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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

Even attempting to parse the psychology of this is turning out to be a maddening experience for me.

I am a hyper-competitive gamer, but I would never participate in a pay-to-win ecosystem. It's the last place I would want to spend my time.

When I lose a game, I want to feel full responsibility for that loss so I can improve. I want the win to feel entirely of my own doing. By shelling out cash for "wins", I am completely destroying this experience.

How long can someone pay for fake outcomes before they get bored and move on? I can't imagine you will find a long term community around titles like this. All you are doing is extracting money from people who forgot how to have fun.

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These horrific pay to win systems aren't meant for gamers, they are meant to find, hook, and milk gambling addicts. They aren't fun for the same reason that most people don't buy slot machines and put them next to their Xbox. The steps you take to make a system that leans into gambling addiction eventually start making it less fun for normal "gamers"

I have a hard time understanding slot machines. They are so extremely boring.

Are they a late stage addiction phenomena? Like, lowest effort gamling dose, or something?

They're entire purpose, all the effort in engineering and designing them, is to push the dopamine response of people who have brains that are prone to gambling addiction. These companies hire psychologists to help them find ways to push that button harder. Every beep, every flash, every diagram on them, the way payouts are structured, the way the buttons feel, the NAME, is meant to take advantage of people who get dopamine responses from exactly that.

They are digital heroin, except they've been engineered instead of a quirk of evolution. And it is perfectly legal. We KNOW that certain people get addicted to these machines, to the point of being basically physically unable to control their interactions with gambling machines, and it is perfectly legal to start a company and hire psychologists and build machines with the sole purpose and goal of milking these problem gamblers for every cent they have access to, including debt they could conceivably take on.

They are intentional experiences with lights, sounds, colors, haptic feedbacks ("chair shaking" is a modern feature often big on the "features list"). It's a lot of the things that make a good pinball machine without the skill needed to play pinball for divergent evolutionary reasons (early slot machines were pinball machines and pachinko machines are still huge in Asia). The sensory overload lights up a lot of interesting parts of the brain all at once.

It's like food science trying to meticulously create all those "super addictive foods" that hit salty/savory/sweet/umami/fatty taste buds all at once in wild combinations. Overwhelm the senses and tell people they are having an exciting time doing practically nothing.

Is there actually some way to win real money in this game? Seems like you can only win in-game stuff and cannot cash out?

Traditional gamblers seem easier to understand. All you need is some magical thinking about randomness or probability to convince yourself you'll come out ahead. It would appear to me the trick here is much more about getting people emotionally invested in the game first. I'm not sure how many people you could get addicted to a slot machine if the money wasn't real.

Much of the gaming industry uses this model. All those free to play games with skins/cosmetic things to buy are there for the sole intend of separating people from their money for things that are probably really low cost for a game studio compared with creating new content.

At least cosmetics do not affect the gameplay or fairness in any way. I think that's an important distinction to make. In Diablo Immortal you're paying for actual gear or items that help enhance that gear.

I have no problem with people buying fancy skins (or companies making money on them) because it doesn't provide players any advantage.

However, do I think sometimes even cosmetics can get rather expensive / predatory / addictive? Yes, they're not immune to other problems. Especially when they come in loot boxes. Rocket League has some neat cosmetics but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $20 for a neat looking goal explosion or whatever...

This is NOT aimed at people like you. Tons of folks out there who either 1) don't have the skills to be competitive without pay2win, or 2) don't want to waste time on useless grinding and have the money to buy items outright.

I anti-recommend Clash Royale. It is a really good Tower defense game with all the p2w mechanics you hate.

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