"There may be no shortage of commentators ready to decry pay-to-win grindfests as 'evil' design, but what’s still needed is a code of ethical game mechanics that provides a yardstick to measure which games and which game designers can be trusted not to unduly manipulate their audience."
Couldn't agree more. It's easier than ever to get games in the hands of eager/bored people via mobile and Facebook, and companies are thus capitalizing on these users by building shallow experiences while optimizing for revenues instead of fun.
Additionally, I think more game devs need to speak out against the "evil" design. I hear a lot of tech-savvy people talking about this stuff verbally, but is the common person really aware of the amount of time that is spent trying to engineer them into being addicted? I realize that as developers, we don't necessarily benefit from spending a lot more time building something just to end up making less money, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
> It's easier than ever to get games in the hands of eager/bored people via mobile and Facebook, and companies are thus capitalizing on these users by building shallow experiences while optimizing for revenues instead of fun.
Change some of the nouns and that describes most capitalist consumerism. Entertainment, cloths, cars, starbucks et al, etc. (rest of it is based on fear/shame).
The root cause is much, much deeper than Zynga or Facebook.
"Creating a need" is certainly an often employed strategy.
I love technology. I'm not very good, I'm not very clever or a great coder, but I'm still more geeky than non-geeks. Now, There are plenty of people who are not deeply fascinated with it, but use technology to make their lives easier.
Why can't we just built good things for them, and everybody can go home knowing they haven't been ripping off or been ripped off -- ??
This focus on profit and fads, it's doing my head in. When I was a kid I was ashamed because computers weren't cool, now I'm ashamed because they are, and because of what is done with them without blinking. They're just tools, but he haven't improved much, so we just use them to do BS faster. Come on, there has to be more. /rant
There are game designers that speak against it strongly, but even gamers put them down as "elitist" or "snobs", because the designers are pretty extreme in their views.
Couldn't agree more. It's easier than ever to get games in the hands of eager/bored people via mobile and Facebook, and companies are thus capitalizing on these users by building shallow experiences while optimizing for revenues instead of fun.
Additionally, I think more game devs need to speak out against the "evil" design. I hear a lot of tech-savvy people talking about this stuff verbally, but is the common person really aware of the amount of time that is spent trying to engineer them into being addicted? I realize that as developers, we don't necessarily benefit from spending a lot more time building something just to end up making less money, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere.