Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I worry about the acceleration of addiction in particular subgroups of the population. WoW (or Farmville), for example, is not crystal meth... but that flippant observation is a response to a core truth that some people just have a lot of trouble saying no. Maybe they're poorly educated, maybe they're genetically predisposed to addiction, maybe they're clinically depressed, for whatever the reason they've got a weakened psychic immune system. It gets dramatically easier (A/B testing! end to end analytics! using their own friends' pictures as your call to action!) and stupendously more profitable (virtual goods!) over time to pay extraordinarily savvy engineers and marketers to design the Skinner's Box From Hell and extract money from them.

And what do you do if you're a startup founder at the next Zynga and discover, running the numbers one day, that 80% of your revenue comes from 2% of the population who cannot attend the user meetups because they can't bear to be separated from your service for that long?

As I remarked in my own essay on the subject (linked by billswift below, keyword "superstimuli"), I don't think the problem comes from the edge cases. I think the problem is that if you make a product 5% more addictive than the competition, you can steal 80% of their customers, and this creates an incentive to make things more and more addictive well past the point where it starts to hurt the median customer significantly. The edge cases are just the canaries in the coal mine - the ones who are hurt blatantly, visibly, and undeniably.

Link for those who don't want to scroll down:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...

In practice I would draw the line at things that are mostly consumed by addicts. So I'd have no problem being a vintner, but I wouldn't want to be a heroin manufacturer, even if it were legal.

There are various edge cases you'd have to treat individually-- e.g. if the median user wasn't an addict but all your revenues came from the addicts. In that case, again, I probably wouldn't want to do it.

Speaking as someone that worked at one of Zynga's main competitors, I can assure you that industry makes 90% of its revenue off 10% of its users. It's a mental addiction to simulated success.

Mark Pilgrim kindly requests that you get your own word: http://twitter.com/diveintomark/statuses/19715440495

This one is taken: http://addictionis.org/

Handbags at dawn.

Is Mark Pilgrim a big shot in the 'addiction' community or something? I am probably stumbling ignorantly into something by asking that question.

And what do you do if you're a startup founder at the next Zynga and discover...

It depends on what your goals were. :) If you were in it for the money you plow right ahead. If you waned to make the world a better place (and get paid for that) you dump it on your investors and move on to the next thing.

Another option is to see if you can put what you learned about compulsive behaviors to better uses - I think the world would be better off if people were compulsive about maintaining good finances, hygiene, business schedule etc. Better yet, compulsively making sure they did the best they could for their family.

It's a tough career move, but I think you'd be morally obligated to destroy the thing you created instead of just passively abandoning it. Or at least fix it. Adding automatic crop harvesters/replanters to Farmville would do a lot to heal Zynga's soul. WoW though, you just might have to turn off.

Just add perma-death to WoW (and some incentives for not just grinding, but risking your virtual life).

But that won't suit the bottom-line of Blizzard.

I don't know about that, nethack is habit-forming in its own ways.

I know that all too well. But it gives you geek-cred.

This is exactly what I'm doing now. I used principles that I elaborated on in this post[1] to help guide construction of my new social app, http://www.EndAnts.com, built to combat thinking disorders.

[1] http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psy...

> I think the world would be better off if people were compulsive about maintaining good finances, hygiene, business schedule etc. Better yet, compulsively making sure they did the best they could for their family.

I imagine they would, but that sounds like a hard problem to me. I suspect it's AI-complete; the only way to do it would be for post-singularity AI to control the destiny of the human species.

I've never seen the attraction of grind-y games like WoW or Farmville. (Caveat: I've never played farmville; I have played WoW and found it pointless). Perhaps games could be created that taught people useful skills, e.g. something like Guitar Hero that teaches you to play an instrument.

Rock Band 3 Pro Mode will actually teach you to play instruments:

From: http://www.rockband.com/zine/rock-band-3-announcements

The Rock Band 3 Squier Stratocaster is a fully functional, full-sized, six-string electric guitar that also functions as a game controller that Fender and Harmonix have teamed up to develop.

Is it true? Can you actually learn to play guitar on this thing? I got to try it. Fondling strings should be an effective way to get away from it all.

That's the goal. FTA:

Ever had someone ask you why you play plastic guitar instead of learning a real instrument? Now you can tell them you ARE learning a real instrument. Rock Band 3 empowers players to develop actual musical skills through the fun of Rock Band Pro gameplay. Start at Easy and work your way up through Expert on three different Pro Modes, just like you did with the plastic guitars and plastic drums.

It applies to drums (adds additional cymbals), keyboard (though it's only two octaves), and guitar, which according to promotional videos, if you play through expert on Guitar, you're playing every real note on the guitar.

>Another option is to see if you can put what you learned about compulsive behaviors to better uses - I think the world would be better off if people were compulsive about maintaining good finances

I've said before that I think many resource-building games have similar reward mechanisms to running a business[1]

Look at, for example, eve online. I know at least one very smart guy who put more effort into accounting within that game than I put into accounting at my business.

If you could figure out how to exploit this; you know, to make doing the accounting for my business as rewarding to this guy as doing accounting in eve online, hot damn, you could make a lot of money.

[1]http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/5/15/5477/35240

There is a much easier explanation. There are people who have crappy lives. Whether by their own decisions, by fate, or by circumstance, their normal daily lives are something they are trying to avoid. Anything that helps them avoid the reality of their life becomes addictive. The only way to fix this problem is by changing their lives. But Oprah is already making a large profit by selling them that idea.

This is why I don't think I could, ethically, ever work at a manufacturer of Facebook-type games. Probably not even at a MMORPG maker.

And what to do if you are Google and your business model is predicated on people with poor impulse control?

Ad land's been a long time darkside after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

I guess we all have our shadow.

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