Someone on reddit pointed out that the morality of making addictive games was never discussed. What does the community here think about 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 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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
And selling a game to the general public is entirely different than targeting an individual and tempting him.
Remember, morality is not limited to legality. It can be both more lenient and more strict.
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.
Unless a game were made so addictive that it was mentally or physically harmful, then it flies with me.