on power an issue? Early game one x red-belt of coal will supply fuel for electricity generation. One you go to solar + accumulators you very quickly don't need steam power anymore unless you're going robot heavy, in which case you'll just stamp a small nuclear plant.

...because I want to spend 5 hours optimising stuff like that? =)

My base is a total clusterfuck and not a perfect city grid of maximised train-based transports to hyper-optimised factory blueprints. Just the way I like it.

The first effective use you stumble across is oil refining chains. Only turn on heavy cracking if heavy oil is backing up, etc.

Found my project for tonight, "thanks" I guess? :D

I recommend the Industrial Revolution 2 mod. It's free and feels like a $50 DLC

There are very few Factorio stories in the game dev world.

They're not hostage to their publisher, it seems.

When it comes to Factorio, I've seen some backslash/hate from gamers for dev's decision on never putting Factorio on sale.

Gamers are such entitled brats. If we go by what the average NES game cost in the 80s, Factorio should be at least $120, probably a lot more due to having significantly more content and replay value.

And I didn't even like Factorio. I'm just sick gamer-brand bullshit.

Some people will always spite you. It's not open source either (hey, CDPR games might be, soon!).

To be fair here, their reasoning is that Factorio is worth the 25€ and that they don't want people to feel cheated because they missed out on a lower price. I don't think that's bad in any way.

No I don't think so. Thank back to the HL2 source code leak months before release of the game. The game still isn't open source even after all this time.

But yes I wholeheartedly agree with your Factorio point. I've bought 2 copies of the game so far because I enjoy it, and I don't feel cheated even though I paid full price.

Steam's reputation for sales has ruined me. It is now extremely rare for me to buy a game at full price. Even a $20 game, I'll wait for a sale, as if I'd even notice the $5 I saved.

That said, once I had discovered that the Factorio devs said it would never go on sale, I decided to pick it up and was glad I did.

I'm looking forward to picking up Cyberpunk whenever it goes on sale. By then, maybe it will be a much smoother and more enjoyable experience.