Because if you're going to go there, then its equally as harmful spending time away from your friends and family in front of a computer screen, especially when you consider the fact that you don't need any money to do it.
"Yes StarcraftII, I will gladly give you $50 and hundreds of hours of my life away, but thank god you're way more ethical of a game than that one that takes up 2 minutes of my bus ride and cons me into spending $1.99 on my way to work"
Addiction is everywhere. Its a sad fact of life. There are people who are addicted to shopping, but Macy's doesn't turn away repeat customers. There are people addicted to food, but Olive Garden/ McDonalds doesn't turn away morbidly obese people. There are people addicted to drinking, but Safeway doesn't do a health scan and deny these people from buying liqour. Similarly, I wouldn't expect Zynga or Blizzard to be like "hey, you've spent $10k/1000 hours on my game, why don't you go see your family or put your money to better use".
But even beyond that, there was just recently an article on how McDonalds is introducing snack wraps because they perceive that the best way to grow now is to convince people to eat at McDonalds BETWEEN meals as well. The article was basically centered around "where does the biggest fast food chain go from here?" (looking for link and will edit shortly if I find it). If you look at the advertising behind these new additions, they are trying to train people that they should eat these snacks in-between their other existing meals, "on the go". So basically, you're hypothetical is actually not devious enough: they've already been so successful at convincing their target market to eat all their meals at McDonald's that they now need to create new meals in order to grow!
Edit: I believe this was the article: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/23/why-mcdonalds-w...
It's about 0.045g sodium per 354mL can. That's about 1/50th of a healthy daily sodium intake. What effect that has on thirst I do not know, but calling that a "ton" is simply false.
Check up on the facts to avoid repeating propaganda.
"Most people who consume caffeine, however, ingest it daily. Regular users of caffeine have been shown to develop a strong tolerance to the diuretic effect,[34] and studies have generally failed to support the notion that ordinary consumption of caffeinated beverages contributes significantly to dehydration, even in athletes.[35][36][37]"
Here are the references:
[34] ^ a b c Maughan RJ, Griffin J (December 2003). "Caffeine ingestion and fluid balance: a review". J Hum Nutr Diet 16 (6): 411–20. doi:10.1046/j.1365-277X.2003.00477.x. PMID 19774754.
[35] ^ O'connor, Anahad (2008-03-04). "Really? The claim: caffeine causes dehydration". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
[36] ^ Armstrong LE, Casa DJ, Maresh CM, Ganio MS (July 2007). "Caffeine, fluid-electrolyte balance, temperature regulation, and exercise-heat tolerance". Exerc Sport Sci Rev 35 (3): 135–40. doi:10.1097/jes.0b013e3180a02cc1. PMID 17620932.
[37] ^ Armstrong LE, Pumerantz AC, Roti MW, Judelson DA, Watson G, Dias JC, Sokmen B, Casa DJ, Maresh CM, Lieberman H, Kellogg M (June 2005). "Fluid, electrolyte, and renal indices of hydration during 11 days of controlled caffeine consumption". Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab 15 (3): 252–65. PMID 16131696.
> McDonalds used to ask you to supersize, which is
> clearly a proactive position
2. Eating a few more fries and drinking a bit more soda is not an encouragement of addiction. The extra bit of food and drink is not going to be the deciding factor in whether or not you end up so addicted to McDonald's that you have to keep coming back for more. (Note: I'm not saying that it's healthy)
3. French fries and soda are huge profit centers for McDonald's, which is why they encourage you to pay them more for a bit extra. There was no evil McDonald's marketing meeting where it was decided that adding "super size" as an option would keep people coming back to McDonald's like heroin addicts. McDonald's keeps people coming back by: 1) having food with a pleasing taste -- not necessarily healthy -- 2) via branding, and 3) consistency -- people can count on McDonald's food to taste the same anywhere within the same country.
> they've already been so successful at convincing
> their target market to eat all their meals at
> McDonald's
A few minutes work at the Googles will show you how this pervasive philosophy started with all of the kids menu items and advertising, and has continued onward with the McCafe and other additions.
The goal is for you to eat three meals a day at McD's. Make no mistake about it.
I actually have no problem with any of this. They're just making a product for people to enjoy. Just because they're running data sets, tests, and using social "science" (bah) to maximize products... so what? What makes that worse than building a product based on your intuition that happens to appeal to people as well on these lines?
I think Zynga is a foul company. I think their product has a net societal cost, and I think the crap they pulled on some of their employees prior to IPO is unconscionable. But I think this aversion to using psychology to optimize your product is misplaced. Nobody is getting hypnotized here. They are just using every tool in their arsenal to make their product perform as well as possible. They do this in an unashamedly metric-based way. Every product you encounter in life attempts to influence and manipulate you. The scientific approach just happens to be very good at optimizing processes.
Last point in this rant... I do believe Zynga makes most of their money off the weak and the crazies who will put thousands of dollars they can't afford into their farmville farm. I do believe that is morally repugnant, and it's well within their power to stop that (which I'm sure they'll never do). I just don't think the design of their games is an issue... it's their billing.
The cynic would retort that they said this and then did nothing...
They did build in a rest mechanic where you became rested by spending time logged out which then increased your xp gain. It was at least a nod to playing casually.
"but they must know that if they had waited just one more month to sell, they wouldn’t have been able to command anywhere near that price after losing so many users."
It just references the omgpop acquisition because it was very recent which makes the story more interesting.
Valid, but I think the author's point still stands. "You merely need somebody with a computer, a good idea, and the ability to make a game." That's true. Look at Tiny Wings. Andreas Illiger happened to be incredibly good at game design, and was a capable iOS programming. Granted, it's a rare combination. And perhaps it IS rocket science to make multiple successful games. But when you've got tens of thousands of young developers who enjoy making these games, probability dictates that occasionally one of them will strike gold.
I don't think social gaming is inherently more predatory. Long-shelf-life games are every developer's dream. Why make hundreds of little games when you can make a few big sellers? So every game developer loves features that keep users coming back, whether discovered intentionally or accidentally. Adding social capabilities to a game makes it infinitely more fun. (Remember when we played board games? It's really a return to the days when games were social endeavors.) Social capabilities are just another feature that keeps users coming back. It's just such a big draw that you can get users spending thousands of dollars. I fail to see how that's much different from hardcore console gamers spending thousands on the latest Xbox + PlayStation + games.
With mobile and new social network games Zynga is basically disrupted and they are trying to keep they dominance by acquiring new mobile gaming companies. They want to think that social games are more like TV shows, but unfortunately social games are more like YouTube - much less control over users, returns are not predictable, ...
Calling the reward systems in games psychological trickery is a bit much. Gameplay have long been based on the psychologically rewarding system of 'do something good, get positive feedback; do something bad, get negative feedback.'
The first arcade games had theses reward systems - do well and put your initials on the leaderboard; do poorly, pay another quarter to keep playing. The fact that it's psychologically enjoyable to play these games isn't trickery - it's basic human-environment interaction. That some people have addictive responses to these mechanisms doesn't mean it's insidious trickery, it just means some people are more likely to become dependent on the rewards these games offer.
Go to Vegas sometime. Watch the people who are playing the slots for hours at a time. They are not enjoying anything. What you're seeing is compulsion and addiction, not fun. That those people are there is not some wacky accident. It's the point.
I believe that Zynga is pursuing exactly that cycle of addiction. They're a metrics and viral marketing company, not a games company.
And seriously, go to Vegas and spend a couple of hours watching people play slots. Craps players are visibly having fun. The people who spend hours at the slot machines visibly aren't.
I rarely play any floor games, but one time I was waiting for some friends to wake up and I wandered down to the casino to play some video poker. I ended up winning $1500 on a royal flush at a nickel machine. What am I supposed to do, start running around the casino in excitement? It was around 8:30 in the morning and the places was pretty quite. Had my friends been there, I'm sure we would have had some hi-fives or something like that, but if I'm just sitting there playing by myself, I'm not going to have any sort of substantial showcase of emotion.
I think you're correct in that a lot of people sit at the slot machines for hours, losing their paychecks in the process, and it's destructive for them. They may be looking miserable at the machines. The people playing craps who are in the process of losing their paychecks are equally as miserable, they're just showing different outward emotions. The addiction isn't any healthier because the person appears to be having fun.
I discovered that some were fun and some were compelling. The two traits are definitely correlated, but there were plenty of games that were only one or the other. There were a number of compelling games that I fucking hated by the time I was done; they had stopped being fun long before they had stopped being compelling.
On the other hand, maximizing revenue means you get to feed feed your family, and ensure continued existance.
I m sure this goes down to "greed". But "greed" is the basic tenant of the corporation, of which most big budget games are made in. I m not sure there is an answer to this, other than gov't legislation, and I personally don't like gov't legislation.
Social games are completely unlike the tacked-on rewards systems in an ordinary game.
The idea that 5M/month Draw Something care about the Zynga purchase is ludicrous. It seems Zynga has made some annoying changes to the game, at least for those that use Facebook to login, but even so.
I think the only story here is that Zynga overpaid for something that was peaking. They may purchased OMGPOP just in case it turned into something huge. There's plenty of that going on (cough Instragram cough).
I've tried Draw Something. It's amusing and I can see the appeal but from all usage patterns I've seen the game has a pretty short shelf life. A game with a short shelf life is going to lose lots of customers once it peaks. It's inevitable.
As for how easy it is to make a game, that's actually hard. I believe you should also separate "normal" games from "social" games here as both are radically different.
Normal games are like blockbuster movies. You want people to buy up big. You deliberately build up the hype. There is very little in the way of long tail in revenue in most cases (other than sequels). I consider this a fairly "honest" or ethical practice because you pay the sticker price and you have your fun.
Social games are more like TV shows. You're trying to build a persistent audience and you're all about the long tail. The part that bothers me is the psychological trickery that goes into this. Social games are really about manipulating the psychological triggers for addiction and I don't really see a distinction between this and, say, gambling addiction.
Some people spend an awful lot on these games (I believe Zynga calls people who spend over $10k "whales" [1]). Zynga and similar companies like to whitewash this with "maybe they're just rich". I believe they know better. They are (IMHO) preying on the weak and those arguably with mental health problems ("it's not unethical, it's funethical!").
Successful social games are all about Big Data. Figuring out what works, what doesn't, analyzing your customer usage and adjusting to maximize revenue and retention.
They're not even "games" really. They're just exercises in repetition.
Anyway, rant aside, I don't like Zynga either but please don't confuse the OMGPOP purchase with a short shelf-life peaking purchase.
[1]: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/zyngas-quest-for-bigspe...