Notgames Forum

I just came across this article, called 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted (http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html). It's an excellent breakdown of everything that Michael hates about typical games. ;)

Worth a read.

I know it is meant to be kind of satire, but still very true. That so many popular games (Wow, Plant vs Zombies, etc) are pretty much fancy slot-machines is scary. Still worse is that additive features are actually good for a game's score!
From reviews of Plant vs Zombies. I am I the only one who finds this scary (and immoral from the devs)? It is like reviewing alcoholic beverages and then giving plus-points for the more additive sorts...

Yeah, that article provides us with a nice checklist for making notgames. :)

To be fair, I don't think that the word "addictive" in marketing means exactly the same as an actual addiction. But it does do the job of making addiction sound like something desirable. Which is weird.

I didn't like the conclusion that the article hinted at which seemed to imply that work should be more like games so that people would do their work instead of games. I'm horrified by the thought of providing artificial rewards for real work done. I guess that makes me a Marxist. :)

Maybe it sounds boring and non-sexy, but I think developers (or any kind of entrepreneur) should simply be more ethical. Of course, this can't really be enforced in a capitalist system without becoming a police state. Ironically, the only people who could force developers to become more ethical, within our current market-driven societies, would be the gamers. And that's like expecting a junkie to tell their dealer they don't want more dope.
It also turns developers and gamers into each other's enemies, which is interesting.

Maybe developers can encourage each other to be more ethical. Maybe it's a matter of pride. Maybe developers should expose the work of their colleagues more if it is exploitative. Like Guilds do in certain professions (such as law, medicine and architecture here in Belgium).

Actually, unless you are against rewards in any form you are more of a capitalist by resisting artificial rewards ;)

I like this article, because I became addicted to the (excellent) game Flotilla, along with a housemate. You play as a captain 'with 7 months to live' and travel around from planet to planet meeting absurd things such as crazy space crocodiles, crippled flamingo traders and the feared reindeer empire. Quite often you engage in simultaneous turnbased fighting, which is simple but complex enough to be compelling every few hours or so. What I like about the game, however, is that although it has a leader-board, the story mode is completely random and you die after a set number of turns: you had only 7 months to live so die of natural causes, regardless of how well you are doing. By having so much random stuff the game keeps taunting you to try again, but with the 7 months limit you are forced not to take it too serious - if you loose your big new ship you know you did not have that long to live anyway.
It is a strange 'happy nihilist' way of thinking - death is the end, so we can go out with a bang.

Thing is, the game is enjoyable because I do not get anything in return - the leaderboard is an incentive, but I die after 7 months and start a new adventure afterwards. This makes anything you do non-persistent. So there is no reward, just the fun of the matches themselves. It completely subverts the normal 'closure' of storytelling and the 'prize' of fighting.

(Actually, you win a piece of cargo if you go to a planet where the game informs you you competed in a competition and won the intergalactic karaoke champion contest!)

Chris Hecker had a talk at GDC this year that was about this very thing.  Great to see another example :)