[Loughla]

>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.

[pixelbro]

I wouldn't say you're overthinking it at all! You make an excellent point, and as a game developer it's something I have to consider. Our mission is to craft joy for our players, but I certainly cannot afford to rule out any potential in terms of designing our games to be more engaging.

On the other hand, I've witnessed many instances of gamers who have fallen victim to habit-forming mechanics that continue sinking hours and dollars into a game daily but also say that they no longer truly enjoy the time they spend in that game. There's many aspects that play into that sort of behavior which games can be designed to exploit, not least of which being the sunk cost fallacy and fear of missing out: a player who has reached the endgame might have run out of interesting content to play through but feel obliged to continuously "defend their title". They're encouraged to keep coming back long after it stops being fun by being constantly presented with what appears to be an existential threat to the supremacy they have labored towards.

At that point I think we can safely say that such a game is no longer a positive impact on that person's life.

My way of attempting to ameliorate these sorts of conflicting interests is to structure our organization as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, in a way that gives players meaningful influence over business, design and development decisions.

[Retric]

The issue is these games stop being entertaining. Pulling the lever on a slot machine might be fun the first few pulls, but after that it’s simply waiting for a dopamine rush.

MMO’s basic gameplay without leveling, item drops, or any form of progression have some fun aspects. But, they need to tell players to collect 50 rat tails because otherwise players wouldn’t.

Mobile games have distilled this down even further, with the minimum possible amount of actual gameplay possible.

[Loughla]

But again, splitting hairs into dopamine rush versus actual fun is simply semantics. Fun = dopamine rush. Does it matter if you are cognizant of the fun, or do the chemicals matter?

To be clear, I am 100% in agreement with you. Most mobile games (and honestly, most pc games at this point with their item and resource gathering mechanics; and I am absolutely talking about MMO's - there's a reason many many many franchises are working toward a multi-player experience instead of focusing on the single player game) aren't supposed to be 'fun'. They're supposed to be addictive, and I believe it is a real problem, especially for kids growing up learning that a dopamine hit is just one iphone game away.

Anyway, though, I guess my point is - it's all semantics. When you say, it's not 'fun', it's just a dopamine rush, developers and sales people can say that's just the same thing. They can argue that people wouldn't play unless they received some kind of value out of it.

To be honest, I've forgotten where I started with all this, other than to say - when you have to split hairs on the definition, it leaves room for people to interpret their own meaning and ignore nuance. Therefore, this is an argument that people don't want to hear, engage with, or consider, I believe.

[Retric]

I don’t think you can say fun = dopamine rush. A dopamine rush works when the periods between them aren’t fun. However, when drunkenly singing drinking songs with your friends it’s overall a pleasant experience rather than having moments of happiness and long segments of boredom.

So what I am saying is gamers have mostly forgotten what it is to have fun in games. Playing around with cheese wheels in Skyrim is different from grinding a character to game breaking power and killing everything in one hit. Challenges based in getting better at the mechanics are different than challenges based on pure time investment.

IMO the three pillars of a great game are entertainment, fun/joy aka playing, and dopamine rushes. Portal 1 was a standout for having all three, but it’s hard to pull off.