The ethics of game addiction

Bennett Foddy detailed the mechanics of addiction as it relates to game design to the audience at Develop Liverpool today. “For game developers, addictiveness is a design goal,” he said, before admitting that an addictive game isn’t necessarily bad. “But not everyone addicted to videogames is enjoying themselves, and lives can go awry,” he warned.

Foddy is a philosopher at Oxford University who focuses on drug addiction, obesity and gambling, but he “moonlights” as a game developer, making the web game QWOP.

He explained some of the experiments that show how addiction works, such as one which reveals it is linked to action providing reward. Two rats are provided a button each. One rat’s button feeds cocaine directly into the brains of the two rats. The other rat’s button does nothing. The rat whose button feeds the cocaine will press it compulsively, while the other rat will not, because only one of them has associated the action with the reward - this rat is addicted, while the other is not, even though both will experience withdrawal symptoms after sustained use.

Another experiment shows how if you’re convinced you have control over the action you can associate it with the reward. A player is given a joystick and shown a virtual joystick that they’re not actually in control of on-screen - they will believe they’re in control, but only so long as the delay between action and response is under 150 milliseconds.

In other words, a gaming experience is more addictive if it has shorter latency between reward and action. Mario, for instance, instantly jumps, so there’s a strong connection with action and reward.

“Jumping is a reward in Mario,” Foddy said. “There’s often talk of trophies and high scores, but rewards are more basic than that. They pervade all videogame design.” But they have to be instantly connected to players’ actions, Foddy added, pointing towards the ‘egregious’ example of 2008’s Prince Of Persia in which there’s a half-second between pressing A and jumping. “It feels like we’re not in control and the game is less compelling.”

For instance, Mr Destiny’s Adventure is entirely scripted; progress is only possible by pressing the correct button, but you get an instant response. Some players are entirely drawn in - the illusion is there that you’re in control, even though you’re not.

Another experiment concerns intermittent reinforcement - rats are given a button that provides food on different schedules - every time it’s pressed, every tenth time, or randomly. It turns out that the rat is far more likely to compulsively hit the button if it’s on a random schedule. It’s a technique slot machines use, as well as Diablo’s loot system.

And then there’s the diminishing reward experiment, in which a rat at first gets food on pressing a button, then has to press twice for the same food, then three times and so on. It will eventually press hundreds of times for the same food. It’s the equivalent to what happens in games like Dragon Quest, in which it’s easy to gain the first level, but subsequent ones are exponentially more work. A willingness to work ever harder for same reward is common to all mammals.

When, though, does taking advantage of these characteristics pass from being a valid part of a game to being exploitative? What’s ethical and what isn’t? It’s down to why the player is playing the game, Foddy said. What’s in it for them? Diminishing rewards is a process that can make players willing to work harder and harder for the same reward - do players still have a reason to do so when they’ve gone through this process?

Asked whether it’s self-defeating for a game to be too addictive because it can breed resentment in players if the spell breaks, Foddy said that you can indeed see resentment in rats and pigeons during related experiments. Though game designers may have made their money from the player and not really care he said that getting addicted to Game Dev Story made him not buy any more of Kairosoft’s games.

Foddy showed two old cigarette ads, one with the tag, ‘It’s toasted’. Because all cigarettes are toasted, it’s a false reason to buy it. Another, with the tag, ‘Slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke,’ alluded to a false relationship between thinness and smoking. Such techniques are abusive, taking advantage of psychological processes. But can they also help people to behave in ways that are positive to them?

“Tiny Tower is one of my most hated games,” he continued, because you’re given the option to pay money to avoid playing and using the elevator to get shops running again. “I felt exploited by this game. Paying money made the game trivial - you’re paying not to play the game. Games are about paying money to spend time with them, not the other way around.”

Not that freemium is bad per se - but it depends on what rewards the game is charging money for. Do the rewards make it a better game, or just a more addictive one?