For many it might be just a type of relaxed enjoyment (shutting the brain off) - and that's fine!

The OP is likely talking about what those games _exploit_: It's the few that will play the game to an extreme degree and likely pay tons of money to do so (often called "whales" but not all of them are).

The mechanism behind this is grounded in how our brain rewards us if we find seemingly rare patterns of success. And some percentage of people are susceptible to that kind of manipulation.

Whether you put the blame on the game or the players is another question, maybe a philosophical or ideological one. But to dismiss the mechanism as simply "enjoying something" implies that you don't recognize the problem as an addiction that may or may not be willingly exploited here.

For comparison: Walk into a casino or similar which has one-armed bandits. Tell me that the people hanging out there are truly enjoying it.

I hear you, but like the OP, your argument is still based entirely around absolutes, and is rather dismissive of the vast spectrum of human behavior. Just because some people get lost in the addictive mechanisms of a game, doesn't mean everyone does, and an addictive mechanism is not universally malicious just because someone becomes addicted to it. If that were true, every company and product would be considered malicious, because everything on the planet is designed to be addictive to some degree.

My grandmother and aunt, for example, visit a local casino once in a while and exclusively play slots. They each bring $20 and play until they've either doubled it or lost it. I've gone with them on a few occasions, and can personally attest that they genuinely enjoy the experience of playing the game -- my grandmother even says "wheeeee" out loud while pulling the lever. I, on the other hand, do not enjoy casinos at all, and easily get caught up in the addictive aspects. Is the casino malicious because I, personally, am more susceptible to addictive behavior? Should my grandmother not be allowed to have her fun because of someone else's addiction?

At the end of the day, my experience is not my grandmother's experience. And your experience is not my experience. And the OP's experience isn't a universal truth, no matter how much they want to insist it is.

I very much agree with the general point that you make. What I'm personally concerned with is the power relation between the casino or game publisher and the group of players that are susceptible to addiction (specifically not your grandmother - in fact I found it very fun to imagine how she enjoys playing).

In my opinion when there is an asymmetric power relation like that, then there is a question of responsibility. Especially if the incentive is to exploit the relation - which is almost undeniable in this case.

So I'm not making a statement about the general case and I don't think things can be boiled down to "this type of game is evil". It's the specific connection between these two extremes that I find worrying, or saddening really. But I'm 100% not the type of person who would deny your grandmother her fun. I think these types of problems start with things like education and attempting to heal the human connection between the powerful and the weak (sorry for the pathos).

I appreciate the clarification, and I do think we're pretty much on the same page. There is definitely an overall responsibility to be a more-helpful-than-harmful member of society, and particularly when it comes to something like a casino, it's probably nearly impossible to prevent greed from manifesting as malicious intent. But as I detailed at length in another comment, it's a slippery slope trying to figure out where "the line" is.

In my grandmother's case, those trips to the casino actually greatly benefit her. At 94 years old, the casino provides a level of sociability and exercise that she doesn't get otherwise. That said, even the particular casino she visits most likely does more harm than good to the local community. Not by a lot, but by enough. Unfortunately, the perception of whether that crosses the line is going to vary wildly between individuals. Some will think it's not greedy enough, and some will think it's the equivalent of murder, and there's no legitimate way to decide where the exact appropriate middle ground is. That's something we all have to decide for ourselves, and it can't be forced upon others.

> there's no legitimate way to decide where the exact appropriate middle ground is. That's something we all have to decide for ourselves, and it can't be forced upon others.

This statement is false. Governments and judicial systems around the world routinely decide where the exact appropriate middle ground is, and make binding judgements forced upon people by threat of fines and imprisonment, ultimately acts of violence.

Some of it is even democratic (deciding together, not each for ourselves).

> because everything on the planet is designed to be addictive to some degree.

This statement is false. I can see in my immediate vicinity many human-made objects that were not designed with addiction in mind at all. For example, there is a rubber band on my desk. It effortlessly and immediately disproves your statement.

> And the OP's experience isn't a universal truth, no matter how much they want to insist it is.

Accounting for how many basic statements of yours I've now refuted, I'm inclined to think that my universal truths are better than yours.

> Should my grandmother not be allowed to have her fun because of someone else's addiction?

I isolated this argument because it's also used by the tobacco industry. Consider that correlation. Should we ban smoking because it's addictive and harmful? Yes, we should - and already have. In my country you can only buy the stuff by specifically asking for it - a good compromise in societal responsibility and personal freedom.

I'm not judging those who play it, but those who create those systems recklessly. The same way I don't judge a drug user per se, but I judge those who exploit drug addictions for their own gain.

That's a slippery slope argument, at best. Every single video game is designed to be addictive to some degree, much in the same way that every chef is attempting to create recipes that bring people back into their restaurant.

What you're saying is that there is a line somewhere that, once crossed, becomes reckless or harmful, and that's certainly true in a way. But where is that line, and who decides it? Is it you? Is it the OP? Is it some committee somewhere? The answer is rather simple. It's everyone, individually. The right decision for you is not necessarily the right decision for me, and our life experiences will always differ in significant ways, which means my line is not in the same location as yours.

Ultimately, the OP's mentality asserts that every business on the planet is acting maliciously and exploitatively, simply because they're trying to make money by retaining customers. And hey, I'm willing to admit that might actually be true -- but it's almost certainly not. Intent matters. It always has and always will.

Just because everyone has different thresholds for addiction doesn't mean that we should therefore not care about it. Some people can enjoy heroin responsibly, therefore opioid addiction is a just a matter of personal responsibility? Of course, total prohibition is the other extreme, but surely there's a middle ground that makes more sense than total apathy. And I'm not really even talking about regulation here, I'm just saying that some people delineate ethical standards in their line of work - with game design, I personally draw the line at exploiting users through addictive design and leaving them worse off.

You're twisting my words. I never suggested that nobody should care about addiction, nor that severe opioid addiction (how'd we even get there?) is purely a matter of personal responsibility. In fact, the whole "line" commentary was about the potentially exploitative actions of developers crossing the line -- not the addictive thresholds of users.

And you're still missing the point. You say that you draw the line at "exploiting users through addictive design." And yet, if your designs had absolutely zero addictive qualities, very few people would play the game a second time. So that brings us right back to figuring out where that arbitrary line is. Is one addictive mechanism the right amount? Two? Ten? Given that we've already established people have different thresholds, how do you even quantify addiction at the design level? You could implement something completely innocuous by your own standards, but somebody out there gets addicted to it and you make money from them. Does that make you exploitative?

The whole point is that you can draw your own personal line, but you don't get to dictate that line to others, nor publicly declare that any developer on the other side of your personal line is automatically a malicious asshole trying to harm people. Because I guarantee there are developers whose maliciousness threshold is even lower than yours, which makes you the exploitative one in their eyes.

Everything is fuzzy and a lot of things are subjective, but that doesn't disqualify them from being a point of contention. I brought up opioids because the same logic applies. Although finer, there's still a fuzzy line between manageable recreational use and destructive addiction. Not knowing exactly where the line is doesn't turn it into a special case where nothing can be said. You're talk about drawing lines but I haven't mentioned anything about that. I don't have some personal line where everyone past it is bad. I'm just saying that exploiting addictive design is bad, and people taking advantage of that are being unethical in proportion to the extent that they are doing it.

Also, I was careful to not blame addictive design itself, it's not evil inherently, because like you said, many games have some degree of addictiveness. I said exploiting addiction is the bad part. You can use it to incentivize healthy behaviors that make for a better game, one that respects the player's time and ideally even enriches them in some way, by telling the narrative in a stronger way, or teaching competition or hand-eye coordination in a better way, or just being more fun in a better way. You can also use it to extract more money from players, or more ad views, or more social anxiety, or shallowly pad the experience to feel like you're getting more "value" out of the game. Again, all of this is fuzzy, not black and white evil, it's just that responsible creators should take the time to consider their own values and be conscious of the decisions they make, understanding that what they do have repercussions on others. We should create things in reference to our values - it's easy to just blindly autopilot to the default rubric of "maximize revenue".

> And yet, if your designs had absolutely zero addictive qualities, very few people would play the game a second time.

Now I see our problem. You've only played shit games.

Procedural content and random generation are a wave of the future of gaming, happening right now; new techniques that makes games fun without exploitation of brain chemistry. By actually being good, by actually being replayable.

> Every single video game is designed to be addictive to some degree, much in the same way that every chef is attempting to create recipes that bring people back into their restaurant.

This statement is false. There exist significant subcultures of video game development, particularly in the independent sphere, where games are designed with no consideration for addictiveness, including myself. You are beginning to offend entire professions.

> Ultimately, the OP's mentality asserts that every business on the planet is acting maliciously and exploitatively, simply because they're trying to make money by retaining customers.

This statement is also false. It is you who are making that assertion right here, right now. I only ever addressed the video games industry, and the specific practice of designing games that emphasize boring, repetitive, tedious tasks, exploiting brain chemistry to profit from lack of understanding of game design.

That's what they do though. They hold meetings to develop the most elaborate systems they can get away with to manipulate you into giving them as much money as possible.

Every single business in every single industry is based around developing products that make as much money as possible. They even have meetings about it.

This statement is false. There provably exist businesses that develop products based on criteria other than making as much money as possible. Do you really need me to do that research for you as well?

You seem to think that capitalism has reached some kind of total control over humans, and that every single human running a business on this Earth is obsessed with making money.

Do you also know a lot of businesspeople, all of whom think money is the end goal of all ventures?