Re: Part 2: System Structure

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 17 May 2006 11:47:44 +0200,
"Michal Suchanek" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Competitions and games are two very different things.
> 
> Not really. I would say that the terms are pretty much orthogonal.
> While some games are more or less competitive, some may not be. And
> some competitions would not be considered games even when stretching
> the term to its limits.

The word "game" has a lot of meanings in the english language.  And
some of these meanings are competitions, for example the "olympic
games".  However, in this context, as I have written in another mail,
I use the word to characterize an action that is performed for the
entertainment value of performing the action itself, not for the
purpose of winning, or other goals.  In this context, I think that
preventing cheating destroys the nature of the action, and replaces it
by something else.

Or, to put it the other way round: Being able to cheat _ensures_ that
I can always play for entertainment, and not because I want to achieve
something else, because it leaves me the option to skip parts of the
activity that I find tedious.  So, cheating in this case helps a lot
to prevent or contain addiction.
 
> > What you say is correct.  But competitions have others affect as well.
> > They nurture and exploit addictive strains in people, and in fact they
> > frequently kill people.  Without even investigating into these issues,
> > I know from news reports about one person killed by playing Starcraft
> > and one person killed by playing Everquest (another committed
> > suicide).  There has also been at least one murder over online game
> > "property."  Online game addiction is widely recognized now, and the
> > social cost, carried by society, is enormous, in terms of health care,
> > broken up relationships, neglected children etc.  I want to coin the
> > term "digital drugs" for these types of infrastructure (Everquest was
> > coined "Evercrack" by its players).
> >
> > So, no, it is not at all obvious to me that we should support this.
> > In fact, I am quite convinced that personally, I do not want to
> > support this.
> 
> The fact that people may get addicted to something does not mean we
> should not support it.

But this is not my argument.

> People can get addicted to wide variety of
> things including sweets, cocolade, coffee, work, all kinds of games
> (computer or not), adrenaline sports, ...
> 
> Banning all such things would be very restrictive and ineffective.
> There are many drugs that are actually banned, and people still get
> addicted to them. Yet people who would make good use of them cannot do
> so legally.

Yes, this is a problem.  It can be solved by legalization and
monitoring and control.  However, the monitoring and control part is
crucial.

Currently, there is absolutely no oversight and control to what online
game producers can do.  It's in fact very astonishing that they not
only develop their games very explicitely and carefully according to
the psychological science of addiction, but also advertise them as
such, and the addictivity of a game is hailed in computer games
magazines as a virtue.

This is even more surprising given that one of the main target group
are kids, and whenever you mix kids and addiction in one sentence, you
should make an appointment with your lawyers.  The industry is
actually very aware of the risks, but for some reason it has not yet
entered public awareness.  Computer addicition (in general) is not yet
taken very seriously by many, but it is only a matter of time until it
will become a main focus.  In China, there is already legislation to
contain it, but there is a conflict of interest because the
politicians also want to protect a growing industry for economic
interests.

If you want to further explore this subject matter, I would recommend
making an experiment.  Try yourself to design a game that is as
addictive as it can be.  Then compare your game with the games that
are currently on the market.  Then try yourself to design a game that
is just as entertaining, but not so addictive.  Again, compare.  If
your result is that a game can be just as entertaining but less
addictive, do you think that there is a moral obligation by the game
industry to explore these possibilities?  If your result is that
entertainment is coupled with addictiveness, do you think there should
be warnings and other methods of monitoring and control to reduce harm?

These questions are in no way limited to the online game industry.
They are in fact very general and broad.

Thanks,
Marcus