This is like getting really frustrated about those train math problems because you don't know how many passengers are on the train or why they're taking a train trip or what train company laid the track for those trains to run on.
Whether a freemium deserves your money or not is dependent upon several factors:
1) Your fiscal capability.
2) Your enjoyment of the product.
3) The quality of the product.
3) The monetization scheme of the product.
4) The developer's handling of the product.
5) The publisher's treatment of their clients.
For example, in the case of Star Trek Online, due to the high negative impact of some of these factors, I'd say it does not.
As for the comic, I don't see it as Homophobic at all.
It's a matter of transgenderism (which used to be a forbidden topic in the USA upto the 90s. For example, the Samurai Pizza Cats "gender bender" episode was blocked from broadcast).
Since Q wears a piece of garment which is conventionally, in the majority of the western hemisphere, would typically be associated with the opposite gender his gender is being brought onto questioning.
If anything, it is actually an issue of fashion invoking social norms and could possibly be taken as a criticism upon this specific norm as being "old fashioned", excuse the pun.
This is like getting really frustrated about those train math problems because you don't know how many passengers are on the train or why they're taking a train trip or what train company laid the track for those trains to run on.
You know what I hate? Train math problems. How long does it take for train a to run into train b? Who cares, trains are going to run into each other! We need to stop both of them!
Fine, whatever.
I, clearly alone, see all this inside reference stuff as alienating the readers since the entire plot hinges on all this stuff. It's not throw away data, it's central to the carrying out of the plot. To me, this is like watching a story about hobby aircraft where the entire thing hinges on two people talking to each other in hobby talk that means nothing to the third party watching. Or for a more followable, concrete reference, Darmok
I'm waiting for something followable to start happening.
It's plenty easy to follow, and everything we need to know that's related to the plot is given as it is needed.
For example, let's take the previous comic (since I assumed this current comic isn't the one giving you issues).
PANEL 1: Cora's dad accuses Q of maniuplation, and Q justifies his actions as being similar to"what Sehrai did, when she threatened to truthspeak to the Nine." Now, we obviously don't know who Sehrai is, or what truthspeak is, or who or what the Nine are.
PANEL 2: Cora's dad says he never mentioned that. So instantly we know that Sehrai, the Nine, and thruthspeak are aspects and characters from his books, and that Q knows about them. He also reveals that he's very knowledgeable about them, since he knows something Cora's dad doesn't recall revealing. Q then says that he learned of this bit of lore at "Readiation in 1985". Again, we don't know what Readiation is, but from the context, as well as general knowlege of the culture around us, leads one to assume it's some sort of Book convention, likely associated with Sci-Fi and Fantasy (hence the play on "radiation.") We also learn that Cora's dad has been writing these books for a good while, since he attended the convention to speak about them.
PANEL 3: Cora's dad remembers a young boy asking, and Q reveals that boy was him. So now we know that Q has been a fan of the books since he was a young boy. This would explain his motivation for trying to get the game license.
All the info is there, it just has to be gleaned from the information provided. At the end of the comic, we still don't know specifics about Sehrai, the Nine, or thruthspeak, but that's because they were there to reveal other aspects of the world, not to be dwelled on themselves.
It's funny that you bring up Star Trek, since ST often relied on nonsensical "techspeak" in order to create and resolve storylines (Ironically, the more you know about science and technology, the less sense most of that techspeak makes). The ST writers, at least the better ones, knew what was important about the techspeak was that it allowed them to create interesting stories and explore their characters, and the techspeak itself wasn't that important. Thus they never got into particulars on how, say, transporter technology worked unless it made sense to in the context of the story.
This is like getting really frustrated about those train math problems because you don't know how many passengers are on the train or why they're taking a train trip or what train company laid the track for those trains to run on.
You know what I hate? Train math problems. How long does it take for train a to run into train b? Who cares, trains are going to run into each other! We need to stop both of them!
How much time do you have before the trains collide though, and where? That seems like critical information to know if you're trying to stop it.
@Cartigan, obviously nobody is going to force you to like Trenches, but need to cool your jets a bit. Trenches is not your thing, and that's fine, but you need to understand that this is the forum of the creators and you're going to be in the minority on this one. If you can't keep it calm, then just walk away on this one. It's a webcomic, and you don't have to die on your sword defending your distaste for it.
@Cartigan, obviously nobody is going to force you to like Trenches, but need to cool your jets a bit. Trenches is not your thing, and that's fine, but you need to understand that this is the forum of the creators and you're going to be in the minority on this one. If you can't keep it calm, then just walk away on this one. It's a webcomic, and you don't have to die on your sword defending your distaste for it.
If you think "generic storyline without clear direction saturated with in-universe references the readers don't know about" is a good method for storytelling, more power to you.
I think the train math issue would be of importance whence you are an engineer who has to form the tracks layout and designate cross-section spots to prevent trains from colliding.
Otherwise...yeah, they're mentally antagonistic.
If you think "generic storyline without clear direction saturated with in-universe references the readers don't know about" is a good method for storytelling, more power to you.
Honestly the comic has been going on this long that if it doesn't appeal to you now, it probably never is going to appeal to you. I have not been a huge fan of it in the first iterations,
@cartigan, you've been asked politely by a moderator to stop being rude and unpleasant, this will be the last such warning you receive on these boards.
So I'm 100% behind the idea that bad freemium games should fail, in much the same way any bad game should fail, because market and so forth. That said, I have to kind of raise an eyebrow at the arguments that the historical norm has been for up-front, paid for games. That was the historical norm on consoles - there is an entire parallel branch of game development that occurred which was, in its essence and entirety, based around the freemium model. Arcades provided games where money was literally your ability to continue playing the game. Some games did this well, and if you were good you could beat them with a single quarter - some games were essentially money traps targeting stubborn kids. Some games don't fit into the schema all that well since they were head to head, and required the loser to shell out more cash.
Many of you may be too young to remember this golden age of quarter-dominated gaming, but let me assure you, the notion of continuously feeding a machine your money in small transactions in order to receive a tangible in-game benefit is by no means new technology. Again, I'm totally okay with this kind of model not being your bag, but asserting that freemium is the work of a diseased mind is not only strident, it's also pretty silly. Oh, and wrong. Also wrong.
And slot machines existed even before arcades did! So you see, exploiting human psychology by creating thinly veiled Skinner boxes that make their profit from a mix of normal people and unfortunate souls who are unusually prone to dumping a fortune into these sorts of things is a time honored tradition, and anyone complaining about this sort of stuff has no real knowledge of the history of the industry and is obviously just a mindless reactionary.
And slot machines existed even before arcades did! So you see, exploiting human psychology by creating thinly veiled Skinner boxes that make their profit from a mix of normal people and unfortunate souls who are unusually prone to dumping a fortune into these sorts of things is a time honored tradition, and anyone complaining about this sort of stuff has no real knowledge of the history of the industry and is obviously just a mindless reactionary.
Suggesting that freemium is equivalent to a Skinner box in all cases is pretty ridiculous.
So is suggesting that just because people did something in the past, it's okay to do it now.
Which I didn't do. Let's try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
More to the point, and I don't think people talk about this enough, there is absolutely nothing about operant conditioning that supports the argument you and others are making. That isn't how conditioning works, and it definitely isn't how the human mind works. Spraying 'Skinner box' every time a repetitive action results in a reward in a game is displaying an ignorance of the work B.F. Skinner actually did and ignores the fact that we are living almost eight decades after those experiments were conducted. Psychology has moved on because behaviorism fails to explain numerous components of human behavior. You can stick with that theory if you want, you can really believe that humans are legitimately controlled by the conditioning these game-actions induce, that's all fine and dandy. It doesn't make any of it accurate or true.
Some games are predatory, insofar as their model for revenue generation is predicated on the exploitation of common human neuroses. Many things in life are predatory. It's an open ethical question as to whether predation in the market is good, or whether predation that exploits human neuroses is evil. I personally choose to believe the latter is not good, by and large. What I would like you (and by you I mean everyone arguing about this) to do is to try and have some accurate historical context regarding how these things evolved, and, perhaps, to explore the notion that it's a bad idea to find one example of a behavior deplorable and therefore write off the entire range of that behavior.
So is suggesting that just because people did something in the past, it's okay to do it now.
Which I didn't do. Let's try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
More to the point, and I don't think people talk about this enough, there is absolutely nothing about operant conditioning that supports the argument you and others are making. That isn't how conditioning works, and it definitely isn't how the human mind works. Spraying 'Skinner box' every time a repetitive action results in a reward in a game is displaying an ignorance of the work B.F. Skinner actually did and ignores the fact that we are living almost eight decades after those experiments were conducted. Psychology has moved on because behaviorism fails to explain numerous components of human behavior. You can stick with that theory if you want, you can really believe that humans are legitimately controlled by the conditioning these game-actions induce, that's all fine and dandy. It doesn't make any of it accurate or true.
Some games are predatory, insofar as their model for revenue generation is predicated on the exploitation of common human neuroses. Many things in life are predatory. It's an open ethical question as to whether predation in the market is good, or whether predation that exploits human neuroses is evil. I personally choose to believe the latter is not good, by and large. What I would like you (and by you I mean everyone arguing about this) to do is to try and have some accurate historical context regarding how these things evolved, and, perhaps, to explore the notion that it's a bad idea to find one example of a behavior deplorable and therefore write off the entire range of that behavior.
I'm sorry I didn't write an essay with proper, up to date citations to various psych journals validating my problems with F2P games and I'm sorry I didn't make it explicit that by "Skinner box" I did not mean to say that I ascribe to behaviorism as a model of the human psychology. I didn't even explain my problems with F2P games! I just thought I'd point out that some slot machines have been horrible things since before arcades existed, which leaves open the possibility that some arcade games have been horrible things since before F2P games existed in their current form. And that leaves open the possibility that some F2P games are horrible things.
And no, I also did not answer what you dub the "open ethical question" about predation in the market - I simply assumed that the answer is that preying on other people is typically bad. I don't think that's a trivial assumption and it's not one I can defend in a few sentences but suffice to say I think that even the name predation should maybe get us thinking about whether it's okay to do these sorts of things for a living, or whether maybe if your job can be best described as "hunting whales" you should take a step back and wonder whether your line of work is ethically questionable, just like actual whale hunters ought to be doing.
So is suggesting that just because people did something in the past, it's okay to do it now.
Which I didn't do. Let's try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
This kind of talk doesn't make these threads any friendlier.
It's also not right - I took @The Good Doctor Tran to be saying that some arcade games in the past were more than money sinks for stubborn kids (what I carelessly dubbed Skinner boxes, failing to realize that by doing so I was signing up to be a proponent of behaviorism, woe is me etc.) and that other arcade games in the past were made in a better way that rewarded good play and let you beat them with a quarter, so we should just let the market sort the good from the bad. My point was that regardless of what some arcade fuckers did in the past, if it was wrong then it's wrong now, and saying "the market will sort the good from the bad" is wrong because the market sorts the profitable from the not profitable without any eye towards what is ethical.
So is suggesting that just because people did something in the past, it's okay to do it now.
Which I didn't do. Let's try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
More to the point, and I don't think people talk about this enough, there is absolutely nothing about operant conditioning that supports the argument you and others are making. That isn't how conditioning works, and it definitely isn't how the human mind works. Spraying 'Skinner box' every time a repetitive action results in a reward in a game is displaying an ignorance of the work B.F. Skinner actually did and ignores the fact that we are living almost eight decades after those experiments were conducted. Psychology has moved on because behaviorism fails to explain numerous components of human behavior. You can stick with that theory if you want, you can really believe that humans are legitimately controlled by the conditioning these game-actions induce, that's all fine and dandy. It doesn't make any of it accurate or true.
Some games are predatory, insofar as their model for revenue generation is predicated on the exploitation of common human neuroses. Many things in life are predatory. It's an open ethical question as to whether predation in the market is good, or whether predation that exploits human neuroses is evil. I personally choose to believe the latter is not good, by and large. What I would like you (and by you I mean everyone arguing about this) to do is to try and have some accurate historical context regarding how these things evolved, and, perhaps, to explore the notion that it's a bad idea to find one example of a behavior deplorable and therefore write off the entire range of that behavior.
I'm sorry I didn't write an essay with proper, up to date citations to various psych journals validating my problems with F2P games and I'm sorry I didn't make it explicit that by "Skinner box" I did not mean to say that I ascribe to behaviorism as a model of the human psychology. I didn't even explain my problems with F2P games! I just thought I'd point out that some slot machines have been horrible things since before arcades existed, which leaves open the possibility that some arcade games have been horrible things since before F2P games existed in their current form. And that leaves open the possibility that some F2P games are horrible things.
And no, I also did not answer what you dub the "open ethical question" about predation in the market - I simply assumed that the answer is that preying on other people is typically bad. I don't think that's a trivial assumption and it's not one I can defend in a few sentences but suffice to say I think that even the name predation should maybe get us thinking about whether it's okay to do these sorts of things for a living, or whether maybe if your job can be best described as "hunting whales" you should take a step back and wonder whether your line of work is ethically questionable, just like actual whale hunters ought to be doing.
You're starting from a groundwork that's pretty faulty - a slot machine has some similarities to a modern game, true, but I think that drawing a direct line from a slot machine to an arcade game is a lot harder to do than a direct line from an arcade game to a downloadable freemium game. Moreover I reject the notion that it is inherently bad, at all times, to establish a business model that caters to human urges. Casinos really, really ride that gray area. They definitely cross into the 'evil' side of things with practices like setting up their floors to be intentionally difficult to get out of or actively preying on known repeat gamblers/those with gambling problems, via telemarketing and incentives. But, again, a casino is not an arcade and setting up an analogical relationship between an arcade operator and Steve Wynn isn't valid at all. By the same token, I can acknowledge the point that whale hunting is troublingly similar to those same casino practices, and we need to look at that as both a subculture and a broader society.
I get that you feel passionately about this, and that's laudable, but the hyperbolic tone you're taking here doesn't help me understand your arguments. If you want to talk about these things, fine, let's actually pick apart the issue, but it's hard to argue in good faith when you open with a line like "I'm sorry I didn't write an essay with proper, up to date citations to various psych journals" - I wasn't asking you to, but the term is frankly overused and misapplied. Earlier I was objecting, most specifically, to the notion that all freemium games should be classified as a 'disease' - I'm not saying you're getting even close to that level of diatribe, but we can't have a dialogue based on language like that. To paraphrase Michel Foucault, the issue with viewing the other side of the argument as 'the enemy' is that you actually begin to think of them in those terms as a person.
I don't feel passionately about it, really, and I haven't made any arguments except to point out that I don't think people should make a living by preying on each other. Preying on someone by robbing them at gunpoint is obviously worse than preying on someone by designing something that specifically exploits psychological quirks (or maybe particularly legitimate, understandable, healthy urges!) to pump money out of someone's wallet, but they're all on the "predation" scale and that just doesn't strike me as a line of work anyone should be in. Should you go to jail for making a living as a predator? No. Are you a worse person if your job is "prey on people?" I think so. If you have a choice between "prey on people" and literally anything else, should you ever choose "prey on people?" I'm not sure it's ever the right choice.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
I don't feel passionately about it, really, and I haven't made any arguments except to point out that I don't think people should make a living by preying on each other. Preying on someone by robbing them at gunpoint is obviously worse than preying on someone by designing something that specifically exploits psychological quirks (or maybe particularly legitimate, understandable, healthy urges!) to pump money out of someone's wallet, but they're all on the "predation" scale and that just doesn't strike me as a line of work anyone should be in. Should you go to jail for making a living as a predator? No. Are you a worse person if your job is "prey on people?" I think so. If you have a choice between "prey on people" and literally anything else, should you ever choose "prey on people?" I'm not sure it's ever the right choice.
Okay, but at what point is it 'game design' and what point is it 'predation'? Are the ME3 multi or Dead Space 3 models predatory? I think that'd be a pretty hard case to make, although you're welcome to try, unless any intra-game involvement of real currency transactions is predatory.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
No, obviously there are situations in which it's not okay, and I think this partially addresses my question above. For me, we cross the line into 'not okay' when, almost from an economic standpoint, the damage to society begins to build up from the statistically incidental to something like 4-5% of society being negatively impacted by the activity. That said, I have a bit of a hard time ascribing blame 100% to cigarette companies, in this day and age - the purchaser has some pretty serious culpability as well, unless they're a child or otherwise cognitively impaired. But yes, historically, obviously a fine example of predation that's a net negative for society and also very wrong.
I should add the 4-5% figure is off the cuff. I'd have to sit down and look at how much of a ripple effect even 1% of society being negatively impacted causes. This ignores the obvious and serious personal ramifications for the individual and their loved ones, but in my opinion it's difficult to base an ethos off individual anecdotes and get terribly far in the real world.
I don't feel passionately about it, really, and I haven't made any arguments except to point out that I don't think people should make a living by preying on each other. Preying on someone by robbing them at gunpoint is obviously worse than preying on someone by designing something that specifically exploits psychological quirks (or maybe particularly legitimate, understandable, healthy urges!) to pump money out of someone's wallet, but they're all on the "predation" scale and that just doesn't strike me as a line of work anyone should be in. Should you go to jail for making a living as a predator? No. Are you a worse person if your job is "prey on people?" I think so. If you have a choice between "prey on people" and literally anything else, should you ever choose "prey on people?" I'm not sure it's ever the right choice.
Okay, but at what point is it 'game design' and what point is it 'predation'? Are the ME3 multi or Dead Space 3 models predatory? I think that'd be a pretty hard case to make, although you're welcome to try, unless any intra-game involvement of real currency transactions is predatory.
Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful. We might draw the line at various places - if you don't think selling someone cigarettes is obviously hurtful, for instance, then bilking them out of cash with a slot machine or a free to play game with microtransactions probably won't be hurtful either. The way I see it, selling someone something addictive that makes them worse off is hurtful, as is designing something to take particular advantage of the weird parts of our brains that makes a small, unfortunate group of people spend a shitton of money on a game they could've just gotten for $60 if it didn't have the microtransaction stuff in the first place.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
No, obviously there are situations in which it's not okay, and I think this partially addresses my question above. For me, we cross the line into 'not okay' when, almost from an economic standpoint, the damage to society begins to build up from the statistically incidental to something like 4-5% of society being negatively impacted by the activity. That said, I have a bit of a hard time ascribing blame 100% to cigarette companies, in this day and age - the purchaser has some pretty serious culpability as well, unless they're a child or otherwise cognitively impaired. But yes, historically, obviously a fine example of predation that's a net negative for society and also very wrong.
I should add the 4-5% figure is off the cuff. I'd have to sit down and look at how much of a ripple effect even 1% of society being negatively impacted causes. This ignores the obvious and serious personal ramifications for the individual and their loved ones, but in my opinion it's difficult to base an ethos off individual anecdotes and get terribly far in the real world.
I guess I don't really buy the idea that something has to shit on 4-5% of society for it to be bad. The 10% of players that account for 50% of the revenue in a free to play game strike me as people being obviously preyed on by this kind of thing, and I don't think it's okay to earn 50% of your revenue from preying on people if you have literally any other option available to you. Just because the damage you do doesn't manage to influence all of society doesn't mean it's okay. If you only prey on a very specific, very small portion of the population, and you only hurt them, I think you're still doing something wrong. I don't think the difference between ethical preying on people and unethical preying on people is "how many people are you able to prey on." Preying on anyone just to earn a buck is wrong (if you have a choice). And game developers obviously have a choice. Nobody is forced into game development as a career.
I don't feel passionately about it, really, and I haven't made any arguments except to point out that I don't think people should make a living by preying on each other. Preying on someone by robbing them at gunpoint is obviously worse than preying on someone by designing something that specifically exploits psychological quirks (or maybe particularly legitimate, understandable, healthy urges!) to pump money out of someone's wallet, but they're all on the "predation" scale and that just doesn't strike me as a line of work anyone should be in. Should you go to jail for making a living as a predator? No. Are you a worse person if your job is "prey on people?" I think so. If you have a choice between "prey on people" and literally anything else, should you ever choose "prey on people?" I'm not sure it's ever the right choice.
Okay, but at what point is it 'game design' and what point is it 'predation'? Are the ME3 multi or Dead Space 3 models predatory? I think that'd be a pretty hard case to make, although you're welcome to try, unless any intra-game involvement of real currency transactions is predatory.
Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful. We might draw the line at various places - if you don't think selling someone cigarettes is obviously hurtful, for instance, then bilking them out of cash with a slot machine or a free to play game with microtransactions probably won't be hurtful either. The way I see it, selling someone something addictive that makes them worse off is hurtful, as is designing something to take particular advantage of the weird parts of our brains that makes a small, unfortunate group of people spend a shitton of money on a game they could've just gotten for $60 if it didn't have the microtransaction stuff in the first place.
Fine in theory, except that it's pretty damn difficult to name a pricing model which is not, in some way, hurtful or exploitative to some group of people somewhere. Life is an inherently risky proposition, and at a certain point you have to draw a line and say individual responsibility takes over. We are never going to live in a society that manages to prevent anthropogenic harm to all groups of people everywhere. Moreover, your suggestion that we should limit or ban any product that harms someone somewhere presents a paradox: you are harming the producer by preventing them from bringing their product to market. And what about products that have a net social good? Movies are, I think we can agree, art, and it's difficult to argue that art isn't good for a society's progress. But movies can contain traumatic material. Some people argue - and I want to be clear that I think this is a dumb, bad argument - that movies can induce violence. Movies can contain media that triggers PTSD. Those movies are arguably 'obviously' hurtful to some people.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
No, obviously there are situations in which it's not okay, and I think this partially addresses my question above. For me, we cross the line into 'not okay' when, almost from an economic standpoint, the damage to society begins to build up from the statistically incidental to something like 4-5% of society being negatively impacted by the activity. That said, I have a bit of a hard time ascribing blame 100% to cigarette companies, in this day and age - the purchaser has some pretty serious culpability as well, unless they're a child or otherwise cognitively impaired. But yes, historically, obviously a fine example of predation that's a net negative for society and also very wrong.
I should add the 4-5% figure is off the cuff. I'd have to sit down and look at how much of a ripple effect even 1% of society being negatively impacted causes. This ignores the obvious and serious personal ramifications for the individual and their loved ones, but in my opinion it's difficult to base an ethos off individual anecdotes and get terribly far in the real world.
I guess I don't really buy the idea that something has to shit on 4-5% of society for it to be bad. The 10% of players that account for 50% of the revenue in a free to play game strike me as people being obviously preyed on by this kind of thing, and I don't think it's okay to earn 50% of your revenue from preying on people if you have literally any other option available to you. Just because the damage you do doesn't manage to influence all of society doesn't mean it's okay. If you only prey on a very specific, very small portion of the population, and you only hurt them, I think you're still doing something wrong. I don't think the difference between ethical preying on people and unethical preying on people is "how many people are you able to prey on." Preying on anyone just to earn a buck is wrong (if you have a choice). And game developers obviously have a choice. Nobody is forced into game development as a career.
But the up front cost of games is still preying on a subset of people - you are taking money from a person and giving them back something which have no tangible benefit to their lives. That money that a parent spends because a child begs them for a video game is money that child won't have when college comes around. The money I shell out on a video game in my daily life could probably be better spent supporting various charitable causes. Where do we draw the line with an ethos like your? Absolutism simply doesn't offer us the opportunity. If we were to follow the model you're outlining, I don't see a way that games could actually be created. Game developers would have less choice in what they do. I'm all for people in blatantly destructive industries not having the choice to continue to work in them. I'm all for people in industries that have become obsolescent not having the choice to continue to work in them. What I am not for is the abdication of personal responsibility and choice by virtue of a fairly doctrinal and orthodoxical line. You are, as a probable outcome of your position, arguing for less art, and I'm not down with that.
I don't feel passionately about it, really, and I haven't made any arguments except to point out that I don't think people should make a living by preying on each other. Preying on someone by robbing them at gunpoint is obviously worse than preying on someone by designing something that specifically exploits psychological quirks (or maybe particularly legitimate, understandable, healthy urges!) to pump money out of someone's wallet, but they're all on the "predation" scale and that just doesn't strike me as a line of work anyone should be in. Should you go to jail for making a living as a predator? No. Are you a worse person if your job is "prey on people?" I think so. If you have a choice between "prey on people" and literally anything else, should you ever choose "prey on people?" I'm not sure it's ever the right choice.
Okay, but at what point is it 'game design' and what point is it 'predation'? Are the ME3 multi or Dead Space 3 models predatory? I think that'd be a pretty hard case to make, although you're welcome to try, unless any intra-game involvement of real currency transactions is predatory.
Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful. We might draw the line at various places - if you don't think selling someone cigarettes is obviously hurtful, for instance, then bilking them out of cash with a slot machine or a free to play game with microtransactions probably won't be hurtful either. The way I see it, selling someone something addictive that makes them worse off is hurtful, as is designing something to take particular advantage of the weird parts of our brains that makes a small, unfortunate group of people spend a shitton of money on a game they could've just gotten for $60 if it didn't have the microtransaction stuff in the first place.
Fine in theory, except that it's pretty damn difficult to name a pricing model which is not, in some way, hurtful or exploitative to some group of people somewhere. Life is an inherently risky proposition, and at a certain point you have to draw a line and say individual responsibility takes over. We are never going to live in a society that manages to prevent anthropogenic harm to all groups of people everywhere. Moreover, your suggestion that we should limit or ban any product that harms someone somewhere presents a paradox: you are harming the producer by preventing them from bringing their product to market. And what about products that have a net social good? Movies are, I think we can agree, art, and it's difficult to argue that art isn't good for a society's progress. But movies can contain traumatic material. Some people argue - and I want to be clear that I think this is a dumb, bad argument - that movies can induce violence. Movies can contain media that triggers PTSD. Those movies are arguably 'obviously' hurtful to some people.
I definitely never said we should limit or ban any product that harms someone. I said nobody should make a living preying on other people. It probably shouldn't be illegal to prey on others for a living - maybe we should tax it more or something but whatever. I'm just talking about the moral thing to do. It's never going to be against the law to tell a child that they are ugly and stupid and nobody will ever love them, but that doesn't mean it's okay to do that. When you talk about stuff like movies that harm people and so on, that's entirely beside the point, as far as I'm concerned, for two reasons. The first is that nobody makes a living by making movies that make money because they are harmful to people, and if they did, I'd tell them to stop making those movies. Nobody makes a living making any kind of movie, specifically. People just making livings making movies. Moreover, even if someone does constantly make harmful films (imagine that Quentin Tarantino's oeuvre is somehow harmful for example) I don't mind if they're doing it because it's art or for some other reason. My problem is when it's a blatant cash grab, like free to play games. Nobody can make the argument that microtransactions are necessary for the artistic integrity of the game they're making, and if they could (Bogost's Cow Clicker could do it, for instance) I wouldn't mind. I don't have a problem with microtransactions as art or as psychological experiment or whatever. I'm just saying that if you have to make a living, don't do it by designing games that make their money by harming people - by milking 50% of their cash out of the poor 10% who are susceptible to this sort of thing.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
No, obviously there are situations in which it's not okay, and I think this partially addresses my question above. For me, we cross the line into 'not okay' when, almost from an economic standpoint, the damage to society begins to build up from the statistically incidental to something like 4-5% of society being negatively impacted by the activity. That said, I have a bit of a hard time ascribing blame 100% to cigarette companies, in this day and age - the purchaser has some pretty serious culpability as well, unless they're a child or otherwise cognitively impaired. But yes, historically, obviously a fine example of predation that's a net negative for society and also very wrong.
I should add the 4-5% figure is off the cuff. I'd have to sit down and look at how much of a ripple effect even 1% of society being negatively impacted causes. This ignores the obvious and serious personal ramifications for the individual and their loved ones, but in my opinion it's difficult to base an ethos off individual anecdotes and get terribly far in the real world.
I guess I don't really buy the idea that something has to shit on 4-5% of society for it to be bad. The 10% of players that account for 50% of the revenue in a free to play game strike me as people being obviously preyed on by this kind of thing, and I don't think it's okay to earn 50% of your revenue from preying on people if you have literally any other option available to you. Just because the damage you do doesn't manage to influence all of society doesn't mean it's okay. If you only prey on a very specific, very small portion of the population, and you only hurt them, I think you're still doing something wrong. I don't think the difference between ethical preying on people and unethical preying on people is "how many people are you able to prey on." Preying on anyone just to earn a buck is wrong (if you have a choice). And game developers obviously have a choice. Nobody is forced into game development as a career.
But the up front cost of games is still preying on a subset of people - you are taking money from a person and giving them back something which have no tangible benefit to their lives. That money that a parent spends because a child begs them for a video game is money that child won't have when college comes around. The money I shell out on a video game in my daily life could probably be better spent supporting various charitable causes. Where do we draw the line with an ethos like your? Absolutism simply doesn't offer us the opportunity. If we were to follow the model you're outlining, I don't see a way that games could actually be created. Game developers would have less choice in what they do. I'm all for people in blatantly destructive industries not having the choice to continue to work in them. I'm all for people in industries that have become obsolescent not having the choice to continue to work in them. What I am not for is the abdication of personal responsibility and choice by virtue of a fairly doctrinal and orthodoxical line. You are, as a probable outcome of your position, arguing for less art, and I'm not down with that.
I agree that we'd probably make a lot fewer video games if you had to have a reason other than "bilk people out of cash" when it comes to making the game. I'm willing to accept that outcome! I think life would be better, overall, if "I can make a buck doing this" was not a justification for doing basically anything. I think if something is going to have tangible bad effects, you need to make a better case than "but I can make some mad cash money" if you want to do it with a clear conscience.
We could still make all sorts of games under my view, for all sorts of reasons - but making money off of people who are unnaturally prone to spending unreasonable amounts of money on the games we make wouldn't be an acceptable reason. I'm not sure normal $60 retail games are exploitative of anyone - $60 from a kid's college fund isn't the same as hundreds or even thousands of dollars from people psychologically susceptible to microtransactions. It's so easy to tell the difference that I barely even have to make the point - the dollar amount is different! So your charges of "but how can we figure out what games are okay and what games aren't" rings a little hollow to my ears. Surely exploiting someone's desire for entertainment to get $60 from them is qualitatively different form exploiting someone's reptilian addiction to microtransactions to get $6,000 from them. Somewhere along that scale is where we draw the line.
I agree that my position is very much an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of people getting bilked out of cash. I think a mature understanding of human society and human interaction demonstrates that we're not the atomistic, perfectly rational homo economicus that we like to pretend we are when we make social policy and proclaim about how things ought to work. People in real life make horrific decisions for themselves, over and over, in ways that others explicitly and knowingly profit off of. Casinos probably know more about the psychology of addiction than any other organization, and they use everything they know to make as much cash as possible. To the extent that we can not do this, I think we ought not to do this.
So no, I'm not arguing for less art. Microtransactions aren't art, and when they are, I'm fine with them. I'm arguing for fewer microtransactions as a source of income. It's not okay to make money preying on people. Anyone who is doing it should stop doing it.
I agree that we'd probably make a lot fewer video games if you had to have a reason other than "bilk people out of cash" when it comes to making the game. I'm willing to accept that outcome! I think life would be better, overall, if "I can make a buck doing this" was not a justification for doing basically anything. I think if something is going to have tangible bad effects, you need to make a better case than "but I can make some mad cash money" if you want to do it with a clear conscience.
I don't agree that it's self-evident that motivation exclusively for profit is inherently monstrous, but let's accept that it is for the purposes of your argument.
We could still make all sorts of games under my view, for all sorts of reasons - but making money off of people who are unnaturally prone to spending unreasonable amounts of money on the games we make wouldn't be an acceptable reason. I'm not sure normal $60 retail games are exploitative of anyone - $60 from a kid's college fund isn't the same as hundreds or even thousands of dollars from people psychologically susceptible to microtransactions. It's so easy to tell the difference that I barely even have to make the point - the dollar amount is different! So your charges of "but how can we figure out what games are okay and what games aren't" rings a little hollow to my ears. Surely exploiting someone's desire for entertainment to get $60 from them is qualitatively different form exploiting someone's reptilian addiction to microtransactions to get $6,000 from them. Somewhere along that scale is where we draw the line.
Right but this isn't what you were arguing above, or perhaps I've misunderstood you. You were saying that we draw the line at anything which is manifestly hurtful to a specific group of people (c.f. "Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful."). Now we've introduced a sliding scale - where and why does it become evil? What if I provide easy and elegant ways to achieve any of the transactable features by playing the game? What if I never market the transaction option and never seek to get a single cent from overpayers - I simply present them with a storefront if they actively seek it out?
Even here, even with this scale you've drawn, there are numerous industries which exist today that would have to be obliterated in order to adhere to your premise, simply because by virtue of their existence an individual has found a way to abuse them - any form of alcohol manufacturing; all gambling; the vast majority of confectionary food production - and numerous other foods besides. I could go on but I hope my point is clear. You can't just base things on how much they might harm a specific subset of people unless you're lobbying for a functionally monastic existence.
I agree that my position is very much an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of people getting bilked out of cash. I think a mature understanding of human society and human interaction demonstrates that we're not the atomistic, perfectly rational homo economicus that we like to pretend we are when we make social policy and proclaim about how things ought to work. People in real life make horrific decisions for themselves, over and over, in ways that others explicitly and knowingly profit off of. Casinos probably know more about the psychology of addiction than any other organization, and they use everything they know to make as much cash as possible. To the extent that we can not do this, I think we ought not to do this.
This isn't remotely in evidence and suggesting that a 'mature' understanding of human society would demonstrate it is very silly. If you were to have said 'a subset of people have trouble with some decisions', I would have been inclined to agree - and, let's be clear, I'm not arguing for absolute personal freedom and responsibility at all here. If you had said 'some people should be restricted from buying games they have trouble dealing with', yea, I think there are practical problems but fundamentally that's probably not a bad idea. You want to shut down the trouble at the source for reasons that remain unclear to me, except insofar as I detect, I think, a considerable amount of suspicion and animosity toward business as a whole.
At any rate, I think it all boils down to this: in my opinion humans, rational or irrational, responsible for themselves or not, should have control over most of the consumptive decisions they make on a day to day basis, as long as those decisions aren't manifesting a statistically significant net negative on society as a whole. Please note I said most, not all - I'm definitely not arguing that a person should be permitted to go out and buy whatever weapons they want at any time, or drive a backhoe down I-40 without a license. That's pretty much it for me, though. If you choose not to agree, I can respect that.
I agree that we'd probably make a lot fewer video games if you had to have a reason other than "bilk people out of cash" when it comes to making the game. I'm willing to accept that outcome! I think life would be better, overall, if "I can make a buck doing this" was not a justification for doing basically anything. I think if something is going to have tangible bad effects, you need to make a better case than "but I can make some mad cash money" if you want to do it with a clear conscience.
I don't agree that it's self-evident that motivation exclusively for profit is inherently monstrous, but let's accept that it is for the purposes of your argument.
We could still make all sorts of games under my view, for all sorts of reasons - but making money off of people who are unnaturally prone to spending unreasonable amounts of money on the games we make wouldn't be an acceptable reason. I'm not sure normal $60 retail games are exploitative of anyone - $60 from a kid's college fund isn't the same as hundreds or even thousands of dollars from people psychologically susceptible to microtransactions. It's so easy to tell the difference that I barely even have to make the point - the dollar amount is different! So your charges of "but how can we figure out what games are okay and what games aren't" rings a little hollow to my ears. Surely exploiting someone's desire for entertainment to get $60 from them is qualitatively different form exploiting someone's reptilian addiction to microtransactions to get $6,000 from them. Somewhere along that scale is where we draw the line.
Right but this isn't what you were arguing above, or perhaps I've misunderstood you. You were saying that we draw the line at anything which is manifestly hurtful to a specific group of people (c.f. "Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful."). Now we've introduced a sliding scale - where and why does it become evil? What if I provide easy and elegant ways to achieve any of the transactable features by playing the game? What if I never market the transaction option and never seek to get a single cent from overpayers - I simply present them with a storefront if they actively seek it out?
Even here, even with this scale you've drawn, there are numerous industries which exist today that would have to be obliterated in order to adhere to your premise, simply because by virtue of their existence an individual has found a way to abuse them - any form of alcohol manufacturing; all gambling; the vast majority of confectionary food production - and numerous other foods besides. I could go on but I hope my point is clear. You can't just base things on how much they might harm a specific subset of people unless you're lobbying for a functionally monastic existence.
"Hurtful" just turns on what actually happens to people. If some small subset of people gets fucked out of lots of money because you put in microtransactions for no reason other to fuck them out of money, that's not okay. Intent matters! Why you put the transactions in the game is important. And effect matters. Whether it ends up scraping lots of cash out of some poor peoples' pockets or not determines whether it's okay for you to do it.
I don't know if we'd have to stop making alcohol - maybe we'd have to find some way from selling it to alcoholics. There are already laws on the books against selling alcohol to people who are intoxicated already - I don't know if anything's wrong with having those sorts of laws. Gambling would probably be out, yes, at least as a money making enterprise, unless there's some way to make money selling gambling sort of stuff without hurting people overly - maybe you don't take more than a few hundred dollars from people a day, or whatever. I'm sure casinos could refuse to sell more than $X worth of chips to any given consumer. I'm not sure we'd need to stop making confections - do confections actually harm anyone? Would refusing to make confections keep them from being harmed, or would it just cause them to eat something similarly awful? And besides, there are all sorts of reasons to make food other than to make a buck. I think a lot of chefs and bakers are in it for the love of the craft, not to make money. If confections are your passion then I don't have a problem if you become a confectioner. My issue is with becoming a confectioner to prey on people. I don't know how many confectioners are in the business to prey on others, but however many confectioners there are who are like that, I think they should find another job.
I agree that my position is very much an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of people getting bilked out of cash. I think a mature understanding of human society and human interaction demonstrates that we're not the atomistic, perfectly rational homo economicus that we like to pretend we are when we make social policy and proclaim about how things ought to work. People in real life make horrific decisions for themselves, over and over, in ways that others explicitly and knowingly profit off of. Casinos probably know more about the psychology of addiction than any other organization, and they use everything they know to make as much cash as possible. To the extent that we can not do this, I think we ought not to do this.
This isn't remotely in evidence and suggesting that a 'mature' understanding of human society would demonstrate it is very silly. If you were to have said 'a subset of people have trouble with some decisions', I would have been inclined to agree - and, let's be clear, I'm not arguing for absolute personal freedom and responsibility at all here. If you had said 'some people should be restricted from buying games they have trouble dealing with', yea, I think there are practical problems but fundamentally that's probably not a bad idea. You want to shut down the trouble at the source for reasons that remain unclear to me, except insofar as I detect, I think, a considerable amount of suspicion and animosity toward business as a whole.
It's not animosity towards business as a whole - it's animosity towards businesses that rely on preying on people. That is the fundamental distinction. This could be accomplished just as well by restricting who is allowed to buy games, but that's not a controversial claim. I think many people would agree that the prey are doing something wrong to themselves and potentially to others by being hooked into spending all their money on bullshit microtransactions, and I think most people would tell the prey "hey, stop spending money on this shit." I'm just saying that the converse is also the case: we should be telling game developers "hey, stop making this shit." There's no more reason for someone to be one of the 10% of people providing 50% of the profit than there is to make a game with that kind of business model.
I think you have a very restrictive view about restrictions. You seem to be thinking that I want to shut down businesses or otherwise implement restrictions that nobody can escape. I'm not saying anything like that. The restrictions I'm talking about are just moral restrictions. You are morally restricted from going around and telling four year olds that Santa doesn't exist and that some day they will die cold and alone, but it's not like this is against the law. "Being an asshole" is never going to be illegal. But being an asshole is never going to be okay, and I think if what you do for a living is prey on other people, you're an asshole.
At any rate, I think it all boils down to this: in my opinion humans, rational or irrational, responsible for themselves or not, should have control over most of the consumptive decisions they make on a day to day basis, as long as those decisions aren't manifesting a statistically significant net negative on society as a whole. Please note I said most, not all - I'm definitely not arguing that a person should be permitted to go out and buy whatever weapons they want at any time, or drive a backhoe down I-40 without a license. That's pretty much it for me, though. If you choose not to agree, I can respect that.
Okay, sure, but I haven't said that anybody should be restricted from consuming whatever they want. I'm just saying that nobody should be making certain things if their sole purpose is to make money.
If I can jump in here...A company wants to make money. But ideally (and it is an ideal we as consumers should strive for), commerce happens when a transaction is made that results in mutual satisfaction. I want that ice cream cone more than I want my two dollars, and the ice cream salesman wants the $2 more than the cone. So we trade and both walk away happy.
This doesn't preclude aggressive pricing. For example, I play Warhammer 40k and I wish the prices on models and books were lower. I feel like they are higher than they need to be. But I don't consider 40k pricing a disease because when I walk away with a sweet new model, I'm satisfied. The fact that the rules are increasingly weighing gameplay towards expensive models (ie flyers) borders on the more insidious side of things, but me and my friends can't afford flyers and we all pretty much buy models we like over buying the latest, most powerful toys. So I'm still happy with the purchases I do make.
Some businesses rely on not having mutual satisfaction--for example insurance. The insurance company is only satisfied if I don't make a claim, so they get to keep my money. I'm only satisfied if I do make a claim, which gets me a net gain and them a net loss. I don't like insurance, especially since it's so often a mandatory purchase and the prices of auto repair and hospitalization are much higher because insurance exists. But the worst part about it is that it puts customers at war with the vendors instead of being a mutually satisfying trade.
That's the problem with many freemium games. It's not, "thee purchases are here if people want to buy them", it's "let's make people feel like they have to pay to continue a game that isn't actually enjoyable." That's where the Skinner box analogy comes in. If the game had any real gameplay to it or we could assume that people play them because they are fun, it'd be fine. But the games are designed as time wasters and built around grinding--it's not about the journey but about a destination that can never be reached. The buyer is not "happy" that they spent the money to make their farm a little bigger--they just felt like they had to do it.
Yes, the people playing these games should wise up and not pay for something that isn't going to make them happy. But that's the whole point here. The Tale is trying to tell us to feel guilty if we *don't* pay, and that we don't have the right to say "that's BS--it's a stupid business model that we shouldn't support." No one is trying to say that freemium games should be illegal. But we can do our part to stop them by wielding the ultimate power in a capitalist society--buying power. So "whining" about bad business practices, as long as we back it up by not patronizing businesses that treat us like the enemy, is a good thing because it's how we force the industry to be better.
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1) Your fiscal capability.
2) Your enjoyment of the product.
3) The quality of the product.
3) The monetization scheme of the product.
4) The developer's handling of the product.
5) The publisher's treatment of their clients.
For example, in the case of Star Trek Online, due to the high negative impact of some of these factors, I'd say it does not.
As for the comic, I don't see it as Homophobic at all.
It's a matter of transgenderism (which used to be a forbidden topic in the USA upto the 90s. For example, the Samurai Pizza Cats "gender bender" episode was blocked from broadcast).
Since Q wears a piece of garment which is conventionally, in the majority of the western hemisphere, would typically be associated with the opposite gender his gender is being brought onto questioning.
If anything, it is actually an issue of fashion invoking social norms and could possibly be taken as a criticism upon this specific norm as being "old fashioned", excuse the pun.
I assume that's what the title of the comic means.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The title alludes to the "ungodly hour" at which the scene transpires.
It basically refers to nocturnal tendencies.
For example, let's take the previous comic (since I assumed this current comic isn't the one giving you issues).
PANEL 1: Cora's dad accuses Q of maniuplation, and Q justifies his actions as being similar to"what Sehrai did, when she threatened to truthspeak to the Nine." Now, we obviously don't know who Sehrai is, or what truthspeak is, or who or what the Nine are.
PANEL 2: Cora's dad says he never mentioned that. So instantly we know that Sehrai, the Nine, and thruthspeak are aspects and characters from his books, and that Q knows about them. He also reveals that he's very knowledgeable about them, since he knows something Cora's dad doesn't recall revealing. Q then says that he learned of this bit of lore at "Readiation in 1985". Again, we don't know what Readiation is, but from the context, as well as general knowlege of the culture around us, leads one to assume it's some sort of Book convention, likely associated with Sci-Fi and Fantasy (hence the play on "radiation.") We also learn that Cora's dad has been writing these books for a good while, since he attended the convention to speak about them.
PANEL 3: Cora's dad remembers a young boy asking, and Q reveals that boy was him. So now we know that Q has been a fan of the books since he was a young boy. This would explain his motivation for trying to get the game license.
All the info is there, it just has to be gleaned from the information provided. At the end of the comic, we still don't know specifics about Sehrai, the Nine, or thruthspeak, but that's because they were there to reveal other aspects of the world, not to be dwelled on themselves.
It's funny that you bring up Star Trek, since ST often relied on nonsensical "techspeak" in order to create and resolve storylines (Ironically, the more you know about science and technology, the less sense most of that techspeak makes). The ST writers, at least the better ones, knew what was important about the techspeak was that it allowed them to create interesting stories and explore their characters, and the techspeak itself wasn't that important. Thus they never got into particulars on how, say, transporter technology worked unless it made sense to in the context of the story.
How much time do you have before the trains collide though, and where? That seems like critical information to know if you're trying to stop it.
If you have time to calculate when they are going to collide, you clearly aren't doing enough to stop them colliding.
Wow.
In fact I do like the original Star Wars trilogy.
Otherwise...yeah, they're mentally antagonistic.
Many of you may be too young to remember this golden age of quarter-dominated gaming, but let me assure you, the notion of continuously feeding a machine your money in small transactions in order to receive a tangible in-game benefit is by no means new technology. Again, I'm totally okay with this kind of model not being your bag, but asserting that freemium is the work of a diseased mind is not only strident, it's also pretty silly. Oh, and wrong. Also wrong.
Suggesting that freemium is equivalent to a Skinner box in all cases is pretty ridiculous.
Which I didn't do. Let's try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
More to the point, and I don't think people talk about this enough, there is absolutely nothing about operant conditioning that supports the argument you and others are making. That isn't how conditioning works, and it definitely isn't how the human mind works. Spraying 'Skinner box' every time a repetitive action results in a reward in a game is displaying an ignorance of the work B.F. Skinner actually did and ignores the fact that we are living almost eight decades after those experiments were conducted. Psychology has moved on because behaviorism fails to explain numerous components of human behavior. You can stick with that theory if you want, you can really believe that humans are legitimately controlled by the conditioning these game-actions induce, that's all fine and dandy. It doesn't make any of it accurate or true.
Some games are predatory, insofar as their model for revenue generation is predicated on the exploitation of common human neuroses. Many things in life are predatory. It's an open ethical question as to whether predation in the market is good, or whether predation that exploits human neuroses is evil. I personally choose to believe the latter is not good, by and large. What I would like you (and by you I mean everyone arguing about this) to do is to try and have some accurate historical context regarding how these things evolved, and, perhaps, to explore the notion that it's a bad idea to find one example of a behavior deplorable and therefore write off the entire range of that behavior.
And no, I also did not answer what you dub the "open ethical question" about predation in the market - I simply assumed that the answer is that preying on other people is typically bad. I don't think that's a trivial assumption and it's not one I can defend in a few sentences but suffice to say I think that even the name predation should maybe get us thinking about whether it's okay to do these sorts of things for a living, or whether maybe if your job can be best described as "hunting whales" you should take a step back and wonder whether your line of work is ethically questionable, just like actual whale hunters ought to be doing.
This kind of talk doesn't make these threads any friendlier.
Fair point. My intent was to convey exasperation rather than sarcasm, but I can see how it's not productive either way. So, sorry for that.
You're starting from a groundwork that's pretty faulty - a slot machine has some similarities to a modern game, true, but I think that drawing a direct line from a slot machine to an arcade game is a lot harder to do than a direct line from an arcade game to a downloadable freemium game. Moreover I reject the notion that it is inherently bad, at all times, to establish a business model that caters to human urges. Casinos really, really ride that gray area. They definitely cross into the 'evil' side of things with practices like setting up their floors to be intentionally difficult to get out of or actively preying on known repeat gamblers/those with gambling problems, via telemarketing and incentives. But, again, a casino is not an arcade and setting up an analogical relationship between an arcade operator and Steve Wynn isn't valid at all. By the same token, I can acknowledge the point that whale hunting is troublingly similar to those same casino practices, and we need to look at that as both a subculture and a broader society.
I get that you feel passionately about this, and that's laudable, but the hyperbolic tone you're taking here doesn't help me understand your arguments. If you want to talk about these things, fine, let's actually pick apart the issue, but it's hard to argue in good faith when you open with a line like "I'm sorry I didn't write an essay with proper, up to date citations to various psych journals" - I wasn't asking you to, but the term is frankly overused and misapplied. Earlier I was objecting, most specifically, to the notion that all freemium games should be classified as a 'disease' - I'm not saying you're getting even close to that level of diatribe, but we can't have a dialogue based on language like that. To paraphrase Michel Foucault, the issue with viewing the other side of the argument as 'the enemy' is that you actually begin to think of them in those terms as a person.
Our disagreement is largely about capitalism, probably - the way I see it, just because you can make money by exploiting people doesn't mean it's automatically okay to do it. Just because people are happy to buy cigarettes doesn't mean you should set up a cigarette factory and count your cash while the lung cancer piles up.
Okay, but at what point is it 'game design' and what point is it 'predation'? Are the ME3 multi or Dead Space 3 models predatory? I think that'd be a pretty hard case to make, although you're welcome to try, unless any intra-game involvement of real currency transactions is predatory.
No, obviously there are situations in which it's not okay, and I think this partially addresses my question above. For me, we cross the line into 'not okay' when, almost from an economic standpoint, the damage to society begins to build up from the statistically incidental to something like 4-5% of society being negatively impacted by the activity. That said, I have a bit of a hard time ascribing blame 100% to cigarette companies, in this day and age - the purchaser has some pretty serious culpability as well, unless they're a child or otherwise cognitively impaired. But yes, historically, obviously a fine example of predation that's a net negative for society and also very wrong.
I should add the 4-5% figure is off the cuff. I'd have to sit down and look at how much of a ripple effect even 1% of society being negatively impacted causes. This ignores the obvious and serious personal ramifications for the individual and their loved ones, but in my opinion it's difficult to base an ethos off individual anecdotes and get terribly far in the real world.
Fine in theory, except that it's pretty damn difficult to name a pricing model which is not, in some way, hurtful or exploitative to some group of people somewhere. Life is an inherently risky proposition, and at a certain point you have to draw a line and say individual responsibility takes over. We are never going to live in a society that manages to prevent anthropogenic harm to all groups of people everywhere. Moreover, your suggestion that we should limit or ban any product that harms someone somewhere presents a paradox: you are harming the producer by preventing them from bringing their product to market. And what about products that have a net social good? Movies are, I think we can agree, art, and it's difficult to argue that art isn't good for a society's progress. But movies can contain traumatic material. Some people argue - and I want to be clear that I think this is a dumb, bad argument - that movies can induce violence. Movies can contain media that triggers PTSD. Those movies are arguably 'obviously' hurtful to some people.
But the up front cost of games is still preying on a subset of people - you are taking money from a person and giving them back something which have no tangible benefit to their lives. That money that a parent spends because a child begs them for a video game is money that child won't have when college comes around. The money I shell out on a video game in my daily life could probably be better spent supporting various charitable causes. Where do we draw the line with an ethos like your? Absolutism simply doesn't offer us the opportunity. If we were to follow the model you're outlining, I don't see a way that games could actually be created. Game developers would have less choice in what they do. I'm all for people in blatantly destructive industries not having the choice to continue to work in them. I'm all for people in industries that have become obsolescent not having the choice to continue to work in them. What I am not for is the abdication of personal responsibility and choice by virtue of a fairly doctrinal and orthodoxical line. You are, as a probable outcome of your position, arguing for less art, and I'm not down with that.
I agree that we'd probably make a lot fewer video games if you had to have a reason other than "bilk people out of cash" when it comes to making the game. I'm willing to accept that outcome! I think life would be better, overall, if "I can make a buck doing this" was not a justification for doing basically anything. I think if something is going to have tangible bad effects, you need to make a better case than "but I can make some mad cash money" if you want to do it with a clear conscience.
We could still make all sorts of games under my view, for all sorts of reasons - but making money off of people who are unnaturally prone to spending unreasonable amounts of money on the games we make wouldn't be an acceptable reason. I'm not sure normal $60 retail games are exploitative of anyone - $60 from a kid's college fund isn't the same as hundreds or even thousands of dollars from people psychologically susceptible to microtransactions. It's so easy to tell the difference that I barely even have to make the point - the dollar amount is different! So your charges of "but how can we figure out what games are okay and what games aren't" rings a little hollow to my ears. Surely exploiting someone's desire for entertainment to get $60 from them is qualitatively different form exploiting someone's reptilian addiction to microtransactions to get $6,000 from them. Somewhere along that scale is where we draw the line.
I agree that my position is very much an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of people getting bilked out of cash. I think a mature understanding of human society and human interaction demonstrates that we're not the atomistic, perfectly rational homo economicus that we like to pretend we are when we make social policy and proclaim about how things ought to work. People in real life make horrific decisions for themselves, over and over, in ways that others explicitly and knowingly profit off of. Casinos probably know more about the psychology of addiction than any other organization, and they use everything they know to make as much cash as possible. To the extent that we can not do this, I think we ought not to do this.
So no, I'm not arguing for less art. Microtransactions aren't art, and when they are, I'm fine with them. I'm arguing for fewer microtransactions as a source of income. It's not okay to make money preying on people. Anyone who is doing it should stop doing it.
I don't agree that it's self-evident that motivation exclusively for profit is inherently monstrous, but let's accept that it is for the purposes of your argument.
Right but this isn't what you were arguing above, or perhaps I've misunderstood you. You were saying that we draw the line at anything which is manifestly hurtful to a specific group of people (c.f. "Game design is predation when you design your game so that some part of its profitability hinges on exploiting some group of people in some way that's obviously hurtful."). Now we've introduced a sliding scale - where and why does it become evil? What if I provide easy and elegant ways to achieve any of the transactable features by playing the game? What if I never market the transaction option and never seek to get a single cent from overpayers - I simply present them with a storefront if they actively seek it out?
Even here, even with this scale you've drawn, there are numerous industries which exist today that would have to be obliterated in order to adhere to your premise, simply because by virtue of their existence an individual has found a way to abuse them - any form of alcohol manufacturing; all gambling; the vast majority of confectionary food production - and numerous other foods besides. I could go on but I hope my point is clear. You can't just base things on how much they might harm a specific subset of people unless you're lobbying for a functionally monastic existence.
This isn't remotely in evidence and suggesting that a 'mature' understanding of human society would demonstrate it is very silly. If you were to have said 'a subset of people have trouble with some decisions', I would have been inclined to agree - and, let's be clear, I'm not arguing for absolute personal freedom and responsibility at all here. If you had said 'some people should be restricted from buying games they have trouble dealing with', yea, I think there are practical problems but fundamentally that's probably not a bad idea. You want to shut down the trouble at the source for reasons that remain unclear to me, except insofar as I detect, I think, a considerable amount of suspicion and animosity toward business as a whole.
At any rate, I think it all boils down to this: in my opinion humans, rational or irrational, responsible for themselves or not, should have control over most of the consumptive decisions they make on a day to day basis, as long as those decisions aren't manifesting a statistically significant net negative on society as a whole. Please note I said most, not all - I'm definitely not arguing that a person should be permitted to go out and buy whatever weapons they want at any time, or drive a backhoe down I-40 without a license. That's pretty much it for me, though. If you choose not to agree, I can respect that.
I don't know if we'd have to stop making alcohol - maybe we'd have to find some way from selling it to alcoholics. There are already laws on the books against selling alcohol to people who are intoxicated already - I don't know if anything's wrong with having those sorts of laws. Gambling would probably be out, yes, at least as a money making enterprise, unless there's some way to make money selling gambling sort of stuff without hurting people overly - maybe you don't take more than a few hundred dollars from people a day, or whatever. I'm sure casinos could refuse to sell more than $X worth of chips to any given consumer. I'm not sure we'd need to stop making confections - do confections actually harm anyone? Would refusing to make confections keep them from being harmed, or would it just cause them to eat something similarly awful? And besides, there are all sorts of reasons to make food other than to make a buck. I think a lot of chefs and bakers are in it for the love of the craft, not to make money. If confections are your passion then I don't have a problem if you become a confectioner. My issue is with becoming a confectioner to prey on people. I don't know how many confectioners are in the business to prey on others, but however many confectioners there are who are like that, I think they should find another job.
It's not animosity towards business as a whole - it's animosity towards businesses that rely on preying on people. That is the fundamental distinction. This could be accomplished just as well by restricting who is allowed to buy games, but that's not a controversial claim. I think many people would agree that the prey are doing something wrong to themselves and potentially to others by being hooked into spending all their money on bullshit microtransactions, and I think most people would tell the prey "hey, stop spending money on this shit." I'm just saying that the converse is also the case: we should be telling game developers "hey, stop making this shit." There's no more reason for someone to be one of the 10% of people providing 50% of the profit than there is to make a game with that kind of business model.
I think you have a very restrictive view about restrictions. You seem to be thinking that I want to shut down businesses or otherwise implement restrictions that nobody can escape. I'm not saying anything like that. The restrictions I'm talking about are just moral restrictions. You are morally restricted from going around and telling four year olds that Santa doesn't exist and that some day they will die cold and alone, but it's not like this is against the law. "Being an asshole" is never going to be illegal. But being an asshole is never going to be okay, and I think if what you do for a living is prey on other people, you're an asshole.
Okay, sure, but I haven't said that anybody should be restricted from consuming whatever they want. I'm just saying that nobody should be making certain things if their sole purpose is to make money.
This doesn't preclude aggressive pricing. For example, I play Warhammer 40k and I wish the prices on models and books were lower. I feel like they are higher than they need to be. But I don't consider 40k pricing a disease because when I walk away with a sweet new model, I'm satisfied. The fact that the rules are increasingly weighing gameplay towards expensive models (ie flyers) borders on the more insidious side of things, but me and my friends can't afford flyers and we all pretty much buy models we like over buying the latest, most powerful toys. So I'm still happy with the purchases I do make.
Some businesses rely on not having mutual satisfaction--for example insurance. The insurance company is only satisfied if I don't make a claim, so they get to keep my money. I'm only satisfied if I do make a claim, which gets me a net gain and them a net loss. I don't like insurance, especially since it's so often a mandatory purchase and the prices of auto repair and hospitalization are much higher because insurance exists. But the worst part about it is that it puts customers at war with the vendors instead of being a mutually satisfying trade.
That's the problem with many freemium games. It's not, "thee purchases are here if people want to buy them", it's "let's make people feel like they have to pay to continue a game that isn't actually enjoyable." That's where the Skinner box analogy comes in. If the game had any real gameplay to it or we could assume that people play them because they are fun, it'd be fine. But the games are designed as time wasters and built around grinding--it's not about the journey but about a destination that can never be reached. The buyer is not "happy" that they spent the money to make their farm a little bigger--they just felt like they had to do it.
Yes, the people playing these games should wise up and not pay for something that isn't going to make them happy. But that's the whole point here. The Tale is trying to tell us to feel guilty if we *don't* pay, and that we don't have the right to say "that's BS--it's a stupid business model that we shouldn't support." No one is trying to say that freemium games should be illegal. But we can do our part to stop them by wielding the ultimate power in a capitalist society--buying power. So "whining" about bad business practices, as long as we back it up by not patronizing businesses that treat us like the enemy, is a good thing because it's how we force the industry to be better.