Yes, I Saw This, No, I Probably Can't Say Anything

The sad part, he will get at least 10k.

In the future, all product labels will read:

“DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING IF YOU USE THIS PRODUCT DESPITE BEING EXPRESSLY WARNED NOT TO.”

I’m only half kidding. What I don’t really understand is why video games keep catching these suits as opposed to, say, McDonald’s for “making people fat”.

If he wins the suit, we can move on to suing WoW for being several times more addictive, siting higher subscriber numbers, and perhaps force a lot of game developers to create something different than a EQ clone in the process.

Aargh ironic redundancy in a grammar rant.

I want this guy to win.

Then I want to bring the lawsuit Geldon suggested against WoW. We’ll make that a class action suit. If NCSoft have to pay one guy $3 million, then we should make Blizzard cough up at LEAST that much per player.

My fee will be a very modest 1% for organising this.

I will spend some of the $300 billion I receive to buy Tasmaynia from the Aussies, and rename it as Tremaynia, where I will be a benevolent overlord … mostly.

The rest I will spend on taking out a contract on Bobby Kotick.

I think this was already tried in similar fashion with EQ. In reality, this is judicial roulette under the guise of personal waste being called victimization.

This is funny because L2 is such a terrible, terrible game. If the guy’s claims are true, he should thank NCSoft for keeping him off the streets, where he might have seriously injured himself with a sharp stick or a heavy rock or something. Because someone that retarded is probably a danger to himself and others.

The mmorpg industry has been walking a thin line for 10 years now and it was only a matter of time before this kind of lawsuit popped up.

You can’t, as an industry, spend millions of dollars on psychological side-research to figure out how to make your games more addictIMEAN how to keep people playing and not expect there to be consequences.

Some people are weaker than others, mentally speaking, and are easily sucked into these games. When these kinds of unfortunate situations happen in real life, we empathize with the victims and call the perpetrators con men and scam artists. When it happens online, we point and ridicule the victim because it’s not “real”. The casino analogy gets thrown around a lot, mainly by people who have never been to a casino. Casinos have very specific rules and regulations depending on the area. For example, you aren’t allowed to consume alcohol around the slots at my local casino for obvious reasons. It impairs your judgment further in an already mentally sticky situation. But those safety precautions do not exist within the mmorpg universe. If you have a credit card then you are good to go for being hooked up to the virtual crack.

The only real innovations we have been seeing in mmorpgs in the past few years have been those involving RNG. Players are manipulated into investing time and money on what are essentially virtual dice roles for everything under the sun. More and more RNG aspects being added and they are quietly being branded with life price tags. Whether they are officially sponsored cash shop items or grey area rmt is irrelevant. With this in mind, it is becoming very hard to defend mmorpg developers and publishers as being completely ignorant of the addictive nature of their product.

There’s no basis for this case here, and with respect to John Smith’s arguments above, I can’t say that the developers are liable for a person going overboard with using their product. I mean, we can break it down into simple terms: A company creates a product. They market and sell the product. A consumer buys the product and likes it so much that they make the choice to overuse the product. The consumer is harmed as a result. Where does the “duty of care” belong? Should the company producing the product forcibly moderate our enjoyment of their product “for our own good”? I don’t like where that road leads. It’s silly and unfeasible. I also don’t like the suggestion that a person’s addiction to a product is the fault of the company, as if they’re jamming these games down our throats and forcing us to play them. If I become fat from gorging on chocolate, I don’t expect Hershey’s to water down their candy bars so I won’t enjoy them quite so much. We’re not cattle.

Is it possible that the judge authorised the proceedings because he was under pressure to decide one way or another and he hadn’t a clue what all this computer babble actually meant? Allowing the proceedings to go ahead is a way of getting someone else to take the decision.

When this goes before a competent court this will get chucked out.

The court of first instance may not be competent in which case the proceedings will be appealed.

I think this all around positive turn for us gamers, as of late, and especially with push toward micro-transactions, games are more and more *designed* to be addictive. We are talking casino slot machine type of addictive, minus regulation and age restrictions you get associated with gambling.

Regardless if this lawsuit succeeds or fails, this will stop the worst of conditional reinforcement being intentionally designed into future games…

The addictive nature of MMORPGs is closely tied to their being games with monthly subscriptions. Give a man a financially reason to keep you about, and he’ll do his best to prevent you from walking out that door.

The micro-transaction driven model is actually a step in the right direction. It is no longer time that they’re trying to get out of you, so much as whatever it would take to get you adequately involved in a game so much as to spend optional extra money on it.

Although, as for what would motivate a MMORPG company to give up the idea of a reliable $15/mo in exchange for less-reliable microtransactions, that has more to do with just how badly bloated the MMORPG genre is these days. There’s enough competition out there letting people visit for free that it no longer makes much sense to charge to let people in the door.

@A Man In Black: Doh, I think I remember that now.

Realistically, what this will eventually lead to is a capping of subscription time in MMO’s.

15/mo, buys you 30 hours a week? 40? 20? Its subjective to suggest how much is too much, but probably the quickest and easiest way for the publishers to protect themselves.

Elovia:

@BoanergesOne word response to your argument that comparing MMOs to drugs is silly: “Pavlov”. Two further words: “classical conditioning”.MMOs seek to retain subscriptions, and thus prolong their revenue stream, by conditioning the players through psychological manipulation which induces physical addiction (in some). The manipulations are not unlike those programmed into slot machines.
And yes, marketing is pure evil. /tinfoil hat

The problem with this argument is that under Pavlovian conditioning the sound of the bell triggers salivation, but it is not the reason for salivation. The reason for salivation is that the dog believes there will be food. You might as well argue that people are addicted to having fun (or, depending on how cynical you are about people and MMOs, addicted to collecting useless knick-knacks).

I await the long-predicted (by me) day when bacon and coffee suppliers are sued using the same logic.

Nobody can argue that Gambling is addictive. Different people are more or less prone to getting addicted to it, but given enough exposure significant % of population will get gambling addiction. This is why we have regulation, minimal age restrictions and zoning bylaws limiting how, with who and when Gambling can be done. We don’t expose kids to gambling, and we don’t set up gambling dens next to middle schools simply because too many, when compared to overall population, will develop gambling addiction.

Now, when you intentionally design your game with knowledge of Operant Conditioning as addictive as possible it is not unlike gambling. It is addictive because it takes advantage of how we as a humans wired. It doesn’t have to be basic drive like food or sex to trigger “reward” behavior, as long as you have ‘Event’ that can act as reinforcement you can be put on a schedule designed to eventually addict you. This is not likely to just happen by accident, someone with detailed knowledge of behavioral psychology has to design it to work that way.

The case would have to suggest and prove that NCSoft received a complaint from the user about a possible addiction. It would then have to prove that NCSoft both ignored the complaint and then acted to further addict the person. If this person, out of the blue, sued NCSoft after years of playing, that person is both complaining or admitting to the addiction (only they can tell when that happens,) and asking for compensation at the same time.

My guess is that if NCSoft received an email from somebody complaining about addictive behaviours around their game, they would, at a minimum, suggest they stop playing. The maximum they could do is put their account on suspension and provide guidance towards the nearest professional for help.

If the case is to just complain that a company developed and sold a game that is addictive, it will get thrown out.

As for this being a monthly-for-pay issue, I disagree. I had a very unhealthy relationship with Masters of Magic and the original Civ back in the day. I got better even without millions to help me sleep at night.

This is completely unrelated:

Lum, I miss your links section any way to get it back?

The issue with F2P games, microtransactions or whaever you want to call them is that either:

a)They suck (I know, not exclusive. But far more abundant).
b)They put the text on the wall: “You shall do an endless grind unless you buy our XP potions” (Hello Korean Grindfests). Fuck that.
c)They try to put a dickish mechanic to try to shake money from the player base (See: Fear of Death, aka why Allods Online tanked).

Between all those, I rather chill out of any MMO until Cataclysm.

All I have to says is Personal Accountability should be reinforced here, and the plaintiff should be tarred and feathered for wasting the court’s time and the defendants’.