Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few into the 6's. And that's on one single game.

The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach. The monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99! Only for the next 60 minutes!")

It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now that I've left the industry.

I left casual games because of this; every partner and publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing, and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible.

When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards" for continued engagement.

It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now. I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not to sell dope.

The frustrating part is there are lots of people making games to tell stories and explore worlds, but they fall into the void almost inmediately after launch due to the slot machine games taking the lion's share of the attention and money.

Thankfully, PC Gaming strangely hasn't been dominated by this phenomenon, despite EA's, Activision's, and Epic's best efforts. Fortnite is addiction-tuned F2P casinowear, and it's done gangbusters, but the industry hasn't managed to copy that formula with great success.

At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact (although not zero impact).

It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player).

This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competitive advantage. (There are far too many of the latter to even list.)

But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of microtransaction model. I've no real issue with meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a game should either be a one time cost, or a simple subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has become all too common.

Ah, but it's a social experience. The primary capital isn't one's competitive standing, it's the uniqueness of your gear.

Fortnite's store UI is designed around limited time access panic sales.

Indeed. In fact, we've even spotted kids using "default" as a slur - which is exactly what you design for if you're building a microtransaction slurry game.

My daughter recently encountered this in Roblox. Her friends gave her a hard time for her default skin. The peer pressure to spend money is real.

This can be easily managed without microttansaction. Simply award in game point that allows a player to buy cosmetics. Do not create any way for players to trade money for in game points.

No profit vs Big profit

> although not zero impact

For reference https://twitter.com/jmantheguy/status/970497516566347776?s=2...

The reward loop works much better when it can be in your pocket and be accessed during moments of boredom/idleness. The lack of friction before getting pulled in is at least as much of a causative factor as the three issues the article highlights. Every little bit of friction diminishes its effectiveness.

One thing that's ironic with a lot of mainstream AAA gaming though, is that even though they aren't copying the revenue model the game design conventions still tend to focus on length of engagement and playtime. I'm sure there's a reason compelling it but I'm not sure what.

I’ve read that the reason is to extend playtime for as long as possible to limit resale market.

Maybe with the advent of digital purchase (and the death of selling your used copy) we’ll see a return to designing games for fun.

Fortnite is a mobile game; it's why Epic is having a fight with Apple.

I really don't think Fortnite is as bad as you're making it out to be (certainly not even in the same league as most mobile microtransaction fests). The core of Fortnite is a pretty good (imo, although I prefer Apex Legends) battle royale fps, and the microtransactions are purely cosmetic items.

In contrast a lot of the big mobile games are barely even games. They're just AI controlling your gambled for gacha characters, which are very not cosmetic only. And the games that aren't AI controlled are still just basic turn based battle mechanics with very little strategy (and what is there is vastly less important than just getting better characters, probably by gambling).

I suspect the market of "people who play mobile games" and the market of "people who play PC games" are not even the same kinds of people, and if you tried to release the same stuff that makes money on mobile on PC, you wouldn't actually attract many new players. Likewise if the mobile market ceased to exist overnight, I doubt the players would be that attracted to many PC/console games. They're getting different things out of them.

Of course this is all just speculation, I don't really know.

Also bear in mind Fortnite was in no means special in offering cosmetic items for microtransactions. The game just got so big that it's a convenient punching bag.

The Fortnite store is special; it's an industry-leading example in exploiting social anxiety through time-limited unique cosmetics.

What's important about Fortnite isn't the core game, it's the social experience and the role that the cosmetics and store play in that.

Epic picked literally the most vulnerable target audience. That's what made Fortnite a hit.

Pretty much all people I ever heard about or new who has issue with gaming were addicted to something like lol, wow or pubg.

The people who play whole night and that are irritable and underperforming during day, who made gaming their whole life, are not playing causual games. They are playing console and pc games.

Those folks are paying their time into the game sure - but casual games in IAPs can drain bank accounts surprisingly fast from folks that'd normally consider themselves above microtransactions. There is a lot of very sneaky psychological tricks that go into trying to get folks to spend an insane amount of money - I'd compare that to something like CS:GO which is trying to get everyone to spend a little bit of money but is less oriented to harness big spenders outside of the marketplace which isn't all that promoted in game.

Well i mean csgo stuff holds value and can be sold off so its not really comparable to normal mtx.

I was in early and rode the wave from selling real games for $4.99, then $2.99, then $0.99, and finally... free. At which point the “real” part of making games was out the window and it was all user acquisition, LTVs, retention, and ugh.

Couldn’t have been more happy to get out of casual and F2P games four years ago. I honestly thought I might be done making games after that experience.

Thankfully, between doing the indie thing for a few years and starting a new studio last year, it became clear it was the medium and not the craft that was the problem.

> Thankfully, between doing the indie thing for a few years and starting a new studio last year, it became clear it was the medium and not the craft that was the problem.

Do you mean to say it's specifically a mobile issue?

100% mobile. I have no issues with F2P games that aren't predatory (like LoL or Rocket League). I've spent hundreds on these games for silly cosmetics that don't affect gameplay.

I would say it's a free to play issue. A lot of these games exist on multiple platforms, basically wherever microtransactions are supported. Gems of War, for example, exists on mobile, on PC (Windows store, Steam), on Playstation, Switch and Xbox...

> not to sell dope.

Is there no Breaking Bad effect because it's all legal?

> The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine.

This is an accurate description. So many games where people have to pay for the chance to get something. It's even worse than actual gambling since the prize isn't even money. All people get is some numbers in a database.

Another oppressive feature found in most exploitative games is the timer. Through a timer, the progression of free players is rate-limited. There's almost always some kind of resource that's used up whenever players do anything and when they run out of it the timer reveals itself. The game refills the resource on a regular basis.

This creates habits in players. People start out playing normally and next thing they know they're setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM to do game tasks because that's when the timer resets. This is done deliberately with the goal to increase the number of players who login every day through a mix of positive and negative reinforcement. The timed refills themselves act as a periodic reward which is simple enough. More insidious however is how usually the timers will not start counting down to the next reward until players play the game. Every second the timer is not running is wasted and delays the next reward.

Paying customers can reset this timer at will. They are therefore able to progress at an uncapped rate. This implies the game's true form is a spending competition: the whale who gives the most money to the company for the longest time will win.

Video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis. I have no doubt this trash is at least partly responsible for that. The reputation of the games industry is only gonna go downhill from there.

It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind, common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I wonder what it will take to pull it out.

There are plenty of people hooked on this stuff in the east. Addiction doesn't care about your philosophy. Some people are just more mentally available to addiction in all it's myriad forms.

I was refering to the tendency to not treat psychological issues as serious as physical ones. Obviously addiction knows no boundaries.

This division is on the verge of self destruction under the own weight of its inconsistencies.

I was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing to me. But from the perspective of the company I could imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and can stop themselves from spending too much).

I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible.

The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.

Addiction is more perverse than that: I'm sure the players could stop if they wanted to. But they just don't want to. They too start rationalizing "it relieves so much stress", "it calms me down" etc.

F2P games are nowhere near as dangerous as casinos. 90% of players waste nothing more but their time. They're more similar to social media. Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.

> Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.

That is what's happening. It's a strip club model where the biggest tippers get the most attention. It is super effective, at least for live streams (see: all of twitch, every adult cam site).

If someone wanted to monetize this with static content, you could probably get people to pay for comment responses from content creators, but I haven't seen that done yet.

Addiction by Design by Dow Schull is an interesting book on this.

Great example of how language is a tool for thinking, but it's also a tool for not thinking. If you want to ignore or obfuscate something, you can seal it off with euphemisms and misrepresentations, kind of like putting an interface in front of an implementation. And as you pointed out, you can use this tactic to deceive not only others but also yourself.

Definitely. It reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984- although the novel itself shows that having a "clean" vocabulary doesn't completely prevent "unclean" thought deemed by the authorities, having a censored set of language can "nudge" people to certain propaganda.

Casual game design uses many of the same nouns as casino operators.

“Compelling”

Let's say language is a tool to convey information regardless of truth or precision.

You can disguise negative information giving it the appearance of a usual positive one (the fake discount).

It's more a property of information than of language, or rather a property of our information processor, so lazy it doesn't check every single piece 3 times but instead rely on habit and context

I'm thinking more of a writer sitting down and struggling to choose the correct word to identify a thought. I wouldn't say they're "conveying information." At that point they don't have information. I would say rather that they're attempting to refine the raw material of the flow of their thought-consciousness by using language. You can use words to assist that refinement. (I'm doing it now, for example.) But you can also use words to divert your thought stream away from potentially uncomfortable ideas, or someone else can do that to you.

"we're supported by advertising" (pervasive surveillance and tracking)

The surveillance and tracking complement advertising, but aren't necessarily part of it. I'd call it brainwashing instead.

Plausible deniability is such a wonderful idea.

There's a lot of things that fall on a spectrum, and this fact can be used to pretend that motivations are different to what they really are.

For instance, where is the line between investing and gambling? A friend of mine was looking into setting up a spreadbetting firm once, so he went talking to insiders. It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact, they say they're offering training videos the teach you how to invest in the market, just like proper investors. And it's not even a lie, a lot of the content makes perfect sense and would be found in any "proper" investment house. The real deal is of course that they offer a buzz from massive leverage, and everything about the UI is to make you blow yourself up.

The same story applies for social media. A place to keep in touch with your old friends is a great thing, but realistically, how often are you going to write to your classmates on a classmates-only forum? And how is classmatesforum going to make any money doing that? So we get the ML-powered feed of news/funnies/cutesies reactions that seems to be the modern social web.

> "It turns out 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this fact"

They do in the UK; the first one I googled is https://pepperstone.com/en-gb/trading/spread-betting/ and it has a banner accross the top of the page (like a cookie banner, above the header) saying "Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79.8% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.". This is typical here on sites and adverts for sites.

Yesterday I saw on Cardi B's stories she did a paid post promotion for a game that is literally a slot machine..

It's designed with childlike graphics and her followers are very young. It's marked as teen in google store.

God even the first review shows how blatant this is:

"I'm really not big on games but this game is the truth. I cant stop playing it. I go to sleep to it. Wake to it. My day is filled with ways of finding new ways to get coins and spins (mainly spins, lol)"

I'm all for legal, regulated online gambling. This not even disguised style of game should be called what it is. Some type of Pachinko in that you don't get money back but some other token. But even worse since you probably can't walk around the corner to exchange easily for real world value.

Call it gambling, verified 18+, and regulate it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonactive...

Why does this type of ad work? Do people want to be addicted to something so badly? Don't they have something better to do?

People just don't have "free", quiet time to think or to reflect about things anymore, stolen by various things, social media mostly. You'll operate in automatic, always-consuming mode, rigged by algorithm, and that doesn't help you thinking critically when this kind of ads comes up.

and companies exploit these things and make tons of money, sad.

Escape.

F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).

I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.

It is also pretty useless. Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery. If you have a list of 20 items with non-uniform chances, can you tell how long you need to play before it's likely you'll get an item you want? You and me can, by doing little math in head; most people can't (and it's another question whether one has the willpower to do such math and follow it through while tired, unwindng in front of a casual game).

What would be more useful if they listed the expected number of loot boxes you need to buy to get an item. "2% chance" reads differently than "you'll need to buy about 50 loot boxes, on average, to get that item".

> Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery.

Yes, they would. The lottery is about giving up something of little value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the chance at a truly life-changing situation. I doubt anyone is unaware there's almost no chance they win, and that they're losing on every dollar they spend. Interestingly, the lottery is occasionally +EV to play.

I otherwise agree, people are bad at gambling, probabilities, and understanding the long term. I play poker, and poker players are constantly furious that their 80% favorite hand doesn't win 100% of the time. 80% feels like a lock.

Some people don't care. They want to gamble, and they have no regard for what they lose in the process. I think many humans are just wired this way, or perhaps it's cultural.

> I play poker, and poker players are constantly furious that their 80% favorite hand doesn't win 100% of the time. 80% feels like a lock.

I always liked an interview by one of the designers of the game XCOM which relies heavily on showing players probabilities. Apparently behind the scenes on lower difficulties, even though they might show you 85% chance of success, they tweak it under the hood to be closer to 95% because that is where the player's emotional weighting is. They want the players to have fun and that is certainly one way to go about it.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266891/Jake_Solomon_expl...

Well because evolutionarily, gambling must pay off sometimes, and the people who are averse to gambling might become rarer if it pays off in a big way.

Ten thousand years ago doing something risky might result in you going from being a male with no prospects to having a harem with 50 wives. It makes sense that when your ancestors could have made a risky gambled (say raiding the village next door), they’d go for it, much like someone will put everything on 21 Black because the payoff could be so big.

Or maybe it's just a trait that ended up there, like countless others.

A RNG machine that's slightly directed towards optimal variation still spews out a bunch of rubbish

That is not how evolution works. It can just be that the trait was not much in a way. Our that trait is innefective maladaption.

Evolution is not a god. And it does not build perfect organisms.

But who gives a damn about the EEA?

I agree, playing the lottery is a little like buying insurance for something. Everyone knows that insurance is a losing proposition, but no one buys it to save 500$ on that fender bender, people buy it so that they can get through a catastrophic event like 500,000$ in medical bills.

I would hazard a guess that people who buy lottery tickets are much less likely to buy insurance than those who don't. I think some similar psychological mechanisms may be at play, but not in the way you are suggesting where they overestimate small probabilities across the board. I suspect it has more to do with discounting odds that are against them.

But I wouldn't bet on it.

A bit part of the lottery is that everyone knows that it's unlikely, but most people are capable of comprehending just how unlikely it is. Most people would probably say it's like "one-in-a-million", when it's really hundreds of times worse than that. People are just bad at understanding really big numbers. Everyone still feels like, "I know it won't, but it could happen to me," when even if you bought a lottery ticket every single week for your entire adult life, it would take you over a thousand lifetimes for you to finally have a 1% chance to win the lottery.

I think people at least initially have better grasps on things like 50-50 chances or 10% chances, even if other gambling fallacies kick in the more you play them.

1 in 140 million for EuroMillions

1 in 293 million for Powerball

Just because someone wins doesn't mean it will be you

> The lottery is about giving up something of little value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the chance at a truly life-changing situation

Wish that were true. Organizers usually take 90% of the money. Just a tiny percentage is paid out.

Like Voltaire said: "Lotteries are a tax on stupidity"

Except that wasn't Voltaire it was the economist Sir William Petty. In fact Voltaire made his fortune on the lottery. He found a exploit in the rules of the particular implementation of the lottery allowing him to guarantee a win and high pay out.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/how-voiltair...

I've never had an urge to buy lottery tickets or gamble for money. Mathematically, I know the odds of me winning are highly unlikely so my non-urge turns further into complete disinterest, I can pass by lottery shops and rolls of scratch lottery cards in shops and not even notice them.

I've only been in one lottery and I was forced to enter against my wishes - that was the draft/conscription which, unfortunately, I did win - along with many others.

If I've an interest in lotteries/gambling then it's to question why I'm so disinterested in the subject compared to others. I've not been able to answer that adequately.

I agree, and I don't see how it contradicts what I said at all.

> Yes, they would. The lottery is about giving up something of little value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the chance at a truly life-changing situation.

It is expected that that one or two dollars is more likely to result in a life changing situation if saved and properly invested - this is difficult in the modern world since a lot of large institutions are out to short-change the little guys but it still remains true.

I can easily see the value proposition of regular casino gambling - you're slowly losing money for the experience - but for the lottery your money is being transformed into a ticket that is, essentially, worthless.

I am strongly morally opposed to the lottery as a form of government income supplement since spending on lotteries tends to be weighted toward lower income and is extracting revenue from those less able to bear it. Lotteries are an extremely regressive tax.

That all said I think the EV of a lottery ticket is probably quite a bit higher than Starbucks and those sell gangbusters. A lot of our society is oriented toward exploiting addiction.

I'd prefer “you'll need to buy about 50 more loot boxes, on average, to get that item” as wording. Bonus if there's a question mark next to it that explains probability (specifically, why the gambler's fallacy is wrong – though not necessarily mentioning the fallacy).

Wouldn't it be easier to just ban gambling apps including ones disguised as games from app stores?

You could probably get virtually everyone by simply defining it as a game with in app purchases that provide probabilistic or in game performance improvements.

If they can sell levels but not swords nothing of value will be lost.

"Most <evil grin> players will get the item after buying 26 more boxes"

While we're all patting ourselves on the back for understanding probability, the correct calculation is actually log.98(.5) = 34.3 = number of attempts required for a 50% chance of getting a 2% item.

Good catch, I agree yours is better.

In some countries, games are legally required to do state rarity of items in lootboxes, so it may just be so that they are compliant with all countries. I forget which countries, but I think they're in central europe

I don't think you realistically can trust these as there will never be serious audits, and they exploit all kinds of psychological weaknesses. They really just need to be illegal. Sell content piecemeal, sure. But not loot boxes.

I agree completely. I would've spent ridiculous amounts of money on that game at this point if it weren't for loot boxes, but alas it wasn't meant to be.

I don't have any more information than you do, but my gut feeling is "80% of companies won't bother to lie on the numbers, 20% will lie, and will occasionally provoke a scandal when they get caught in the rare audit or get the whistle blown on them by a spiteful employee".

They should also disclose a spending ceiling. How much do you need to / can you spend to gain access to all the content. Do I need to spend $60, $600, $6000, $60,000 or is there no limit?

Interestingly enough, the Pokemon Picross game on the 3DS had a fixed spend limit of $50, after which you could just top up your in game currency for free.

So either you did f2p, or you paid $50 and got a full game, or some linear combination of both.

I liked that game and paid $50 for it.

Hello fellow person who liked that game! I didn't know there were more of us.

I never did spend any money on it though.

Most of them don't have limits as you don't buy a DLC to unlock content. Games are almost infinite and money helps you advance.

Mobile gaming is disgusting. And the few good developers that make good "traditional" games don't make enough money to keep developing.

Eh I don't really think "think of the children" is the right narrative here. These games, while especially bad for children, aren't much better for adults. Absolutely require 18+ to play and require them be labeled as gambling but I don't think that's enough.

If we're counting on adults "knowing better" which makes it okay to play these games while the industry profits on precisely those adults that don't then there's a problem.

In fact, we never marketed to children. Adults are much more profitable, because they can actually pay up.

I don't have a problem with "F2P-with-purchases" as long as the "purchases" aren't random lootboxes and aren't gating progression or buying power.

For example, I always felt that League of Legends had a good F2P-with-purchases model. There are a lot of characters you can play as, but you have to either unlock them by playing or pay a couple dollars to unlock one. But the more expensive characters aren't necessarily more powerful, they're typically just newer, and it doesn't take much play to unlock a character.

Once a character is unlocked, there are skins you can purchases with money, but they're purely cosmetic.

> F2P-with-purchases

this misses the core issue. a game like path of exile is completely playable for free - and they release new content quarterly and yearly (again, for free). a game like Raid Shadow Legends is not - you very rapidly hit a paywall and it would take years of free play to acquire power equivalent to spending $100.

the exploitative nature is pay to win, where youre simply playing a different game unless you spend money.

There's nothing wrong with an honest pay-to-win game. The dangerous part is the randomness.

While I agree with your sentiment, I have to wonder if it would be possible to make a non-random pay-to-win game be compelling both from a financial and gameplay standpoint.

Say you can buy max-level weapons/characters/whatever for a defined price. The meta rapidly breaks down to "this is the highest yield of power per dollar" and "the optimal build costs exactly USD 1143.76."

It's not compelling for new players to say "I know that I'm going to eventually spend eleven hundred bucks if I love this game." You can't dangle the chance of getting a super-powered item on that first 99 cent lootbox to get someone on the IAP treadmill. I'd expect the game design itself would have to feature hard breakpoints to trigger a purchase/hundred hour grind moment.

And then, how do you convince the whales to pony up 5 and 6 figures once they possess an optimal build? Fashion and equivalent power churn only goes so far.

I once read "The best game developers are like weed dealers: they sell you something they love. The worst game developers are like heroin dealers: they would never, ever touch the stuff, or let their own children get within a mile of it."

This has been going on for more than a decade. I recommend to read at least the opening chapter: https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-...

Yep, I've pasted that link in the past. It's now a proper classic.

Gaming today is not that different than gambling. I started playing some games on iOS recently, I got addicted too and spent way too much money I should have.

Meanwhile ads displayed in the app offer me “real money” and “millions each month” playing cards or by “putting my finance at risk” or playing similar addictive games.

(Yes, I paid for the game but there are ads for extra scores)

Except that with gambling, you get a rush and a chance of profit. In games, it's only a sad and short-lived rush.

...which is why i like video games and not gambling :)

It can be even seen in design of offices. I once joined a meetup at what turned out to be a sports gambling software company (William Hill I think), and there was no mention or suggestion of gambling at any place in their offices - it was about "celebration of sports" and other bullshit.

From my experience, knowing people who works at King this is definitely a thing. The doublethink due to having a pretty great workplace is stark.

I worked for a VP in mobile games who described the central loop as “giving the players a job and having them pay us [the makers of the game] for it”. I respected his candor on what we are doing, but this was past the point when I had realized it wasn’t something I was proud to have spent time on.

Even before mobile gaming and in-game purchases was a thing. I remember there was a very wealthy player on Asheron's Call Frostfell who paid players to feed his XP chain, bought all of the rarest items such as nexus armour etc etc. There was a huge botting scene that sort of ruined the game but forced me to learn C++ and made me a bit of money as a teenager selling accounts.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

- Upton Sinclair

Not really applicable. In this case, everyone understands it but they don’t talk about it due to legal reasons

This all seems a bit silly. Go work for an *unprofitable* mobile game company (or start your own!) to see how quickly your model breaks down.

The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a silly concept.

That games en masse are evolving for maximal "addictiveness" is unquestionable, but has entirely different implications.

The fact that some people fail to accomplish a thing doesn't mean others can't. Of course you can engineer addictive games. We know quite a lot about addiction. What do you think casinos are, exactly?

Tell me this -- do casinos fail?

If you look only at examples of successful things and say "it is addictive" but don't look at the same principles as applied to failed examples of the same thing, then you're being intellectually lazy.

In order to establish some facet as "addictive" it needs to work both ways, otherwise you're just using "addictive" as a synonym for "successful" -- Edison's light bulb was "addictive" and people were "addicted" to Pullman cars. But you get to carry all the negative connotations of "addictive"; you're trying to let the informal do all the work while positing nonsensical equivalences.

So you call someone intellectually lazy... and immediately turn around and make an implication that if casinos have failed to be successful then that somehow speaks to the addition qualities of gambling? Something something nonsensical equivalences.

Do bars fail?

Yes, and so do casinos. That is the point

The original point was: "The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a silly concept."

The rebuttal was: "this is literally what casinos do"

The rebuttal to that was: "well, some casinos fail"

Which isn't really a point. Some casinos fail, that doesn't show that they don't optimize for addiction. It just indicates that optimizing for addiction is necessary but not sufficient for a casino to maintain solvency.

I think we have fundamentally different of andrewla's original point, and that is OK.

I read it as pointing out that success isn't guaranteed with an addictive game model.

I did not read it as saying that some games don't or cant optimize for addictiveness.

Companies involved in bad faith dealing often have this kind of NewSpeak.

>I don't think it was adding much value to the world

I believe this statement can be applied to the vast majority of jobs, or capitalistic endeavors in general. Not to defend them in any sort of way, as I abhor these practices, but I think we should acknowledge that reality (and perhaps work our way out of it, somehow)