I’m sure most of us are aware that a lot of the mechanics of incremental games rely on things like skinner boxes to make us want to keep playing by just promising us future positive moments, rather than just giving us positive moments.
Where do you think the line is, between genuine fun vs just being manipulated into wanting to keep playing? Or is there no difference?
Additionally, awareness of video game addiction is pretty important within the genre. The community has a lot of young people who could be harmed if playing games long enough into the night as to disrupt their sleep cycle, for example. To that end I’ve been considering adding a notice to my future games when the game has been actively played a lot, that mentions video games addiction along with some resources to help. When do you think it’d make sense to display this? I was thinking about showing it if the player has been active within the game during 6 of the last 8 hours.
I hope y’all don’t mind the more serious/critical topic of this post. I plan on keeping most of them positive, but I think this is an important topic to discuss within the genre.