Marximize Your Revenue, or What (Really) Is Exploitative Game Design?
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My talk at the international student conference “Europe 2017. From Printed Word to Knowledge: Local Traditions and Global Transition” which took place on May 6–7 in Vilnius. Download the presentation to read the full text in the notes!
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Marximize Your Revenue, or What (Really) Is Exploitative Game Design?
- 1. Alesja Serada Media & Communications European Humanities University Vilnius 2017
- 4. gambler's fallacy near miss effect hot hand fallacy loss aversion sunk cost fallacy overjustification effect • manipulative randomness • manipulation of game difficulty • mispresentation of game costs Caused by
- 8. При капитализме человек эксплуатирует человека, а при социализме - наоборот!
- 9. “the exploitation of one individual by another” “the exploitation of one part of society by the other” “struggles between exploited and exploiting” “the exploitation of the many by the few”
- 11. John E. Romer. Should Marxists Be Interested in Exploitation? “Marxian exploitation is defined as the unequal exchange of labor for goods: the exchange is unequal when the amount of labor embodied in the goods which the worker can purchase with his income... is less than the amount of labor he expended to earn that income”. “The distributional consequences of an unjust inequality in the distribution of productive assets and resources”
- 12. Allen W. Wood The Marxian Critique of Justice. Marx’s theory is not a moral theory. “Capital, by its very nature as capital, that is, by its function in capitalist production relations, necessarily exploits the worker by appropriating and accumulating his unpaid labor”.
- 13. “Marx rejects appeal to justice. For him, what's wrong with exploitation is that it involves unnecessary unfreedom because surplus transfer in class societies takes place under coercive conditions”. In Defense of Exploitation Justin Schwartz
- 14. “Players should be able to make their own games”. Imaginary John E. Romer “Free-to-play games are an acceptable method of exploitation in the post-industrial mode of production”. Imaginary Allen W. Wood “Are players too poor to play better games? What caused their poverty?” Imaginary Justin Schwartz
- 16. ."Of course, benefitting from another’s vulnerability is not always morally wrong—we do not condemn a chess player for exploiting a weakness in his opponent’s defense, for instance“. Exploitation. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Matt Zwolinski and Alan Wertheimer
- 18. 1. CLARK, O. Games As A Service: How Free to Play Design Can Make Better Games. New York ; London: Focal Press, 2014. 2. MCNEIL, E. Exploitative Game Design: Beyond the F2P Debate. In: Gamasutra, August 9, 2012. [Retrieved on February 5, 2017] Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EdwardMcNeill/20130809/197958/Exploitativ e_Game_Design_Beyond_the_F2P_Debate.php > 3. ROEMER J. E. Should Marxists Be Interested in Exploitation? In: Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 30–65, 1985. 4. SCHWARTZ, J. In Defence of Exploitation. In: Economics and Philosophy 11 (1995), pp. 275-307. 5. SHOKRIZADE, R. The Top F2P Monetization Tricks. In: Gamasutra, June 26, 2013. [Retrieved on February 5, 2017] Available from World Wide Web: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_To p_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php > 6. WOOD W.A. The Marxian Critique of Justice. In: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring, 1972), pp. 244-282. 7. ZWOLINSKI, M. and WERTHEIMER, A. Exploitation. In: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Available from World Wide Web: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/exploitation/>.
Editor's Notes
- Our task is to explore the criteria of so-called 'exploitative game design' in free-to-play games, based on Marxian tradition of understanding exploitation in capitalist economic systems.
- Exploitative game design is usually understood as a set of certain game design techniques. Such techniques are criticized by professional game designers as 'exploitative' (McNeil, 2012) or 'coercive' (Shokrizade, 2013) because they manipulate the user and diminish the quality of game. It has been widely discussed both among game developers and game critics, mostly in relation to the current boom of free-to-play games. The most active discussion has been going for several years in the column section of Gamasutra, a popular online resource dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games" [Gamasutra]. Edward McNeill, one of the columnist and a game designer himself, provided a comprehensive summary of the discussion in "Exploitative Game Design: Beyond the F2P Debate" [McNeill].
- The best examples of practical criticism can be found at the biggest conference for game developers, GDS: this conference runs a contest called Evil Game Design Contest, when renowned game designers mock free-to-play games by bringing typical elements of their design (which are considered 'evil') to their extremes.
- In short, the main objection against design of free-to-play games is that it manipulates players into paying real money in a free game. Most critical articles simply list marketing techniques used in free-to-play games, and then the dispute about ethics begins. Generally, these publications accuse game publishers of exploitation of cognitive biases in sake of making money. Specific examples may include gambler's fallacy, near miss effect, hot hand fallacy, sunk cost fallacy, loss aversion, overjustification effect etc. Most of these biases have been described in context of experimental psychology, and they are not specific to free-to-play games. Within the context of games, technically, they are based on manipulative randomness, manipulation of game difficulty and mispresentation of game costs (intermediate currency). There are also game-specific examples of direct economic exploitation: paywalls ("progress gates") and "ante games" (paying your way to success), or "purchases that short-circuit game dynamics" (McNeill).
- Despite the efforts of game critics and academics (for example, Ian Bogost, who designed an ironic exploitative game "Cow Clicker" and introduced a word 'exploitationware') - or maybe due to these efforts it is difficult to talk analytically about exploitative game design. To start from, free-to-play games wouldn't be economically sustainable without luring player into paying. As a result, in most cases, we cannot distinguish between elements of game design and marketing techniques: they exist as a whole. For example, when the developer manipulates randomness of tiles to make the game more 'sticky' - is this manipulation exploitative? Also, proponents of gamification implement the same techniques for the greater good: in education software, work management and healthcare.
- So, it's time to ask, is exploitation bad? Looking for an answer is impossible without mentioning Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their Communist Manifesto. Surely we all remember the classic formulas of "the exploitation of one individual by another" and "the exploitation of one part of society by the other" that lay in the foundation of a class struggle, a struggle "between exploited and exploiting", "the exploitation of the many by the few". It feels natural and fair to us that the society should be freed from exploitation, as the Communist Manifesto states [The Communist Manifesto]. These are perfect rhetoric formulae that can be applied to any case, to game design as well, but, to start from, players and game publishers are not social classes, and game publishers are not even individuals. Moreover, the field of exploitation is a free game that can be ended at any moment, as the players don't bear any economic obligations in it (unlike the publishers who have to run and support the game).
- As it appears, Marx never explicitly stated what is exploitation and why it is bad, neither he stated that capitalism as such is unjust [12 Wood p. ]. Since then, understanding of injustice and social change evolved, and today we are talking about much more subtle forms of exploitation that doesn't feel like coercion. The voices of the authors of The Communist Manifesto speak against brutal, impoverishing, economically enforced exploitation of early industrial workforce, so obvious that it doesn't need to be specified. This image is simply incomparable with a picture of a middle-aged lower middle-class woman who finds joy in upgrading her virtual farm. And yet, today it is a common place to believe that she is exploited by the game.
- Most Marx's followers problematize relationships between exploitation and injustice in his works. For example, in his essay Should Marxists Be Interested in Exploitation? J.E. Roemer interprets exploitation in terms of the labor theory of value. According to him, exploitation is a result of uneven distribution of means of production [65]. So, for him exploitation is purely material and technical: "It is only by appealing to conceptions of justice that exploitation theory can be defended as interesting" [38], - he writes.
- As we see, economical and ethical concerns become separated in some interpretations, but other scholars demonstrate that this view is too simplistic. Exploitation in the Marxian tradition is often explained as estrangement of labor, or alienation of a part of the worker's self, not just taking away something that he justly earned. The capitalist is "reaping the fruits of the worker's unpaid labor" [Wood, A.264], even their contract is fair and justified by social conditions. Also, Wood suggests that exploitation is not unfair as long as it is prescribed by the mode of production, and puts responsibility on capital. He writes: "Capital, by its very nature as capital, that is, by its function in capitalist production relations, necessarily exploits the worker by appropriating and accumulating his unpaid labor".
- Comparing the ideas of Roemer and Wood, Justin Schwartz claims that exploitation should be defined as unfreedom, not as injustice. "Marx rejects appeal to justice. For him, what's wrong with exploitation is that it involves unnecessary unfreedom because surplus transfer in class societies takwa place under coercive conditions" [277] Also, he prefers the term 'coercion' and stresses its forced nature, particularly in the reality of labor market.
- Let's imagine these critics judging exploitation in free-to-play games. Roemer would likely say that exploited players should be able to make their own non-exploitative games - it is possible, and it happens, as in case of indie games, but the economy of such games is principally different from free-to-play games. Wood would justify exploitation in games because it is one of the forms of life of capital in the post-industrial mode of production, still, he would encourage development of new and better games that would signify social changes. Schwartz would acknowledge exploitation in games, and he would probably wonder if the players are too poor to play better games for money, and what makes them that way. What we are saying here is that we haven't found any common ground to judge exploitation in games, perhaps because it is primarily an ethical question, and only secondarily an economical condition. Anyway, when we start to explore this phenomena, we learn a lot about the society, players and game companies.
- Now it's time to mention the other side: the exploiters, as it's their ethical choice as well. Some designers of free-to-play games offer 'fair' monetization techniques for free-to-play games as an alternative. For example, Oscar Clark stresses the importance of "the deliberate choice to not use a potential monetization method, to preserve the integrity of playing experience" (Clark 2014, p.265). Furthermore, McNeill, a game designer whom we have already mentioned, offers the next procedure: to evaluate exploitation in a game, the publisher should imagine a hypothetical customer who is making an informed and rational decision, and ask himself if such customer would play his game. This is a very reasonable viewpoint, and it also acknowledges responsibility of the developer. Still, in the context of a free-to-play game, this reminds of "mutually beneficial exploitation" mentioned by Zwolinski and Wertheimer: exploitation that allows both sides to achieve their aims. For example, in games like Crossy Road the player can choose to watch advertising to earn in-game currency that can be exchanged for emotionally valuable objects. The player spares some of his attention to watch advertising videos, and the developer receives a part of the cost of this attention from the advertising network.
- Game-specific forms of exploitation are a marginal case in normative understanding of exploitation: if the player accepts the game, it means that he accepts the rules of the game even if they are against his or her interests."Of course, benefitting from another’s vulnerability is not always morally wrong—we do not condemn a chess player for exploiting a weakness in his opponent’s defense, for instance", Matt Zwolinski and Alan Wertheimer write in the entry "Exploitation" for the online version of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Many players of so-called exploitative games are fully conscious about the intentions of game publishers and the marketing tricks they use. So, if we see a free-to-play game as a game between the player and the publisher of the game, both of them are seeking a weakness in other's defense. The player wants more in-game resources, and the publisher wants more real-world resources, so they enter a more or less fair exchange that can be biased towards any of sides. The player can cheat or exploit technical vulnerabilities of the game: for example, many players quickly learn to adjust the clock on their phones to get additional lives when playing Candy Crush Saga. Anyway, it requires determination and expertise from the player, and the majority of the players of mass market free to play games tend to be passive consumers of the games offered. Also, many players still make unreasonable decisions when playing games because of manipulative techniques, even if they realize that they are being manipulated.
- If we accept the Marxian argument that capitalism economy is exploitative by nature, then free-to-play games simply don't make a special case among other forms of consumption. What is unique about them is that they make exploitable biases visible. Every free-to-play game is a running experiment in consumer psychology, and it measures freedom of the exploited in exact numbers. So, the key to understanding exploitation might be in free will of players and their preparedness for emancipation from 'sticky' but enjoyable games. This is their responsibility as well, not just the responsibility of game developers and publishers.