

The ethics of social games and how mass culture killed the auteur - dirtyaura
http://virtual-economy.org/blog/the_ethics_of_social_games_and

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patio11
I'm kind of torn on this, because a lot of the social gaming space is at the
leading (and bleeding) edge of metrics use in our industry, and that is
something that excites me (and gives me furitive visions of applying my skills
in a fashion which would scale ridiculously well).

On the other hand, I'm sincerely worried that taking the craftiest
engineers/marketers available and iterating directly on people's psychological
levers risks creating an industry based on exploitation. I'm playing a
particular Facebook game at the moment -- market research, I swear! -- and
there are some game mechanics which I can only describe as darkly brilliant.
I'm not going to dumb down "evil" by describing pay-for-roulette-disguised-as-
treasure-chests as evil, but half of my brain is saying "That is Magic cards
without the paper -- profitable, but not odious" and the other half is saying
"You'd be afraid of running queries telling you who are buying those for fear
of what you'd find out about 90% of sales."

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JoeAltmaier
Remember Diamond Mine. A compulsive-obsessive trap that put people in the
hospital.

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sireat
Speaking as someone who made a living from virtual goods for five years, the
article presents valid points and observations but could have been more
specific on the positive aspects.

Then again, I am struggling myself to come up with much positive(longer term,
not in the sense of immediate satisfaction from the Skinner box) for virtual
goods, as they are being sold.

"And just as with other goods and services, it is possible to use virtual
goods in business that contributes positively to people's lives, as well as in
business that exploits people and harms them."

I went through the PhD thesis -
<http://info.tse.fi/julkaisut/vk/Ae11_2009.pdf> of the author looking for the
positive examples, but could not find any.

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whatusername
Going to a cinema is as tangible as any virtual good. It's an experience
nothing more. Things like cigarettes are detrimental to you.

People buy fancy cars/houses/clothes to one-up others all the time. Why not
buy some virtual gold/farm-goods.

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dalore
Why not prositution, drugs and gambling?

Gambling is an apt comparison as these games are designed to be highly
addictive. We have regulation in gambling, why not also regulate this highly
addictive behaviour?

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ytinas
I play one of these silly online games. The draw is simple: my friends play it
and it only takes a few minutes a day to move forward. I'm close to ditching
it though because they've changed the game to be completely unable to progress
without my attention and it's not good enough to justify more investment than
I've already given it.

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JoeAltmaier
Once I figured out it was an empty exercise, there was actually no game there
at all, I STILL played it for 2 more weeks before I got unhooked.

