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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I think this is where the nuance is and where the things can go off the rails. Your example is that you want to more easily be connected with people that you enjoy engaging with but find it hard to find - which you did attempt to find a work around for, which I do commend.

    I think because of the volume of scale of the internet it has been fine-tuned and engineered towards benefiting the major players more as they have taken convenience features and frankenstein’d it into a tool of “increased engagement”.

    It is like a market square and everyone is shouting out their wares at the same time and the major players (and others) have done their research on how to be the “loudest and most attention-grabbing hawker at the square”

    Here the algorithm approach is useful to help “silence the sea of voices” and find “hawkers” that sell “products” that are of interest to you. It does require some discipline on the users part to curate their “hawkers”, but overall the experience is improved as one deals with “products” that is aligned with one’s interests.

    I feel, in general, however that the intent has been twisted into something that has become a slippery slope that slides down towards “how can I get eyes on my thing and keep people coming back” for as long as possible. One’s attention gets bombarded with as many ideas as possible and, from this, one’s scope starts to bloat and becomes muddy as one processes too many different ideas and viewpoints in a short time frame and as a result one spends less time forming a individual opinion. I believe this does contribute to shorter attention spans as we attempt to “offload” our thinking onto something else as we try to make sense of all the information we take in.

    The easiest thing I can think of is TikTok and how quickly the short video format was incorporated into the big platforms.

    It is a human shortcoming I feel that gets taken advantage of (and I feel like it is being cultivated) and as humans we do have a side to us that tries to optimise the shit out of a things - often to our detriment.






  • Thank you, it seems the scope of the thought was a lot more open-ended than I imagined.

    Was thinking in the line of the how the big game companies seem to try to hook people onto their game experiences and when one hits it big, how they attempt to moderate that experience around trying to keep it at a level that is akin to selling cigarettes.

    It is like they are trying to find that “magic addictive formula” and try to be the sole provider of that experience to keep a person coming back to them.


  • That sounds depressing, it is like they commoditised cheat codes. Sad to see it fall into the trappings that the game makes fun of. I can almost imagine what the GTA 6 version might become if they decide to intergrate that level of “hooks” into its shiny game environment.

    I think that was the 2K launcher, if I recall, I remember they were doing something with their games (was playing XCOM 2 at the time) and promptly made use of a workaround

    Didn’t like the extra steps just to get into a game - like they were reminding you that you only pay for the license to play the game and the property is theirs to do with as they please. I mean, it is, but still doesn’t help feeling like I am being constantly reminded.




  • Streaming platforms and movies are similar - yes but for them it is a one time recurring cost for the service or in a movie’s case it is a pay per experience.

    With game pass, for example, you can play games like streaming, but it won’t be the full experience for some games (i.e the dlc and additional content) - and to be fair, it does usually come at a discount but there in lies additional costs per experience

    It is like the equivalent of paying for a streaming service and then it asks and double dips, saying “hey, we see you really liked that show - want to pay us 5 more bucks to enjoy more of it” or a movie and where they ask you to spend more to see the extra deleted scenes

    Games are in an area where one can both pay per experience and pay for the service and it is understandable in some cases why that can be - however there are games now that are intended for pay for experience (single player for example) that have additional costs attached to them to draw more “easy” money (this can be the case of developing something worse on purpose to offer a simpler way out of it) or you have games that are nearly the same every year (with them chopping and changing features to make it seem “fresh and new”) and then leverage on a FOMO (mobile games are far worse in this regard) to “encourage” one to spend more on the original purchase.

    The effort to manipulate and try to make more with less, feels more erroneous in the gaming sphere

    They are trying to get people to become “addicted” to an experience and they wish to target either those that can afford it (and for them - power to them) and/or those that cannot but are unable to control their desire for more (worst case scenario - they hook a proverbial “junkie”)


  • I will be say I wasn’t thinking too hard into it but, (and not direct response more how a lot of the bad elements feel like they are being pushed)

    • Was thinking how the idea of games-as-a-service and subscriptions are considered a priority
    • how samey a lot of AAA games seems to feel (like it is consoldated on a “formula”)
    • a desire to manipulate towards the idea to spend more on the original product
    • supply enough of a product to get a player invested and once hooked - try to maintain that investment over a period of time
    • the product is seldom as good as advertised
    • the quality of the product, in general, feels like it is being degraded in an effort to more easily manipulate
    • games are seen as something as means to an end - and in that vein, it is targeted to be able to draw in people according to metrics and less a expression of creativity

    By and large - yes, the idea can be applied to capitalism and I think the idea I was thinking of is that AAA games lean into the more exploitative area of it.

    Doesn’t mean it is the only one or even the worst, but I was thinking in the headspace at how the “big games companies” are trying to lean into being more manipulative (directly or subversively) and how it feels more like “drug dealers” trying to sell their brand of high, trying to dictate how to enjoy those highs, they try to lock players into a “brand” of gaming and once they can “control” what people will enjoy, attempt to exploit value from it.