Moral Design

Everyone has a moral framework, whether or not it is examined the way Socrates would demand it to be. The issue is that you gave an example, which undermines your claim that you're not prescribing a moral framework: no example can successfully be free of every possible framework.

You claim that "life is the ultimate aim of moral design", but this is completely untrue. Many moral systems encourage the wasting of time and the dismissal of life in its various forms. Many moral systems, indeed, are not about the contribution of work to society and humankind at all. As a matter of nuance, this can be argued. (Is afterlife a form of life? Is life in the city or in nature? Is your time wasted if you intentionally wasted it? Et. al.)

In short, you actually are prescribing a specific moral framework. Yours. There's nothing wrong with this, except that you didn't even realize you were doing it. You've answered the relevant questions, at least implicitly, and so forgot that they were even questions to begin with.

> I do stand by the idea presented there.

You're not wrong, exactly. Take Richard Bartle, who has been pounding out a very similar message to the game community, though you'd have trouble recognizing it.

His message is simple: know why you do things. Why do you have levels in your RPGs? MUD1 (his game) had them because they represented the possibility of social mobility to a pair of British country-born schoolkids annoyed by their circumstances. But most designers only have them because well... that's just expected. Their decision stands unexamined; often unrecognized to be a decision at all.

He did not need to bring up morality, because it's not the point. The point is that, when you do things, it should be grounded in a solid self-aware understanding of what and why you act. Design intentionally. Think about the details. Care about consequences. Test everything, hold onto what is good.

Nonsense. How do you define "effective" without aims?

I believe the author's point of view is that an aim must first be moral to be good a aim, and this leads to his statement that you quote.

The reality of any game design, Zynga's in particular, is far richer and more nuanced than this meme credits. Specifically, the author makes two sloppy errors:

1. Gamification is used to make something addictive. -- It is a game, it is not gamification. And the goal is to make it fun. Sure, you can call fun addictive if you want to make it sound less... fun. (Now if you applied game mechanics to things that were not games, that would be gamification.)

2. And in turn to part people with their money. Actually, most of any social game's "tricks" are intended to increase the popularity of the game. To spread that game to as many players as possible. Giving people a way to spend money on what is otherwise a completely free game is a separate enterprise entirely.

You can call any of these things immoral, I suppose, but it's not the easy conversation the author wants to have in support of "ennobling", "enriching", and "advancing."

The users' enjoyment isn't really the issue. It is not immoral to play the game, nor to pay for it, nor to have fun doing it. The issue is whether the motivation of the creator are to build a product that gives their customers value, or a product that is effective at making money (there is a large distinction here). If your product provides entertainment, it is pretty much essential that your customers enjoy it, but the key is whether you abuse their enjoyment by turning it into addiction (which you can then exploit for your own monetary gain, e.g. drug dealers), or whether you aim to give them the best entertainment you can while keeping their consumption of it in moderation -- in other words: your primary motivation for making the product is the product itself, not the monetary reward.

I posit that Zynga falls into the former category, that is: their primary motivation is to make money (and I may be wrong, but this is not a wild assumption), and they achieve it by developing an addictive product. I also posit that this leads to overconsumption on the part of the users (again, not improbable). Making money isn't immoral, but exploiting another's loss for your own gain is. I am prepared to argue further about the specific example, and perhaps in doing so we may discover that Zynga do actually care about making a really great product, in which case I will be happy to retract it, but the general principle for which the specific example is given still stands.

At this point some will make an argument along the lines of: the responsibility for moderate consumption falls on individual users, not on the creator of the product. Now this is a very important point, but it is by no means a resolved question. I side with the camp that says that some of the blame does fall on the creator because it is only through the combination of their intentions to make the product addictive and the user's weakness that overconsumption can occur. My argument is that by choosing not to make addictive products -- that is, to make moral design decisions -- we can make products that benefit society rather than cause it ill.

This is not some moral condemnation of the creator, far from it, for I care about the creators just as much as I do about the consumers (I am one, after all), and as much as the question is about what products are good for society, it is also this: What products should we be building? What products will truly matter? What design will live on and be cherished after we die? Resolving those questions will help us develop a society we all want to live in and be proud to be a part of, both as creators and consumers.

Certainly the psychological prods that Zynga deploys to keep people constantly returning are not all (or even mostly?) fun-based.

I also wonder how many treasured memories of hours spent clicking on cows the younger generation of current Farmville players will fondly recount to their grandchildren, many years hence.

Of course there's a short-sighted argument that "people pay for it, therefore they want it, therefore they must be enjoying it" to justify this sort of stuff. It's a shitty justification, though, if you even think about how human psychology seems to work; no advanced study required.

I guess there's always "if we don't sell it, someone else will, and they'll get all the money instead", as well, though that doesn't even really pretend to be creating a moral good anymore.

[side note: sorry to seem to fire this at your short comment... it's a topic that troubles me deeply, and I'm leaving just this one comment in the discussion.]

The same way that giving a company money for alcohol/tobacco/cocaine/etc might be destructive to the buyer and selfish for the seller.

How would you feel if your 8 year old child spent hours playing FarmVille? She thinks it is more fun than playing outside or with her friends.

Now what do you think about a company that claps with glee upon hearing the above?