this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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This author seems pretty comfortable mocking the concept of games being addictive.
Loot boxes need to stop for sure, but things like limited-time content are 100% designed to form habits and ultimately feed gaming addiction. Season passes or weekly achievements require you to log on and grind out challenges at regular intervals to avoid missing out on rewards that are required for competitive play.
I know plenty of people who have had to make an active choice to stop playing certain games because they found they couldn’t play the game ‘on their own terms’. It sucks as an adult, but kids without fully developed brains capable of rational thinking would stand no chance.
Hell, even subscription-based games like MMOs. After all, if you're paying every month for something, you want to get your money's worth.
That's part of why I never played WoW. I knew that I'd constantly be like "I'm paying for it I should be playing".
Funny, when I played it, it was always "wow, I'm really getting a good bang for my buck." It was a huge money saving for me because instead of going out to a bar an extra one or two nights a week, I stayed home and gamed online with friends. Never once did I think "I should play to make it worth it" I was making it worth it without a thought. lol
I had a similar thought, but moreso "i'm paying for this... why isn't it fun?" So I stopped paying after maybe 4 months.
There's a reason I used to call it World of Warcrack. That game was harder to quit than smoking cigarettes for me.
Depends on the implementation: I liked Eve Onlines model where, yes, you had to pay the sub but your character would train skills even while offline.So at least to me there was less of this classical fear of missing out.
Ugh, don't get me started on EVE. Like yeah, there's an awesome game underneath it all, but the fact that they make you train your character in real time by reading skill books feels so scummy when they are billing you a monthly fee. Like that has such an obvious perverse incentive. You think those skill books take as long as they take because it's fun? No way. They take that long because it maximises profit.
I was quite addicted to a Facebook game back in the day. Never went more than a day without playing it and even then I had scripts to play the repetitive parts of the game while I was away. I might've spent $50 total on the game but I never really felt like I was missing out because of not spending money. When they got to the point where it was blatantly obvious I would miss rare items or other collectibles if I didn't pay then I quit altogether.
I think the system could use a change but I still prefer minimal interference. It could do a lot of good if players were notified (monthly/weekly) how much they've played the game and how much they've spent. The "micro" part is probably what gets a lot of people and they never realize what they've paid in total.
Yep, this is me. stopped playing at least 2 or 3 games they forced stupid unnecessary grind or daily/weekly quests (that are basically all the content there is) on me. Nope, not doing that shit anymore.