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Parents Sue Gaming Companies Over ‘Video Game Addiction’, Because That’s Easier Than Parenting (www.techdirt.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Parents Sue Gaming Companies Over ‘Video Game Addiction’, Because That’s Easier Than Parenting::Video game addiction. Sigh. Big sigh, even. Like, the biggest of sighs. We've talked about claims that video game addiction is a documentable affliction in the past, as well as the pushback that claim has received from addiction experts, who have pointed out that much of this is being done to allow doctors to get…

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 10 months ago (4 children)

things like limited-time content are 100% designed to form habits and ultimately feed gaming addiction. Season passes or weekly achievements require you to log on and grind out challenges at regular intervals to avoid missing out on rewards that are required for competitive play.

Hell, even subscription-based games like MMOs. After all, if you're paying every month for something, you want to get your money's worth.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

There's a reason I used to call it World of Warcrack. That game was harder to quit than smoking cigarettes for me.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That's part of why I never played WoW. I knew that I'd constantly be like "I'm paying for it I should be playing".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Funny, when I played it, it was always "wow, I'm really getting a good bang for my buck." It was a huge money saving for me because instead of going out to a bar an extra one or two nights a week, I stayed home and gamed online with friends. Never once did I think "I should play to make it worth it" I was making it worth it without a thought. lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I had a similar thought, but moreso "i'm paying for this... why isn't it fun?" So I stopped paying after maybe 4 months.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the implementation: I liked Eve Onlines model where, yes, you had to pay the sub but your character would train skills even while offline.So at least to me there was less of this classical fear of missing out.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Ugh, don't get me started on EVE. Like yeah, there's an awesome game underneath it all, but the fact that they make you train your character in real time by reading skill books feels so scummy when they are billing you a monthly fee. Like that has such an obvious perverse incentive. You think those skill books take as long as they take because it's fun? No way. They take that long because it maximises profit.