Valve Hired an Economist

[fubarFX]

Addendum: Trotim makes a valid point that Blizzard or any other company doesn't take steps to limit how much players play, or whatever. They don't make steps to stop addiction. And you know what? I think that is fine. It would never work, and anyway, it isn't Blizzard's job to be someone's brain, to be someone's dad.

actually playing too much starcraft 2 hurts your ladder score. It sometimes feel like blizzard is limiting my playtime.

 

[tyler]

I didn't know that. Seems mean though.

 

[grazr]

I'm not even going to explain my views to you because you know you're wrong.

I know that i used to have the same opinion as you, putting addiction down to mere human stupidity and inability to predict/anticipate certain ramifications.

But addiction is something that happens regardless of an individuals IQ. My brother has an IQ in the 200's, he's doing a PhD in Bio-Chemistry and dealing with proposals that are multi-million in GBP at the age of 22, that didn't stop him from falling victim to an addiction that he didn't understand. He made a choice to play a computer game, he didn't choose to lose his life to it until he was already hooked and under its influence. I'm less inclined to say that's his fault. I ended up writing my 3rd year university dissertation on the morality of certain game mechanics and i learnt a lot about myself and other people in doing so.

Addiction to drugs and cigerettes i am more inclined to say "you should have known better", people have known for generations that smoking and drugs is addictive and bad for your health, whilst studies into video game addiction are barely over a decade old.

My problem is with why these mechanics are even there in the first place except to fill stats like online player counts and consider them a measure of success. How about we measure a game's success by its frickin' body count? We can all pat Blizzard on the back and say "you officially make games that are superior to life", people would rather play WoW than eat, shit and sleep.

 

[thaumiel]

This does look fascinating. Interested to see what comes of it.

 

[Sel]

You know what else exploits habit loops? Corporations. I don't see anyone saying they're addicted to shopping at Target.

Sure, but you know what else you don't see very often? Drug addicts admitting they have a problem.

Convincing addicts in general that they have a problem is usually an incredibly difficult thing to do, so this argument really doesn't hold its own man.

Consumerism is a huge problem in our society today though, so it's not like corporations aren't succeeding too using similar tactics.

The idea that a video game can control your actions through a screen, as though it's some kind of diabolically engineered mind trap, is fucking absurd.

Do you really think anyone many people play world of warcraft past the 2000 hour mark because of it's superbly designed mechanics which are just loads and loads of fun?

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

I do think people make choices. Everyone has free will. But some people are too stupid to actually use it.

Nope. A person's environment dictates pretty much everything they will do, and think.

Your's, and everyone else's, actions and thoughts are the result of the values, and experiences you have been exposed to in your environment.

(see the video I linked before)

Also watch this.

I know that a game that exploits habit loops will probably get some people addicted. But when that person is losing loved ones and losing jobs and letting their hygiene or appearance suffer, when that person is playing non-stop--which is what you described yourself grazr, not me, as an example of what this does--that is purely the choice of that person, whether it be conscious or subconscious, and I don't believe it has anything to do with how susceptible they are to addiction. Don't tell me I oversimplified when you did that to begin with.

Cigarettes are designed to be addictive, and have addicted millions upon millions of people. They have developed a chemical dependance, which has developed a higher priority to them than anything else. The same is true for video games. When you're playing one your brain is releasing all kinds of chemicals that have the same effect.

Is it really such a farfetched idea that a game designed with careful scheduling in order to take maximum advantage of this and keep people playing longer, or do you think it's just a coincidence that WoW, which is a subscription based game, just happens to have all these people who are totally hooked on it so that they'll keep paying month after month?

Over the last few decades there has been loads of research into psychology and behavioral sciences, and how it pertains to getting people to consume as much as possible. It's the reason why we have ridiculous advertisements nowadays that almost never show the product and are usually totally ridiculous, whereas in the fifties we had commercials that actually showed us the fucking product and how great it is. Meanwhile consumption has grown and grown. This knowledge is easily applied to countless other capable mediums, including games.

 

[Trotim]

Keep in mind that when a random guy gets addicted to playing, I dunno, Minesweeper and does it 6h a day that's his problem and the game didn't foster that in any way. It has replayability yes, but it doesn't push you towards constantly playing it at all, or even punish you for stopping.

But then you get thousands of people addicted to playing e.g. WoW who also do it like 6h a day. Here, the game is fostering it, and was from the start designed to constantly keep players playing, mostly by using the Skinner Box mechanics Sel linked to.

I know and agree some people just get addicted to random things, but I also think it's certain specific games are designed to be catalysts for addiction.

 

[tyler]

Trotim/Selentic: I think you're both right, honestly, but I think you two and I just have a different opinion at a basic level. What you're saying about addictive games is all true, but I guess at my core I just don't think that you can blame a game, however well engineered, for addiction at this level. I just don't. Maybe you can ascribe it some amount of blame, but not 100% of it. These people that lose jobs and whatever, they're like a 1% or 5% of total players. It's not like WoW hits everyone that way. If literally everyone that played it turned into a mindless slob and lost their job and significant other, then sure, I would blame it more ardently, but I just can't accept it is fully the fault of the game, or even 50% its fault at that.

I'm not sure how much else we can say without us just having a different base opinion.

I know that i used to have the same opinion as you, putting addiction down to mere human stupidity and inability to predict/anticipate certain ramifications.

I like that you reply to this out of context, as though I put it in my response to you about addiction, and not from my reply to your strawman argument. This has nothing to do with my post, and I did explain my views on addictive gaming to you, but you apparently chose to ignore it and repeat something at me again without actually addressing anything I said with anything more than passing anecdotal remarks.

I don't want to call your brother an idiot or anything, because he doesn't seem to be one, but WoW didn't put an IV drip in his arm. Maybe you just respect your brother too much to think he could have made some bad choices?

At any rate, we're just talking past each other.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

From my previous experience with MMO's, I'd just like to chime in with, it's less of an addiction, and more of a routine. For me in early on in highschool (I was a new kid, not a lot of friends nearby), my routine was wake up, breakfast, school, come home, do some hw, playing guild wars 1 for the rest of the night. Easily 4-5 hours.

I did that for a long while. When things in highschool got better and I had the option to be more social, I did, but early on it was hard and frustrating. I had set myself into such a routine and comfort zone, that breaking out of it was a bitch and a half. I didn't try to break the routine purposely, because I didn't see anything wrong with it. Eventually I just grew tired of the game and the people I was playing with and moved on.


... I bought the orange box a few months after.

tl;dr: Frozen used to be a big nerd who played 3000+ hours of GW1 in 20 months.

 

[LeSwordfish]

I think implying people are rape apologists and such won't help anyone. Jeez Grazr, I bet you're just like hitler.


To clarify, I am making a joke.

 

[grazr]

No i didn't, because i don't think my comparisons were really strawmen.

I'm not disagreeing that people make bad choices and that's what leads to most addictions, but then things like drugs are illegal and cigerettes have warning labels all over them so i have no sympathy for some 16 year old who hooks themselves on such things in the knowledge that they are generally bad and addictive. Computer games on the other hand don't have that socio-cultural stigma. I'm more inclined to sympathise with someone who made a choice without having the foreknowledge that it could be bad, because that's not the first thing that comes to mind when you buy a computer game. Most people play games as a form of temporary escapism and that can sometimes be addictive for people, but that's not really what i'm discussing. I'm discussing mechanics employed by game developers in the knowledge that they are addictive and destructive to significant portions of any demographic seeking entertainment due to the reward system.

And sure, my anecdotes aren't really compelling evidence on a whole but it's hard for me as an individual to see past the fact that out of the 23 or so friends and family that have played it, only 2 of them have had positive experiences and incidently neither of them played to "end game", having cancelled their subcriptions after the first 3 months.

 

[tyler]

I don't find it worthwhile to have this conversation with you any longer

 

[grazr]

That's fine by me, i only answered again because you enquired. I didn't even want to reply to your comment before last but your attitude made me bite. You have this simple minded perspective of addiction that irks me mostly because i used to think exactly the same way. Before i experienced it second hand on several occasions and covered it in an academic study. I'm not saying that makes me right, i'm just explaining that if you can't understand why i think what i do, then those are some reasons for it.

 

[MangyCarface]

Ridiculous to cast judgment on nicotine addicts but not gaming addicts. Smoking is still very much a cool thing to do. Playing WoW 6 hrs+ a day is acknowledged universally as the nerdiest thing to do, and not even in a cool nerdy way, just a life-sapping, boring ass grind way. I can forgive the kid who wants to fit in and starts bumming a smoke once in awhile and then finds themselves addicted, or the single mom who needs her smoke breaks at work because god knows she won't have the time to decompress and have a moment solely for herself when she gets home

I still play some video games, but some of the best advice I've ever got is "are you going to regret not playing X video game in 30 years" It's pretty easy to follow

 

[grazr]

I can forgive the kid who wants to fit in and starts bumming a smoke once in awhile and then finds themselves addicted, or the single mom who needs her smoke breaks at work because god knows she won't have the time to decompress and have a moment solely for herself when she gets home.

But nobody really needs a cigerette unless they already smoke. The feel good factor from a cigerette are chemicals that already exist in the body naturally, except that smoking causes the body to stop producing them because there is an outside source (the cigerette) providing those chemicals, so that craving is the body wanting more of the chemical it was already producing, but stopped.

Incidently, the reason i started playing WoW many moons ago was because so many of my friends did, and a girl i was into played it also and actually asked me to join her. A friend gave me a 2 week invite and then i paid for my first 3 month subscription. Is that much different from trying your first cigerette to socially fit in?

In the end i realised they were wasting their lives away on it, 2 of them had ran out of money playing it and could/would never go out, one had lost his job, one had lost his girlfriend over it and several had dropped grades; then when as i got to know my crush a lot better i realised she was a shallow husk of a human being and thought "fuck this shit" and cancelled my subscription. It also helped my decision that most of them resented playing with me as i would actually read the quests, none of them had the patience to wait for me to immerse myself in the narrative so i spent most of level 10-60 playing alone or with a stranger.

As for smoking being cool, i guess that's where you come from and the people around you. A huge portion of my friends smoke (more than 50%) and none of them like the idea of me smoking. They'll share and lend cigerettes/rollies with each other, but if i'm out socially drinking and think i might try one none of them let me, saying "you don't want to, it's unhealthy and expensive and i don't want you to get hooked". None of them really see it as a particularly cool thing to do, it's just something they got from a generation ago. But that's just another of my anecdotes.

 

[tyler]

Back on topic--there was an update to this.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/arbitrage-and-equilibrium-in-the-team-fortress-2-economy/

I'm laughing every time he refers (presumably) to earbuds but calls them earmuffs.

It's weird that he at first says TF2 hasn't evolved a currency to replace its barter system, then turns around and says "Let keys act as the currency". Like, no shit? Keys, buds and bills (which he graphs) are very clearly the currency of the TF2 economy. I dunno, am I being an idiot here

 

[TMP]

The silly thing is that Keys, Buds, Bills, and Refined are actually all really considered as currencies in the game, just differently valued and tiered. Though I don't know anyone who's bought an unusual with Refined.