The Anatomy of Addictive Gameplay | Hacker News Reader

The Anatomy of Addictive Gameplay

innesoft.com

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This talk, mentioned on HN a few times, is must watch tv for anyone in this space.

http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/multimedia/schell-dice.shtml

On a personal note, I can attest to the addictive nature of these games. My crack of choice was WoW and oh how I chased that dragon. But like all highly addictive substances, it is my firm beliefe that this area will come under the regulation of government... to protect the children. But in reality it should be regulated like any other addictive form of entertainment like gambling, alcohol, tobacco, or narcotics. Not outlawed, but regulated. Like S.Korea regulating play time, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/12/south-korea-imposes....

Maybe this will save someone some time: Adblock Plus blocks playing of the Schell vid. Turn it off for the page.

Someone on reddit pointed out that the morality of making addictive games was never discussed. What does the community here think about this?

I am potentially very troubled by it, because I think the capability of a team of capable engineers/marketers to A/B test and measure their way to addictiveness increases much faster than the ability of people to adapt to the stimulus. In particular, I think that there probably exists one or more vulnerable segments of the population who get ROFLstomped by this.

I chuckled with most folks about being "addicted" to WoW, but I play some of the social games on Facebook. One of them has a particular mechanic where you buy a treasure chest. The price is immaterial, and it is obfuscated -- we've learned that people suck at fractions so if you price points at 80 to the dollar sales increase versus pricing them at 100 to the dollar. Anyhow, buying a treasure chest gives you a 5% chance at one of four particular desirable items. It also gives you chances at less desirable items, which are designed to make you feel (like a slot machine) that you just missed getting the good one.

(I'll note that despite being fairly decent with numbers, my ballpark guess for how much you'd probably spend in USD to get one of those items was off by a factor of four.)

There was a long thread on the forum about folks spending hundreds of dollars rolling for that treasure chest.

I have no particular problem with a well-off individual spending hundreds on virtual goods. However, I don't think that 90% of e.g. Zynga's bottom line is coming from folks like me. I think huge portions almost certainly come from people who are relatively poor, less educated, have poor impulse control, and who cannot afford what they're buying. If you look at the AOL ad click data, they found that this is the type of person who clicks -- almost obsessively -- on advertisements. They don't understand that they will not win a million dollars if they punch the monkey.

I'd prefer to see the industry self-regulate to avoid exploiting vulnerable people.

Considerations like this are why I decided against doing a Facebook game -- I was genuinely worried about what my stats would show me.

I used to play a MMO (not WoW, but close) and was fairly well addicted to it. It got to me at a vulnerable time (I'd just moved away from friends and family to start a PhD, and so I had flexible time and no RL friends nearby, so it was a perfect chance to get sucked in), and although I had some fun playing it, I'm very glad I got out when I did.

I saw a lot of good things and many more bad things in my time there. Kids failing school, people getting screwed over in relationships, parents neglecting children, all to play the game. However I also saw people co-operating, people looking out for one another (in one case, my group helped a member get out of an abusive relationship by helping her with her self-confidence so that she was able to confront her partner and ultimately move out), friendships bloom, some relationships that did work out, and lots of positive times as well.

So I'm really torn about it. I think the line for me is when the games start making you pay for the addictive qualities. With the MMO I played there was just the monthly flat fee, and the cost of expansion packs (which were not very frequent). With some of these games coming out now, you pay for items, equipment, horses, farms, etc. and how much money you put in directly influences what you get out of it. And I think that is the definite line for me, crossing into wrong territory.

The issues in the first part that I saw are very difficult to regulate. It's hard to tell whether someone is going to become addicted to the point where they have serious life issues going on. Plenty of people can maintain a casual relationship with these sorts of games. But when you start tying money to direct actions like these new "social" games do, it's directly profiting from these vulnerable people. And that for me is wrong.

Calling a game 'addictive' is a playful compliment. Let us not mistake it for a serious assessment of the situation. Games do not foster physical dependency; they do not coerce the player to chase a diminishing high until his whole life is a ruin. Except WoW. ;)

I think addictive games come in two flavors, one negative and one positive.

The negative type are games that don't let you go, that you wind up playing long after you've lost interest in them. Games that are centered around a guild that needs you, so your friends draw you in. Games that must be played regularly and so form habits. Games that threaten to punish you severely if you don't frequently check in. This is a negative sort of 'addictive' gameplay: it eats up time, demands attention, serves as a second job. Games like these should be enjoyed briefly and then escaped from. Lucrative though they may be, I would not want to develop one.

Then there is the positive sort of 'addictive' gameplay, which I might call more accurately 'fascinating'. These are games that dazzle and delight, that eat your brain, that you wind up playing for 16 hours a day for a week because you can't stop thinking about them. Like a fascinating problem or a motivating vision, they push you to perform and learn. This sort of addiction always dies out eventually, but while it lasts it is enjoyable and rewarding. I would go so far as to say it's what gaming is about. Yeah, it may cause the occasional day of missed work, but it gets the odd hacker in a serious groove, too. I think games with this quality are excellent and even make the world a better place. I would strive to make any game I built so 'addictive'.

Out of curiosity, what games would you put in which category?

I would class something like WoW as negative and games like Civilisation as positive, which makes me think it has something to do with where you do the "work". In WoW, the "work" is all in-game, killing monsters for rewards etc. In Civilisation much more of the "work" is done planning your next moves, which is more of an out-of-game activity, meaning you can continue "playing" the game while you do other things.

Every Facebook game I've ever played is in the first category. Some MUDs. WoW, apparently -- I haven't played it, but its effect on friends who have seems negative.

In the second category . . . well, my choices are going to reveal my age and biases, but here goes. Starcraft, Nethack, and Descent are the big three that have eaten whole years of my life through simply excellent and deep gameplay, so they're my standby examples. Any of the Civ games would count. Deadly Rooms Of Death is a puzzle game that's a genuinely tasty hacker snack. And one of the most direcly addictive games I've ever played was Starscape.

I agree with your distinction between in-game and out-of-game work. Bad games convert time into progress. Good games convert time into skill into progress. Great games convert concerted mental effort into progress.

There was a lot of talk about this subject at GDC this year. Lots of designers feel really uncomfortable with the Skinner box overtones of some of the facebook games and constant reinforcement that's become a standard part of the design toolkit. If the only thing you're offering is a slot machine or Skinner box without something else, then I personally think ethical questions start becoming important. But I also think that you've moved beyond the realm of designing and developing games and into the realm of gambling systems.

Addictive games that are addictive because they're compelling products that people have fun with? I find it hard to have any ethical qualms about making those. I have been a victim of Civilization's "just one more turn" effect since the early nineties, but I don't think there's any ethical stain on Sid Meier, Bryan Reynolds, Soren Johnson, or any of their teams. Sure, parts of these games could be viewed as psychologically manipulative, but then again, so could changing elements of a website according to psychological principles to increase conversion. The ethics and morality of using these tools hinges on intent.

1) Freedom. It's up to people to choose what to play and how much. Don't feel bad if they choose to play a lot. It's their life to live, not yours.

2) Don't just make something people want purely for money, but also make something you think ought to exist. Making something you like and approve of is a nicer life for you: it's more fun, it's better for meeting people you'll like, you can use it, etc...

About your number 1, "Freedom". I don't see how someone else's responsibility on a matter can always be expected to obviate the need for one to exercise one's own moral responsibility. It can be one person's responsibility to make a choice or perform an action well (that bit is also in play here since we aren't merely in a realm of just the stated choices, but also the ability to stick to them in the face of temptations), while at the same time being morally wrong for someone to put them in the situation where they have to.

Is it, or is it not, morally OK to tempt and socially pressure an alcoholic to drink? To construct a situation that contains many or all of their personal triggers and then offer and encourage them?

What about a table with some green food, some orange poison, and a sign explaining the color code? Fine for many, but as the doorkeeper to this banquet hall, how bad a case of red-green colorblindness need a hungry person express to you that they have, before it is morally bad of you to let them in to eat without supervision or aid in the discrimination?

Running a bar is entirely different than personally tempting an alcoholic to drink.

And selling a game to the general public is entirely different than targeting an individual and tempting him.

If the bartender notices that a patron is an alcoholic, have they no moral duty to change away from a stance of "this is purely commerce", perhaps cut that patron off? Is a bartender completely without any responsibility to look for such patrons?

Remember, morality is not limited to legality. It can be both more lenient and more strict.

Cutting off a drunk customer has no parallel to game design. Asking for game design changes so that people will want to play the game less would be like asking the bar tender to design and sell only drinks with lower alcohol content.

I believe it does have a parallel in game design. Game design seems to clearly extend to something like the possible inclusion of an automated, somewhat user-controllable "how much can I play & pay this week" mechanic. I.e. something that helps the user's stated choice (and perhaps a bit of our best social judgment on mitigating the worst risks) become action.

In the earlier analogy, the bartender saw the troubling behavior. Game design is not just analogous to how the drinks are mixed, but also the behavior of the bartender. If one is programming the bartender-AI and one can, but doesn't, include the ability to be watchful in that way, and the reason one makes that omission is to increase drink sales... well, that seems pretty morally wrong to me.

You don't see how choosing to only include in a game's design the things that undermine user intentions of self-control and never any of the things that support those intentions, how that is a moral issue of game design?

Games can perhaps be used to help teach or reinforce the helpful skill of self-control and other better angels of our minds. So possibilities of moral good are also clear. Instead, are you saying moral metrics don't apply at all? That there are no moral issues with how one designs games which treat their players little different from saps at a carnival? No moral issues with making games that better and better undermine the player's will and take advantage of systematic mistakes in the way that player's discriminate, while having regard only for the metric of sales and no other effects. Using someone else's weakness for gain is a moral issue.

As a formally very addicted gamer, I have no moral objection to making a game addictive. Sure, I wasted a lot of time, but I had a lot of fun with it.

Unless a game were made so addictive that it was mentally or physically harmful, then it flies with me.

Making a game addictive is pretty amoral, I think. It's also pretty vapid. Is it immoral for a game developer to turn himself into blind fool? Not really. Pathetic, though.

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