
The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction - cjauvin
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-glorious-profitable-inescapable-art.html
======
vinceguidry
One of my favorite Minecraft Mods was equivalent exchange. It foretold the
coming of modern idle games. You work hard in the beginning to earn your first
magical item, that gives you some sorcery that lets you spend less time
gathering resources.

A small amount of time later, you get another magical item that lets you
transmute a little more efficiently. A few dozen grinding hours later and
you've acquired an array of items that grant you limited control over the
environment, and you start grinding towards your first resource generator,
which gives you resources which let you make the second one.

Now you're scaling. Build speed becomes the bottleneck for awhile, you're
grinding the farm. Eventually you reach the next tier of generators, and this
unlocks new mechanics. Finally at the end of the game you get artifacts of
immense, game-breaking power.

Once I started playing, I couldn't stop until I had done all the things. And
when I was done with that, I never picked it, or Minecraft, back up again.

The lure of mastery is perhaps the most addictive one that could ever be
dreamed.

~~~
Ntrails
Weirdly I've only played vanilla survival but this genuinely sounds precisely
like my experience. First we built a zombie farm. Which gave us some weapons
and xp. Then a chicken farm, for food. Then a spider farm. Then we found an
underwater temple. Guardian farm time! Oooh, and an ender pearl/xp farm, iron
farm, gold farm etc etc etc.

We spent days and days in game automating away as much resource gathering as
we could. Until the server was basically finished - there really were no more
farms to build.

So we started a new one :)

~~~
vinceguidry
Yeah my next big rush was Factorio. More concentration on the mechanics of
building and scaling, less on the awesome graphics and immersion that
Minecraft offers.

------
seventhtiger
I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be
interpreted with hostility.

If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a
scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying
to hype people up and sell them something bad.

If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when
players lose a level they think you're extorting them for money.

If you sell time, like a subscription, then players think you are trying to
force them to grind to pay money

If you sell in-game items, like weapons or maps, the players think you are
intentionally weakening the free items in favor of the power you can buy.

If you sell in-game cosmetics, like skins, which have no impact on gameplay,
the players think you are trying to make every look stupid and you have to pay
to look cool.

Video games are inherently manipulative in the sense that the game is designed
for you to behave in fun ways and do fun things. Once monetization is in the
picture it completely poisons the whole dynamic. It doesn't help that the
audience skews young.

If you want to make a game just for the passion of it, if you want to have a
healthy relationship with gamers, you are literally not allowed to monetize.
You have to give it away fully for free.

~~~
ps101
Upfront sale is not like the others at all because it doesn't interact with
addictive behaviour in the same way.

~~~
seventhtiger
It doesn't relate to addictive behavior, but there's still continuous uproar
about deceptive marketing and lack of support. Developer interviews are picked
around and lists of promises are made. Any monetary incentive a developer has
will be viewed through a bad faith lens at every turn. That can't win.

~~~
einr
There is only uproar about deceptive marketing and lack of support if the
marketing is actually deceptive and if there is an actual lack of support.

People have been burned a few too many times by less reputable developers (EA)
selling unfinished, deceptive garbage (SimCity 2013) at full price, so a
certain amount of uproar and skepticism when it happens _again and again_ is
to be expected, I think.

But there are good, reputable companies too who are doing honest business by
selling quality games for a reasonable up-front price. I don't generally see
people having an issue with that.

See if you can find a lot of people who are unhappy with dropping $60 on
Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey, for instance.

~~~
leetcrew
an upfront price made sense in the old days when a relatively polished product
was released at launch, perhaps with a couple patches to fix bugs, and with
users running their own multiplayer servers.

for better or for worse, the norm has shifted to longer periods of support and
servers hosted by the company. it's hard to commit to supporting a game this
way when each user only pays once.

personally I like the approach csgo has taken. you get a full game for free
(although it was still a good deal at $20, imo) and you can pay for purely
cosmetic items. I think this aligns the incentives well; the devs can only get
paid by making game that people care about playing, but there's also an
unrestricted stream of new players since it's free. plus if you decide your
finally done, you can sell all your skins on the market and get at least some
of your money back.

~~~
einr
I will fully admit that I have only the faintest idea of how modern
multiplayer games work, but I agree from my understanding that the old
business model of selling a complete game once seems ill suited to that style
of game.

(Although, counterexample: Mojang made a fortune out of selling Minecraft, a
complete multiplayer game, where you host your own servers, with no paid DLC
or hidden catches, but then later came out with the Realms thing where they
had optional paid server infrastructure. That's a thing you can do. Not sure
how it panned out.)

That being said, my point was that there are still plenty of companies, such
as Nintendo, successfully operating in the traditional way without facing much
hostility for daring to sell a complete, polished, mostly bug-free product for
money.

Therefore I think it is inaccurate to state that "every way to monetize a game
will be interpreted with hostility" like the grandparent did.

~~~
leetcrew
to be clear, I'm not saying it's totally not viable to just release a good
game and charge for it upfront. there is a small number of studios/publishers
who have such good brand recognition (or just consistently ship really good
games) that they can actually make money this way. it can still work well for
games with little ongoing maintenance cost from established companies making
AAA titles or indie devs who don't have the same upfront costs.

all I'm saying is that there are other "game-as-a-service" models that can
align incentives well between players and devs for ongoing projects without
_necessarily_ being abusive.

GGP is sort of right though. gamers are a notoriously difficult group of
customers to please, and they don't really have a way to understand the
business or technical constraints faced by the makers of their favorite games.
the worst of them will be uncharitable and hostile, no matter what you do.

------
taneq
> Now, of course, we designers know to make the upgrades come in a constant
> flow of smaller improvements. A host of bars slowly filling up and numbers
> increasing, so that the warm feeling never stops.

I don't think that's necessarily true. WoW moved more and more towards this
model and all it did was make the game predictable and grindy. You need big
chunks of uncertainty (will we kill the boss? will it drop what I'm after?
will that item go to _me_?) to really kick the intermittent-reward circuitry
into gear.

Constant small incremental progress is just easier to implement.

~~~
girvo
Note: This is likely not as neat an analogy/example as I would like, but it
seems relevant.

I used to be an actual heroin addict, many many years ago. Finding the next
hit every day/every couple of days was nearly as satisfying as the actual rush
of the drug itself.

In fact, this effect was so powerful, that the "come thru" message from my
dealer, and driving over to his, would make my withdrawal symptoms subside
nearly entirely, well before I'd actually taken the drug.

Brains are crazy.

~~~
rosser
I imagine you saw a bit of a dopamine spike when that message came in. Was it
enough to mitigate the physical symptoms at all, or was that purely mental, I
wonder?

~~~
girvo
Genuinely mitigated the runny nose, aches and pains in my back, etc.

~~~
bloopernova
I wish I could trick my stupid brain like that. (not saying that your brain is
somehow easier to trick than mine or whatever. My brain is just stupidly
stubborn when it comes to feeling pain)

I'm really very deeply glad you kicked that habit and killed the dragon. This
internet stranger is rooting for you :)

------
john_minsk
I wouldn't mind DLC and virtual slots model, if only it delivered better games
in the end.

In reality games became just a gateway to these slot machines or DLCs. i.e.
development happened only in one direction: money.

There is no way to explain how 15 years ago developers were able to build
incredible open worlds with hours of dialog and tons of possibilities worth
100s of hours of gameplay on a single pay model, except priorities change in
the industry. Fast forward 15 years - all the progress and tools, developing
practices, experience accumulated in the industry - but no real progress or
innovations.

There are still games that push quality mark forward, but mass market is going
away from it. Companies like EA have to make a choice: do we fund this game
that will sell for 60$ and give 100s of hours of diverse gameplay or do we
fund this online game with proven gameplay and sell ingame items for 1$/piece
for next 2 years. Both of these games not only differ in terms of money they
make, but also in terms of time people spend on them. So EA is better not to
fund game 1 at all, to let people spend more limited gaming time on the game
that has a potential for more profits.

~~~
kace91
Sony is going in the opposite direction ( single player, story based games
with rich content).

Their logic is quite flawless:

Online games depend on a large userbase to be successful, which forces them
(or at least greatly pressures them) to be multiplatform. That's a bad
direction to move towards if your business is selling a console and its walled
garden - so they are pushing for content that is more compatible with console
exclusives, ie. single player games.

~~~
ardani
I hope they develop more splitscreen games! That's really the main edge to
consoles for me.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
In an alternate reality, 3D TV really took off and split screen was replaced
by polarized-screen. Wouldn't that have been neat?

~~~
tk75x
[https://www.tweaking4all.com/video/gaming/split-screen-
game-...](https://www.tweaking4all.com/video/gaming/split-screen-game-full-
screen/)

------
bloopernova
This brings to mind a very recent dilemma of sorts that I have been
experiencing.

I love strategy games. From _Carrier Command_ back in the 80s to _Sid Meier 's
Alpha Centauri_ to _Stellaris_. I've recently picked up _Surviving Mars_ in
the Steam sale and it doesn't appear to be holding my attention as well as
Stellaris does.

Why? It probably can be reduced down to the reward factor. In Stellaris the
galaxy is pretty huge, there's a massive combination of races, ideologies and
other factors that all go together to create what feels like a novel/new
experience.

In Surviving Mars, your playing field is limited to a 10x10 grid, and you
quickly become bogged down keeping ahead of your colonists' needs. The
experience feels the same, and there's no real novelty. The planet just kind
of exists as a map outside your little grid, there's no way to visit or
expand, you just send expeditions out and get a text box saying they found x,
y or z.

Now, if someone could write a game that accurately captures the feel of
reading Kim Stanley Robinson's _Red Mars_ in an exploration/build/research
combined with novelty in a truly expansive world, that would be amazing.
Setting up your base, digging your habitats, finding volatiles and water and
all that good stuff. It would be great, if done well, of course.

But maybe by the time someone writes such a beast, we'd have people on Mars
for real.

~~~
blaser-waffle
> The experience feels the same, and there's no real novelty

That sounds like Stellaris, tbh. Eventually it just turns into waiting for
things to complete so you can launch the next war. And without the historical
immersion (EUIV, VIC II), or personal connection (CKII) of other Paradox games
it just feels like a complicated menu simulator.

------
i_am_proteus
I appreciate the direct mention of his motivation for writing.

>I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's
Wish: The Conqueror.

~~~
gnat
I've been reading Vogel's writing for something like 25 years now, and it
always repays the time. He's entertaining but thoughtful with it.

~~~
pvg
First heard of him reading this which is very nearly 25 years old.

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.games/-ShSyZ8bv...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.games/-ShSyZ8bvcs/LniQHEyxP-
UJ)

------
akozak
A lot of what we do can be explained (or "reduced") to chemical processes that
reward or reinforce behavior. Is there a chemical difference between this and
the pleasure some get from reading great literary works, building a birdhouse,
playing with your kids, etc?

A key question on the ethics of it all is - I think - whether there is some
externality from the behavior that leads to social utility. Reading literature
might make you more understanding and empathetic of others' experiences for
example. Gambling in a casino, maybe not so much (though certainly it creates
jobs, etc).

I'm excited by the idea that neurochemical feedback loops in gaming _could_
create some positive social utility. Certainly the storytelling in a lot of
games is artistic and meaningful, but maybe we'll find even better ways to
directly channel those brain cycles, along the lines of protein folding games
but with more depth. (Neal Stephenson had some interesting ideas for this in
Fall or Reamde - can't remember - where an MMORPG had an API similar to
mechanical turk where players were rewarded for cognitive tasks in the real
world like airport security)

edit: I guess we shouldn't forget that games are fun too, and doesn't
necessarily need to be deeper than that to be good.

~~~
cousin_it
> _Is there a chemical difference between this and the pleasure some get from
> reading great literary works_

Yes, and that difference is the whole point of art vs entertainment. After
consuming entertainment, you want more entertainment. But after consuming art
- after reading The Great Gatsby - your eyes get yanked back to your own life.
You start thinking "what doomed dreams do I have?", not "when will they
release Great Gatsby 2?"

~~~
ahaferburg
Note that the comment didn't say books vs games. A video game can be art, and
a book can be entertainment.

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
_Suppose the people who hate free to play games win the argument and get rid
of microtransactions. Suppose they change the laws so you have to get your
looter shooter Destiny /Anthem/Division dopamine drip for one fair fixed
price. So you're grinding hundreds of hours to get better armor, but you
aren't spending more money. Just time._

If it’s a single fixed price, what is incentivizing the developer to make the
game more addictive? Purchasing the sequel? Wouldn’t the developer instead be
incentivized to make a game with novel and compelling gameplay that isn’t
necessarily addictive?

~~~
socialist_coder
If your game only has 10 hours of gameplay, people will complain that it's too
short. Then your game gets bad reviews and you don't eat.

So you need to have more gameplay, and that's either through cleverly
addictive game mechanics or a ton of expensive to produce content.

~~~
karlp
Plenty of games have less than 10h of gameplay, and an even bigger amount of
games have less than 10h of non grind gameplay. Portal is a good example

------
jancsika
> Look, if an ADULT spends $500 of their hard earned money to buy Fortnitebux
> or Smurfberries or whatever, I don't know what business it is of yours. If
> an adult wants to spend cash on beer or DLC or opera tickets or loot boxes,
> it's their right.

I was ready to write an angry 10,000 word response on the importance of
private property and the free market system. But reading this paragraph de-
escalated the situation enough for me to realize this article was only a
general overview of the industry they work in.

~~~
xg15
Well, the article provides some good points why a free market system does not
work.

The basis of free markets is that participants act rational and have full
knowledge.

Yet here we are researching increasingly sophisticated ways to undercut their
rationality...

~~~
sien
The basis of free markets is that on balance people with radically different
preferences will make better choices more aligned with their preferences and
local knowledge than other systems do.

Markets perform better than other allocation systems for many things. It's an
observed principle rather than something that was directed from above.

Some economic models assume people are rational because on aggregate it works
for those models.

Mostly market systems have substantially outperformed centrally controlled
systems.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If you take a descriptive (vs. prescriptive) view of the free market, you have
to include _all_ observations.

Yes, we've observed that under free market, "people with radically different
preferences will make better choices more aligned with their preferences and
local knowledge", at least on many occasions. We've also observed countless of
occasions when they'll make a _worse_ choice. Sometimes idiotically worse
choice. We've observed the cases where those choices, aggregated, cause wide-
spread suffering.

So many people were asking a question - why does free market work perfectly in
some cases, but fails so badly in others? That's where the "rationality" and
"full knowledge" things come from. Economists have figured out that these are
necessary conditions for the free market model to work the best. When you make
people behave irrationally, or refuse to give them full knowledge, the free
market model results in suboptimal outcomes.

Free market isn't a silver bullet. It's a process that gives particular
outputs for particular inputs, and we've been mapping the relationship between
its domain and codomain for a while now. We know that the more rational
participants and the more symmetrical information come in, the more ethically
positive transactions come out. This can be seen in both theoretical models
and in practice.

Now when the game industry is "researching increasingly sophisticated ways to
undercut [players'] rationality", what that means is that they're weaponizing
the free market to fuck fellow human beings over.

------
doctorpangloss
It’s a flavorful point of view but it really is about IAP. Only truly mad
people go out and defend virtual slot machines, and that’s definitely the
virus (smallest reproducing harmful life form) of the game industry.

------
LMYahooTFY
I have a lot of (my own, highly speculative and uncertified) thoughts on this,
and if you'll indulge me in some cynacism I'll try to highlight what doesn't
feel quite right.

If you're curious about how this is developing, try Black Desert Online. It's
a really remarkably polished game that is truly unique. It's a PvP action
fighting game encapsulated by an immersive RPG with a load of different ways
to play the game.

It's almost terrifyingly well crafted.

There is a startlingly well designed progression system pivoted around raising
your attack and defense rating to fight against other players in the various
fields of battle. In every one of the sub routines within this intricate
Skinner Box there is an efficiency modifier which can be metered through the
use of USD,

All of these sub routines inevitably connect at the central purpose of pumping
black stones, or as I'll refer to them, probability stones into your gear with
a chance of either raising their rating, lowering their rating, or in certain
cases destroying them completely. Sometimes the undesired outcomes can be
negated through further remittance of USD, for this and certain other mini-
games as well.

There is a tightly controlled exchange of goods through a central system
(which collects a tax unless you pay for a buff every month), with only a
small number of consumable items being transferable between players.

You are utterly economically isolated in the game.

This is not a new phenomenon, but I think it's clearly evolving.

Casinos were built on it, and so are many of these so-called "Korean MMOs".

Pearl Abyss has enjoyed massive success and, to my dismay, has purchased CCP
Games, developer of EVE Online.

[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_gam...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_game_design.php)

I hope these system designs are less insidious than my experience has led me
to believe.

Edit: I'll add that I've read supposedly regulatory action is being taken, I
read somewhere that China was or is imposing a rule for disclosure of
probabilities in at least some circumstances. Not confident on veracity.

Curiously, in certain regions there are apparently varying or no limits on
purchase of "cash shop" items, while in others (like NA) there are. Also worth
noting that within the game, players who've paid the most into the cash shop
are called "whales".

Edit2: Last I looked they boast a player base in the 2-3 million range.

------
crawfordcomeaux
As a recovering gaming addict, the author doesn't realize behavioral
addictions can lead to a person becoming suicidal.

Or doesn't care. Or cares and has no idea how to live an ethically sustainable
and interdependent life.

------
stillsut
Me: I can't see how people can put money into a slot machine or a video game
and take pleasure from that.

Also me: gcp compute model.fit(epochs=20) _watches error trend downwards_

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Most people find pleasure in it once they do it. But perhaps it's not for
everybody.

Have you ever tried?

------
p1mrx
Compare this to a game like Beat Saber, where you can play any level, at any
difficulty, in any order, and the computer just keeps track of your score. 99%
of the game state is in your brain, so the only way to progress is by learning
how to interpret the patterns and coordinate your body. It's also anti-
addictive, because playing for more than a few hours is physically exhausting.

------
ahaferburg
Great talk from the author:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs)

> _In this GDC 2018 talk, Spiderweb Software 's Jeff Vogel presents a
> retrospective on his company's history and how they've managed to stay in
> the game-making business since 1994._

------
yahnusername
I dunno, calling people unsophisticated drug dealers because their game
designs don't value the same dimensions of fun as your game designs seems
pretty judgemental.

> This isn't an editorial. I'm not judging anyone. I write computer RPGs for a
> living. My games are crude and low-budget, but they give you your modest
> dopamine dose for a far more reasonable price than the free-to-play drug
> lords over on Android. I even throw in a decent story to put a patina of
> sophistication on the whole thing.

------
goodside
Bad, sloppy, breathless writing. Reiterating the central metaphor for pages on
end doesn’t make it right. It’s like the author really wanted to vent with
their preferred insult for more successful game developers and needed a few
pages of folksy pop-psych nonsense to justify it.

If there’s any kernel of truth here, it’s nothing new. Likening commercial
online games to drugs is as old as “Evercrack”.

