
Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us - smacktoward
http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/12/13/hi-im-from-the-games-industry-governments-please-stop-us/
======
adrtessier
> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but
> warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some
> people are losing catastrophically."

I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology
behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has
probably read Vance Packard's _The Hidden Persuaders_ , which was released,
oh, _58 years ago_. People _know_ what pushes their buttons, too, and we have
a name for it: _interest_. Not "manipulation". Certainly not "psychological
warfare".

Marketing and advertising might seem to be refined in this dopamine-heavy,
short-attention-span social gaming age, but this shit has been around as long
as humanity itself has existed. Some people have better impulse control than
others; it's not the state's job to regulate the impulses of their populaces,
or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. It's a slippery slope
that would take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry,
an industry which is pretty much necessary for the vast majority of the
citizenry to even know _what is out there to purchase_.

Furthermore, how would one even decide where the line between manipulative
consumption and social signaling is? Some people want to own all the capital
ships; they have some social hierarchy in some subculture standing upon it.
Should I regulate that, too, and force them to have the same consumption
values and preferences that I do? Should we take this a step further and ban
all vices? Let's see how fast American society would fall apart if we banned
alcohol again.

FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big
branded items, I don't know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just
because I feel this way, I don't go around trying to violently force that
opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me.

~~~
guntars
So in your opinion there's nothing a gaming or marketing company can do that's
legal now, but really shouldn't be?

I'm also not buying that it's a slippery slope and banning, say, cross
compiling profiles on customers from different, unrelated platforms would
"take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry".

In capitalism, companies will do everything within the legal framework to make
more money. That's their job. Ours is to set and adjust those bounds to keep
the whole system productive.

~~~
nostromo
Take a look at someone who spent $30k on ships in Star Citizen.

[http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-
sta...](http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-star-citizen-
ships/)

He seems like a reasonable person to me. He's not in financial ruin. He
doesn't seem to regret his purchase. He's just putting money into his hobby,
the same way a different 40 year old would buy an "unproductive" boat or an
"unproductive" Rolex.

~~~
zouhair
When you buy a boat or a Rolex, you own a boat or a Rolex. Now you can buy all
Star Citizen's ship you will own nothing, if tomorrow they decide to close
their servers you are pretty much screwed.

~~~
brc
With a boat, you might spend thousands on consumables. All that you have left
is the memories of driving the boat around.

Some guys spend $100k to go motor racing for a season in single-make cars. At
the end of it, they don't own anything but any trophies they might have picked
up.

If people want to spend money on digital goods, putting up walls to stop or
make it harder is unlikely to be successful unless you outright ban it with
heavy punishment for use.

That hasn't worked so well for other items in a similar category, and digital
goods are completely victimless.

~~~
jhanschoo
I don't really buy into this argument. Regulating the sale digital goods
works. Companies that wish to remain legal will refrain from the sale of
digital goods in an illegal manner; mandatory company audits will be a vector
governments use to enforce that.

The article and others in the thread have given arguments that digital goods
are not victimless. Most societies acknowledge that gambling is harmful;
digital gambling with fake money or with time spent in-game is presumably
harmful as well.

------
kozukumi
Hmm this is a tough one. Firstly I should make it clear that my wife works in
the games industry. She works on PC, Console and Mobile titles. She has
mentioned several times how there is _a lot_ of pressure put on developers and
publishers to "catch the whales". They employ psychologists and gambling
specialists to make games, mostly mobile but it is also creeping into PC and
Console, super addictive.

Personally I am of the opinion that people should be able to do what they
want* but my wife is genuinely concerned about just how they go after certain
types of people. They _do_ want to get the gambling types. They are the people
who spend money. Lots of money. I have seen numbers where people who obviously
have more money than we can imagine spending $50-100k on IAPs. Some games even
have "limited" IAPs that were designed for just _one player_ as they spend so
damn much.

However I can't help but feel there is something else behind this post than
what the author seems to spin it as. What I am not too sure but it seems quite
the ramble and he doesn't actually have any solid sources or data to back up
his claim. Of course neither do I outside of what my wife tells me :)

* Okay so there has to be _some_ limits.

Edit: I would like to make the point clear that while I think people should be
able to do whatever they want, I do find this kind of predatory game design
unethical. As does my wife. Thankfully nothing she has had to do so far has
been totally deplorable.

~~~
triangleman
The original article is bad. It can be summed up in a key phrase the author
used 3 times: Governments need to "save us from ourselves". I'm sorry but
that's not the role of government. "Protect us from each other" as well as
"provide us necessary public services" is closer to the actual design of
government.

I wish that instead of running around screaming "think of the children", the
author actually respected his audience and their very real free will, rather
than just wave his hands, claiming that free will does not exist, _except when
we use our political will to save people from themselves_ , or something.

I wish the author addressed people like your wife, who is dealing with an
ethical dilemma at work. These are the people who have the choice to stay or
to leave their jobs--an incredibly hard choice for someone who has a family to
think about.

Let me offer my respect to your wife who is dealing with this issue first-
hand. Whatever choice she makes, it will not be without much anxiety and it
will not take a small amount of courage.

There are other jobs out there, and I'm thankful that I live in a country
where I have the freedom to choose where to work. Such a freedom--the
expansion of my free will to include the needs of my conscience--was enabled
by the work of men who came before me, men who used their free wills to
establish a system that protects this freedom. I am grateful for this system,
and I reject any attempts to pervert this system towards poorly conceived ends
in the name of "saving me from myself".

~~~
Mithaldu
> I'm sorry but that's not the role of government.

That is a very american point of view. The author of the article is british.

------
mschuster91
As someone who worked in the customer-facing ends of the gambling industry
(hell, I haven't been able to totally let go, I just ordered a true casino
machine for my home... for reverse engineering and pentesting)... that online
shit is far worse than "offline" gambling.

With gambling offline, well you have to leave your house, gonna dress up, and
people will notice if you fuck up your life by gambling every day. Also,
maximum losses per machine and hour are usually regulated and you can have
yourself banned from gambling venues.

Online gambling - and online playing of the "free to play" or "pay to win"
sort - however, does not offer any of these advantages. Instant pay-ins of
five-figure sums (and instant pay-outs, publically shown)... or just the
pleasure of 0wning an opponent because you paid for the "by-cash-only"
battleship.

No limits at all, disgusting. And no one will see you going down and down,
except the pizza delivery guy and the coroner when it's too late.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a
game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to
have this conversation.

~~~
mschuster91
I wouldn't call it "blind". From a capitalist POV, they're doing their job
very well.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Well, devs generally admit that there's a spectrum of coerciveness and
intrusiveness. It's just that all the devs I've talked to generally believe
themselves to be on the "not as bad" end. So it's not purely A) devs don't
think they're doing anything wrong or B) they don't care. It's the usual
cognitive dissonance of "those other guys are doing something wrong, but we're
not as bad, and we need to pay the bills."

There is a real problem -- 98-99% of people will play your game but won't pay
for it. So, that other 1-2% has to subsidize everyone else.

Some other points that I rarely see discussed...

Game developers don't have some inalienable right to make games AND be
financially successful (unless we as a society decide they do and regulate
them and the market).

Here I'm drawing an analogy to other jobs that HN readers may be less
sympathetic to, e.g. cab drivers or fishermen. They got disrupted. There's no
reason why technical creatives are immune to disruption.

Second, there's a black-hat / white-hat argument. Humans shipped with mental
bugs. Many of these are exploitable. The gambling and game monetization
industries basically identify, study, and exploit these bugs. Individuals have
a choice to make -- do I work for the black-hats, or do I work for the white-
hats? What about studying these mental bugs and inoculating users against
being exploited? I know there are some resources for this out there, but this
post is long enough and I'm getting too lazy to link.

------
LukeB_UK
A lot of people here seem to be missing the main point of this post. It's not
about crowdfunding or advertising, it's about using hugely manipulative
tactics within the games to get people to basically throw money at them.

The reason they're called microtransactions is because they're small, usually
priced at a point that's negligible. Using these tactics, they entice people
to buy over and over again, each time the spend is a negligible amount but
over time it adds up to hundreds or thousands.

~~~
wturner
The problem is that there is nothing that can be done due to the fact that its
all opt-in and is based on ( as the article points out ) psychology. Free to
play has gamed the inherit structure of the world wide web.

~~~
LukeB_UK
Gambling is the same yet there are a whole host of things that governments
have done to try and help protect consumers.

~~~
wturner
Gambling isn't the same because the money users spend isn't used as a bet for
a real-world money return. That is why when this stuff goes to court it gets
thrown out.F2P relies on pure psychology and large sums of marketing dollars.

~~~
ZenPsycho
what about the gambling apps that, from top to bottom are exactly a slot
machine with the only difference being that you can't get money out, only
facebook trophies?

~~~
wturner
As I said, the reason these things get thrown out of court is because it isn't
gambling since no money is expected by the user. If you're asking me a legal
opinion I'm not a lawyer. I'm just telling you what I've read. I'm not
advocating free to play.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
This post is a bit rambly and doesn't make its case particularly well.

I think the case is better made implicitly by reviews of games like Game of
War: Fire Age. They are designed to be addictive and get players to spend
literally thousands of pounds (or dollars) on microtransactions. They have
ruined lives.

Particular attention should be paid to games which advertise microtransactions
to children.

~~~
marknutter
< Particular attention should be paid to games which advertise
microtransactions to children.

Particular attention should be paid to the parental controls available in
every mobile OS out there.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Even with parental controls, why should companies be allowed to advertise
expensive microtransactions to children? Certain types of advertising aimed at
kids are already banned in various countries.

Companies are well aware of the power of making kids nag their parents to
spend money. But now they have an even worse tool: many kids have almost
direct access to their parents' wallets if they borrow their devices.

~~~
marknutter
Because parents can just turn parental controls on. I'm sorry, but it's not
the state's responsibility to make sure my kids don't nag me for shit.

~~~
ascagnel_
Most western nations impose age limits on drinking and the purchase of
cigarettes as well as limit advertising targeted at children. If it's
addictive and potentially habit-forming, it should be regulated.

------
eveningcoffee
_“We take Facebook stalking to a whole new level. You spend enough money, we
will friend you. Not officially, but with a fake account. Maybe it’s a hot
girl who shows too much cleavage? That’s us. We learned as much before
friending you, but once you let us in, we have the keys to the kingdom.”_

Discussed previously
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239931)

------
brohoolio
I was totally and completely addicted to WoW for two years. Almost lost my
girlfriend, friends, etc. When I finally quit I had the shakes. Literally.

One thing though is I've never saved more money than when I was playing WoW
because I never went out. These newer games do seem to have a different
financial model that exploits addiction in potentially a much more dangerous
fashion.

~~~
ris
"These newer games do seem to have a different financial model that exploits
addiction in potentially a much more dangerous fashion."

It's mostly that they're "casual" and, most importantly, primarily mobile.
Which means they follow you everywhere as you conduct your life.

------
wturner
I was momentarily good friends with someone who went on to become a well known
entrepreneurs in this space. Right before he got his business off the ground
he emphatically told me :"I am going to exploit the living fucking shit out of
these people". He wasn't just talking about his users, but the investors and
the entire silicon valley ecosystem. It kind of blew my mind when he actually
did it. He went on to be extremely successful in the free-to-play space.

------
marknutter
I really don't understand the opening rant against Star Citizen. This is a
game that quite literally would not even have started production if it weren't
for crowd sourcing because the big boys are too busy cramming the next Call of
Duty down everyone's throats than taking chances on interesting new IPs. If
Star Citizen never materializes it will still have done the gaming industry a
huge service by signaling to the other companies out there that a huge,
verifiable demand exists for that style of game.

~~~
fbbbbb
Star Citizen employs microtransaction, you just pay them in advance. There are
also whales, like the guy who paid 30000$, and many more who pay between 100$
and 1000$. In comparison with other mentions it is even worse, because this
game isn't even completed yet. It fits in the narrative.

------
jnbiche
Yeah, pretty doubtful of the author's initial claim of being "not a big fan of
government regulation in general" and "not a friend of regulation". I can only
imagine the views on gambling and drugs of anyone who proposes regulation for
_video game advertising_.

Suffice it to say this guy _is_ a friend of regulation if he's making this
proposal. It's a nice little rhetorical device but most of us are smart enough
not to be fooled by this.

~~~
necessity
Almost seems like he's... advertising it? Doing some mild "psychological
thing" on the readers.

------
sandstrom
I think what some are missing here is whom the regulation (of gambling,
alcohol/tobacco advertising, lending regulation etc) is ment to protect.

Pulmonary physicians didn't need regulation to cease smoking[1], people with
basic financial schooling probably won't get tricked by usury (which,
interestingly, has been banned since medieval times but is now permitted in
many countries), and so on.

If you're an educated, conscientious person you don't need this (and are
sometimes needlessly constrained by it, which can be frustrating). But it was
never for you.

It's for the struggling single-parent who would otherwise burn their paycheck
on an online casino -- and get through the month with 300% payday loans.

[1]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.36.1.2/p...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.36.1.2/pdf)

------
rwallace
OP is rolling two separate claims into one.

The first claim is that there is a problem.

Yes, I agree. There is.

The second claim is that the solution is prohibition.

The results of applying that solution to alcohol addiction and then drug
addiction were... 'more harmful than beneficial' is much too mild a way to put
it. 'Society-wrecking catastrophe' would be more accurate. Given those
precedents, any argument that another round of prohibition is the right answer
here requires far more justification than OP gives.

------
marcoperaza
The solution is to teach people to be savvy consumers, to have a skeptical eye
to the world, to be able to sort out fact from fiction from opinion, to
understand incentives and identify ulterior motives. This skill will never
become obsolete. The government can never protect you from everything, but
politicians are happy to take your freedom away while they convince you that
they can. No consumer protection law can ever supplant caveat emptor.

------
gus_massa
This idea to stalk customers in Facebook is scary, but why don't other
companies (let's say the home appliances manufacteres) do the same trick? Is
it effective only for some niches?

~~~
Animats
Nest tries to increase your emotional engagement with your thermostat, a tough
sell at which they've had some success. Then they can sell you a home
monitoring system and additional home automation.

The gambling industry is scarily good at this.

~~~
eveningcoffee
You can potentially do cool things with cloud connected home
control/monitoring devices. In short, I would never ever buy a cloud connected
home control/monitoring.

Why?

Suppose you have an IoT device in your bedroom that uploads CO2 values (of
course it may also do something useful too such us showing this data to you or
regulating the ventilation).

Now the rate of CO2 production depends on bodily activities. More activity
means more CO2 production. I suppose that you agree that having this
information you more or less are capable to deduce when a couple has sex.

This means that we could calculate a metric how much sex is going on and
relate it to a specific user.

Suppose that we detect that the rate of sex has gone down by 20 (a made up
number dependant of our model). We can now sell this information.

This information is for example useful perhaps for a psychologist who wants to
sell you counselling.

But it is even more interesting for the divorce lawyers who now could prey on
couples having period of difficulty in their sex lives.

Even more, this information could be made more valuable by some additional
influence. For example feeding the user with articles related to marital
happiness and sex life.

The same thing could be probably aslo implemented within a thermostat with a
precise enough temperature sensor.

------
JabavuAdams
I'm glad someone called out this "addicting" as a positive adjective nonsense.
First of all, the word is "addictive". Second, how is this a positive for the
user?

I got addicted to Clash of Clans after starting to play for market research. I
spent $400. It didn't hurt me financially, but it was very interesting to
observe myself engaging in classic addict behaviour.

"I can buy another gem pack because I'll just come in by transit tomorrow, so
I won't have to pay for parking."

"If I bring my lunch tomorrow, then that will cancel this other item."

... of course, knowing that I wouldn't do any of these things...

------
pandaman
I might be reading this wrong but this gentleman's problem seems to be that
some companies make way more money than he thinks is "fair". Because all his
sources are about who made how much. If this was similar to gambling he might
be able to show a story or two of somebody mortgaging their house and/or
losing job, taking a loan from mob and unable to pay it etc. etc. over
addiction to Candy Crush as we have plenty of such stories about gambling.

I have never seen anything similar about f2p games. At most you learn about
kids dropping out of school to play DOTA/LoL/WoT/etc but this had been
happening ever since there had been video games. Same kids dropped out over
EQ/UO/WoW, which are not f2p. Heck, a dude dropped out of my school over a
single player PC RPG (was either one of M&M or Wizardry games). I never heard
of anybody becoming homeless trying to get their Farmville's dog to lv85. All
there is are stories about somebody spending thousands of dollars at once to
by some magic crystals in some stupid cell phone game. While it looks pretty
stupid it does not seem any more danger to society than people buying pieces
of painted canvas for millions and even tens of millions at art auctions.

------
oldmanjay
That this person is putatively in the games industry does not bolster the
point of the article, so I have to assume that used as a manipulative aid to
help sell the idea therein. Mildly ironic, I suppose, but it's okay to
manipulate when you are doing "the right thing" in some minds.

------
njharman
> have an incredibly fine tuned and skillful marketing department bent on
> psychological manipulation.

This.

This is not specific to games industry. In fact they are rather late bloomers
and amateurish. This is consumerism. This is production driven economy (in
which goods are produced and post facto demand is manufactured). This is
inevitable in any market with unequal ownership of resources (that is any
market system were it's possible to profit or "get ahead", i.e. all of them).

All advertising is this. Almost all marketing is this. It only varies in it's
sophistication and subtleness.

I can not fathom why people watch commercials, don't ad block, read
advertising based periodicals, go to shopping centers, etc. Why people
willingly participate in being psychologically manipulated into beliefs,
decisions, and actions.

~~~
fbbbbb
I think they mostly see the ads (read: products) as things that will influence
their life positively. While this is true in the short term, brief
entertainment in compensation for their money, it makes the life less
significant in the long term, because their time was wasted not improving
themselves. _You are not the car you drive, you are not the contents of you
wallet..._ Most people are short sighted.

(I'm not pretending that this fully answers the question.)

------
erik14th
I'd draw the line at the point where the user/consumer can't easily recognize
advertisement as advertisement.

For example, paying people to write blog posts or to friend your client on
social media without making the "I'm being paid to do it" part explicit should
be illegal.

I know nothing about US law, but shouldn't that be some kind of fraud crime or
"confidence trick crime" already?

------
DaveSapien
I have talked in front of rooms full of my peers about abusing the vulnerable
with predatory IAP's. Rooms full of artists (and students) applauded me. While
rooms of more 'professional' developers booed me. I found more often than not,
the 'professional' people that have a family to feed defended there moral very
strongly. I could boil their argument (unfairly?) down to this, its ok to
trick the vulnerable out of their money because I need to make money to feed
my family. Where the more idealist artisans where more interested in the craft
of games and earning the right to make money with good content. Its a weird
rational to base your moral actions on.

I count myself as an idealist, I care about people before my own ability to
buy things. I don't think I have a right to make a living at what I love, an
opportunity for sure, but thinking you have an entitlement to make money at
making games seems to lead us to a dark place for us all.

------
falcor84
I wonder how i is that South Park did a great episode[0] on this subject of
addiction to freemium games, and neither the post nor anyone in over 100
episodes mentioned this. Is South Park completely passé?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_Isn%27t_Free](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_Isn%27t_Free)

~~~
fbbbbb
It is becoming more and more current and relevant. I'm assuming you saw the
current 19th season. If you didn't see it, or at least the last three episodes
that form a "trilogy" or sorts, and talk about online ads and ad-blockers.

------
petke
I think there would be a better case for regulating in game purchases. Some
kind of limit, or a at least a warning at the beginning so people know what
they are in for. "This game contains purchasable items. You may spend more
than 10 000 dollars in this game."

Marketing on the other hand is a different story. We cant really ban that.

~~~
fbbbbb
And why not?

There are cases over the world where advertising was banned with success.

[http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5338](http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5338)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1125...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11250670/Grenoble-
to-replace-street-advertising-with-trees-and-community-spaces.html)

This is just the first step.

~~~
CM30
Random related question then; how do smaller companies and individuals
starting out in business for the first time compete? Because as much as
advertising and marketing can be sleazy in its execution, it's also
potentially a way that smaller companies can compete with incumbents. Remove
that, and what's left? Brand recognition and word of mouth. The former is
great for multinational corporations, but kind of bad for anyone trying to
dethrone them. The latter can be good for smaller companies and individuals,
but can take decades to become effective.

Banning certain types of advertising is a good idea, but trying to ban all of
it would kill competition.

------
abalone
He brings up a bunch of things, only one of which applies to Star Citizen: the
"addictive" element of collecting things. Star Citizen is a game with
genuinely exciting concepts and visuals exhibited in their marketing. The
"addictive" thing that appears to have driven part of their $100M fundraise is
prepurchasing cool-looking spaceships.

But how would you regulate that? And what would be the impact on Lego kits,
Star Wars action figures, Beanie Babies, coins, stamps, and other real-world
collectibles? They have the same issues with OCD. Wouldn't it be arbitrary to
limit it to software?

If found it interesting that the author left the _most_ potentially
regulatable thing about Star Citizen untouched: consumer protections for
crowdfunding investments.

------
swiley
I don't think I've ever thought of "addictive" as a positive attribute to a
game. Reddit and HN are addictive, I want entertainment that I can leave when
I want and that has depth.

~~~
chejazi
I don't play games, but my roommate does for several hours every day. I asked
him about it and he said he loves being immersed in it, and finds it much more
engaging than other forms of entertainment, such as watching a movie. I
wouldn't call him "addicted" though. We hang out all the time, and I never see
the sort of desperation that the author describes.

...

Are there specific genre's of games that have the sorts of traps the author
describes? A giant achievement screen sounds like it could be in any game, but
I'd be curious to hear of any patterns recognized by others.

~~~
jml7c5
>Are there specific genre's of games that have the sorts of traps the author
describes?

Free-to-play games are the obvious example. MMORPGs are another, though I
would say they are somewhat less sinister as — while they use many
psychological tricks to keep players coming back — they are at the core
generally an attempt to produce an interesting or enjoyable game world, which
is generally not the primary goal in F2P games.

I feel one of the worst (or at least most interesting) offenders for gambling
is Valve, through Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike. In those games people
can buy "keys" to open randomly dropped "chests" which may or may not contain
valuable items (valuable in the sense that they can be traded to other players
for sometimes hundreds of dollars in Steambux). They are essentially running a
lottery. I will concede that it's quite similar to Magic: The Gathering's
business model (small chance to find something valuable!), but something about
the exact implementation (perhaps the ease of trading and valuation of items,
or the heavy use of Steambux which can only be redeemed in a Valve store?)
Valve uses feels a bit more skeevy.

~~~
chejazi
As a former MtG player, I remember the gambler's high I'd get opening every
booster pack. But while my cards are sitting in a dusty box somewhere, it
sounds like there's a lot of recirculation that happens within the Valve
community.

~~~
ascagnel_
There also a big difference between Magic cards and the Valve items -- Valve
items are only cosmetic, while Magic cards derive their high value because
they can make your deck stronger.

------
xacaxulu
I'm always wary of people who beg for more government control .

------
flink127
"You think you are not manipulated by ads? Get real, read some of the latest
books on the topic."

Any book recommendations? Sounds like this would be really interesting to read
about

~~~
vslira
Try Hooked, by Nir Eyal

------
JabavuAdams
Terrible article, but raises some good issues. Would like to see a better
discussion of those issues.

One problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that in my experience a
large proportion of people in the games industry are essentially game addicts.

They've forgone other opportunities, higher pay, IRL social interactions,
family duties, etc. due to their passion for games.

It's hard to have a serious conversation about games and addiction without
examining this further.

~~~
justinhj
I've been in the game industry for 20 years and I don't recognize this image
you've painted at all

~~~
JabavuAdams
Glad to hear it.

------
foxhop
Where do erotic web camera sites that allow tipping and rake money off the top
fit in?

I'm pretty sure lots of people are addicted to these shows.

------
vinceguidry
Look, this is just commerce at work. People are going to use whatever edge
they can get to make more money. These edges only go so far. If you think the
only reason Game of War is popular because of the million dollar ads, then why
isn't every single product, everywhere using these ads?

These games fulfill more than just some need to mindlessly click on shit. Just
because doesn't do anything for you, that doesn't make the people it does work
for stupid or rubes. As soon as something better comes along, all of these
games companies are going to be toast, way, way deader than disco.

Assuming that any massive success is due to nefarious attention-gaming is
pretty much categorically wrong. Video gaming, by the standards of global
commerce, is a ridiculously tiny niche. There are billions of people who have
_never played a video game in their entire life_. Game of War is the largest
player in a sub-niche of this small niche. Big enough to buy ads on the Super
Bowl, sure, but that says a lot more about the declining power of television
and advertising in general than it does about the size of the gaming market.

That this market needs political attention to curb abuse is utterly laughable.
How about we fix oil drilling, or pharmaceutical production first?

~~~
Retra
>Look, this is just commerce at work.

And? Oil drilling and pharmaceutical production is just commerce at work. As
is child labor, sex trafficking, drug trade, and slavery.

~~~
vinceguidry
So they are. Are you really equating them?

~~~
Retra
Nothing is "just" commerce at work. This is also a prime example of the
naturalistic fallacy. Just because these things happen to be legal doesn't
necessitate that they should be.

~~~
vinceguidry
When did I say they should be legal?

The political process has limits. There's such a thing as political capital
and there's only so much of it at any given time.

Most people seem to think that shit is unlimited, that we could just fix
everything all at once if the politicians just knew what it was.

That's emphatically not the case. Issues all get their time in the sun, and
the political fix is almost never perfect. The issues you compared social
video games to, slavery _et. al._ all were banned, rightfully, a long time
ago.

When I say that this is "commerce as usual" I mean that the market will sort
out the complained-about issues itself, without the need for a law.
Legislation is a complicated, tortuous affair. Society needs many, many
individual events to draw on in order to draft effective legislation. Someone
has to study this stuff in order to write a law, someone has to convince
others to vote for the law. None of this is free, it all comes at the expense
of other issues needing attention at the moment. Votes get traded like horses.

In this case, political attention isn't needed, at least not yet. There are
way too many other issues that beg attention.

------
hackuser
The article the author links to is more revealing:

[http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-
of-...](http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-a-free-to-
play-producer/)

------
meanduck
Only if the regulation get 90+% votes.

I am so waiting for the future when one can switch (mobocratic) government
like a house.

------
andrewclunn
> "I guess at this point we could just say ‘A fool and his money are soon
> parted’"

Yep.

------
m0nty
NSFW tag would help.

------
microcolonel
Cliff's comparison of Star Citizen's preorder process to gambling, painted in
_royal we_ , is obscene.

I don't like to be dismissive, but it sounds like he's mostly upset that their
slimy marketing actually works; while meanwhile people haven't even heard of
his company.

For kicks I looked at his company's website, and their top two titles are
"Democracy 3", and "Big Pharma". i.e. he makes video games about regulation
and a highly-regulated industry. After seeing these titles, the attitude makes
a lot more sense.

~~~
norea-armozel
I think he picked Star Citizen since you can spend close to thousands of real
dollars (US) on items that don't physically exist. It's really no different
than running an unregulated lottery since you can't be sure if Star Citizen
will ever reach published state (It's been alpha close to two years IIRC). So,
I think his comparison is close enough to question the validity of at least
Kickerstarting projects like this.

------
mahouse
This has absolutely no sources. And if you compare what "an anonymous
developer" says he does (which may as well be made up) with what a company
that spends $40,000,000 in an ad campaign does, you see how this is
delusional.

------
PaybackTony
This is jealousy, at the core of it. Not just the gaming industry uses these
tactics. I work in an industry that does that all the time (I hate it).

Certain kinds of games shouldn't be regulated, though I would agree that
creating fake profiles on social media in an attempt to gather more
information from users should be regulated to some extent.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, are you in favor of people
having a free will, or do you want to mitigate what a person can and can't do
with their free time because in your opinion, it's bad for them?

~~~
daemin
Well there is actually a middle ground, where society (through te government)
can make changes so that people are nudged to a better direction. (Check out
UK's nudge unit.)

So even though people can smoke, drink, gamble - there should be some form of
policy to limit or reduce the harm that comes from these activities.

This actually goes double for such free-to-play games with IAP as in some ways
they are no better than plain old slot machines - or "pokies" as we call them
in Australia. But since they are just "games" on "phones" they are not treated
with the same rigor as other pure gambling machines.

------
pascalxus
I don't see any problem with games or any other product spending that much on
advertisement if it's beneficial for them. I don't understand what people have
against targeted advertisement? So what if the advertisements are tuned for
your interests. Wouldn't you rather see relevant ads, rather than the
something completely irrelevant to your life? I actually wish, they had more
information and were better targetted. Right now, the ads really don't have
much of the right information or enough intelligence at all.

Also, since when is it to much to ask people to spend responsibly? I mean, we
have licences for driving and licences for fishing. Should we also have a
licence to spend? Perhaps, all these so called 'victums' you speak of, should
go to the a financial therapy class and their spending should be limited by
the government.

If you dont know how to spend your money, you shouldn't be allowed to have a
wallet or money.

People need to be responsible for their own spending if they want to grow up
and live on their own.

~~~
yrro
> Wouldn't you rather see relevant ads, rather than the something completely
> irrelevant to your life?

Absolutely not. The cost to my limited time & attention span is not worth it.
If I feel there is a problem in my life that I can solve with a product, I am
perfectly capable of finding it using sources I trust.

