jayseven

F2P games aren't supported solely by people with OCD that is serious enough to warrant help; OCD that is serious enoough to impact on the lives of them and of others. You say this. So it is held up by other people with "[OCD] tendencies lying dormant" you say. My point here would be that these tendencies are in no way harmful, in no way damaging to the individual or society as a whole. I would also argue that it is entirely normal to have 'ocd tendencies'. I also argue that F2P games is not what we were arguing about and is instead a facet of the facet that you were arguing about previously. There are no F2P games on PS3/360 so those external reward systems would therefore be irrelevant to your new point. I argue that it is a big leap between grouping these elements together, and comparing them to gambling, too. Gambling is regulated because it harms lives, because people with addiction problems end up losing jobs, houses, partners, children to their inability to function regularly; to their compulsions. I feel that you are moving away from the role of achievement unlocking and towards the role of farmville et al in mentioning F2P. Ultimately, to reiterate; if someone has an underlying OCD tendency that is of severity strong enough that their lives or the lives of others are affected, then it will be exhibited in other ways, and will not be something that the game exclusively is responsible for. In Australia, gambling is a huge problem. I attended a serious university open evening which concluded with a raffle. There are large social clubs that are funded entirely by one-armed bandit machines. I'm sure I could find millions of people who would rather someone they knew switched from gambling to achievement hunting. Not sure I could find so many to go the other way.

Rediscovered something yesterday; when a tired old balloon has started to shrink and it gets all wrinkly, I like to gently place my finger or hand on the wrinkles and let the rubber tighten up. Lol. My cousins - NEITHER COULD DO IT. Whadafuq? I'm not the only one who can do it eh?

@Agent Gibbs perhaps that is exactly what happened but marvel didn't want to share any of its profits. I think it's fair enough, just silliness on Marvel's part.

OOoooh exciting! Vote: no lynch

@Dcubed I disagree that games need warning labels. Peanut allergies can result in death. Achievement hunting cannot. I still motion that if you have warnings for game's complusiveness or addictiveness then you're labelling every single game. I also think that there are larger bodies of 'vulnerable' that exist. You have recognised a form of behaviour that exists in gaming, and you have recognised that the industry is aware of it and takes it into account when designing games. You state that there are those extreme cases where this form of behaviour affects their day-to-day lives. You demand that they be considered by the industry. I state that those with serious behavioural issues need further and more serious care, and I do not believe that it is the responsibility of the industry to cater for them. There is no huge issue about this. You have cited many 'journals' that talk about the link between gaming and addictions but it is not the same as other addictions which affect entire economies. In the US alone: Source What damage does an external reward system actually have? On society, nothing. People with the sort of crippling OCD that would be needed in order for achievements of trophies to be debilitating to their working life would be utterly inable to work anyway, for their compulsions would be found elsewhere and already a driving force in their life. On the self? As is already obvious - if they suffer here, then they are suffering anyway. It is often stated that everyone has a vice. We can call them hobbies, we can call them urges. It is when an addiction impacts upon that person's ability to lead a 'normal' life that it becomes a problem. Gaming addiciton certainly exists but again, it is not the role of the industry itself to cater for someone who has an addictive personality - if there were no games they'd be addicted to something else. I disagree that we need to label games "warning: addictive" (I'm sure some games have used that as a selling point). Where would you draw the line? "Warning: jokes about dead babies" to protect those who miscarried? "warning: spiders" for those arachnophobic? "Warning: Contains scenes of an outdoor nature" for the agoraphobic? You speak about 'sweeping it all under the carpet' as if it's a giant mess affecting billions already.

I bet there were a few cases made around somewhere - a true collector's item! Rather fitting with the grandness of teh movie as a whole.

But if you want to lose loads of weight then the carrot and treadmill is an excellent thing :P It would be a subjective situation. But also it does not account (or perhaps merely does not expressly allow) for the fact that the person on the treadmill can get off at any time, can change the speed of teh treadmill, and also can get feedback from the treadmill which can tell him precisely how far he's run and at what speed, while also displaying a heart rate monitor. You can get off the tradmill by ignoring achievements, by turning notifications off for the 360. People who are simply unable to switch off - who deal with the sort of OCD or have issues with addiction - need professional help. Nannying for their safety would mean removing actual legitimate pleasure and happiness for the large majority of others who are able to control their gameplay style. People who are already vulnerable to OC tendencies have bigger problems in their lives than gamerscore. The order that their shirts are hung up in teh wardrobe or the fact that the toaster is not at a right-angle to the bread bin, or that the light switch hasn't been flicked 7 times in the last hour. Metagame/external rewards/loyalty schemes provide genuine, legitimate, real happiness from the act of achieving. Happiness. If you were to introduce safeguards in game development to protect the groups you mention then do you think that would not affect the internal rewards systems at all? Surely any element of a game that encourages replay is therefore dangerous? Any game that has collectibles? A map to explore? F-Zero X had, what, 30 racers, 4 tournaments, and 5 difficulties - which is really an OCD nightmare/dream. it is not the responsibility of games developers to protect these groups of people. Their family would be primary care givers and they would be responsible for both recognising symptoms and protecting health. Those without a family to do so is an even smaller group. Arguing that even they should be protected would mean all groups of that size should be thought of, which opens up a truckful of cans of worms; where would it end? I am tempted to think up examples to push this further but it's fairly self-explanatory. If you're allergic to peanuts do you blame the people who grow them, the people who use them as ingredients or the people who buy them for ignoring your health problem? It is your problem. Not their responsibility. You have alternatives, that's a reasonable enough compromise.

That game looks so hard and epileptic... Can only get to about 2 seconds before level 3 and the pressure is making me explode.

1st point: The agenda behind gaming and smoking is not fairly linked at all. There is a difference between being addicted to cigarettes and being addicted to punching babies in the face, for example. There is a difference between gambling addiction and a compulsion to smile at strangers. I would find it incredibly easy to argue that. I fully disagree that the agenda behind an act fully determines the morality of that act. I fully dispute that killing thousands of millions of people and getting rich off it is the same as achievement unlocked: Kill 50 enemies with a pistol. That there is a similarity in how people behave in the two instances is no reason to draw further parallels. I do not think that it is plausible to dismiss the dangers of smoking when considering quantifying the agenda because the agenda is worse because the teleological consequence is known. That is why it is so ethically dark. The parallel only goes so far. They are only similar to a point. I can argue that giving someone a puppy is the same as shitting in their garden twice a day because I can leave out a whole bunch of relative information that is extremely relevant. Achievements are like tesco reward points. Air miles. "Buy 10 get 1 free." Getting a limited edition coke glass with my big mac that's part of a set of 6 is not the same as getting cancer. 2nd point: "good" style isn't very objective :P So we need to identify what an external rewards system offers that internal ones do not, yes? it offers external awards. That's it. It's like the pasta sauce thing. Before there was chunky sauce nobody new they wanted it. There's nothing wrong with regular smooth sauce. Only in this instance, the creation of external awards like achievements also give companies that want our money (the cheek!) to see how we game in more detail, and to see what they can do to change their games so that we'd play them more. The bastards! Yes, gamers will endure a certain amount of pain in order to attain a sense of reward. But as we have already agreed that this can exist in games without external rewarding, then it's not really something to add to the 'definitely evil' pile. I think you are kind of taking away a lot of control that a gamer has in how you describe achievements systems. I understand your angle, I just think that focusing on it does nothing but make you dislike games. It doesn't mean you see a 'truer' vision of what game development is, or what the companies are doing. EDIT: Essentially, I am saying that an external reward model in itself DOES present more awards to gamers, and thus it provides more of a sense of achievement, which is a good thing, and not evil like tobacco companies.

Katie I'd guess. Aside from Ashley's excellent joke, it is rather a risk to amend someone's name after they've told it to you. It doesn't bother me at all but I certainly know of people who are annoyed by it.

... Maybe it does just look like him :P How incredibly racist of me.

The whole good/bad intentions, good/bad outcome argument is hugely subjective. If gamers use games as a form of escapism, and developers make games designed for escapism, then there's no conflict here there's just supply and demand. It would be stupid if games were designed NOT to be escapist, if gamers demand escapism. Stating that gamers are playing games against their own will is a generalisation and in itself a bit of a paradoxical thing to say. The elements that lead to the gamer willingly play a game is at question here, for sure, but I argue that it is irrelevant - whether it is achievements or high scores or k/d ratio or that you rent it and need to finish it before it goes back. I recognise the distinctions between all of the above, and I recognise that it is a behaviour modifying element. I do not agree that the intention behind said technique is in itself malicious or negative compared to any other element that goes in to designing a game that is intended to make money. I think that the issue here is that we live in a world where there are businesses that are buying something cheap and selling it to you for more. I think that is something that you can argue to be immoral for the good of the great, but that's just not what capitalism is. What you are saying is that gamers are now addicted to the achievements, thus need to play games to feed, whereas without the external model they would just be addicted to the particular game. What is also happening is that the all-in-one entertainment hub is trying to lock the gamer (or 'user' which goes hand in hand with 'addict') to their screen where tehy can control the choice of entertainment they have on offer. Here's a relevant TED vid to the discussion. By having a controllable environment, a company can observe how a gamer spends their money and time on entertainment and use the data to increase the efficiency of milking the gamer for money - by giving the gamer what they want. Microsoft have been good at creating monopolies in order to control how users are able to interact with products/information/etc/etc, and have been able to steer billions of dollars of industry by shaping not only the choice of stock on the shelves but by manipulating the entire warehouse of shelves. But this doesn't mean that the corporation behind it all is omniscient. It doesn't mean that it's evil. It just means that it knows how to make money - and that's by giving consumers what they want, whether it's good or not. I think I'm probably guilty here of arguing rather poorly by meshing too many points together. But reading your quote I don't see something that fully backs up what you say - and the bolded part does not mean that achievements themselves are unethical. So the designer needs to choose reward mechanisms that are right for that style of game. This is reflected in the range of types of achievements that reward various kinds of gameplay -- he isn't saying external rewards are bad, he is saying that they need to be thought about and that they need to agree with the game's design. He's saying they can be complementary, not that they are immoral. I think it is hyperbolic and a bit daily-mail to say gamers are lab animals trapped in a callous ecosystem. I think that all you're doing is identifying an element that is pervasive in all elements of life, that has been around for as long as man - manipulation for personal gain. That's just life.

I do see what you are saying on all of your points, I just disagree that it is detrimental in a different way to the sheer fact that games exist as forms of escapism. I think the issue that swarthes of people choose games over real life in varying degrees of intensity is the diamond to your OC-focused facet, here. And that diamond is just one of dozens that stud the crown of 'entertainment' that human beings wear to create meaning in our reality. It was kinda fun making that extended metaphor but I'm not entirely sure it works, but hey!

@Rummy my cousin recently introduced me to chonny and superwog - guys who go overboard with their race stereotypes. It's aussie bred (nobody here says ozzie for some reason) and some of it is too funny. TOO FUNNY. And 'wog' here is a completely acceptible term for pretty much any south-east european/mediterreanian/non-white non-black non-arab non-asian... (I say this because that guy in the picture is chonny)

My issue here is with the "might" and the "probably" usage in both this post and your later one. Identifying one element in a game that can be attributed to one small group of people is not actually doing much more than just making sweeping generalisations. There are multiple ways that achievements affect design, but then there are multiple other elements that affect design - these design alterations are not inherently bad or wrong. You dislike them because you dislike the idea of being controlled in some subconscious way, yes? Go play the one of the valve games that has audio commentary. You will learn about how they go about designing their levels using light as a tool to guide players through a level non-verbally. Yes, having an external rewards system alters gaming habits, and yes companies may benefit from this, but it isn't bad. There was a larger change in how games were made when the possibility of having a saved game came about. Games made for arcades are designed differently. The rumble pak altered games to the extent where force feedback is completely expected in a game, and kind of noticed when it's not there. Going back to your argument; I do not think that gaming is up there with smoking/gambling/drugs (unless we're talking south korea :P). I understand that you are saying it is positive reinforcement and thus instilling more of a completionist in a gamer, but good games are still better than bad games, so what?

I've wanted JSR ever since FOREVER. Never had a dreamcast (borrowed one for a month or so) but loved the game concept. I am willing to purchase this without watching any videos (ever), in order to satiate 12 year old me. It will be glorious.

So what's the difference between an achievement arbitrarily stretching out a game and an in-game element doing the same thing? Goldeneye on the N64 had cheats for completing levels on certain difficulties within certain timeframes. Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid reward dog tag collections and repeat playthroughs with unlockables. So why is an achievement in their stead worse? Would I play a game on Expert difficulty just to unlock an infinite ammo rocket launcher, or would I do it for 40G? Is one reason worse than the other? If there have been 'meta game' elements driving replayabillity for generations, why is it so bad that it's tied to a global score? This is what I don't get, @Dcubed. You talk as if this is a new element in gaming whereas it's just an evolution of what has been here for generations.

Well done for resurrecting this thread It's odd living in a place that is barely a few hundred years old, then seeing a picture of a pub that claims to be nearly 800 years old!

Ha! I TRIED to do the rubber band thing but wireless controllers meant it would stop after, what, 15 mins? I tried twice then I just ran up and down a 'corridor' between where a giant sandworm was and another area and didn't have to do it more than 3 times and it unlocked... Not bad :P

This sounds good! I don't think I'll be very good at spotting the characters but I'll play

Well yes, if they aren't enjoying it then they're idiots. I've done exactly that :P Spent 20 hours working towards the dog tag achievement on MGS2 then realised it was too difficult for me to continue... Pretty wound up about it but ultimately I did enjoy 19 of those hours!

I didn't mean for the "less" to be there!

If I was still a teenager; oh, man, the cinema! You queue up for about 15 minutes before a film starts to make sure you're near the front, then the cinema empties and you're left accidentally overhearing EVERYTHING about the movie that you're about to see! Awful. @Cube: funny, as it was me editing Daft's post in the BSG thread that led me to this new thread. I was worried that I was being overly cautious with the spoiler warning. I do also find that if my only spoiler is "YOU'LL LOVE IT!" then I have a sudden compulsion to TRY and love it... and my records dictate that, generally, I'll hate it even more.

... Yeeaaah you've made it even more less appealing! I guess the game tried to snatch up some multiplayer territory but utterly failed in that department, and thus the lacklustre single player mode made everyone realise "oh shit! WTF do we do!"

Oh man, I am very much known to just sit and shout LALALALALLALALALALALAAA! at the tv if it threatens to spoil shit for me. I very much miss MOTD and the entire day of trying to avoid spoilers (an excellent Likely Lads' episode about this).