Marketing and manipulation.
I've researched and practiced mind control which is always fun to talk about because people look at you like you're a scientologist. It's not a great way to start a conversation in which you want to convey something important. Which is why I start with it here, I like to make things difficult for myself. Mind control techniques is the exact same thing as manipulation techniques. It's just about making you think a little differently about something by using certain words in a certain rhythm at a certain time in a certain way that sort of thing. You are being manipulated constantly. By everything and everyone around you. When a person shares an opinion that is you being manipulated and most of the time that's absolutely fine.
Marketing is complex but the essence of it is simply to make you want to buy a service or product that you didn't want to buy before. That can be innocent: by informing you about a product you didn't know about. But as you probably know it goes a little further than that. When you look at advertisements on TV you can tell with basic knowledge of mind manipulation techniques that they are trying their hardest to apply those techniques to make it more likely for you to buy their thing. That can be advertisements that repeat twice, it can be ads that are slightly altered the second time, it can be loudness, repetition within the ad, changing words in a catchy tune that you are familiar with, the power of association, you know, showing images using words that have nothing to do with the actual product, agreeable lines etc.
Ads are expensive, but it's not because they work that well. It's because of the exposure to a large quantity of people. Basically what it does best right now is... when you are standing in front of a shelf with different brands of the product you're looking for, you will most likely pick the one that you heard of, that you are 'familiar' with the most. What I'm saying is that marketing is pretty bad at manipulating you, for now. But there is something to keep in mind about marketing: They are well paid teams of professionals targeting untrained individuals, aiming to successfully manipulate you into doing something you didn't want to do. And with enough studies and time and money they may improve over the next decades. It's not unthinkable, right? It's not exactly the same as a random person online sharing an opinion.
But oftentimes they fail miserably. Remember Reggie going: PLAY, THE GAME? That was hilarious right? Nintendo is notorious for being bad at manipulation techniques. And when they don't work it actually becomes counter productive as you become aware of it. You're not going to play the game because Reggie said it, you are going to play it in spite of Reggie saying it. And that's an important point I want to make: you become very aware of these techniques when they fail. In the off chance that they do work, you won't be that aware.
In fact when manipulation works, the target will hardly ever admit that they have been manipulated. Something drastic needs to happen to most targets before they'll admit to it, if ever. Like losing their house because of it. Or losing their family. They just chose to do what they wanted to do. It was their idea all along. It's like admitting to being manipulated is -on top of admitting you've been slightly wrong about something for a while- akin to admitting you are weak minded or not that smart. (Which it didn't seem to have anything to do with in my 10 years of experience with manipulation techniques in my 20's.) You don't want to look like a fool so you won't admit it. There's nothing foolish about it, it's one of the most natural things there is. We base most of our 'voluntary' actions on premises, on assumptions. There's just no other way.
Video games are, not of services but of all products that you can think of the best host for manipulation. You invest(!) money to bring the game onto your(!) system. You invest time, to install it. And then to play it. Investment is huge. Steam culled piracy because of its convenience: less effort. Because of that investment you want it to be good. You are more forgiving and susceptible. It takes little effort to turn on. You will engage with it for hours. And it can have completely manufactured levels of engagement over time. Certain types of manipulation work best when someone is in a trance like state. Which happens to many players at predictable times, like when they're watching a load screen. I know that sounds like some hypnosis hocus pocus but people are actually in a light trance state many times throughout their day. Visibly so. When they're sitting in a bus, when they're getting their hair cut, when they're watching TV, when they're getting up, when you say something that breaks their routine.
And now we get to what worries me about the future of games from companies like EA and Activision: It's the fact that if they manage to make something work not 1 percentile of the time but say 2 percent of the time, then there are going to be hordes of consumers quite energetically defending that practice while being milked for money. And maybe they already managed to get in a technique that works...
Loot boxes are a good example of a mind control technique that works wonders. A mechanic that messes with your mind in a very fundamental way. Skinner box, you know how it works. And they 'monetized' it. What we see happen there scares me. A whole lot of people engaging with a manipulation technique because it's spread through a game that you want to like, that works better because it's just a part of a game that you want to like. A game that you invested in. Result? Quite a few people on forums who actively defend the system, they don't want to admit that maybe it's not a great system because they are being manipulated into doing something they previously(!) didn't want to do. For a fact they do manipulate the mind quite well and for some people dramatically so. They combine that with fake currencies so that you distance yourself from what you're actually doing. A hypnotherapist will tell you something like hypnosis -which is simply manipulation of you in a more susceptible state plus strong rapport - is harmless because it's a form of self hypnosis which is true. But it's not harmless. You won't do anything you don't want to... but you can still be manipulated into doing so, by creating enough of a distance between what you are actually doing and what you think you are doing.
And that should raise a discussion in your head about game design: Are games about being controlled, being engaged and spending the most money? (Those loot box charts are impressive.) Or is there/should there be more to it?
I hope that with this enormous wall of text (sorry) I made clear why I think it's important to be first as consumers. And not wait until the corporations manage to make something somewhat work. This is also why I've been adamantly against any kind of ads in games or on consoles. I wanted a line to be drawn: Never let marketing into a game. Well that kind of failed didn't it? I think that player engagement does not mean player satisfaction. And even player satisfaction does not mean a good game when you lose your house or your savings to it. Stay sharp.
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