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Game developer laments gaming industry marketing/psychological warfare

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Renegade:
This is an interesting article where a game developer argues for regulation in the gaming industry against psychological warfare techniques used in ads and customer management.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/12/13/hi-im-from-the-games-industry-governments-please-stop-us/

Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us.


This may not be popular, but its how I feel. First, some background and disclaimers. I run a small games company making games for the PC, strategy games with an up front payment. We don’t make ‘free to play’ games or have micro transactions. Also, I’m pretty much a capitalist. I am not a big fan of government regulation in general. I am a ‘get rid of red tape’ kind of guy. I actually oppose tax breaks for game development. I am not a friend of regulation. But nevertheless.

I awake this morning to read about this:

*** see link for graphic ***

Some background: Star Citizen is a space game. Its being made by someone who made space games years ago, and they ‘crowd-funded’ the money to make this one. The game is way behind schedule, and is of course, not finished yet. They just passed $100,000,000 in money raised. They can do this because individual ships in the game are for sale, even though you bought the game.  I guess at this point we could just say ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’, but yet we do not do this with gambling addiction. In fact we some countries have extremely strict laws on gambling, precisely because they know addiction is a thing, and that people need to be saved from themselves.

Can spending money on games be a problem? Frankly yes, and its because games marketing and the science of advertising has changed beyond recognition from when games first appeared. Games ads have often been dubious, and tacky, but the problem is that now they are such a huge business, the stakes are higher, people are prepared to go further. On the fringes we have this crap:
--- End quote ---


And one snippet:

This is not market research, this is not game design. This is psychological warfare.
--- End quote ---

More at the link.

I encourage you to read the entire article as it gets a lot better with some pretty shocking stuff if you're not already familiar with the industry inside.

FWIW - I've been doing a lot of work in the gaming industry for a long time, and I get to see some of the dirt, but certainly not all of it.

I know some other DCers are knowledgeable in Big Data and can help shed light on the subject. Hopefully they'll chime in.

The tl;dr is that gamers are massively outgunned by marketing departments with bots and Big Data.

TaoPhoenix:

I'm flat out involving myself with Ludum Dare but I saved / jammed this into a diff node of virtual window Dexpot, so I will probably get to it in a bunch of days. (Days are like grapes - Bunch can mean wide vars on quantity!)
:)

Attronarch:
Good article, thank you for sharing.

mwb1100:
I am so glad that free-to-play/freemium/in-app-purchase gaming model pissed me off right from the start so that I just never started down that path.

Then again, I'm not a big time game player, so it was pretty easy for me.

wraith808:
The tl;dr is that gamers are massively outgunned by marketing departments with bots and Big Data.
-Renegade (December 14, 2015, 10:54 AM)
--- End quote ---


I might go for that, other than this line:

people need to be saved from themselves.
-Renegade (December 14, 2015, 10:54 AM)
--- End quote ---

Bullshit.  Just because one side is bad, doesn't mean the other side is worse.

An article that might seem to lean towards the way of the writer:

http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-a-free-to-play-producer/

It is bad.  In fact, it's arguably worse than what he says in the article.  But adults don't need to be saved from themselves.  No matter the reasoning.  It's not a slippery slope.  It's an express elevator funded by your tax dollars.

"Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?"

I follow Cliffski, and have bought his games, and do enjoy his articles.  But he's a bit vitriolic at times, and definitely has his own agenda.  And even worse, he subscribes to his agenda with one hand, while bashing the system with the other.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/11/25/indie-game-developers-move-on-or-they-fail/

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/10/22/thoughts-on-ethical-capitalism/

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/09/19/causes-of-the-indie-apocalypse-maybe/

He's a good writer, and very well-spoken.  I like his game.  But I also realize he has biases, and they show... but he doesn't really acknowledge it.  So I take the good, and bin the bad in his conversation, passing them through the lens of known bias.

But really, if I didn't hammer it home enough: Don't ask the government for anything for me, or for the "greater good".  You'll get a new form of evil in response.

That bias in this case can be summed up very well:

“Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please regulate my more successful competitors.”

Always remember:

“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”

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