Item — HN Reader

It's really no wonder. Way too many games are straight up designed to create habits in the players.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_gam...

Rewards and punishments are used to create schedules. They make player do the things the company wants them to do when they want them to do it. A simple example:

- playing every day rewards the player with bonus items

- taking a break punishes the player by making them weaker relative to other players

And of course there are those wonderful companies which reward players that spend money and punish those that don't.

WHO already recognizes the existence of a gaming disorder:

https://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/

It's only a matter of time before this industry is regulated.

6 comments

I'm glad I got out of playing games like that when I did. Having diablo 2 when I was young was bad enough. I wasted a good amount of my teenage years on that game. It pioneered a lot of those Skinner box mechanics that those pay to win, I can't even call them games, scams have refined to a tee and use heavily. I'm glad I never grew up with games like that everywhere. At least I see them for what they are these days, I'd hate to think how hooked I might have gotten on those things.

I am really struggling to ever put my phone down. I get stuck in a loop of checking email, then Facebook, then a series of news websites including hacker news. Then repeat all day.

Here are some things that can help:

- Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode. On Android, that hides the notification icons for IMs, texts, calls, app notifications. Often, I turn on my phone screen to look something up and immediately get distracted by the notifications. Then I forget what I was originally going to look up.

- Remove your favourite sites "quick bookmark" icons on your browser's landing page. Often I mindlessly click those icons when I open the browser, even though I had a different purpose in mind when I opened it.

- Use the grayscale mode on your phone if you have it. It turns the entire display black and white, and makes app icons, images etc look less vibrant and less noticeable. It's a hack that makes me want to go on my phone less often, or just use it for the exact purpose I turned it on for.

Block the sites, delete the apps

Is there a hosts file for iOS 13?

You can use the adult content restriction feature to blacklist domains. This only works for content loaded in a browser that respects resource filtering, like safari, and won’t affect things like apps at all.

Or pihole! That’s the most effective.

As ridiculous as it sounds a serious benefit to me of owning a Mac is that it's utterly useless for gaming.

You'll be delighted to learn Catalina contains Apple Arcade (you can find it in the App Store). Yes, Catalina is the latest version of macOS, 10.15. Queue the "what would Steve think" memes.

As for the topic. "(Computer) addiction" is a symptom of a (myriad of) problem(s). It could be depression, it could be the person is bullied, it could be autism, it could be "just" puberty.

I dunno, from what I can tell browsing through steam there's more often Mac ports of a game but no Linux one and almost never the other way around, yet I find more than enough games than I have time for on steam that run on linux.

OpenBSD, now providing safety in a whole new way...

Purchasing boxes that have a chance of giving loot. Upgrading your gear in the game depends on chance.

It's just getting the players used to gambling and filtering out those who are resistant (they won't make money by going on a spending spree).

Ban virtual gambling.

Should lump socal media into this, too.

Perhaps. “The feed” certainly shares many of the same qualities of intentionally addictive games.

I love playing the NHL games with my brother who lives several hours away.

But dammit if that didn't describe them exactly.

Include timed content that occurs on specific schedules (bi-weekly, monthly, etc).

Will it be regulated, its profits are a reward for controlling a section of the population when their hormone levels make them hard to control? Do you not think the military and law enforcement like citizens staying still playing a game so they cant get into trouble? Of course, what future opportunities are lost because society took an easy option and kept them dummed down? Its like parents who don't like their kids being hyperactivity when consuming Sodium Benzoate in drinks and foods even though hyperactivating is a sign the kid is healthy and Sodium Benzoate (cinnamon) is a nootropic.