Quite horrible to think that some people that develop games know how the human mind works and takes advantage of the players. Especially when apps are so common amongst youngsters who areore easily affected.
Understanding the human mind to create videogames is a two-edged sword. It can be great in the sense that it stimulates those areas of our brain that makes us have a great time with videogames, on the other hand, it can also be used like in the article, purely for profit…
In the future, I think we’ll see a blend of both…
Well I just disagree with you guys (and those articles).
I and my fiance work in market departments and see our profession antagonized by people is pretty sad :undecided:
Think this way. Game’s have a cost, a pretty high cost. It’s 2~3 years of salary for 10+ people with good education, plus all other costs. Let’s ignore all other costs except these development costs and call the amount x. If the studio and other intermediates don’t get any profit margin, each individual game will cost x/n were n is the number of people buying the game.
Now, if you believe the fair thing a developer should do is ignore the taste of his public and attempt to be 100% authentic with his own game view he will surely hit a lower amount of buyers. Most people here believe that doesn’t matter at all. As the equation x/n show, the lower n is, higher the cost of each game will be for the people who want to buy it. The hypocrisy i see in many naysayers is that they want the game the way they want (which is a different way the public want) but also complain when games are not cheap. A game the way you want is a game you will pay alone for the entire development. If you can’t pay that (people obviously can’t) then stop being so selfish and share your desired product with other people with different views. They will help the company to pool resources and allow for a better development/accessible game/better service support/reward people who worked in the game.
Now, I see the studios don’t need to always have all people in the world as target public and that’s fine. I’m just trying to shed some light in the fact that better sales have benefits for all parties involved (consumers, producers, developers). If each individual consumer want things the way they want and developers want things the way they want, ignore the preferences of the general public, prepare to face some dire financial issues.
In the Free Radical article all i read is a case of terrible management by the studio btw.
I have to agree with the above to some extent. It’s easy to demonise and polarise because the world is really acting in shades of grey most of the time. The vast majority of people working - even on social gaming - are not evil and caricatures out to get you.
If you want another example; look at the financial sector and the crisis spawned in '07 and '08. I’ve worked in the financial sector for over a decade and most office workers are just that. No billions flashing - that’s for a select few investment banks and top brass. That crisis was everyone’s fault - from regulation, to shady sales people willing to forge paperwork, to the company that let them do it and pay their bonuses on it, to firms packaging loans as AAA when they had no clue what it was, to people actually signing an 800 000$ mortgage on a 2000/month salary and expecting to being able to pay it off… so we sank ourselves.
I still find the whole gaming debate quite funny though - online has always been polarising as well. It’s always all bad or all good. We’re casual or hardcore, we’re sponsoring evil EA or M$ or open source, we remember the days or yore to be so much better than todays but The Division and WatchDogs look awesome anyway! 
BTW, gaming companies recruit psychologists too; a friend of mine did his BA and then his Master’s in game design because he wanted to CREATE WORLDS and believable flawed characters with mental illnesses or pathological disorders. He’s happily working on those things too!
The bad side, the Other side, is of course this article and Skinner’s Box (Google that if it’s not in this thread) but most people are trying to make a decent living no matter what.
My heart goes out to small teams though - I believe that’s where creativity and innovation will soar - especially with digital distribution made possible - and where the market will be able to disctate what succeeds or not in a more purer form - marketing budgets aside.
Merry
Very informative read!
And another such article (or set of articles if you count the linked ones):
Very similar thematically 
There are free2play games that basically gambling to get good rewards to hook the player. Sadly, there are people caught up in the hype of these rewards which in the digital world appear to give them some prestige maybe they lack that in real life hence they need to feed their addiction and their paycheck towards these unscrupulous developers that keep feed them and playing on their ego and gambling addiction.
What do we blame this on, our schools? Government? I for one react a much different way than the ‘users learn how to buy to have things now’ statement implies. If I play a game that says come back in x minutes, I click on the X in the upper right of the window, then open browser and type in google ‘free online mmo games’ or some such. I won’t be back.
The real issue with this model going forward is what happens when the 9 year olds that are now getting used to that model of game become 20 somethings and are then the majority of those purchasing games. Saying it is a fad is missing the point for current adults yes the games are a fad but what happens when the people who are addicted to the model become adults.
Thank you for this post. I have just freed up about 10 gigs of crap out of my note 4. Sigh yeah their are some cool stuff gaming wise on android and iphone but most of them are all Social Free 2 play crap that absorbs your soul.
Paying for game time boggled my mind. Its basically defeating the purpose of playing a game. You play the game to be rewarded through invested time. Not to buy the time invested.
I find it crazy that people dont see that they are just paying for time.
Like what… the… hell… man…
That reward mechanism also borrows from casino tricks. They have psychological rewards based on sensory feedback - new animations, new graphics, a sound with a great ‘feel’ to it. (Remember the ‘DING’ from EQ1?) These rewards are attempting to engage our senses and reinforce specific behaviors, which are sharpened by the mathematics. No Risk, All Reward, just invite 10 friends…
Those games make a stupid amount of money. I wrote a business plan for one and people didn’t believe my numbers because they are too insane 
and the games are BAD.
w w w.psychologyofgames.com/2012/07/seven-psychological-sins-of-simcity-social/
Here’s another article, also worth reading. I went looking for another gamasutra article that I remember from 2011ish about psychological tricks of social gaming. I didn’t find it again, but here’s and article about good design:
w w w.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130702/the_psychology_behind_games.php?print=1
Eh.
I hope the practice comes to a screeching halt, and dies in a fire.
It even ruined Street Fighter.
Medierra, that link was appreciated greatly. It’s good to see something that well-written (if a bit verbose) explaining the current state of the gaming medium. Also very much appreciated that you would take a side in the war and that it’s of the players. You’ve closed off a potentially lucrative road for yourselves by posting that and making your base aware of it. You deserve credit for that.
I kind of disagree with Medierra in terms of timing. In my eyes it is not a trend that is creeping in the game industry, but rather a condition that has solidified its place, for now at least.
I 've been a gamer for roughly 35 years now and after the big bang WoW it feels like the gaming industry has taken a nosedive in terms of gaming design and quality, despite better graphics and stronger hardware available. With every passing year the gaming design is poisoned by economic prospect and revenues. A perfect example of that was D3’s RMAH.
What is even worse is that for the past few years games are based on a hype or cashing out a brand name and not on the actual game itself. They give us games with uber graphics but shitty in performance or design, alot of times so buggy it makes you want to cry. D3 sucked at launch (still does if you consider it a Diablo game), Destiny sucked at launch, The Division sucked at launch -just to name a few- and the list goes on and on.
I am definately not against companies making money from the gaming industry, but I am against companies that profit while providing mediocre products.
As a player I am tired of overhyped underperforming unfinished (but well polished) games, of games designed around maximizing profit and not player fun, of their toxic forums and their deaf and blind dev teams.
I am glad I discovered Grim Dawn, a fresh game that brings me back to days when gaming was so enjoyable. Thank you Crate.
this is why i don’t play social games. these types of schemes prey on medium-core gamers with shallow titles that release deceptively large amounts of gameplay behind paywalls.
got sucked into MonTowers once lol; first and last time.
It’s white collar crime.
I get that the article is trying to set a stage and be dramatic about it’s revelation, but it is simply too long winded and unengaging to tolerate for the sake of it’s interests.
The same hand leading approach that it talks about is what it feels like to read.
What I am in essence saying coming from a science background (caring about data not emotional context) is that the main problem is that it feels like a perspective is being groomed into the reader, with the affect that people of intelligence will recognize such and psychologically rally against the forced view.
The writer may have a point from what I garnered wading through the chaff, that businesses are destroying gaming by commoditizing players ‘energy’ and laying new ground into practices formerly only associated with gambling (where most of the psychology integration comes from); but the hinge here is that most of the profit comes from statistical anomalies just like with gambling addiction.
it’s actually more an issue that should be pressed on a legal front within societies; and we cannot even manage to do that with traditional gambling.
Money determines policy and if you find it horrific that your son or daughter may grow up to be that 10-15% addict it comes down once again as it always has to parents properly educating children to instill within them the correct attitude to in this case assume that nothing comes for free.
You cannot expect capitalist corporations and similar entities not to act like money grubbing sociopaths, just like you can’t get liberals to see the big picture that money is an idea; A means to effectively address needs, not an end to simply needing more money.
What you can do is make a point succinctly, that people should be wary of modern gaming using peoples own psychology as the means to addiction, give a short referenced proof that your not some clueless berk barking at the moon, and get on with making your own informed decisions.
-Job Done.
Medium core gamers? wouldn’t they more likely be casual gamers technically speaking.
personally i have no problems with free to play games existing that take the stance that paid items are frivolous additions (such as realm of the mad god); and at the end of the day parents need to be taught that not saying no is complicity in harming their children.
A child that constantly butts heads with paywalls as they grow up will grow up resistant to such monetization policies because that reward feeding rat learning these games employ will in fact be turned in equal measure against it; turning a positive re-enforcement response to a negative one.