Why your favorite apps are designed to addict you
kernelmag.dailydot.com
kernelmag.dailydot.com
My life has become increasingly cluttered with feeds, needing to login to games I like to get bonuses and such, and it has started to pile up so I decided I needed to make some changes, starting with CoC.
At first I had a lot of anxiety because the mechanics of the game would penalize me pretty harshly if I was away for a few days/weeks and wanted to come back. The lizard part of my brain started urging me to play it in a way that was so urgent it felt like I could almost reach out and touch it.
But I had deleted the app from my device, and I sat myself down and told myself that those urges had no weight because the consequences would never be felt since I wasn't going to play the game again.
Now I'm past the hump, and while I still have many more things on my list to extricate from my life in my path towards simplifying things, I definitely feel a bit better. One less responsibility.
Don't get me wrong--I'm still a gamer, and likely will always be to some degree. But I'm so jaded by games with super transparent mechanics like this that they are starting to lose their hold over me. Started playing Pillars of Eternity last night and it was refreshing to get into something story-driven that didn't devote a significant chunk of the initial gameplay to introducing me to various IAP mechanics.
But I had deleted the app from my device, and when I sat myself down and told myself that those urges had no weight because the consequences would never be felt since I wasn't going to play the game again.
The second sentence is the most important here - good work on getting rid.
I consider myself fairly self-aware and the most fascinating aspect of this for me has been observing my thought process as I went through this.
The way I laid it out above makes it seem rather simple. Like, I had a five second mental conversation with myself and was like "oh, ok, no consequences so I don't need to care anymore." However the reality was that it was something I needed to continually coach myself on until I internalized it over the course of a day or two.
The initial realization of this came pretty quickly, but actually breaking the hold it had on me took real repeated effort. I have newfound respect for those who are able to kick much more harmful addictions where the body's response is "pain and agony" vs. just "an annoying nagging feeling."
I mean the tech stack behind it, with replay functionality and async multiplayer is cool together with its "Battle.net like" integration is also working great for mobile. But as a game, it isn't better than any random mod on WC3. It's essentially build, purchase crap, and attack. Sometimes they give you the false notion that anything you do impacts the game itself as you attack. You get "bombs" to drop and etc, but as a game... it's essentially just a shallow graphic layer on top of numbers.
I understand you can say the same thing about most games, but somehow my brain just rips apart Clash of Clans or Boom-beach easily, while it won't treat Star Craft same way.
Just needed to ask.
As someone who does digital marketing for a living, I'm not only acutely aware of all the tricks they are using, but also the "shallow graphic layer on top of numbers" as you described it. Sometimes I can even visualize it kind of like Neo in the Matrix.
Initially there might be some stimulus for me, but it tends to wear off quickly and that has been my big issue with finding a good long-term game to sink my teeth into. It also is incidentally the reason why Casinos hold no appeal. I tried slots once and the moment my brain registered that I didn't need to wait for the wheel to spin, and I could hit the button as quickly as I wanted to generate the results, I thought "wow, this is like a game with absolutely shitty graphics I have to keep paying for that has no skill involved." And just like that I had zero interest in Casinos.
So I see all this going on in my head, but then there are things like Dungeon Robber[1] that for some reason keep attracting me back. And they literally give you the tables and such for the dice rolls as they are occurring. There is even less of a veneer of graphics on top of the numbers (although in this case I love D&D and I think it reminds me of my younger tabletop days).
That is what makes a lot of this stuff insidious for those that are less self-aware. I can recognize when I'm getting the dopamine hit, and it can be fun to experience, but for people who don't see it for what it is, I can only imagine how devastating that could be.
These days I find myself (with few exceptions), gravitating towards team-based games that are played in rounds (like Rocket League) that have a heavy emphasis on skill so I can pick it up, put it down, and not feel obligated to grind at all. Those seem to hit the sweet spot at the moment.
But with social, it's even harder. I literally had my mother calling me to complain "I miss following you and hearing about what you're doing on Twitter honey."
It never was a responsibility.
It is also why I never understood why my friend enjoyed being an MMO guild leader when I was young. It seemed like real work. Once a game crosses the "work" threshold, I tend to lose interest pretty rapidly. The fact that it took this long for it to get bad enough where I could kick this game to the curb is perhaps testament to the efficacy of the game systems they have in place to drive DAU/MAU.
So, I did what you did when I realized that computer games had this power over me, and got rid of them completely (early 20's at the time). Since then I got sucked in exactly once, the game of Mahjongg, and as soon as I recognized that I was being sucked in I deleted that as well. (this happened when I was 28 or so.)
It's super annoying that I can't seem to set myself limits on what is ok and what is not, but in the end I come out ahead because I then have to be utterly ruthless about it which saves even more time (and in the case of alcohol and other goodies it saves me my health and money too).
When I got sucked into computer games the world of games was a lot friendlier than it is today. I worked for a game company for a while, and in the end realized that that world really wasn't for me (though I enjoyed the programming immensely, the only addiction that I've allowed to run completely without restraint). Computer games nowadays are more like crack cocaine compared to the ones that were available when I was a kid.
Congratulations on your recognition, it's going to be an interesting time for you now that you have a really large chunk of extra life that you can allocate in whatever way that you see fit.
I wish it were really a significant chunk of my life compared to some other things though. It saved me maybe 10-20 minutes/day. Sure that adds up, and I have to start somewhere, but I need to chop more. Reddit is a huge one that I'm on the fence with. I use it as one of my primary news sources, learn a ton from the more educational subs, and even do some valuable professional networking there (in fact, I just had coffee with someone whom I met on Reddit to chat about work stuff). But I inevitably also read things that don't add that type of value, or get sucked into responding to stuff that I could have avoided, etc. Would love to hear how you tackle integrating the various "feeds" in your life in a productive manner.
Also, back to the gaming note--were you actively playing any games on a regular basis when you started having your first major entrepreneurial successes? I'm pretty established in my career by now and senior in my field. Objectively I'm "doing well", but I sometimes feel like I'm being held back by my leisurely pursuits (gaming, gardening, watching a little TV with my wife after dinner). I justify it as something I need to do to manage stress from my life/job, but I simultaneously feel guilty when I realize how "unproductive" that time is. I could be practicing coding, working on side projects, reading something educational, etc. It is really starting to be its own source of stress.
As for the games, it was long long ago and I don't think I would have done much of anything if I had not cut the habit. The one that really did it for me was Elite, I played that so much that one evening I saw the afterimage of the main screen superimposed on the wall paper when I looked away and I realized I should really stop this before it got even more out of control.
20 minutes per day... I wish. More like 12 hours per day or so, I remember one time I arrived at the office on a Saturday because I'd totally lost track of time.
http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Product...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machine...
"I can’t tell you how often I’ve been approached since the publication of my book by Silicon Valley types who say things like, ‘Wow, the gambling industry really seems to have a handle on this attention retention problem that we’re all facing,'" Schüll told me. "'Will you come tell our designers how to do a better job?’"
They're jolting, those moments when you realize you've been talking to someone who acts just like a normal human being but is totally disconnected from basic human empathy.
I think you're confusing 'empathy' with 'virtue signaling.'
[0]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard
Presumably, designers now often see the 'main' adventure or campaign as for everyone, the multiplayer mode as a way to keep most people playing instead of fake difficulty and the 100% completion 'optional' content as for the masochists.
Still, from the perspective of the companies that made them, it was similar. Look at the earlier games or even the current gen of pachinko games that are still popular in Japan and you can see the sort of overlap between video games and the exploitation of impulses and reactions typically associated with gambling.
I remember not understanding why my folks never wanted to give me money to go screw around in the arcade at the mall but looking at microtransactions and "energy games" on mobile, I completely get it now. Sure, to beat an arcade game or beat a high score can take enormous skill but in order to develop that skill, you need to keep feeding an endless stream of quarters. It's the original gaming microtransaction.
Remember, sharing is spamming.
Otherwise, it's just something I look at once or twice a week when I'm bored and want to see what people are up to. I never connect any mobile games or other apps with my FB account and if a program or site requires FB login, I stop using it.
I've found that I rarely check it anymore since I'm always notified when something interesting is happening or when people specifically want to reach me; I'm no longer afraid I'll "miss out".
Now modify the lever to only give a food pellet sometimes. Sometimes there's nothing. This turns out to be much more effective at getting the rat to compulsively press the lever.
Now look at the internet, and services with frequent updates like Facebook, Twitter, or even HN. Sometimes you push the lever and get a reward, and sometimes you don't, effectively training the user to compulsively check.
I might be completely wrong here, but I read about a study where mice were deprived of dopamine (chemical responsible for motivating behavior). There they shows that the mice would rather starve to death than seek out food and water. However, if food was placed in their mouths they would swallow it and gain pleasure.
I believe apps are a perfect example of addiction in this case since they create compulsive behaviors without giving pleasure.
Like, favorite, share, subscribe, follow, some type of hierarchy system.
That's how you get people addicted.