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免费游戏开发者应该具有社会责任感

发布时间:2013-10-24 15:47:56 Tags:,,,

作者:Ramin Shokrizade

上周我发表一篇题为《Mastering F2P: The Titanic Effect》的文章。在文中,我指出互动媒体使消费者陷入一种比“正常”心态下更容易花钱的状态。与我的其他所有文章的评论一起,该文引发了一场激烈的争论,使我的想法更加深刻。

发表评论的人中,有两个人的观点似乎是围绕相同的主题展开的;他们的想法似乎都非常理智,但却是相反的。其中一个为人父母,觉得因为她对孩子管得很严,有一套非常好的家教,其他人应该跟她采取同样的教导方法。另一个是位前途无量的科研人员,他雄辩道,消费者应该对自己的行为负责,特别是当他们做决定所必需的知识是可以获得的,即使那些信息并没有明显地体现出来。

Compassion(from info.sdiworld)

Compassion(from info.sdiworld)

双方的观点都存在问题——他们缺少良心;这是我就这个话题另写了这篇文章的原因。未来必是缺少一般的良心,而是缺少那种我经常在数量分析专家等高智商人群身上看不到的那种同情心。我希望跟这些人达成共识,而不是互相争执。

1989年,那时我还在加州大学洛杉矶分校的Anna Taylor博士手下做神经内分泌研究。我们的研究课题是与胎儿乙醇综合症(fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)),即在老鼠体几注入酒精,然后对它们进行踩水测试,看看他们在沉没前能持续多长时间,以分析他们对压力的反应情况。所有老鼠都在踩水测试中死亡了,而那之后我也不再做动物实验了,因为我是一个严格的动物保护主义者。后来我们提取这些老鼠的细胞,用放射性物品标记这些细胞的儿茶酚胺细胞膜受体,以便测量它们。这是一个漫长而无聊的过程,但结果发现,FAS老鼠的细胞膜上的这些受体四倍于正常的老鼠。

儿茶酚胺是一种刺激你产生“反抗或逃跑”反应的化学物质,肾上腺素就是其中一种。当你遇到威胁或感到压力时,它们就会释放,使你变得更加警觉。这些物质太多会让你的心跳加快、更快疲劳。当面临压力时,FAS老鼠对踩水测试反应过度,所以总是提前死亡。体检发现,它们面临相同的外部压力和具有相同水平的儿茶酚胺血清的,但是他们的身体对这些化学物质反应过度了。

如果是换成人,会产生什么情况呢?我们以在机动车辆管理局排队注册驾驶证为例。排队的人往往非常多,所以队伍会很长。在长队中等待是一件累人的事,但大部分人都能应付得了,即使会感到很不会舒服。患有FAS的人却很难应付这种情况,那些焦虑不安或破口大骂的人可能就是这一类人。有时候,他们甚至会被“请出”等候大厅。

这些人与其他人面临同样的压力,但他们因为生理上的原因而做出过度反应。缺少同情心的我们会很容易就当这些人是不成熟、自制力差或神经质。毕竟,我们对排队都能表现出淡定的样子。我们所不知道或可能没有想到的是,上述人其实有一种“缺陷”;这种缺陷如果不使用非常精密的实验设备是无法测量的,所以它当然会被严重忽视。

我不是说,我知道世界上的所有人的生理情况。我想说的是,我确实不懂每个人的生理情况,但我知道有一种生物学变量能使某些人更容易受到某些刺激物或情况的影响。嘲笑那些不擅长某些情况的人,是缺乏理解和同情心的表现。

如果是我自己的游戏,我不会让玩家陷于单调乏味的等待测试,我要像《Clash of Clans》那样做:玩家可以选择慢慢等建筑升级完成,也可以点击按钮立即跳过等待时间,毕竟有些人因为生理原因就是不擅长等待。当我看到游戏研究的数据表明这种机制有1%或2%的转化率,听说游戏开发者私下里嘲笑我们的行业是因为这些“先天不足”的人的支持才得以生存下来的,我想到有些人就是生理上比较“脆弱”。这些人包括儿童,因为负责做决定前额叶皮质是人类大脑最晚成熟的部分(一般到25岁左右才完全成熟)。

现在,你知道容易受我们在免费游戏中使用的某些技术影响的人并非少数。当我们缺少同情心时,我们很容易嘲笑那些心理比我们自己脆弱或比我们更没有自制力的人。我们知道我们不应该嘲笑身体残疾的人,但这种同情心往往没有留给那些我们认为低智商的人。这些人的缺陷也是一种残疾,只是不明显罢了。对于患有FAS的成人或孩子,你怎么能责备他们呢?你还敢说利用这些人挣钱是合理的吗?

当然,他们可能只占游戏玩家中的1%或2%,我们可以一边刺激这些人花与其他98%的非付费玩家一样多的钱,一边嘲笑他们为我们的游戏行业的“肥养”。但今天我想让你们放弃这种态度,当你决定如何制作、出售和可能甚至运营你的游戏时,请怀有一点同情心吧。

我不知道保护儿童和其他“脆弱”人士的警戒线应该画到哪里,但当我看到《Marvel Superhero Squad Online》等游戏的主页上宣称“我们认为有责任和义务在游戏中保护儿童”,我就会认为这款游戏站在了警戒线的正确的一边。当我看到游戏教程教我们的孩子如何使用轮盘赌博工具获得游戏币并以此提高游戏销量时,我很难过我们居然教孩子这些东西。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Compassion in F2P

by Ramin Shokrizade

Last week I published my article Mastering F2P: The Titanic Effect, which proposed that interactive media could be used to put a consumer into an altered state of consciousness that could then be used to make them more vulnerable to spending money than they would in a “normal” state of mind. I also made this case before the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network summit in Panama the week before that. As with all of my articles, the comments are where rigorous debate occurs and my ideas often become more refined.

Two of the people that commented seemed to have a common theme, both proposed in very intelligent fashion, using very different words. One, a parent, felt that because she had very strict control over her children, due to her excellent parenting skills, that others should be just as good at parenting as she is. The other, a very promising scientist, eloquently argued that consumers should be responsible for their actions, especially if the knowledge they need for decision making is available, even if it is not explicitly presented.

The problem with both of these arguments, and the reason I am taking the extraordinary step of writing my rebuttal as a stand alone article, is that they lack compassion. Not necessarily lack of compassion as a characteristic, but the kind of lack of compassion I often see in Quants and highly intelligent people that is born of a lack of knowledge of how the human body and brain works. I want these people as allies so instead of arguing with them I am going to make my case here and hope we can come to agreement.

In 1989 when I was doing neuroendocrine research under Dr. Anna Taylor at UCLA, our research involved inducing fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in rats by exposing them to alcohol in vivo. We then did a number of tests to assess their response to stress, culminating in a water treading test that timed how long the rats would tread water before drowning. All rats died during this test, and I no longer do animal research and am a strict ethical vegan. We then extracted certain cells and marked their cell membrane catecholamine receptors with a radioactive marker so that I could measure them. This was a long tedious process but the results were that the FAS rats had about four times as many of these receptors on their cell membranes as normal rats.

Catecholamines are your “fight or flight” chemicals, adrenaline being one of them. They are released during periods of threat or stress to make you more alert. Too much can make your heart race and make you tire quickly. When exposed to stress the FAS rats overreacted and in the case of the water treading experiment they always died early. They were experiencing the same external stress and had the same serum catecholamine levels, but their body overreacted to these chemicals.

An example of how this might translate to humans is where you have people in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles (the office in the USA where you register your vehicle and get your drivers license). The lines are usually very long. Waiting in a long line is a stressor, but most people can handle it even if it is very uncomfortable. Someone with FAS probably would have a very difficult time in this situation and might be that one person that starts getting agitated and verbally complains about the wait. Sometimes they have to be ejected from the building.

These people have the same stress as everyone else, but they overreact to it for biological reasons. It is easy for the rest of us to lack compassion and just describe the person as immature, undisciplined, or weak. After all, we seem to make it through the line just fine. What we don’t know, or perhaps do not consider, is that this person has a disability that is almost certainly underestimated statistically because it is nearly impossible to measure without very specific laboratory methods.

I am not saying I know what is going on biologically with every person in the world. What I am trying to communicate is that I do not know what is going on with every person’s biology, but that I know there are biological variations that make some people more vulnerable to some stimuli or situations than others. To dismiss those that are not as good at handling some situations as I am as weak is showing a lack of understanding and Compassion.

If instead of the treadmill test I subject humans to a wait test like is used in Clash of Clans where they can wait a long time for a building upgrade to finish, or they can hit a colorful button and instantly get past the wait, some people are biologically bad at waiting. When I see statistics in games that show such mechanisms have 1 or 2% conversion rates, and hear game developers privately laugh that our industry survives on the backs of these “weak” people, I understand that some of these people are biologically “weak”. This category typically includes children since the part of their brain that is most relied upon during such decision making situations, the pre-frontal cortex, is the last part of the brain to mature (typically around age 25).

Now you can see that it is not a small slice of our population that is potentially biologically vulnerable to some of the techniques we use in F2P. When we lack compassion it is easy to laugh at those we see as mentally weaker or less disciplined than us. We know we are not supposed to laugh at physically disabled people, but often have no reservations about laughing at those we perceive as less intelligent. These people may be disabled too, it is just less obvious. In the case of those that have FAS or are children, how can you blame these people for their condition? Do you really want to say it is okay to prey on these people?

Sure they may only make up 1 or 2% of the population of our games, and we can get them to spend so much money that the other 98% of us get to play for free while laughing at the people that actually fund our game play. But I am asking you here today to stop, think, consider, and maybe even find it in your heart to feel some compassion when the time comes to decide how to make, sell, and possibly even regulate your games.

I’m not sure where to draw the line in protecting children and other “weak” members of society, but when I see a game like Marvel Superhero Squad Online (Marvel is a Disney franchise) that says “We recognize a special obligation to protect young children in our games” on the home page, I’m led to believe this is a product that I can trust to be on the right side of that line. When I see the tutorial training our children to use what looks like a roulette wheel that gives common and premium currency, and promotes their subscription, it makes me uncomfortable to think what we are teaching our children.(source:gamasutra)


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