That’s still shuffling unrelated definitions of “value.”
You understand Achievements have no intrinsic worth. The fact you’ve been made to care about them anyway, is what I am talking about. You were made to care about collecting a thousand unicorn skulls, because the game dangled a cleverly-named merit badge for doing so. Dollar value: zilch. Totally arbitrary nonsense, could’ve been anything else.
at a certain point, manipulation constitutes an initiation of force against a user.
Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle, but sure, yes, good. These systems exploit cognitive vulnerabilities to shortcut our decision-making and trick people out of real money. Generally for things that cost the seller nothing… like editing your own character on your own computer. Any game taking real money is inevitably a collection of these abusive antipatterns, for that kind of manufactured desire.
Nitpicking individual cases is letting the trees obscure the forest - these are game studios. Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job. Only a sweeping solution could possibly work.
For me, yeah, I agree. For someone else, maybe they do have value. Achievements are a particularly stupid example because you can automate getting them, but my point is that digital things can have value. Maybe they’re sentimental (I did a hard thing and this proves it), or maybe they’re resellable (rare item in a game, which can be traded).
Something physical that you value could have no value to someone else. Value is subjective.
Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle
As a libertarian, that’s generally how I frame things, because if I can’t justify it under the NAP, it’s probably me forcing my values on others.
Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job
True, but isn’t that true of pretty much everything if we zoom out enough? Politicians want to manipulate voters to get (re)elected, restaurants want to manipulate patrons to return, etc. We all have a selfish interest in getting others to do what we want.
There has to be a line at which point self-interest is “wrong” to the extent that we should use government to regulate it. I use the NAP to reason about that point, others use some other (often subjective) metric. This same line of reasoning could be used to ban porn games, games with self-harm, or games critical of a government.
Banning things is generally not what governments should be doing, they should practice restraint and only step in when someone’s rights are violated or at risk of being violated.
That’s still shuffling unrelated definitions of “value.”
You understand Achievements have no intrinsic worth. The fact you’ve been made to care about them anyway, is what I am talking about. You were made to care about collecting a thousand unicorn skulls, because the game dangled a cleverly-named merit badge for doing so. Dollar value: zilch. Totally arbitrary nonsense, could’ve been anything else.
Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle, but sure, yes, good. These systems exploit cognitive vulnerabilities to shortcut our decision-making and trick people out of real money. Generally for things that cost the seller nothing… like editing your own character on your own computer. Any game taking real money is inevitably a collection of these abusive antipatterns, for that kind of manufactured desire.
Nitpicking individual cases is letting the trees obscure the forest - these are game studios. Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job. Only a sweeping solution could possibly work.
For me, yeah, I agree. For someone else, maybe they do have value. Achievements are a particularly stupid example because you can automate getting them, but my point is that digital things can have value. Maybe they’re sentimental (I did a hard thing and this proves it), or maybe they’re resellable (rare item in a game, which can be traded).
Something physical that you value could have no value to someone else. Value is subjective.
As a libertarian, that’s generally how I frame things, because if I can’t justify it under the NAP, it’s probably me forcing my values on others.
True, but isn’t that true of pretty much everything if we zoom out enough? Politicians want to manipulate voters to get (re)elected, restaurants want to manipulate patrons to return, etc. We all have a selfish interest in getting others to do what we want.
There has to be a line at which point self-interest is “wrong” to the extent that we should use government to regulate it. I use the NAP to reason about that point, others use some other (often subjective) metric. This same line of reasoning could be used to ban porn games, games with self-harm, or games critical of a government.
Banning things is generally not what governments should be doing, they should practice restraint and only step in when someone’s rights are violated or at risk of being violated.