mneme | Games that are bad for you (Reply)

I've been thinking for a while about games that are bad for you.

Not, you understand, games that have bad content. Not that I'm saying that's impossible, exactly, but art is art, and while you can certainly say -terrible- things with art, there's nothing unique about games that make "bad/racist/sexist/violent" games any worse than any other media with those elements.

No, what I'm talking about is games that make your life worse, or at least more hazardous, just by playing them.

Games that take something from you that doesn't balance the enjoyment you get out of them, that weaponize the urge to play, to win, to succeed into a kind of attack against the players, in a way that doesn't really balance.

I'm talking about gatcha games, of course, but also games that are deliberately addictive, that trickle out the story or fun in segments asking you to pay more and more money to finally finish or succeed, games that want to take your time or money or effort or attention and use it in ways that you only barely consent to, because they work that taking into the game play itself.

Of course, no conversation about parasitic games can ignore the oldest type of them all: Gambling games.

Which underscores, of course, one of the big facts about such games. You can play them without them being bad for you, personally. You can play the occasional penny poker or bridge or whatnot falling to the bug, without wasting time and money playing games not because you enjoy them, not because the money is spice that makes a good game just slightly better, but because you've got the bug and you're going to some day gamble everything you earned away, or because you've lost so much that you're gambling in a vain attempt to get it back. Or because you're not in the game to gamble, but to find someone who's about to lose money and make sure it's your money, to be a kind of predator, which maybe doesn't make the game bad for you, but it doesn't make it that great, either.

The thing is, I'm a lifelong gamer. I love games. Love the way they can take you out of yourself, give you something to seek mastery in that is made up, but still real, give ways to strive with others where nobody needs to get hurt or strive with them against the game itself in a way that brings people together.

All those things are great. And honestly, if you're spending time in a game and enjoying yourselves, there's nothing wrong with that.

But bad-for-you games, parasitic games, don't just stop there. They take more than you (probably) started out wanting to give, and they don't give back what they take. You might enjoy them; you might even be able to make the game work for you, but it's a struggle because the game is designed to abuse you. And honestly, I've played a lot of these games; there's even one I'm still playing -- extremely defensively and carefully, but knowing that if I let the game have too much, it will take something I don't want to give it.

I probably don't have a complete list of ways these games abuse you, but here's a partial one:

Some games are designed to take your money--not in a normal "here's a game, here's how much it costs, thanks for your business" way, but in far more insidious ways, ones that start with "this game is so fun" and end with losing a literal fortune or spending thousands of dollars you can't afford, just to get a single digital character in a video game.
Some games are designed to take your time, not in a way that's fun--spending time in a game to enjoy yourself, but as a -cost- of doing other things in the game. I used to think this was true about D&D--that you played through the low levels as a "payment" to get to the fun, high levels of the game. And honestly, maybe this is true of some TTRPG games, at some tables, but it's not generally the case--however, it absolutely is part of some of the worst mechanics in games, where you "grind", spending time repeatedly doing the same thing over and over for a "reward" in a game. That's not gameplay; that's pay-to-play (you're just paying with time), whether it's repeating a series of actions in Fallen London to eventually get enough resources, or grinding in an RPG (when grinding is required, anyway).
- Not this, is when a game takes time for mastery, not just as a cost. If you study the mechanics of a game to get better, or practice incessantly to master a combo in a fighting game, that's not "taking your time" even if it takes some time; that's just study and training, the same as when you train for a sport. And it feels different, because rather than having your time wasted, you've changed by the end of it.
- But a great example of this kind of "mechanic" is daily quests. Throw a daily quest into a game, and for maximum rewards and success, the player "has" to log in every day--whether there's anything fun to do or not. This wastes the user's time, and also is part of taking their attention, even when not playing the game...which is my next point.
Related to taking your time, a game can take your attention. The most harmless way this might happen is ads--where a game is monetizing your attention. Which....OK, it's a pretty straightforwards transaction (except that the game is probably also taking your information without informed consent, which I'm not going go into but also isn't great), but honestly, I'd rather pay money.
- More importantly, a game can try to create reinforcement systems that grab your attention even when you're not playing the game, trying to get you to build the game into your routine. Hours just drift away, sucked into one or more games that pull this. In addition to daily quests, a big culprit here is action points--where you get a certain number of action points per day, and they'll replenish at the beginning of a new day--or worse, replenish over time, encouraging you to return periodically to see if there is enough to -now- do the moves you couldn't do before. Like some other mechanics that are used in harmful ways, this wasn't originally employed as exploitation or psychological manipulation -- the first place I know that used a mechanic like this (short of play by email games, which are enough divorced that I'm not even going to count them) were "door" games on BBSes, which, my impression is, used an action limit as a form of fairness, to stop you from just stay logged into a BBS all day (limited number of phone lines, people), and, yes, probably to push gameplay along the expected BBS cycles where you'd log in once or twice a day to engage with others and while you were there, play a few daily moves in a game. But take the same mechanic and employ it for monetization (by letting you spend money to replenish your actions early, or get more actions a day by spending) and suddenly it becomes a tool for exploitation.
It's reasonable to look at the objection to games grabbing your attention and time and say "but aren't games for spending time? Aren't games supposed to be engaging?" Well, yeah, they are; that's part of what makes a good game. But a good game then -stops- grabbing your time and attention at some point--a game isn't a job, and it shouldn't become your life. So games that never end; where you have no natural stopping point, have to be better at giving people exit ramps to not risk abuse.

Ok, so quite a few games (most of them "free to play" but by no means all of them) are actively, semi-deliberately harmful to their users. So, what should we do about it?

Yeah, I dunno.

It would be hypocritical for me to say "never play or support games that use these mechanics. First, as I mention regarding gambling, it's possible to engage in a little harmful gaming without being harmed, or even contributing materially to harming others. But also, a lot of these mechanics enter use not because the companies in question hate or want to harm or exploit their users, per se, but because they want to be able to make their games at all. 21st century pressures (particularly the Internet) have driven the costs of many games towards zero, and when consumers aren't willing to pay enough to build games, there's a strong incentive to get the money another way.

And on top of this, well, I do still play games I know are harmful. In moderation and exercising defensive measures, sure, but I even play Genshin Impact (which engages in almost all of this).

So, instead, I'd say: If you're designing games, try to avoid building in abusive mechanics, and if you have to (or find that you have) try to mitigate their effects.

If you're a player, protect yourself. If a game asks for you to play it every day, build in breaks so you don't lock in a cycle where you feel you -have- to play every day (and yes, this means deliberately "breaking streak" in games that keep track of and reward streaks; playing the same game every day is rarely healthy!). If a game has slippery slope mechanics that ask you to commit more and more time or money to the game, don't. Make rules for yourself that limit what you will give to the game, and stick to them. If the game has mechanics that reward people who leave the game and return (these rewards will never equal that of just playing all the time), weaponize those rewards to encourage yourself to take regular breaks.

And most importantly, the moment a game is no longer fun, stop. Do something else, to return to the game some other year...or quite likely never. I can't count the number of games I've started, enjoyed, put a few dozen or even thousands of hours into...and then summarily quit. That's how games are supposed to work unless you're a world class competitor (in which case the game -is- your job); you play a game and then finish it, making your own exit if there's no natural one, not become your life and potentially crowd out other activities and even other games.

I have a lot more to say on the topic, and I suppose I could go into specifics with individual games, but that was long enough.