Notably, Rym and Scott did not meet my initial vetting requirements. The first PAX I went to I saw nothing from them. Hi-Definition befriended me and mentioned their stuff, so I did go at the next PAX.
One lesson I've learned is that I'm "too informed" about some of the subjects I really like to enjoy a panel directed at the masses for an hour. I have some friends that ran panels at PAX and Gencon that I've been to, and it's just an awkward feel when you know you have more in-depth conversations about the topic with these guys on a weekly basis.
I have basically zero patience for 50 minutes of undirected Q&A or high school presentation power point lectures. ;^)
While I generally agree, a good enough guest can make undirected Q&A worthwhile. It requires a very high level of snarkiness and improv skills, but I've seen it done.
Worst case of what I described above: Three guys I've known from forums since I was sixteen and Chris Perkins talking about how to run life-long D&D campaigns. It can be summarized in three words.
Fucking Risk Legacy. Between the different gaming groups I bounce between and my personal friends, I have a pretty damn large list of gamers to tap, and all but one or two are complete wet blanket commitment-phobes. I gave up on trying to get a 5-man 15-game campaign.
Yeah it's weird because they have no problem committing their time to playing games. We have game nights like clockwork. They just don't want to commit to playing a game 15 times. There's a bit of an "always chasing the new thing" problem.
With gaming addiction, exploiting the human biology to trick itself into doping it isn't in itself unethical. At least if the person is aware of what is happening.
The unethical part is where that is exploited (intentional or not) to cause a person to perform immoral actions (extreme example murder) or to cause unsociable behaviours.
Don't know if that makes sense, so let me try to explain.
Using things like variable ratio reinforcement schedules isn't in itself unethical.
In slot machines, or gambling in general in my eyes is unethical, because that's misuse of currency, but whatever.
If in a game you're trying to get a gamer to perform an action that results in the gamer spending more money (eg. Kompu Gacha), that is unethical because of the enclosed nature of it's use.
The makers of the game have by design hidden the true value of the complete set, and this deceit is wrong because you're paying money and you don't know what you're getting. Especially when it's objects for kids, no child should ever feel obligated to buy anything, since it's the parents who are responsible for the spending of the family.
Also, from a gaming perspective, it's just lazy. There's no fun in this mechanic on it's own. If you had a virtual slot machine built within a game, and you only spent virtual credits to play to win in game items to use in the main part of the game, there's no REAL WORLD harm in playing a virtual slot machine. You could happily sit and spam the slot machine till you got what you want.
So the main issue is deceiving true value.
What is you made a game that used variable ratio reinforcement schedules that for example, 3d world you can explore you have tools at your disposal. You can dig. Every time you dig a hole there's a chance you can hit gold/ oil/ gem/ more dirt sand creature or nothing whatever. In conjunction with that you have a separate game mechanic, you can buy/ construct/ research an portable x-ray device that allows you to explore the ground so you don't have to dig so many holes.
There's value in time saving, however a bad example of time saving is pay to win.
That still can be considered unethical, depending on how people value purchasing in game items (hats). Or how the game was bought in the first place.
The harder question to ask really I think is what is the real world monetary value of digital content? How does that change over time, and how does the developer extract that value.
The hat model works in free to play games, because simple maths, if you pay for a full game with all content for 50£/$ the value of that content is very simple to understand. If you've got the game for free minus some content, the breakdown of the value becomes isn't so obvious, especially if the objects being sold in the game aren't significant pieces of content (like expansion packs)
If you divide 50£/$ by all TF2's hats + misc. items you can say, each item is worth x amount. I don't know what they actually charge per item, so I don't know how fairly priced those items are.
So the prices of the total sum of the items, compensates for the value of the whole game. Once you've bought an item, you don't need to buy it again.
Where as Kompu Gacha, technically is a bottomless pit. Not good.
Back to my previous example about the digging game. instead of buying the portable x-ray doohicky, what if as part of the game you could construct your own means for finding the resources you want. I don't mean a script/ bot/ macro. An actual in game mechanism that allows you through experimentation to develop in game tools (a more advanced shovel that some how only digs out diamonds), but which can only be achieved through time investment and discovering, in this patch of ground there's more iron ore and there's big grey boulders around, that patch of ground over there has more gold patches and its next to a stream.
Probably doesn't sound exciting at all, but the point I'm trying to make is that developers probably would do a better job of implementing them if they didn't have only financial pressures.
If they had real external ethical pressures also, we would probably have more sophisticated and fun games to play.
If we go by supply and demand, the "real world value" of digital content is $0.00(repeating)1 + time it takes to consume the content. Now, what will the market bear, if the time is decreased to a 1-click action (or equivalently short length)? That depends on the game, but $0-5 seems pretty reasonable (based on my completely unscientific anecdotal evidence. I'd like to see an actual study done on this).
The main issue I see with your hypothetical game is that the player's choice is between grinding and paying-to-win. You know how much I hate grind in games? I didn't finish Mass Effect 2 because the gameplay had too much grind. And I am the kind of person who would otherwise have loved Mass Effect 2.
Comments
Notably, Rym and Scott did not meet my initial vetting requirements. The first PAX I went to I saw nothing from them. Hi-Definition befriended me and mentioned their stuff, so I did go at the next PAX.
One lesson I've learned is that I'm "too informed" about some of the subjects I really like to enjoy a panel directed at the masses for an hour. I have some friends that ran panels at PAX and Gencon that I've been to, and it's just an awkward feel when you know you have more in-depth conversations about the topic with these guys on a weekly basis.
"Group Buy In"
The unethical part is where that is exploited (intentional or not) to cause a person to perform immoral actions (extreme example murder) or to cause unsociable behaviours.
Don't know if that makes sense, so let me try to explain.
Using things like variable ratio reinforcement schedules isn't in itself unethical.
In slot machines, or gambling in general in my eyes is unethical, because that's misuse of currency, but whatever.
If in a game you're trying to get a gamer to perform an action that results in the gamer spending more money (eg. Kompu Gacha), that is unethical because of the enclosed nature of it's use.
The makers of the game have by design hidden the true value of the complete set, and this deceit is wrong because you're paying money and you don't know what you're getting. Especially when it's objects for kids, no child should ever feel obligated to buy anything, since it's the parents who are responsible for the spending of the family.
Also, from a gaming perspective, it's just lazy. There's no fun in this mechanic on it's own. If you had a virtual slot machine built within a game, and you only spent virtual credits to play to win in game items to use in the main part of the game, there's no REAL WORLD harm in playing a virtual slot machine. You could happily sit and spam the slot machine till you got what you want.
So the main issue is deceiving true value.
What is you made a game that used variable ratio reinforcement schedules that for example, 3d world you can explore you have tools at your disposal. You can dig. Every time you dig a hole there's a chance you can hit gold/ oil/ gem/ more dirt sand creature or nothing whatever. In conjunction with that you have a separate game mechanic, you can buy/ construct/ research an portable x-ray device that allows you to explore the ground so you don't have to dig so many holes.
There's value in time saving, however a bad example of time saving is pay to win.
That still can be considered unethical, depending on how people value purchasing in game items (hats). Or how the game was bought in the first place.
The harder question to ask really I think is what is the real world monetary value of digital content? How does that change over time, and how does the developer extract that value.
The hat model works in free to play games, because simple maths, if you pay for a full game with all content for 50£/$ the value of that content is very simple to understand. If you've got the game for free minus some content, the breakdown of the value becomes isn't so obvious, especially if the objects being sold in the game aren't significant pieces of content (like expansion packs)
If you divide 50£/$ by all TF2's hats + misc. items you can say, each item is worth x amount. I don't know what they actually charge per item, so I don't know how fairly priced those items are.
So the prices of the total sum of the items, compensates for the value of the whole game. Once you've bought an item, you don't need to buy it again.
Where as Kompu Gacha, technically is a bottomless pit. Not good.
Back to my previous example about the digging game. instead of buying the portable x-ray doohicky, what if as part of the game you could construct your own means for finding the resources you want. I don't mean a script/ bot/ macro. An actual in game mechanism that allows you through experimentation to develop in game tools (a more advanced shovel that some how only digs out diamonds), but which can only be achieved through time investment and discovering, in this patch of ground there's more iron ore and there's big grey boulders around, that patch of ground over there has more gold patches and its next to a stream.
Probably doesn't sound exciting at all, but the point I'm trying to make is that developers probably would do a better job of implementing them if they didn't have only financial pressures.
If they had real external ethical pressures also, we would probably have more sophisticated and fun games to play.
The main issue I see with your hypothetical game is that the player's choice is between grinding and paying-to-win. You know how much I hate grind in games? I didn't finish Mass Effect 2 because the gameplay had too much grind. And I am the kind of person who would otherwise have loved Mass Effect 2.
There should be built in work around, but they shouldn't be 'pay to win', cheats or anything cheap.
Work arounds should be clever use of what's available in the game, but it takes a clever person to create 'tool' puzzles.
Portal is a good example of tool puzzles, except that's the core game mechanics instead of something peripheral.