Comment by pixelbro
5 years ago
Uh, it's interesting that you see the design of your product as a counterexample, because to me it looks exactly like what mobile games have been doing as a mechanism for maximizing engagement.
You want to stop them from playing through too much of the game's content and burning themselves out on it. So you lock them out with a timer, forcing them to come back later. Then you reward them for coming back every day. This encourages them to turn the game into a habit and integrate it into their routine.
Looks to me like you've accidentally stumbled onto one of the very tactics games use to turn people into addicts.
Habits can be good or bad. In this case, one would want the user to be rewarded for coming back every day to learn programming. Habit acclimation is a neutral process, just because the parent uses the same tactics as those who use them for building bad habits does not mean that those processes are bad in and of themselves.
Of course! I'm not ascribing any moral weight to it, just pointing out the similarity in tactics. Engagement can be a good thing if you're using it to improve someone's life rather than simply trying to extract as much time and money from them as possible.
>Engagement can be a good thing if you're using it to improve someone's life
Can we agree that entertainment and being entertained can improve someone's life? If we can agree to that, then we can also agree that games designed to entertain an individual are good for said individual.
It's not a leap from there to say that a game that is engaging and keeps someone playing is good for them, because it's entertaining them, and that, as we've established, is good.
Once you take the step to make a product addicting, as a formal part of your business model, everything after that is just shades of grey, I believe. Morality and justification of your own truth is a fascinating process. Or maybe I'm overthinking this.
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> You want to stop them from playing through too much of the game's content and burning themselves out on it. So you lock them out with a timer, forcing them to come back later. Then you reward them for coming back every day.
Simultaneously offering a pay-to-play option that enables the user to bypass the timeout with money
This is the key difference. They mobile games don't want you to wait and come back tomorrow. They want you to pay to remove the blocks and just keep playing, today, tomorrow, every day.
This is not _entirely_ true, not that it changes anything significant about the predatory nature of f2p developers.
They absolutely want you to come back tomorrow. Apparently (inferring from what e.g. Mihoyo says and does about "total lifetime income") a whale that spends a bit less at once, but keeps doing this for years is far more valuable than one that blasts through the game and burns out immediately. You also need some dolphins and free-to-play people, both to fill out the multiplayer lobbies and appear less predatory.
But since they know not everyone is addicted, they want both.
Hardcore addicted people and people who are at least so on the hook to come back regularly.
Yes... I build iOS apps for learning Japanese ( https://reader.manabi.io https://manabi.io ) and recognized how the same kind of SRS system I was building is both optimal for learning and habit-forming in the same way as game dark patterns. It felt economically and morally fortunate but I recognize it’s not an easy or light responsibility to customers to get it right.
Bummer this isn't available for android
Try Memrise!
> Uh, it's interesting that you see the design of your product as a counterexample, because to me it looks exactly like what mobile games have been doing as a mechanism for maximizing engagement.
Addiction is a habit that interferes with other areas of your life. Smoking isn't bad because you're having something to do with your hands during a break, it's bad because it's expensive and impacts your health. Playing games for 8 hours is fine if you have time for that, but bad if it stops you from keeping your bathroom clean.
So yeah, intentional habit forming is using the same techniques as addiction building. The difference is, essentially, in the informed consent involved in the former.
>Looks to me like you've accidentally stumbled onto one of the very tactics games use to turn people into addicts.
You're confusing something. It's the exact opposite.
"Games accidentally stumbled onto one of the very tactics you use to turn people into addicts."
Industries take advantage of human behavior, they don't invent them.
That reads like such a weird take on that statement, that I think I had to have misunderstood what you're saying. Please clarify.
Is your claim that industry isn't at fault for addiction, because people are able to be addicted to things?