Gaming

Addictive and entertaining are synonyms now?

The World Health Organization recognizes videogame addiction as a disorder, and the American Psychiatric Association says that the question of whether or not videogames can be addictive is "still being debated," but that "early evidence suggests that videogames are one of the most addicting technologies around

Its clear that games can be addictive and the concept of „whale fishing“ is openly discussed in terms of game design. Obviously, the weakest of us in terms of addiction make the standard because its those who are harmed.

Obviously, cash shops should be banned in games immediately.

Some of these are engineered to be addicting especially loot crates and stuff. A lot of them are just genuinely good.

They mention Minecraft, pretty sure that one was addicting since day 1 and completely unintentionally so. It's just genuinely fun and you can spend hours in it easily. Same with Factorio.

Not exactly a new phenomenon, I've seen my own parents up at 4am just because they wanted to sneak a peek at the new level they reached. My mom had hand drawn and annotated the entire Zelda 1 map. For a little bit, that NES basically ran on a UPS to not lose their progress.

For some reason US parents always want to shift the blame to companies for their own failures. It's her own damn fault she let this get out of control for 10 fucking years. Just like those that park their kids on an iPad all the time and then sues because their kid spends too much time on the iPad and cry out in the news how iPad babies are so bad. Who's given them the damn iPad?

In some respects, I can see this. Games such as unscrupulous MMOs are often carefully engineered to distort your ability to manage time and money. However, many games are still produced as entertainment products meant to compete on a basis of artistic or entertainment value. The addictive aspect doesn't come from a manipulative design, but Rather just plain old fun, and in those cases similar arguments could be made about strawberries or books.

I would like to reiterate that there are addictive video games which really do try to manipulate you. Just like how a breakfast cereal might market itself as healthy and balanced while loaded with sugar and deceptive portion sizes, leading to unhealthy habits, a money first video game will contain elements carefully crafted to distort player's perception and reasoning.

It's just... All mixed together.

This is a pretty complicated topic that touches video games, gambling sites, social media algorithms, and marketing in general. It also touches fundamental philosophical questions like the existence of free will.

We have lots of established law on which sort of "mind tricks" are fair play and which aren't, but we have not advanced those laws to keep pace with the science. Currently, lying is really the only thing off limits and is covered by fraud statutes. We also have some limits on marketing to children. But one could argue that there are several "persuasion" tactics that can be just as effective as outright lies in manipulating the behavior of others. In fact, licensed therapists are ethically barred from using these tactics, yet we allow salesmen, marketers, etc to use them at will.

I don't really have an opinion on this lawsuit, nor do I feel qualified to offer a solution. But let me give you an example of how the human mind works which underpins addiction to gambling.

Dopamine is a signaling molecule that regulates a lot of our reward responses. If I find honey in a honeycomb, dopamine gets released and now I am more likely to seek out honeycombs in the future. You can see how this is evolutionarily beneficial. Dopamine release reinforces behavior that increases survival. But let's say that only about 1/3 of all honeycombs have honey. Now I have a lower chance at a reward, so does that mean the dopamine release is likewise diminished? No, the opposite is true. Dopamine release skyrockets. Evolutionarily this makes sense, we do not want to miss out on a reward simply because the probability is diminished, so the high dopamine release counterbalances the diminished probability such that reward seeking behavior is reinforced so long as the probability of reward is reasonable (it peaks at about 1/4). In fact, dopamine is released even when the honeycomb has no honey. You can draw a direct line between this physical phenomenon and gambling addiction. What people don't appreciate is that this physiological response is very similar to addictive drugs in effectiveness. It can be hard to acknowledge that one of the reasons you are not a gambling addict is simply that you didn't start gambling to begin with, not that you are somehow superior to those that are addicted.

We have lots of behavioral quirks like this that can be exploited. At what point does this manipulation cross the line? That is a hard question. For me, gacha games cross that line. But if we want to enact meaningful regulations we need to acknowledge that these mind exploits exist and confront the fact that free will may not be as free as we hope.

There's a difference between addictive and entertaining.

I wouldn't call nicotine entertaining.

Opening lootboxes you paid $5 each for is not entertaining.

I really, really need people to grok the distinction between engagement and entertainment.

For a long time I've argued that there needs to be stronger language differences between physiological addiction and psychological addiction, especially in non-academic discourse. Academic papers usually define their terms pretty well, and often use terms like "habit forming" or "dependency" instead of addiction.

A lot of work has been done to remove the stigma of addiction to shift the blame from the individual to the product, and I have no objections at all to that for physiological addiction. Nicotine, alcohol, opioids, etc.

The problem is that zealots have co-opted that model to try to ban anything they don't want other people to be able to enjoy. Comic books, television, videogames, marijuana, pornography- all of these have had the word "addiction" attached in news media without solid scientific evidence of physiological addiction. At the same time, you can find case studies of individuals with mental health disorders who get addicted to literally anything.. I'm not saying there are not individuals who don't have problems with these things, but a lot of the effort into stigmatizing and restricting these seems to have ulterior motives. It's parents who don't want to teach their children about responsibility and discipline. It's religious zealots trying to push their worldviews on others. It's large corporations trying to gain market share by attacking competing industries. In some cases like "sex addiction" it's used to try to excuse or justify criminal behavior and portray abusers as victims. It's notable that efforts usually go to just banning and shaming these things rather than helping the alleged "victims". At the same time, efforts at harm reduction for physiological addiction seems to be constantly undermined.

With all of that being said, there is a separate issue that applies to this case- consumer protection. History has clearly demonstrated that without regulation and enforcement, corporations will engage in all manner of activity to screw over every stakeholder (consumers, vendors, employees, lenders, etc) in order to enrich ownership.

Looking at videogames in particular, there are definitely marketing practices and pricing structures that need to be banned. I just hate this idea that "videogames = bad" when the real issue is corporate greed, and a lot of these issues apply to other industries too.

That argument doesn't fly for companies that employ psychologists specifically to make their games as unhealthy as possible.

And now explain to me, what psychological tricks Minecraft uses that make you addicted to it.

Well, apparently we can

People don't drink because vodka tastes good, assholes. "You're still playing!" is not proof of enjoyment.

This is the same as Trump saying he was just challenging the results of the election.

Namely, nobody is trying to prosecute him for his legal challenges...and nobody is complaining that games are too entertaining. They are bold strawman arguments that most people see through immediately. "Complete bullshit" is now a common argumentative tactic.

This is really a thing?

Where do I line up to give my victim impact statement on the quality and longevity of games?