[matheusmoreira]

> they're just people with an addiction

Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself.

Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups reinforce each other's behavior. The goal is to get them to log in every day and invest in the game.

People pay money to uncap their progression. This turns these games into spending competitions: whoever spends the most money wins the game. The corporation is the only true winner of course.

I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating. I reverse engineered the game and wrote a bot for it. All those silly tasks were now getting done automatically, my progression was assured and the game's hold over me was destroyed. The best part was my bot was statistically indistinguishable from a sufficiently addicted player due to the game's own design. I'd like to believe I helped destroy that game.

[nonrandomstring]

> I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating. I reverse engineered the game and wrote a bot for it. All those silly tasks were now getting done automatically, my progression was assured and the game's hold over me was destroyed.

This is absolutely fascinating. It's something I kinda missed from Digital Vegan, thinking that extrication would be a matter only of self-mastery and access to good information rather than fighting back. Most people do not have that capability.

But fighting back is exactly what you've done, and it's worked for you. I wrote earlier that the relationship between users and developers is increasingly an adversarial one [1]. Things like "right to repair" have become an open battle between ecological common-sense and pure greed. Where your health, wealth and environment is under attack from rampant greed a legitimate (moral/ethical) response to hostile technology is obviously hacking back.

But it's not a universalisable moral principle, unless we want a descent into chaos and digital "civil war". Therefore the proper solution is to start recognising what some of these companies are doing as crimes. You need the law on your side when you act in self-defence.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31626063

[matheusmoreira]

EFF calls this adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

A digital civil war is preferable to surrendering to the designs of exploitative corporations. We should fight back on principle. We should block ads and tracking, scrape websites, reverse engineer private APIs, violate DRM technology, replace their proprietary apps with our own free software that we control, feed them false data to poison their data sets... We should do everything we possibly can to defeat any attempt to exploit us. We don't need their permission to do it either.

Turning things into crimes is the corporation's game. They're the ones with billions of dollars and expensive lobbyists. We shouldn't be trying to beat them in this space. We need ubiquitous subversive technology that neutralizes their exploitation whether the laws allow it or not. It shouldn't matter whether it's legal or illegal. We need technology that makes it impossible for them to exploit us in any way, and we define what is and isn't acceptable or exploitative.

[geysersam]

That sounds like an arms race that's both wasteful and difficult to win. Why should we not use the tools democracy provides to shape society? These corporations are not out to get us. They maximize profit constrained by the regulatory environment. We have to guide them, and channel their capacity for good.

[matheusmoreira]

> That sounds like an arms race that's both wasteful and difficult to win.

It is.

> Why should we not use the tools democracy provides to shape society?

We should, if we can. I'm just not holding my breath.

I think copyright should be abolished but the trillion dollar companies that depend on it will never allow that to happen. So we're better off de facto abolishing it by making copyright unenforceable and eliminating consequences for copyright infringement.

I think advertising should be illegal but companies like Google will never let that happen. So I use software like uBlock Origin to block ads whenever I can.

[sbarre]

>I think advertising should be illegal but companies like Google will never let that happen. So I use software like uBlock Origin to block ads whenever I can.

Honest question (and I am not fan of advertising here and not trying to be an apologist)..

What business model replaces it, in your mind?

In the world that exists today, how do companies who provide free services online (including the creation of information) pay their staff and their operational costs, if not through being paid to display ads or sponsorships?

Do all websites become subscriptions?

[wahnfrieden]

The replacement is not another business model

[_jal]

> Why should we not use the tools democracy provides to shape society?

Turns out that's also a Red Queen's race. And if you look at the lobbying costs vs. potential rewards, there's a lot of room for escalation in US politics.

[q-big]

> Therefore the proper solution is to start recognising what some of these companies are doing as crimes. You need the law on your side when you act in self-defence.

The only difference is who does the concrete fighting: you by yourself, or let the police and criminal prosecution do the fighting.

[nonrandomstring]

Good question. I'm not sure which would be faster and fairer. Police and courts have enough to do dealing with reality, without getting involved in our messy hacker games. So long as the law is clear, we should want people to help themselves first and foremost. The key is really dismantling protectionist laws that enable powerful aggressors, not arming the people with more protectors. On what the law cannot speak it should remain silent, and I do believe that vast tracts of so-called "cyber-law" are absolute rubbish - utterly unfair, bought by lobbyists and written by incompetents to defend the barons' castles. Take this down and let nature run its course to restore the proper balance.

[skohan]

I agree regulation is needed. I think these situations are also partially due to a failure of anti-trust. In many of these cases, there is insufficient competition for these companies to be forced to act in the user’s best interest.

Addictive products are another case where the user is unable to choose in favor of their own self-interest, because the product is exploiting weak points in human psychology.

[sandworm101]

It is an alcoholic leaping over the bar to start drinking directly from the tap. It is a violation of the rules and will get you banned, but it will not cure a true addiction. Some gamblers are addicted to the game, but some are actually addicted to the money they want to win from gambling. Gaining access to free ingame stuff by cheating might mitigate some harmful economic effects but it wont necessarily allow an addict to stop. Making the beer free might stop kids from thinking it cool. It wont stop someone actually addicted to beer.

[matheusmoreira]

> Gaining access to free ingame stuff by cheating might mitigate some harmful economic effects but it wont necessarily allow an addict to stop.

The free stuff exists to instill an habit in players. People literally force themselves to log into the game and do daily tasks because otherwise they're missing out on daily rewards.

My bot completely nullified their little scheduled rewards design. I was now free to play the game whenever I actually felt like playing. Then I discovered I didn't actually feel like it, I was just going through the motions due to negative reinforcement.

Don't underestimate the power of software. It can literally liberate us.

> It is a violation of the rules and will get you banned

Whatever. No big loss.

[ramshanker]

Same for me. 2015 or so. FarmVille addiction. Once I clicked 1200 times straight to farm/plaugh/seed, my fingers heart. So searched for a solution and found click recorders . Not exactly cheat but once I started using the auto click, I was out of addiction within a month and left game in Two month.

[matheusmoreira]

Awesome. In these cases, bots are not really cheating, they're legitimate self-defense against shitty repetitive addictive games. They are addiction prophylaxis and treatment.

[yurishimo]

I think it's okay to label it as cheating and not feel like you're breaking some moral code. If the game is rigged, then the only way to win is to "cheat". When the hero in a story does it, we call them clever.

[safety1st]

This is really insightful. Things in 2022 are so bad that the manufacturer of this addictive product is not only unregulated, but has actually banned the therapy in its ToS.

(If you think about that a bit it follows that the smartest course of action is to break the ToS early and often!)

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah. The thing about these little agreements is they're all about what's good for the company, never what's good for us. They are inherently abusive and it's in our best interests to subvert them as much as possible.

[xenator]

When Facebook introduced games on their site I used to play one game. It was some stupid game with limited energy, but for me mechanics was pretty new. So I created Selenium bot that on schedule do some simple tasks. Since I was little addicted to game I created club and invite people to join it.

And I shared my bot with them. Reaction was very negative. People blame me for "hacking" and ruining game.

So I made my conclusion and never shared my bots

[matheusmoreira]

I never shared or published my bot either. Gaming communities will never understand. They wouldn't even entertain the notion that anti-cheating software could have false positives.

[azeirah]

> I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating.

Oh yeah that works so incredibly well! I get addicted to idle/tap/infinite progression types of games every now and then.

At one point I got sick of it and I wrote a program that taps my phone with an axidraw robot. Seeing the progression happen without my own input totally broke the addictive cycle for me.

And I got to play with the axidraw :D

[SapporoChris]

I'm sure you know there are other ways. Android phone emulator on a PC and scripting the mouse is one of the easiest. However I'm incredibly impressed that you used a software/hardware solution.

Thank you for mentioning the hardware, I looked it up and it looks affordable and interesting. https://www.axidraw.com/

[chii]

so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves.

Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?

[matheusmoreira]

Hey, I love video games. They've given me thousands and thousands of hours of fun. Awesome games like Subnautica can bring joy to the world.

The problem is the one time I tried mobile games I eventually started waking up at 3 AM because that's when some timer resets. At some point I started wondering where my life went so wrong.

Then I started studying the design of these games and I realized they are designed to cause this sort of addiction and harm. They employ the same strategies as casinos and drug dealers. They straight up subvert the reward center of people's brains to the point they harm themselves and even destroy their own lives.

[iancmceachern]

Just like much of social media

[matheusmoreira]

Yes. Social media is the exact same brand of brain-hijacking dopamine dripfeed. They too want their apps to be habit forming in order to maximize the amount of user attention they're capturing so they can make more money on advertising. Every time you see someone talking about "engagement" this is what it means.

Software like uBlock Origin is so world changing they should be built into our operating systems in order to help destroy the revenue of these abusive corporations.

[doctor_eval]

> so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves.

This is an incredibly simplistic view of the problem, on multiple dimensions.

On one dimension, a question of to what length should we give companies the right to harm people. Because if something is knowingly designed to take advantage of the study of psychology to hurt people then that’s what this is.

On another dimension, the person spending the money is typically hurting others (spouse, kids... business partners) at least as much, but frequently more, than they hurt themselves.

Giving companies the freedom to do things like this takes away our freedom to live without others harming us. Its really hard to understand why this is even debatable.

[mensetmanusman]

I agree with you, but it’s interesting that everything you say applies to the sugar industry, and that industry has harmed far more people (and our healthcare system).

[ZeroGravitas]

Sugar taxes are a thing for this very reason:

https://news.sky.com/story/sugar-tax-consumption-of-sugar-fr...

It wasn't liked by the right-wing government, even though they implemented it in the first place. They financed a report that investigated it's effectiveness, and then tried to bury it because it showed it worked as intended.

[kergonath]

> It wasn't liked by the right-wing government, even though they implemented it in the first place.

Quite the conundrum. On one hand, it’s a neat tool for class warfare, an occasion to have a laugh about those bums who cannot control themselves, and drone on about Protestant values and work ethic. On the other hand, some chums would make less money, and we cannot have that.

[kergonath]

And it should be regulated as well, for the reasons you mention. At the very least a tax to partially offset its effects on public health.

[jhrmnn]

Never thought of that, good point. I guess in the end if we wanted to find the boundary for harmful/tolerable addiction, we might not be able to find it, it’s a continuous spectrum. I guess in the end intent would need to decide the ethics—is the product designed to leverage addiction or is it designed to enable people to have fun, which might lead to addiction?

[donatj]

I think there is a very blurry line between non-chemical addiction and just liking something very much. Say a person spends thousands on audiophile equipment where the layman couldn’t hear the difference, and often even a double blind of audiophiles can’t, is that spending an addiction? Or do they just enjoy chasing that dragon?

[viraptor]

Isn't addiction diagnosis usually about "does this negatively impact your life and relationships"? Basically on the level of "would you get into risky debt or skip on necessities for yourself or family by buying more equipment? "

[matheusmoreira]

> Isn't addiction diagnosis usually about "does this negatively impact your life and relationships"?

Yes. This is more or less standard criteria for diagnosing mental disorders.

A. Persistent and recurrent problematic gambling behavior leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as indicated by the individual exhibiting four (or more) of the following in a 12-month period:

1. Needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement.

2. Is restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop gambling.

3. Has made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling.

4. Is often preoccupied with gambling (e.g., having persistent thoughts of reliving past gambling experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, thinking of ways to get money with which to gamble).

5. Often gambles when feeling distressed (e.g., helpless, guilty, anxious, depressed).

6. After losing money gambling, often returns another day to get even (“chasing” one’s losses).

7. Lies to conceal the extent of involvement with gambling.

8. Has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity because of gambling.

9. Relies on others to provide money to relieve desperate financial situations caused by gambling.

[ClumsyPilot]

There is a very blurry line between chemical addiction and non-chemical addiction

[Termitiono]

Because a normal hobby is not designed to be addictive.

A hobby like wood working doesn't push you to do woodworking every day and there are not people behind this non existing mechanism who design it like it.

Also normally a hobby costs money due to physical parts of that hobby. A software engineer as a hobby only needs some computer, would worker needs a metal saw.

[elif]

That's the important part. Not only are these games "designed for addiction," they are written as if someone opened up a psychology textbook on manipulation and implemented every chapter.

It is human abuse.

[usrusr]

Fitness hobbies also punish you for taking some time off. But they still just happen to be that way, instead of being deliberately designed, and that's a distinction that should very much be allowed to make a difference. It's not unusual at all for intent to carry legal significance.

[matheusmoreira]

The risk/benefit calculation of fitness activities is overwhelmingly positive. Their health benefits of exercise might as well be infinite. Even such a benign activity can be pathological though: accidents and lesions during training, anabolic steroid abuse, body image issues...

The risk/benefit calculation of predatory gambling video games is overwhelmingly negative. It's really no big loss if they were to be outlawed straight up. We have much better games available for our enjoyment.

[viraptor]

There was a leaderboard posted in the local gym. It was for the most frequently coming members. Some of them regularly racked up >400 visits a year. I didn't even realise at the time that it was weird until a doctor mentioned that these are likely people with addiction or body image issues. I guess you can overdo anything.

[donatj]

> A hobby […] doesn't push you to do [it] every day

Look at organized sports, if you don’t show up enough times, you don’t get to play anymore.

[ZeroGravitas]

This is a good question.

Golf seems very similar to me. There's the random element. A friend described it as a feeling of continual frustration followed by a high when he hits a good shot.

You similarly can buy your way to 'success' with gadgets and training or investing more time.

There's the community of similar addicts that gather together and provide a social element and re-inforce each others addiction. People's marriages suffer to the degree that there is a term "golf widow" for someone who's lost their partner to the game.

But I can still see clear differences between golf clubs and casinos, and there's also similar differences between different mobile games. I feel it's worth delineating them, particularly as golf isn't constantly being replaced with a slightly modified version of golf that takes it 2% closer to being a Casino and casino's are heavily regulated for good reasons.

[elif]

Wait, what's the random element in golf? I play weekly and the only random element I can think of are maybe cars and animals distracting me?

Golf is a game of 3D localization and mapping, wind analysis, projectile estimation, and fine-tune physique control...

If you are treating those elements as "random" you are missing large aspects of the game.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm obviously not a golfer, but here's a write up from someone who is, that explores the topic in depth:

http://www.limitlessperformance.ca/blog/the-mental-patters-o...

> But the most accurate and refreshing response received to this day has been… addictive! And if you think about it clearly, what better one-word description encompasses all that we know of this exhilarating sport known as Golf. There is no description more encompassing of a sport such as golf!

> And this is best described by a psychological principle referred to as “intermittent reinforcement”. Intermittent reinforcement is the formula foundation for all forms of addition. Take gambling with a slot machine as an example. You lose, lose, lose, lose and suddenly you win! And yet, despite the guaranteed repetitive loss and the incidental win, people love to play slot machines for hours. Why is intermittent reinforcement so powerful? In its simplest translation, the reinforcement pattern that blooms into addiction must entail of high levels of reward and amusement without the predictability factors which can trigger boredom. It‟s the unpredictability of when the reward arrives that draws and engages people into the activity. The rewards that are distributed intermittently trigger and release significantly higher doses of a pleasure inducing hormone known as dopamine, than the same rewards distributed on a more consistent (predictable) basis.

> Can you think of another activity that features in more intermittent reinforcement than golf? No matter what level of golf you are playing, it is guaranteed that you are going to hit more shots that feel miss-struck than well-struck. Some may argue that the pros hit the ball well on almost every shot, but on the contrary the better you are the higher the standard to what constitutes a shot that delivers maximum satisfaction and reward. To a highly skilled golfer, maximum satisfaction is gained through a perfectly struck and executed shot. While by the same token, for the double-bogey player, a drive that is struck decently and stays in the fairway is also a cause for celebration.

[sandworm101]

It is about hitting a very small/light ball very far. It is about interaction with natural elements in real time (wind/grass etc). It may be physics but it is physics in the real non-vacuum world. Even a perfect robot could not place a golfball in the same spot repeatedly. That is the unescapable random element.

[elif]

i havent seen a robot capable of reading wind patterns from tree movement as well as humans.. again you are minimizing the deterministic factors where humans have a compelling advantage by over-essentializing perception beyond your personal capability as "random"

[sandworm101]

Look to artillery, where billions are spent on robots throwing an object through the air as accurately as possible. Randomness is still there.

[phpisthebest]

The deflection point for me on Regulation is purchases vs loot boxes

If the game is implimenting direct purchases, where you buy Item X for Y price then I feel regulation is unwarranted even in the context of harmful levels of purchasing

However if the game is using a loot box system where the play buy a "chance" to "win" an item they desire, then I think that should be considered a "game of chance" like a lottery or slot machine, under which there should be some regulation to require the disclosure of odds, how many times their is a payout, etc etc etc

Diablo seems to use a Loot Box system, not a direct pay system

[algorias]

To be fair, many such games do disclose the odds.

The difference to older tech like mechanical slot machines is that the game records everything the player does, and can then drop a "discounted" special offer at the right time to maximize the likelihood of keeping the player hooked.

[phpisthebest]

While some games do, the few that do those odds are not predominantly displayed nor they are externally validated as being accurate.

There is also no disclosure as to if the odds are manipulated on a per player basis, which I believe there are a few patents related to changing the "drop" rate based on player behavior, this is similar and can be combined with your comment about monitoring to drop a discount at the right time

In the context of Diablo, I can not find the Odds of their loot boxes anywhere published.

[matheusmoreira]

I wouldn't be surprised if these predatory games lowered the odds for big spenders in order to trick them into spending even more.

[ClumsyPilot]

> so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit

You are allowed to be in any number of relashionships with other people, and some of them can be pretty weired.

However when someone is manipulating you and pimping you out, thats different.

You have the rirgt not to be stabbed, stolen from, or manipulated.

[martinko]

> so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit

Cant believe you actually want to debate this.

[hombre_fatal]

Even if you thought that being addicted to gaming or gambling is no different for the creature than any other hobby, like kayaking, it might help you to look at the other side of the question:

How much should we allow others to enrich themselves off the addictions/compulsions of others?

I always thought that was a compelling point even when I was a libertarian for one year as a uni freshman. That people should be able to consume what they want doesn't finish answering the question.

[chii]

> How much should we allow others to enrich themselves off the addictions/compulsions of others?

the current line is drawn at 18+ and non-chemical addiction, or light chemical addition like nicotine. It is worthy of debate, whether psychological addiction ought to be included.

My guide would be that if it causes external harm, then it should be regulated, where external harm is defined as harm that, while undertaking said activity, would befall a third, unrelated party.

[enneff]

Nicotine is not lightly addictive.

[makeitdouble]

This picture is too black and white. I have no interest in EA games so I don’t know if it appliesto them, but most “social” games make the bulk of their revenue from players paying small amounts every now and then, or ideally on a regular (a bit every events) shedule. The main target is not the whales, it’s the sustainable long tail (though paying players stay a small minority, even 4~5% of hundreds of thousands of users is a big pool).

This is basically the “recurring revenue” model, it’s the monthly packages sold in Yostar or Mihoyo games.

Sure, people who get easily caught in competitive schemes will have a hard time to stop, and will get caught in nightmarish situations. The same as people who can’t stop drinking and become alchoholic over time. This is a nefarious effect that we should pay attention to, but a super small minority becoming alcoholics doesn’t mean alcohol industry itself is a conspiracy to produce them. Moderate people exist. We should find ways to to protect the vulnerables, but it also means coming to terms with the nuances of the situation.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Do you have any data to support this assertion? It goes against everything I’ve ever read about how games like this make money.

[makeitdouble]

I kinda find it surprising to assume a company like Mihoyo consistently makes record profits from just a few whales addicted to gambling. It litteraly makes no sense.

I also don’t see these companies disclose their revenue per user statistics, could you share some of what you read positing current gatcha games are sustained by whales ?

[JohnJamesRambo]

https://then24.com/2021/09/23/the-whales-from-the-app-store-...

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-whales-gobble-...

https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/infographic-wha...

[makeitdouble]

Thanks! To TLDR my answer, the first link gives interesting numbers but are very generic, and as the top gatcha devs won’t give breakdown numbers of user spending patterns, in the end it doesn’t tell that much more.

I should disclaim I do play gatcha games on a somewhat regular basis (I need to know how they work for various reasons) and follow the different communities around.

On the first link:

> Whale game users: 1% of the players, generate 64% of the income spending 2,694 dollars per year. > Medium-high game users: 3% of the total, generate 20% of income spending 373 dollars a year. > Average game users: 2% of the total, generate 4% of income and spend $ 104 per year.

First, that 1% of “whales” at 2,694$ per year is interesting, as it puts it around the 2,482$ said to be spent on entertainment on average in the US [0], which doesn’t seem to be freakish in context.

Then there’s also no breakdown of social games and “normal” games, like Minecraft which for instance has monthly subscriptions for online services, and other games who have season passes or allow to buy in-game contents like songs, levels etc.).

Sure social games must have a decent share, but right now for instance I see in my [edit to US ranking] Roblox, Apex, Pokemon Go in the free app ranking and they aren’t gatcha. The above number must also including straight purchaseable games.

It’s interesting numbers, but don’t tell us much about gacha games in particular (though the author has opinions on the subject, which I mostly agree with).

The second link is from 2015, that’s almost the beginning of the field, the candy crush days and developpers not understanding clearly what is ok and what is not. A lot has changed since.

I don’t have access to the third link, it asks me to pay to become premium (the irony), and it’s also from 6 years ago…

[0] https://www.thesimpledollar.com/banking/savings/a-look-at-th...