who killed videogames? (a ghost story) is getting a whole lot of bloggish attention, and justly so.
It tells the tale of how “social” game makers, especially for handheld devices, are scientifically manipulating the user to get them to spend real money in the games.
I personally don’t play any of those things, and have never spent any money in them, but even so it’s pretty creepy and convincing. The end of the article (don’t skip), suggests that the results can be generalized. Ouch.
Interesting. I played a Facebook game to “completion” a while back. It eventually involved creating a spreadsheet to determine the minimum effort path to completion. As this “robin hood” game was essentially a resource management game. …Which meshes with this author’s idea that every action in a game is about in-game currency.
I don’t play Facebook games anymore like I don’t watch TV anymore. the payoff is not worth the time and attention needed to get it.