Restricting addictive game design

[Pifanjr]

I think all of us can agree that video games can be addictive and we've all probably had times where we knew we should've stopped playing but kept going because we were too engrossed with a game. However, would you say that governments need to create new regulations to curb the addictiveness of video games?

You can't sue us for making games 'too entertaining,' say major game developers in response to addiction lawsuits

Microsoft, Rockstar, Epic, and others are being sued for using "addictive psychological features" in games like Minecraft, GTA 5, and Fortnite.

www.pcgamer.com

There's currently six lawsuits against video game developers for making their game too addictive, with the developers claiming that they can't be blamed for making their games "too entertaining". Personally, I don't think that defence holds up considering how tightly regulated gambling is, which I would say people also do because it's entertaining. With gambling it's generally acknowledged that minors are not able to properly judge the consequences of spending money on gambling, so I don't think it would be that much of a stretch to make a similar argument for video games. For adults however I don't expect we'll see anything in the form of strict regulations of how addictive video games are allowed to be.

Lawyer warns game developers about 'unlawful game design' as 'dark patterns' lawsuits rise

Could a game that makes you grind too much be unlawful? It's possible.

www.pcgamer.com

From this article, this particular quote stood out to me:

"One of the identified dark patterns is grinding," said Weiss. "And that's 'making a free version of a game so cumbersome and labor intensive that the player is induced to unlock new features with in-app purchases.' So it's set up in a way that you don't need to make a purchase, but is it so difficult that the practical reality for the reasonable gamer is that they're going to have to make that purchase? Have they been deceived, or is it unfair in some way?"

While restrictions on what game mechanics are allowed seem unlikely to me, I think there is room for more regulations regarding transparency of a game's mechanics. I think a lot of platforms already require developers to clearly state whether a game contains microtransactions for example, but I don't think that's required by law yet. It also doesn't tell you if the microtransactions are just cosmetic or whether the game makes it practically impossible to experience all of the content of the game without buying microtransactions. I could imagine restricting the term "free-to-play" for games that you could reasonably play completely without paying, for example.

 

[Zloth]

I think something needs to be done about the "Skinner Box" games out there. Figuring out what and how is going to be a very difficult thing, though.

Say a DLC does show up for BG3 a couple of years from now. The DLC adds a couple of chapters and, in the end, gives the original games endings quite a twist. Now, couldn't players demand that DLC for free? After all, they wouldn't be able to completely understand the ending in the original game unless they buy the DLC.

P.S. I don't know where you are, but gambling restrictions keep dropping more and more where I'm sitting.

P.P.S. "Grinding" doesn't mean what Weiss said - but "grinding" is so over-used now that it barely means anything anymore.

 

[Zloth]

(Apologies for hogging, but you've got me thinking)

What would the store's role be in all of this? These games come from all over the globe. If you fine some of them for breaking your own nation's laws, they'll just look at you funny. If you ban the company, they'll simply incorporate a new one and sell the same game under a new name.

On the other hand, if you hold stores accountable, they've suddenly got to evaluate... how many games are on Steam now? 30,000? Maybe Steam, GOG, Epic, and others could pool up and hire some third party to do their evaluations for them?

 

[Pifanjr]

I think something needs to be done about the "Skinner Box" games out there. Figuring out what and how is going to be a very difficult thing, though.

I don't think it would be that hard to make a law that says that a free-to-play game can't become significantly harder to progress in unless you start paying money. It's obviously hard to draw strict lines, but laws are often fairly vague and left open to interpretation by judges anyway.

Say a DLC does show up for BG3 a couple of years from now. The DLC adds a couple of chapters and, in the end, gives the original games endings quite a twist. Now, couldn't players demand that DLC for free? After all, they wouldn't be able to completely understand the ending in the original game unless they buy the DLC.

Just giving a twist probably wouldn't be enough. They would have had to clearly botch the ending in the base game, while claiming it was complete, and then bring out the DLC. There should be an element of false advertising basically.

P.S. I don't know where you are, but gambling restrictions keep dropping more and more where I'm sitting.

It seems over here they added more regulations to online gambling a couple of years ago. They also planned on banning loot boxes, but it's unclear whether that's still happening.

(Apologies for hogging, but you've got me thinking)

What would the store's role be in all of this? These games come from all over the globe. If you fine some of them for breaking your own nation's laws, they'll just look at you funny. If you ban the company, they'll simply incorporate a new one and sell the same game under a new name.

On the other hand, if you hold stores accountable, they've suddenly got to evaluate... how many games are on Steam now? 30,000? Maybe Steam, GOG, Epic, and others could pool up and hire some third party to do their evaluations for them?

If a country creates a law that makes it illegal to offer microtransactions to minors the stores might have to verify a user's age before selling them games with microtransactions, though they probably just shift that responsibility to the developers themselves, as they have no real way to test every game they're selling.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's partly just prejudice against gaming as a hobby. The average American watches 5 hours of television every day, and no one thinks that's strange or worries that television is addictive.

As for the rest of it, dark patterns and such, this is a very real problem caused by over-aggressive monetization spurred by greed. I would agree that in the first article, the plaintiffs don't have a case and that games are protected in the US as free speech. However, this doesn't mean that laws can't be passed that are intended to protect minors.

As for dark patterns, I hope they come down hard on the gaming industry here. The industry has been getting worse and worse for many years now with nothing but greed guiding their moral compass. Fine them out of business if you have to. Would be what people like EA deserve for continuing, unabated, selling loot boxes to children and adults alike, suckering them into spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars just to get content that should be in the games for free.

 

[Zloth]

I don't think it would be that hard to make a law that says that a free-to-play game can't become significantly harder to progress in unless you start paying money. It's obviously hard to draw strict lines, but laws are often fairly vague and left open to interpretation by judges anyway.

Yeah, that's a thing with me. I want a program and an unthinking CPU, not a somewhat vague law, a bunch of judges, and a case history.

It seems over here they added more regulations to online gambling a couple of years ago. They also planned on banning loot boxes, but it's unclear whether that's still happening.

Oh, that's sad, just having a few laws like that showing up was enough to make a LOT of them go away.

I don't know about limiting to just kids. I expect they'll be more susceptible because they don't really know how money works, but I think the actual practices might work just as well on adults as it does kids - at least until the adults have gotten burned by the practice a few times.

P.S. And, because I'm apparently not thinking about this enough already, news today that one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics has died.

 

[Pifanjr]

It's partly just prejudice against gaming as a hobby. The average American watches 5 hours of television every day, and no one thinks that's strange or worries that television is addictive.

Television addiction is also a thing, but I'm not sure what kind of regulations you could make to combat that. There are already some regulations for TV programs aimed at kids though.

Yeah, that's a thing with me. I want a program and an unthinking CPU, not a somewhat vague law, a bunch of judges, and a case history.

I have some experience as a moderator and I can tell you that there's no way to write absolutely clear, easy to understand rules that can't be circumvented and don't also target innocent people.

I don't know about limiting to just kids. I expect they'll be more susceptible because they don't really know how money works, but I think the actual practices might work just as well on adults as it does kids - at least until the adults have gotten burned by the practice a few times.

Oh, I agree, I just think it's much easier to get regulations put in place for kids than it is for adults.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh, I agree, I just think it's much easier to get regulations put in place for kids than it is for adults.

Amazon does the dark patterns. They should start there. Every time I pull something up, it says "Only 2 left! Buy now!" Go back a few days later, it still says the same thing.

 

[ZedClampet]

Somewhat related:

Former US senator and anti-videogame crusader Joe Lieberman has died at age 82

Lieberman's congressional hearings into videogame violence in the early 1990s helped drive the creation of the ESRB.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Maybe this is a hot take, but couldnt this be solved by not allowing monetization of any games aimed at kids? Putting an 18 rating on any game with in app purchases would fix it, no? Adults are able to make their own decisions, and of course addiction is a problem that it sucks for companies to prey on, but its kind of on an adult to seek councilling or mitigate our own tendencies somehow. If parents then want to let their kids play these games then they cant try and push the responsibility onto developers for their kids future issues.

 

[mjs warlord]

Any laws that restrict what games makers can or cant do is just totally stupid.
Up to a point the games industry already regulates itself , they are intelligent enough to know what "subject" matter in a game would be not be acceptable.

As i have mentioned in other posts i have been a die hard gamer since 1982 and joined the ranks of pc gamers in 2002 i will be 69 in august and have no plans to stop gaming and i have never allowed it to clash with my daily routine.

Is it the games makers fault that they made games that have been so good i sometimes forget where my bed is.
The answer of course is NO NO NO .. I made the decision to do that , their is nothing in T's and C's of any game that say i must use their product for x amount of hours per day.

[Mod edit: changed 2022 to 2002, per comment.]

 

[mjs warlord]

Just a bit more to add ...... Age restrictions on anything wont work and i once saw a quick way to avoid age restrictions. A young lad wanted a world of warcraft payment card and the shop refused to sell it saying he was not old enough ..... he said ok i will give my dad my pocket money and he will buy it for me.

One area i do think needs some sort of policing is micro payments but not sure how it would work.
A lot of older games are now "free" but with a lot of content missing because they want you to do micro payments.

New " free " games are defiantly geared up to empty your wallet if you want to beat AI players or real people.
A perfect example of this is Dragonheir , i have 218 hours on it but cant progress any further unless i spend money to make my set up stronger.

The one thing you have to be careful of is that over a certain length of time you can unintentionally spend more on micro payments than you would on the outright purchase of a game and thats exactly what the makers want you to do.

 

[Brian Boru]

Putting an 18 rating on any game with in app purchases would fix it, no?

That was my thought too. This is mainly about money extraction, there are laws already for other objectionable corporate practices, albeit they vary a lot among jurisdictions.

Adults are able to make their own decisions

Presuming you mean 18+yo, this isn't too true. The brain doesn't mature higher mental processes until at least 25—things like decision making, judgement, risk analysis, pattern recognition etc etc. There's a reason car insurance is often a lot more expensive for YAs. Of course, some people never mature these higher functions, and others do it earlier, but 25 seems to be the lower limit generally if it is going to happen.

would you say that governments need to create new regulations to curb the addictiveness of video games?

Games are not the only product sector which takes advantage of the weaker members of society. Is there a product sector or market segment without highly tested manipulative and deceptive marketing in full swing?

China is having a back-and-forth experience with trying to rein in the worst abuses of video games, so there's at least one guinea pig to observe.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I honestly feel it's always going to come down to the willpower vs gullibility of the player, and how strictly they were raised by their parents regarding financial responsibility and time management. The lack of such discipline is where the problem starts, and the wheels potentially fall off.

What I'm saying is, especially here in the US, the government is already too far in debt to afford spending a ton of court time on things like this, and as mentioned, the huge companies that own and/or invest in game IPs will easily be able to sidestep any mandates thrown at them.

It's a lot like when the EPA tries to penalize corporations for illegal dumping of waste. The fine is always more affordable than the preventative solution. That's the reality of the world we now live in. Local governments have even stooped to decriminalizing misdemeanors and low level felonies, and legalizing (and even selling) marijuana to afford their over inflated spending habits.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Just a bit more to add ...... Age restrictions on anything wont work and i once saw a quick way to avoid age restrictions. A young lad wanted a world of warcraft payment card and the shop refused to sell it saying he was not old enough ..... he said ok i will give my dad my pocket money and he will buy it for me.

One area i do think needs some sort of policing is micro payments but not sure how it would work.
A lot of older games are now "free" but with a lot of content missing because they want you to do micro payments.

New " free " games are defiantly geared up to empty your wallet if you want to beat AI players or real people.
A perfect example of this is Dragonheir , i have 218 hours on it but cant progress any further unless i spend money to make my set up stronger.

The one thing you have to be careful of is that over a certain length of time you can unintentionally spend more on micro payments than you would on the outright purchase of a game and thats exactly what the makers want you to do.

Not like I wasnt getting alcohol at age 13 easily either in pretty much the same way as that. But it does stop devs deliberately and obviously milking children of their parents money ala Roblox and Fortnite, and at the same time removes developers/publishers of legal responsibility if kids do get into it.

 

[mjs warlord]

Kaammos said .... But it does stop devs deliberately and obviously milking children of their parents money ala Roblox and Fortnite, and at the same time removes developers/publishers of legal responsibility if kids do get into it.

Hi Kaamos ... several years ago i read quite a lot of stories about youngsters running up huge bills on google play store and pc micro payments ... one story was about a 9 year old girl who was taken out for the day by her grand parents and when she realised how long she had been out she insisted they take her home to collect the crops in farmville and she had to do it now or they would die. At the end of the month her parents got a credit card bill for over 900$ because she had managed to get hold of her parents card details without them knowing . I believe that in the usa purchasing methods were altered to stop it happening.

At the time i thought that story was unbelievable so i got the game just to look at it. I pretended i was going to buy everything possible and at £900 ( i am in England ) i had not bought everything possible

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Kaammos said .... But it does stop devs deliberately and obviously milking children of their parents money ala Roblox and Fortnite, and at the same time removes developers/publishers of legal responsibility if kids do get into it.

Hi Kaamos ... several years ago i read quite a lot of stories about youngsters running up huge bills on google play store and pc micro payments ... one story was about a 9 year old girl who was taken out for the day by her grand parents and when she realised how long she had been out she insisted they take her home to collect the crops in farmville and she had to do it now or they would die. At the end of the month her parents got a credit card bill for over 900$ because she had managed to get hold of her parents card details without them knowing . I believe that in the usa purchasing methods were altered to stop it happening.

At the time i thought that story was unbelievable so i got the game just to look at it. I pretended i was going to buy everything possible and at £900 ( i am in England ) i had not bought everything possible

Yea its really dark, especially IOS and Android apps designed around in app purchases and with adverts otherwise. Its just evil.

Thankfully if you turn the wifi off on a tablet at least the ads disappear on the ones Ive played with my kid.

 

[Pifanjr]

Maybe this is a hot take, but couldnt this be solved by not allowing monetization of any games aimed at kids? Putting an 18 rating on any game with in app purchases would fix it, no? Adults are able to make their own decisions, and of course addiction is a problem that it sucks for companies to prey on, but its kind of on an adult to seek councilling or mitigate our own tendencies somehow. If parents then want to let their kids play these games then they cant try and push the responsibility onto developers for their kids future issues.

I think banning kids from any game in which you can buy something is like banning kids from toy stores or arcades or something like that. I don't think the answer is in trying to prevent kids from accessing these games (which seems like it would be very ineffective anyway) but from preventing microtransactions to be pushed on players in the first place.

There's a ban in the US on showing advertisements during a TV show of toys related to that show. I would be fine with a ban on pushing players to the store in videogames as well. Plus, there should be strict regulations on false or misleading advertisement. For example, a game cannot be labeled as free-to-play if you cannot reasonably progress through the game without buying microtransactions.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think banning kids from any game in which you can buy something is like banning kids from toy stores or arcades or something like that. I don't think the answer is in trying to prevent kids from accessing these games (which seems like it would be very ineffective anyway) but from preventing microtransactions to be pushed on players in the first place.

There's a ban in the US on showing advertisements during a TV show of toys related to that show. I would be fine with a ban on pushing players to the store in videogames as well. Plus, there should be strict regulations on false or misleading advertisement. For example, a game cannot be labeled as free-to-play if you cannot reasonably progress through the game without buying microtransactions.

Tbf arcades with fruit machine are 18+, the only real difference between loot boxes and fruit machines is you dont directly win any real money back.

Im with you in spirit I think, I dislike false advertising and games that obviously manipulate psychologically to draw money continually out of the player base.

Adding age limits to games with mtx might have the effect of stopping developers making games with malicious micro transactions styled in a way that is aimed at kids in the first place.

It would be hard to prove something was aimed at children. But the EU slowed down Apples EWaste for profit model a little in the long run, so if a larger market like the US or EU did it and regulated it actively it might reduce the amount being made. Its a monkeys paw I wont be that scared of tbh. Curl away.

Adults can decide for themselves what to do with their minds and bodies imo. Tax the hell out of it sure, and use that money to treat addictions and educate, but, Wont Somebody Think of the Children!

 

[Pifanjr]

Tbf arcades with fruit machine are 18+, the only real difference between loot boxes and fruit machines is you dont directly win any real money back.

I agree for microtransactions that involve gambling, but I wouldn't ban kids from games that only have cosmetic microtransactions, as long as the store isn't pushed upon you.

I think Fortnite actually does it pretty well. Sure, they rely on people seeing cool skins and wanting to buy them, but the store is (almost) never advertised within the game itself.

Adding age limits to games with mtx might have the effect of stopping developers making games with malicious micro transactions styled in a way that is aimed at kids in the first place.

It would be hard to prove something was aimed at children.

It's not that hard to prove something is aimed at children. I know Roblox has had problems because kids are a main part of their audience and therefore they had to adhere to specific regulations, though I don't remember what they got in trouble for exactly.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I agree for microtransactions that involve gambling, but I wouldn't ban kids from games that only have cosmetic microtransactions, as long as the store isn't pushed upon you.

I think Fortnite actually does it pretty well. Sure, they rely on people seeing cool skins and wanting to buy them, but the store is (almost) never advertised within the game itself.

I see it, fair enough. Cosmetics are only distasteful for kids in the same way toy adverts are on TV or whatever, and I dont have a problem with whatever people want to buy for fun.

not that hard to prove something is aimed at children. I know Roblox has had problems because kids are a main part of their audience and therefore they had to adhere to specific regulations, though I don't remember what they got in trouble for exactly.

I was imagining a panel of 65 year old European or US regulators whove never played a game in their lives checking out anything that looks vaguely anime.

 

[breaalina]

The dopamine that we get from video games and the techniques we’ve devised to get that dopamine lie at the root of both good and addictive game design. While the issues of loot boxes and unlawful interface settings are currently being examined separately and may appear unrelated, there is a promising approach to address these problems in tandem, starting with the 'dark pattern' concept, an emerging regulatory objective in the EU Santos & Rossi, W.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Since this thread has been necroed already…

It's partly just prejudice against gaming as a hobby. The average American watches 5 hours of television every day, and no one thinks that's strange or worries that television is addictive.

Right! I don't see any lawsuits complaining that you have to spend money (e.g. by renewing a subscription) to watch the next season in a series, that studios deliberately add cliffhangers to the end of seasons to manipulate viewers into watching the new season, that streaming platforms openly encourage a culture of “binge-watching” (analogous to binge-drinking), etc etc.

The brain doesn't mature higher mental processes until at least 25—things like decision making, judgement, risk analysis, pattern recognition etc etc.

Happily, this is an urban legend. Humans reach ~99% capability in these areas around the age of 16. There is then some minuscule improvement to make up the remaining percentage point over the following decade that is probably more to do with life experience than with brain development.

 

[Brian Boru]

Happily, this is an urban legend

Sadly, it's not

But I'm not going to argue it—too big a topic, and still too new to make definitive claims. Different aspects of brain maturation are documented in various credible places, but a lot depends on what aspect of maturity you're measuring, and what part of the brain you measure it in.

If you happen to know any auto insurance underwriters, they should have access to the latest and best info on this.

 

[mjs warlord]

Early on in this thread i said i had been a pc gamer since 2022 i made a typo i should have said 2002.

If we are addicted to games it is not the fault of the makers .... it is us the end users who decide who long we sit it front of a screen using their products.

I would much rather be known as a person who is addicted to gaming rather than be known as a smackhead or an alcoholic.