
Former Fortnite UX lead digs into ethical game design - smacktoward
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/342130/Former_Fortnite_UX_lead_digs_into_ethical_game_design.php
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mikekchar
I'm not sure I can relate to her stance. It's very possible I'm getting it
wrong, but what I understand from what she is saying:

\- It's not that games are addictive, it's that addicts are playing games

-If you aren't an addict then any negative consequences from playing games you experience are your own responsibility

\- Parents need to balance their children's potential for overplaying games
with a legitimate need to socialise online (and in games).

\- Game companies can't reasonably opt out of offering "engaging" behaviour
because if their competition offers it, they will lose money.

It's not really the narrative that I expect when I see someone discussing
ethics ;-) It's not so much that I _disagree_ with the points from a practical
perspective, I just think that they have completely dodged _all_ of the
ethical implications of the behaviour of the game companies.

It's well known that strategies for engaging players can lead to negative
consequences. Even if you can't make money unless you let players choose those
negative consequences, it doesn't really absolve you of the ethical issue. As
described by the person being interviewed, actual "addiction" talks about a
compulsion for repeated self-harm. Even if the player is not an addict, it
doesn't mean that they don't _sometimes_ engage in self-harm. Giving them that
option because there is no other profitable way to create the game, _still_
results in self-harm by your player base.

One could write a lot about these kinds of issues, but I find it disturbing
that someone apparently interested in discussing ethics in the gaming industry
seems to be saying, "Yeah, there are problems, but they totally aren't my
fault".

~~~
ydb
As a young girl, I was absolutely addicted to playing games. My drug of choice
was _Final Fantasy_ , because it allowed me an entirely new world to explore.
I could escape the bullies; I could escape my father.

Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have
taken over the industry. Take for example the microtransactions that so many
gamers lament. What of a beautiful narrative, empathetic characters, and
engaging _gameplay_ (since they are _games_ after all)? I'm not entirely
certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest
common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium
for the masses that so many hoped it could be.

~~~
beenBoutIT
The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier
than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that
only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.

~~~
maccard
> For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once
> upfront are a relic of the past.

I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro
transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't
mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead.
They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime
example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few
exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman,
Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has
games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case
of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech,
Into the Breach.

All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as
standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid
for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p
(Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of
exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro
transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the
game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in
wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right
now.

~~~
krageon
I appreciate that you framed this comment as if you're inviting discussion and
subsequently shut down all responses by saying that they are "cherry-picking
some of my specific examples" and re-claiming your standpoint without any
additional evidence. This doesn't promote or invite healthy discussion, as
you've essentially closed yourself to feedback before it is even given.

~~~
maccard
I really didn't mean to - I more meant that I am aware that games such as call
of duty having microtransactions doesn't take away from all of the rest of the
games. In previous discussions I've had on the topic, people just focus on one
small point and take it as a reason to dismiss my entire argument, which is
that games are in a healthy state overall, and there are plenty of narrative
rich, mtx free games available. (which is what I really hoped to avoid).
Unfortunately I can't edit my above comment to clarify or rephrase!

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Causality1
>Most of the case, when you have an addiction, it's not coming from the
product

Except the products (specifically "live services" and "free to play" games)
are specifically designed to cause addiction. They're Skinner boxes. I forget
the title of the work but there's a book on designing casino games that's
required reading at half of these dev studios.

If it's possible for a company to get an ongoing revenue stream from a game
then the game is designed to extract the maximum possible amount of revenue
from its players.

~~~
bladewolf47
Are referring to Addiction by Design? This article reminded me of that book

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13748038-addiction-by-
de...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13748038-addiction-by-design)

~~~
Animats
Clickbait link. Site wants a sign-in.

Wikipedia article.[1]

Author's site.[2]

Princeton University Press PDF of book introduction.[3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction_by_Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction_by_Design)
[2] [https://www.natashadowschull.org/addiction-by-
design/](https://www.natashadowschull.org/addiction-by-design/) [3]
[http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9156.pdf](http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9156.pdf)

~~~
r3bl
> Site wants a sign-in.

Interestingly, they show the pop-up only in the US. Accessing from other
locations doesn't show it.

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maxxxxx
She talks exactly like PR people for fast food, soda, opioids, guns and
cigarettes talk. “Let’s be rational”, “only a small number”, “responsibility”.
They will never admit that they are engineering their products to be as
addictive as possible to make more money.

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rainonmoon
> Research by Przybylski and colleagues in 2016 revealed that less than 1% of
> gamers might qualify for a potential diagnosis of internet gaming disorder.

Am I reading this wrong? It seems to me that the abstract for the cited
research says less than 1% of the population, not 1% of gamers.

> Among those who played games, more than 2 out of 3 did not report any
> symptoms of Internet gaming disorder, and findings showed that a very small
> proportion of the general population (between 0.3% and 1.0%) might qualify
> for a potential acute diagnosis of Internet gaming disorder.

~~~
sbuttgereit
This is from the abstract:

"Method:

Four survey studies (N=18,932) with large international cohorts employed an
open-science methodology wherein the analysis plans for confirmatory
hypotheses were registered prior to data collection.

Results:

Among those who played games, more than 2 out of 3 did not report any symptoms
of Internet gaming disorder, and findings showed that a very small proportion
of the general population (between 0.3% and 1.0%) might qualify for a
potential acute diagnosis of Internet gaming disorder. Comparison to gambling
disorder revealed that Internet-based games may be significantly less
addictive than gambling and similarly dysregulating as electronic games more
generally."

I think they mean to say the general population of their study population, not
the population at large. I could be wrong, and I'm not overly fond of the
wording of the first "results" sentence, but I think that's what they are
talking about.

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ninefoxgambit
Oh those UX designers, aren't they just gods. So gifted, with their ability to
shape the minds of the pesants and turn every product into gold.

Games have been great for decades. There have been huge hits and misses.

Games have been addictive since the beginning.

Long before UX came along to claim the credit.

I'd love to see a UX team make StarCraft. You wouldn't even get functional
software.

Free to play and loot boxes are a new evolution but they are far from the only
type of game.

In fact many people play fortnight and dota2 and never spend a dime.

Fortnight is popular and addictive because it's a good fun game that gets
everything right for teens. The game designers and the game team did this, not
UX.

~~~
throwayEngineer
Yeah, your game might be fun, but I'll get bored of it.

They have the network effect, where friends are playing it.

When friends stop playing and its no longer interesting, people will stop
playing.

Updates can be good, but even my favorite games have gotten old.

I'm just glad I got most of my gaming out when I was young. Now, nothing seems
to hook me.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Yeah, your game might be fun, but I'll get bored of it.

This is _healthy_. You _should_ get board of particular creations, at which
point you'll move on and discover new experiences. There will be
exceptions—some people become _very_ engaged with Chess and go on to play in
international tournaments and such—but a majority will find other pursuits.

This of course runs counter to the business of "Games as a Service"
products—which is why those products are inherently "evil" in a sense.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
There seems to be a trend of people making a lot of money designing/building
stuff that erodes privacy and ethics and then leaving the company where they
made that money and talking about privacy and ethics. Take for example Justin
Rosenstein who invented the Like button.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/fa...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/facebook-like-inventor-deletes-app-iphone-justin-rosenstein-addiction-
fears-a7986566.html)

~~~
jimminy
He may have created the icon, but the like was invented and released by the
team at FriendFeed about 18 months before Facebook copied the feature (in Feb
2009, the article you linked got that wrong).

[1] [http://blog.friendfeed.com/2007/10/i-like-it-i-like-
it.html](http://blog.friendfeed.com/2007/10/i-like-it-i-like-it.html)

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dleslie
This is a worthy video on the subject of Fortnite's successful, and altogether
addictive, design:

[https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q](https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q)

~~~
iscrewyou
I haven’t played fortnite so take my comment for what it is worth. Isn’t
fortnite not as resource intensive as other games? Which makes it possible
that more and more people have it? I remember when I played bf3 and bf4, the
three points mentioned in the video still apply. I guess he does mention the
scale and amazon web services in the video to allude to the amount of people
playing I guess.

~~~
vxNsr
yeah w bf3 and bf4 even as a novice you were still likely to get 5-10 kills
with a death count possibly in the high double digits, but you valued those
kills anyway because it was so easy to get back into the game.

I've been playing fortnite fairly regularly over the past year, but that video
is making me consider uninstalling. I'm not that good and I do waste way too
much time on it...

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brownbat
Bit OT, but I'm curious about whether the UX team ever discussed the ethics of
Fortnite silently installing BattlEye, anti cheat software that's difficult to
remove and yet breaks the Windows preview build upgrade process.

I'm fine with anti cheat software in general, but this one felt like malware.

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sus_007
> _But that 's not addiction! That's just managing time so kids can do a lot
> of [other] things. The problem with Fortnite and many games is this is where
> they have their social life. And they meet with friends and they play with
> friends. They hang out and are creative. It's not like they're mindlessly
> shooting, they do a lot of other things._

This statement just sounds very wrong. Why are they glorifying virtual
platforms as a common social gathering ? Having tried the game myself, I don't
see anything creative with it - building scientifically impossible structures
to jump/hide from enemies to begin with. Alas, it's indeed "mindless shooting"
and showing off expensive in-game virtual purchases.

~~~
mhh__
The game is very social. Within a group of 4 you can talk continuously and do
custom (non shooting) maps. It's hard to explain, but young teenagers do
basically congregate in Fortnite (and not in a bad way).

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ydb
As a writer, this is a fascinating topic. I admire the gall it takes to make
this leap, especially as a UX lead working at a company whose business model
is addiction.

If I write a book, and I don't hook you, nobody wins. You wasted some twenty-
odd quid for a stack of paper worth nothing to you. The entire task of a novel
is to suck you into its narrative, so that you want to be apart of that world
- just as children and teenagers, say, want to be in the Harry Potter
universe.

It would be working against my own interests to - in public - attack the very
position that puts food on my table.

~~~
pjc50
Books end, though.

Even those of us who have stayed up all night to finish a huge book aren't
going to come back and do the same again tomorrow. Or pay for cosmetic DLC.

~~~
magpi3
That is arguable. I am sure there are a lot of Harry Potter (and Star Wars,
etc.) fans that have spent a lot of money on merchandising，which is not as
accessible as DLC but is kind of the same idea.

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0_gravitas
> Game companies can't reasonably opt out of offering "engaging" behaviour
> because if their competition offers it, they will lose money.

Except... they can, and they do. There are plenty of companies out there that
don't act like scumbags, its low hanging fruit and almost a meme at this point
but CDprojektRed is a classic example. And just about anything published by
Devolver is pretty non-predatory, and there a plenty of indie studios making
bank without being shifty, like Risk of Rain 2 that just released, or the even
more recent Mordhau.

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empath75
That seems like the last person who should be taking about that.

~~~
learc83
Whatever issues you have with Fortnite probably don't have much to do with
her. She left in 2017. Until the tail end of her tenure, Fortnite was a very
different game.

~~~
briatx
Well, Fortnite Save the World launched with paid loot boxes, so...

~~~
orbat
Doesn't mean she's personally responsible for that choice, though. More likely
than not the requirement was handed down by suits with MBAs

~~~
ge0rg
As was said in other threads, what she writes is more comparable to cigarette
industry or casino operators than to ethical design. Therefore, even if she
wasn't directly responsible for the loot boxes, she seems to have thoroughly
internalized and rationalized the unethical design of the game.

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hartator
Fortnite is a direct clone of PUBG. Not sure why I would want to hear about
ethics from their leadership.

