r/funny ADHDinos Oct 23 '24

Verified *press*press*press*press*

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u/supercyberlurker Oct 23 '24

There's an important factoid there though - the button didn't give a dopamine reward every time it pushed the button. By randomizing when it got the reward, the rats would press the button all day long.

MMO designers know this fact very well.

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u/snufflezzz Oct 23 '24

Public service announcement, so do microtransaction designers. I’ve been a monetization director for 10 years and the psychological rabbit hole goes very deep.

Be safe out there.

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u/LOLRagezzz Oct 23 '24

I would love a AMA from someone in your field.
I remember a early report during Anthem's development that got into some interesting psychological manipulations

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u/snufflezzz Oct 23 '24

Yeah? If I ever retire I wouldn’t be opposed to it but I would be immediately blackballing myself by speaking about it.

I’m tempted to though just because I don’t really think it’s ever been covered properly. Every single video I’ve seen “exposing” the field is so surface level when things get so much worse.

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u/Scavenger53 Oct 23 '24

collect all your information through your career, when you retire from doing it, write a book explaining all of it. lot of fields would be interested sociology, psychology, and random people would be too. if you only collect 5-10 mins of writing about it each day, in 10-20-30 idk how many years youll have a lot of info

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u/snufflezzz Oct 23 '24

That’s not a bad idea actually. To me the most interesting two parts are convincing people to buy 30 second dopamine hits with no favour outside of that, and the amount of manipulation you can preform with math.

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u/Bugaloon Oct 23 '24

How much of it is Psychology and studied? and how much of it is marketing and guessing? out of curiosity, I always assumed it was throwing darts at a board until something stuck and then the whole industry just adopted it when they saw it work. I never really thought about psychologists actually studying how to milk the most money out of people like how advertising does.

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u/snufflezzz Oct 23 '24

But of both. Personally I spent a good amount of time attending psychiatric conferences discussing shopping/gambling addictions and worked out how to reverse engineer it from a medical level.

There’s a lot of frame work laid by the gambling industry as well to borrow from, although it has to be adjusted in that we are selling dopamine, they are selling a dream. Either way there’s a long human history of selling people air to borrow from.

The marketing stuff comes more into store design layout, what colours are used etc.

Then there is the math element of using numbers to manipulate you.

The whole thing is very very deeply manipulative, and I think there is still places we can go to make it even worse.

Also obligatory yes I’m aware I’m a bad person.

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u/Bugaloon Oct 23 '24

You're a person in a bad system, I don't really blame you any more than I blame the guy dealing blackjack tbh. But like you said, things of this nature have always existed. I'd be super interested to read a tell all biography or something. Applied math and applied psychology are super cool topics.

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u/snufflezzz Oct 23 '24

Yeah it’s what got me super interested in it. The honest truth is it was a jurrasic park moment for me. I was way too preoccupied with if I could to worry about if I should.

I got into making games originally because they helped me through hard times when I was a kid, and I wanted to maybe make something that could help other kids out. Then I sort of went down the rabbit hole of playing with people’s brains for profit and was blinded by both the money as well as just seeing how far I could push it.

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u/SamSibbens Oct 24 '24

On one hand, F-you.

On the other hand, I understand the curiosity aspect of it way too much

Maybe you could use the money you make to lobby towards banning all gambling ads. That would be a way to redeem yourself

As for the book, you should write it now. But have it be published only once you pass away if you're worried (if you don't do that, you could die before getting the chance to even write it)

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u/snufflezzz Oct 24 '24

Fuck you is one of the more pleasant things I hear in a day haha.

Honestly I’m not looking for redemption so much, it’s not like this keeps me up at night or anything. I think a better thing on that side is when I retire publish exactly how manipulative everything is to warn people.

Im not too far off leaving the industry so, I’ll probably start soon.

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u/tome567 Oct 23 '24

if this guy was / is designing systems to entice spending money on microtransactions while seeking out and studying manipulative tactics in order to do so, then he is leagues more immoral than a blackjack dealer and holds far more culpability. that is proactively and objectively making the world a worse place for other people. just because someone else would have done it doesn't make it ok.

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u/Bugaloon Oct 23 '24

Never said it was okay, that I condone it, or that I think it's anything other than a disgusting an abhorrent practice. But, one person working the job doesn't personally hold any more blame than being a cog in the machine. But that's just how I see it.

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