1) If only people would pay as much for a game as they do for a coffee, there wouldn't be these ridiculous incentives to aggressively monetize the 2% who pay for the 98% who don't pay. At least for studios that are content to be successful small business, rather than industry-dominating outliers.
2) I worked at freemium game maker Get Set Games, and everyone involved in making the games was an old-school gamer who struggled with the new economics of the mobile game business. In my experience there's a kind of conversation/rationalization where at least at the more conscientious studios people don't want to make addictive games, but they also want to make some money to keep the studio alive. So you don't talk about addiction, but you talk about engagement. You don't do the most user-hostile things, but you do engage in industry norms that are parodied in TFA.
3) I believe that more generally, a lot of people working in the games industry have some level of addiction to games. You can call this love, or passion, or whatnot, but it's there. Staying up 'till 3 to play something and then coming in to work tired. Working on this passion even though there are other interesting and better-compensating or potentially more socially beneficial alternatives that would stroke all the same interests out there.
3b) I'm old enough that when I was a kid, computer games was not a respectable hobby. There was no "gamer culture". If you spent a lot of time on games, you were considered a bit weird or a loser. Because of this, I think that people of my generation get really defensive when there's any talk of addiction. They spent their childhood and adolescence fighting the stigma of being really into gaming, and are not willing to have a nuanced discussion about engagement and addiction. Because, yeah, games can be a wonderful positive force and form of expression. It's just that most aren't.
4) I was a die-hard gamer from about age 7 until my early thirties. I can honestly say that I spent too much time playing games. Yes, it got me a job in the games industry, and while at times horrible, there were many great things about that experience. But ... as you get older ... you realize that 20+ hours a week is a lot of time and that time compounds. What if I had spent 10 hours a week playing games and 10 hours working on math, or physics, or biology, or getting better at business, or living on a sailboat?
I strongly believe that people should follow their interests, as I always have done -- for better or for worse. However when there is an element of external compulsion or facilitation of internal flaws ...
It's a complicated issue and I don't see it being discussed seriously by those in the game industry.
2) I worked at freemium game maker Get Set Games, and everyone involved in making the games was an old-school gamer who struggled with the new economics of the mobile game business. In my experience there's a kind of conversation/rationalization where at least at the more conscientious studios people don't want to make addictive games, but they also want to make some money to keep the studio alive. So you don't talk about addiction, but you talk about engagement. You don't do the most user-hostile things, but you do engage in industry norms that are parodied in TFA.
3) I believe that more generally, a lot of people working in the games industry have some level of addiction to games. You can call this love, or passion, or whatnot, but it's there. Staying up 'till 3 to play something and then coming in to work tired. Working on this passion even though there are other interesting and better-compensating or potentially more socially beneficial alternatives that would stroke all the same interests out there.
3b) I'm old enough that when I was a kid, computer games was not a respectable hobby. There was no "gamer culture". If you spent a lot of time on games, you were considered a bit weird or a loser. Because of this, I think that people of my generation get really defensive when there's any talk of addiction. They spent their childhood and adolescence fighting the stigma of being really into gaming, and are not willing to have a nuanced discussion about engagement and addiction. Because, yeah, games can be a wonderful positive force and form of expression. It's just that most aren't.
4) I was a die-hard gamer from about age 7 until my early thirties. I can honestly say that I spent too much time playing games. Yes, it got me a job in the games industry, and while at times horrible, there were many great things about that experience. But ... as you get older ... you realize that 20+ hours a week is a lot of time and that time compounds. What if I had spent 10 hours a week playing games and 10 hours working on math, or physics, or biology, or getting better at business, or living on a sailboat?
I strongly believe that people should follow their interests, as I always have done -- for better or for worse. However when there is an element of external compulsion or facilitation of internal flaws ...
It's a complicated issue and I don't see it being discussed seriously by those in the game industry.