The lack of tethering is a deal-breaker for me, and one of the stupidest things that I've ever seen T-Mobile do.
To keep me from getting an iPhone and reluctantly switching to AT&T, T-Mobile had to show me that they would be more open, more flexible, and let me do everything I could with the new phone. Instead, they are probably creating "fake value" by crippling functionality and then charging a premium for it later.
I'm waiting a month, and if I haven't seen them change their tune, I'm getting an iPhone.
There is a big difference between mp3 players and mobile phones. I'm willing to give up a little functionality for some glitz and fun on an mp3 player. I am willing to give up some glitz and fun to get more out of my mobile phone.
I have been thinking about getting an iPhone G3, but have held back due to concerns about tethering and general freedom/openness. I am already a fairly content T-Mobile customer, and wasn't really looking forward to switching to AT&T.
I agree that the HTC Dream/G1 is unlikely to take more than a few percent of the iPhone's current customer base away. I think it may, however, staunch the growth of that customer base, and take a good slivver away from the Blackberry, as well.
That's the funny thing about Mac integration. When you get fed up, you pretty much get fed up in-toto. After a honeymoon with Leopard, using Safari + Mail.app + iWorks, etc, the little frustrations and limitations have compelled me to do an exploratory jump to Firefox + Google docs as my main "platform." It wasn't that way in Windows, where I'd go best-of-breed pretty freely. Apple really is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts: when you get fed up with a couple of the parts, the other parts, and the whole, loses its luster.
Horrible IMAP handling, copying multiple versions of the same messages and attachments to offline stores, eating HD space, fixable only by removing the local IMAP folder every so often.
You're missing the point. He was doing national Xbox to national PS3. The response went international with the PS3, so he fairly responded with international for the Xbox.
God, I hate fanboi quarrels, it's like being back in 5th grade.
A friend of yours gives you a toy that he made himself, for you to give to your kid. Unfortunately, the toy consists partially of broken glass, rusty nails, and a rabid badger. You smile, nod, and say "thank you," and as soon as your friend isn't looking, toss the toy into the rubbish bin.
A week later, you're talking to some friends and say, "you know, I really need to get a toy for my kid. He's bored of his old one, and he needs something for his next stage in cognitive development." The friend of yours who gave you the glass and nails and badger... thing... happens to be walking by, overhears you, and says, "well, what was wrong with the wonderful toy I gave him last week? I put a lot of time and energy into it!" You say, "I really don't want a lacerated, tetanus-infected rabid kid, but thanks anyway." Your friend says, "you damn ingrate! Go f*** yourself!" and walks away in a huff.
The "statistical outliers" argument applies to heroin and cocaine, as well: only about 10 to 15% of people who try those drugs become addicted to them. Yet we have no problem describing them (or, for that matter, gambling) as addictive. If you want to get serious about this, I suggest you actually look at some of the research about addiction and its substrates.
None of the play-use time studies I've seen are conclusive, but remember: if 2 hours per day is average, that's already 14 hours per week. We don't need to go too far about the average to get to the 20-hour mark.
The very article to which this thread is a response showed that the social networks which motivated in-game absorption were not persistent out of game: people no longer considered those relationships important. Again, the analogy with the bar-scene holds.
Brian, I know Nick. He's not a psychologist, he's a sociologist with a PhD in communications (I think he may have gotten his BA is psychology, but, for that matter, my own BA was in cog sci.) My hope is that you will understand that there are game structures that produce somewhat predictable addictive behaviors, and that you should consider the ethical component in designing them.
There are a variety of benefits, social as well as otherwise, to drinking; in any case, you're willfully seeking the exceptions to the analogy, while simply ignoring the core basis for it.
Actually, while I'm no fan of the choices of the mass market, I think that widespread disappointment will be the main response to Buffy, and I don't think it will sell well - while I think VtM actually has a bigger long-term market. But we will see.
No, VtM is better structurally as the basis for an MMO. Either the Buffy MMO is going to be a bad MMO, or it's only very, very superficially have anything to do with the Buffy stories.
I want to add that you're right that the social component is a major component of its addictiveness. The in-game accomplishments are recognized socially, which makes it far more likely that those accomplishments will displace real-world accomplishments in terms of providing emotional rewards. As one moves towar endgame, one finds a community of players who will echo and approve of a player's choice to play for 40 to 60 hours a week, just like a barfly will find a chorus of approval for their regular visits to their neighborhood dive (and indeed, why most models for recovering from addiction also include a significant social component.)
The social aspect introduces another factor that makes MMOs uniquely addicting: persistent temporality. Other people will always be there, and the game continues to change and evolve even when you aren't logged in. One doesn't feel one is "missing something" in a single-player game. That the other players may come to rely on you to perform your in-game function, may become angry if you don't contribute to a certain level, only accentuates the pressure to supplant real-world goals with in-game ones.
Like you said, game developers rely on "non-empty" worlds. This means that you need a critical mass of people who are, in fact, playing 40 to 60 hours a week, a hardcore contingent, to provide much of that sense of persistence and mutual recognition. I think this in fact makes you a little more complicit in engineering the addictive elements of the game design.
I'm aware of Nick Yee's research. I actually participate in some of the more academically inclined blogs you link to on your site. Most of the research on addiction in gaming comes from Korea, however. I have long thought that the question of violence in games is a red herring, while that of the addictive nature of MMOs is the more substantive issue.
As far as the answers to you questions go, the very point I'm making is that MMOs seem to supplant developmental goals with their very reward structures, and yes, people who were otherwise doing well lost a great deal as they become addicted to the game. I've made it clear: this is different from the "filling a void" element by which someone suffering from depression takes up television, compulsive web-browsing or even single-player games as a time-filler.
I compared you to the alcohol industry, and I think that comparison is accurate. Beer and wine manufacturers do not design their products to exploit alcoholism - yet they continue to market their products to populations who are, in fact, alcoholic. That 90% of the population can drink alcohol responsibly doesn't make alcoholism any less real.
You're not owning to the element of MMOs that are distinctive: their unclosed, open-ended, more-time-you-put-in-more-reward-you-get-out nature, and I've seen the consequences of it at work in the lives of people around me, more so than with sports or television or film or books by a long shot. What I have seen is people who had balanced lives before they started playing, but then lost those balanced lives. I have not seen that dynamic at work with other media or interests, except with drugs, alcohol, gambling, and such. I do think that watching TV constantly is a waste of a life, and that it is something associated with depression, but it doesn't have the same disruptive and rapacious character that an MMO has.
Calling them "compelling" is disingenuous in the extreme, because it pretends that it is the fictional, fantastic nature that keeps people playing for 20 to 60 hours a week over several years, when you can log into any end-game forum and see that it really is about camping, high-end-raids, drops, and that entire cycle of seeking the next item. (The best description I've heard is that of taking a stick and hitting dozens of pinatas, hoping that one will have a bigger stick that lets you hit bigger pinatas, ad infinitum.) Creating an ongoing, engrossing cycle of reward for repetitive behavior is designing for addiction.
Your equation of games with television would play better if I weren't a gamer - and an MMO gamer - at that - and one with a great deal of real-life experience of old-fashioned drug-and-alcohol addiction, to boot. I'm not some school-marm who doesn't know one end of the controller from another: I've been playing MMOs since the days of LPMUDs and DikuMUDS, and I've seen the way they can play out. Now, as someone involved in education, I've seen too many times in which they were part of students' failing or dropping out of class. Only drugs and alcohol compete with MMOs as a cause of failure among the students I've seen.
What you say about MMOs could be said about alcohol: people who develop into alcoholics have other problems in their lives. In fact, it could be said about a variety about substances we are generally comfortable with describing as "addictive." A lot of people can drink - and even do cocaine and heroin, occassionally - without ruining their lives. Is it tiresome to see those substances demonized?
I know a lot of people in the MMO dev business, so don't take it too strongly when I say that you're in the alcohol business. (Which, it should be said, is better than being in the nicotine business.) A significant part of your revenue comes from people whose use of your product is self-destructive, and the element that makes it self-destructive is itself a design goal.
Your ranking of "real" addiction and the easy stuff is incorrect, and anyone who has worked extensively with addicts will tell you that.
One can generally get past the physical addiction to opiates in about 3 weeks in all but the most dramatic cases. But relapse can occur months later: it is the powerful psychological pull to escape the emotional pressures of everyday life that is the real engine of even "chemical" addiction.
It is generally believed that about 10 to 15% of the population has a pre-dispensation to addiction. There may be a hereditary component, as studies of adopted children suggest. During the Vietnam war, many soldiers returned with a chemical dependence to morphine. Also, many people being treated for cancer become physically addicted to the substance, yet when their treatment ends and the morphine is withdrawn, only about 15% of the recipients actively seek it out again. This suggests that the physical component of chemical dependence really isn't the major one.
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The lack of tethering is a deal-breaker for me, and one of the stupidest things that I've ever seen T-Mobile do.
To keep me from getting an iPhone and reluctantly switching to AT&T, T-Mobile had to show me that they would be more open, more flexible, and let me do everything I could with the new phone. Instead, they are probably creating "fake value" by crippling functionality and then charging a premium for it later.
I'm waiting a month, and if I haven't seen them change their tune, I'm getting an iPhone.
There is a big difference between mp3 players and mobile phones. I'm willing to give up a little functionality for some glitz and fun on an mp3 player. I am willing to give up some glitz and fun to get more out of my mobile phone.
I have been thinking about getting an iPhone G3, but have held back due to concerns about tethering and general freedom/openness. I am already a fairly content T-Mobile customer, and wasn't really looking forward to switching to AT&T.
I agree that the HTC Dream/G1 is unlikely to take more than a few percent of the iPhone's current customer base away. I think it may, however, staunch the growth of that customer base, and take a good slivver away from the Blackberry, as well.
When one invokes Godwin's Law intentionally, it is not considered an instance of Godwin's Law.
That's the funny thing about Mac integration. When you get fed up, you pretty much get fed up in-toto. After a honeymoon with Leopard, using Safari + Mail.app + iWorks, etc, the little frustrations and limitations have compelled me to do an exploratory jump to Firefox + Google docs as my main "platform." It wasn't that way in Windows, where I'd go best-of-breed pretty freely. Apple really is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts: when you get fed up with a couple of the parts, the other parts, and the whole, loses its luster.
Horrible IMAP handling, copying multiple versions of the same messages and attachments to offline stores, eating HD space, fixable only by removing the local IMAP folder every so often.
Also, no "View Next Unread Message" function.
Immo: Minus the extra verb.
It is late and I was debating whether or not the Grammar Nazi's were going to hound me.
It is late and I was debating whether or not the Grammar Nazi's were going to hound me.
whether or not the Grammar Nazi's were going to hound me.
the Grammar Nazi's
Nazi's
's
'
Well, we're damn well going to hound you now.
You're missing the point. He was doing national Xbox to national PS3. The response went international with the PS3, so he fairly responded with international for the Xbox.
God, I hate fanboi quarrels, it's like being back in 5th grade.
I wonder why none of the stories about the upcoming Android phone release are making it out of the firehose. Are Apple fanbois gatekeeping?
I'm responding to you to undo a mis-moused moderation: I modded you down when I meant to mod you up. Sorry about that.
Although there's a certain irony, or something, that a moment of horribly uncoordinated computing occur on this little sub-thread...
Well, there was NetShare. Granted, AT&T called the shots there, but that doesn't make the application any less banned.
Again, by this logic, the CEO can do every job from that of the computer science PhD to the marketing MBA to legal to the cook's. I don't buy it.
OK, here's my counter-counter-analogy.
A friend of yours gives you a toy that he made himself, for you to give to your kid. Unfortunately, the toy consists partially of broken glass, rusty nails, and a rabid badger. You smile, nod, and say "thank you," and as soon as your friend isn't looking, toss the toy into the rubbish bin.
A week later, you're talking to some friends and say, "you know, I really need to get a toy for my kid. He's bored of his old one, and he needs something for his next stage in cognitive development." The friend of yours who gave you the glass and nails and badger... thing... happens to be walking by, overhears you, and says, "well, what was wrong with the wonderful toy I gave him last week? I put a lot of time and energy into it!" You say, "I really don't want a lacerated, tetanus-infected rabid kid, but thanks anyway." Your friend says, "you damn ingrate! Go f*** yourself!" and walks away in a huff.
Um, that's what this is like.
Glad you fell for Microsoft's marketing campaign. There is a reason they don't crush mono. It gives a illusion that there is choice. Name me
OK, nicolas.kassis, I hereby name you, Fluffy, Viscount of New Budapest.
His mechanic doesn't want to re-tool and re-skill. The former is about money, the latter about either laziness or exhaustion.
The "statistical outliers" argument applies to heroin and cocaine, as well: only about 10 to 15% of people who try those drugs become addicted to them. Yet we have no problem describing them (or, for that matter, gambling) as addictive. If you want to get serious about this, I suggest you actually look at some of the research about addiction and its substrates.
None of the play-use time studies I've seen are conclusive, but remember: if 2 hours per day is average, that's already 14 hours per week. We don't need to go too far about the average to get to the 20-hour mark.
The very article to which this thread is a response showed that the social networks which motivated in-game absorption were not persistent out of game: people no longer considered those relationships important. Again, the analogy with the bar-scene holds.
Brian, I know Nick. He's not a psychologist, he's a sociologist with a PhD in communications (I think he may have gotten his BA is psychology, but, for that matter, my own BA was in cog sci.) My hope is that you will understand that there are game structures that produce somewhat predictable addictive behaviors, and that you should consider the ethical component in designing them.
There are a variety of benefits, social as well as otherwise, to drinking; in any case, you're willfully seeking the exceptions to the analogy, while simply ignoring the core basis for it.
Actually, while I'm no fan of the choices of the mass market, I think that widespread disappointment will be the main response to Buffy, and I don't think it will sell well - while I think VtM actually has a bigger long-term market. But we will see.
No, VtM is better structurally as the basis for an MMO. Either the Buffy MMO is going to be a bad MMO, or it's only very, very superficially have anything to do with the Buffy stories.
I want to add that you're right that the social component is a major component of its addictiveness. The in-game accomplishments are recognized socially, which makes it far more likely that those accomplishments will displace real-world accomplishments in terms of providing emotional rewards. As one moves towar endgame, one finds a community of players who will echo and approve of a player's choice to play for 40 to 60 hours a week, just like a barfly will find a chorus of approval for their regular visits to their neighborhood dive (and indeed, why most models for recovering from addiction also include a significant social component.)
The social aspect introduces another factor that makes MMOs uniquely addicting: persistent temporality. Other people will always be there, and the game continues to change and evolve even when you aren't logged in. One doesn't feel one is "missing something" in a single-player game. That the other players may come to rely on you to perform your in-game function, may become angry if you don't contribute to a certain level, only accentuates the pressure to supplant real-world goals with in-game ones.
Like you said, game developers rely on "non-empty" worlds. This means that you need a critical mass of people who are, in fact, playing 40 to 60 hours a week, a hardcore contingent, to provide much of that sense of persistence and mutual recognition. I think this in fact makes you a little more complicit in engineering the addictive elements of the game design.
I'm aware of Nick Yee's research. I actually participate in some of the more academically inclined blogs you link to on your site. Most of the research on addiction in gaming comes from Korea, however. I have long thought that the question of violence in games is a red herring, while that of the addictive nature of MMOs is the more substantive issue.
As far as the answers to you questions go, the very point I'm making is that MMOs seem to supplant developmental goals with their very reward structures, and yes, people who were otherwise doing well lost a great deal as they become addicted to the game. I've made it clear: this is different from the "filling a void" element by which someone suffering from depression takes up television, compulsive web-browsing or even single-player games as a time-filler.
I compared you to the alcohol industry, and I think that comparison is accurate. Beer and wine manufacturers do not design their products to exploit alcoholism - yet they continue to market their products to populations who are, in fact, alcoholic. That 90% of the population can drink alcohol responsibly doesn't make alcoholism any less real.
* Cough *
You're not owning to the element of MMOs that are distinctive: their unclosed, open-ended, more-time-you-put-in-more-reward-you-get-out nature, and I've seen the consequences of it at work in the lives of people around me, more so than with sports or television or film or books by a long shot. What I have seen is people who had balanced lives before they started playing, but then lost those balanced lives. I have not seen that dynamic at work with other media or interests, except with drugs, alcohol, gambling, and such. I do think that watching TV constantly is a waste of a life, and that it is something associated with depression, but it doesn't have the same disruptive and rapacious character that an MMO has.
Calling them "compelling" is disingenuous in the extreme, because it pretends that it is the fictional, fantastic nature that keeps people playing for 20 to 60 hours a week over several years, when you can log into any end-game forum and see that it really is about camping, high-end-raids, drops, and that entire cycle of seeking the next item. (The best description I've heard is that of taking a stick and hitting dozens of pinatas, hoping that one will have a bigger stick that lets you hit bigger pinatas, ad infinitum.) Creating an ongoing, engrossing cycle of reward for repetitive behavior is designing for addiction.
Your equation of games with television would play better if I weren't a gamer - and an MMO gamer - at that - and one with a great deal of real-life experience of old-fashioned drug-and-alcohol addiction, to boot. I'm not some school-marm who doesn't know one end of the controller from another: I've been playing MMOs since the days of LPMUDs and DikuMUDS, and I've seen the way they can play out. Now, as someone involved in education, I've seen too many times in which they were part of students' failing or dropping out of class. Only drugs and alcohol compete with MMOs as a cause of failure among the students I've seen.
Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
What you say about MMOs could be said about alcohol: people who develop into alcoholics have other problems in their lives. In fact, it could be said about a variety about substances we are generally comfortable with describing as "addictive." A lot of people can drink - and even do cocaine and heroin, occassionally - without ruining their lives. Is it tiresome to see those substances demonized?
I know a lot of people in the MMO dev business, so don't take it too strongly when I say that you're in the alcohol business. (Which, it should be said, is better than being in the nicotine business.) A significant part of your revenue comes from people whose use of your product is self-destructive, and the element that makes it self-destructive is itself a design goal.
Your ranking of "real" addiction and the easy stuff is incorrect, and anyone who has worked extensively with addicts will tell you that.
One can generally get past the physical addiction to opiates in about 3 weeks in all but the most dramatic cases. But relapse can occur months later: it is the powerful psychological pull to escape the emotional pressures of everyday life that is the real engine of even "chemical" addiction.
It is generally believed that about 10 to 15% of the population has a pre-dispensation to addiction. There may be a hereditary component, as studies of adopted children suggest. During the Vietnam war, many soldiers returned with a chemical dependence to morphine. Also, many people being treated for cancer become physically addicted to the substance, yet when their treatment ends and the morphine is withdrawn, only about 15% of the recipients actively seek it out again. This suggests that the physical component of chemical dependence really isn't the major one.