00:00SPEAKERHave you ever experienced that phenomenon when you are building a PC or tinkering with
00:04SPEAKERa PC or repairing a PC or things have gone just sideways enough that any and all pretense
00:10SPEAKERof organization is just out the window?
00:13SPEAKERI know that I, everybody's got different tidiness standards.
00:17SPEAKERI'm a bit on the extreme end of wanting an organized desk and stuff like that, but do
00:22SPEAKERyou know what I mean?
00:23SPEAKERLike things devolve so far into just a gigantic explosion of every cable and screwdriver.
00:29SPEAKERAnd case fan, you can think of splayed across one or more rooms.
00:34SPEAKERYou have literally described the entirety of my life.
00:38SPEAKERThat's why I mentioned, you know, some people might not consider this such a problem.
00:42SPEAKERSo look, there's a point in every build where you're like, fuck it, I just want to be done.
00:49SPEAKERAnd then, and that's when you jam all the cables up onto the backside and you just shove
00:54SPEAKERthe door closed.
00:56SPEAKERIt's actually kind of my one complaint with this fractal design meshify case that I built
01:00SPEAKERmy new PC in, is it uses contact.
01:03SPEAKERThere's not screws holding the backside on.
01:05SPEAKERIt's just like snap on things.
01:07SPEAKERSo you actually have, it enforces, it's both a good thing and a bad thing and it enforces
01:12SPEAKERa backside cable tidiness that like, it doesn't let you sweep your, hide your crimes as it
01:19SPEAKERwere.
01:20SPEAKERSo yeah, what, I mean, you haven't built the new PC yet, so I'm curious.
01:25SPEAKERThis is just a, just a simple NVMe drive swap in my NAS has turned into like a three day
01:30SPEAKERodyssey of, oh, simple.
01:33SPEAKERYou can't see it cause this camera's pointed at the ceiling, but this room is a complete
01:36SPEAKERdisaster.
01:37SPEAKERBrad, is the NAS up or down?
01:40SPEAKERThe NAS is fine.
01:41SPEAKERIt's mostly cooling stuff that once I'm cooling is always the problem.
01:44SPEAKERIt turns out I'm never buying micro ATX again.
01:46SPEAKERI don't think it matters because they're barely making micro ATX anymore.
01:50SPEAKERLike that standard just seems like it's on the way out, but I never, again, will I attempt
01:54SPEAKERa compact build of any kind.
01:56SPEAKERWow.
01:57SPEAKERYou're just going full big, full tower from here on out.
01:59SPEAKERI'm getting the biggest cases I can possibly fit into my living space from now on.
02:05SPEAKERLet me, let me suggest an alternative.
02:07SPEAKERWhat about a 4U rack?
02:09SPEAKERDude, what about a 42U rack in which a 4U case can sit along with a bunch of other stuff.
02:16SPEAKERI'm with you on that.
02:18SPEAKERI, one of the M.2 sockets on this MATX board is so close to the PCI express slot underneath
02:25SPEAKERit that I could not fit the SSD into the socket because the retaining latch on the PCI express
02:31SPEAKERslot was blocking that.
02:32SPEAKERI had to take a screwdriver and wedge it into the slot and pop the latch out to get the
02:37SPEAKERSSD in.
02:38SPEAKEROh, I don't like that.
02:39SPEAKERThat feels bad.
02:40SPEAKERThat feels like a design flaw.
02:42SPEAKERThat was a pain in the ass, but whatever, it worked fine.
02:45SPEAKERAnyway, I got the whole thing back together.
02:46SPEAKERThe fan controller turned out to have died.
02:49SPEAKERIn the motherboard?
02:50SPEAKERNo, no.
02:51SPEAKERIt's, it's an external.
02:52SPEAKERIt's just a little, it's just, it plugs into Molex and then like takes three, you have
02:56SPEAKERlike three, four pin fan headers.
02:58SPEAKERYeah, they're three pin, but yeah, it's just a little, got it.
03:00SPEAKERWhat is it?
03:01SPEAKERResistive.
03:02SPEAKERDoes it have a physical knob on it or is it software controlled?
03:04SPEAKERIt's a knob.
03:05SPEAKERYou just turn a knob and it, you know, changes impedance or resistance or whatever to anyway,
03:09SPEAKERthat thing died.
03:10SPEAKERSo the case fans weren't working.
03:11SPEAKERSo I managed to get all of the fan headers on the board populated and then it turned
03:15SPEAKERout one of those case fans was just dead anyway for who knows how long that's been going on.
03:20SPEAKERSo it's possible that your dead case fan made your fan controller not work actually.
03:24SPEAKERMaybe.
03:25SPEAKERAlso there, I don't know what the part is.
03:26SPEAKERIt's their tiny little exposed PCB on, it's mounted on a PCI bracket.
03:30SPEAKERYeah.
03:31SPEAKERThe knob points outside the case.
03:32SPEAKERYeah.
03:33SPEAKERThat's interesting.
03:34SPEAKERIt's not on the front.
03:35SPEAKEROkay.
03:36SPEAKERAnd the PCB sticks off the back of the bracket.
03:37SPEAKERI don't know what this part was.
03:38SPEAKERIn fact, if I, I think it's in the living room right now, but I could show it to you.
03:42SPEAKERHaving soldered to the little PCB on my fan controller, if I bent it a certain way, the
03:46SPEAKERfans would come back on and then letting off of it, they would go off again.
03:48SPEAKEROh, like a resistor capacitor, like something round or no, it's like rectangular with a
03:53SPEAKERhole in the middle.
03:54SPEAKEROh, that's a MOSFET probably.
03:55SPEAKEROkay.
03:56SPEAKERThat sure.
03:57SPEAKERSo MOSFET's like a big switch essentially.
03:59SPEAKERSo anyway, I kind of bent it into position and the fans mostly seemed reliable, but I'm
04:03SPEAKERnot going to count on that.
04:04SPEAKERYeah.
04:05SPEAKERThat's not, you should, why don't you just plug the fans into the motherboard for the,
04:08SPEAKERcause they run full speed.
04:10SPEAKERIt's complicated.
04:11SPEAKERThere's two of the headers.
04:12SPEAKEROne of them is an AIO header that you can't adjust.
04:14SPEAKERIt runs at full speed all the time.
04:16SPEAKERThe other one is the CPU opt header, which is basically.
04:20SPEAKERUsually matched bound to something else.
04:22SPEAKERIt's bound to the CPU fan.
04:23SPEAKERSo that case fan would just oscillate along with the CPU fan, which isn't really what
04:27SPEAKERyou want.
04:29SPEAKERIt's fine.
04:30SPEAKERI I've got a, I've got a, it turns out, thank you Noctua.
04:33SPEAKERI've got a bunch of Y splitters for fan headers.
04:36SPEAKERSo I've got, I've got two nice new Noctua case fans on the way.
04:40SPEAKERThere you go.
04:41SPEAKERAnd it'll be fine.
04:42SPEAKERIt'll be fine.
04:43SPEAKERWe could all use a little more Noctua in our lives.
04:45SPEAKERYes, for sure.
04:46SPEAKERIt's just, it's just that whole thing of like, Oh, this will take 30 minutes to swap this
04:49SPEAKERdrive out.
04:50SPEAKEROh, by 30 minutes, I'm in three days.
04:52SPEAKERYeah.
04:53SPEAKERThere's nothing to look if you, especially here's the thing, there's a rule about this.
04:57SPEAKERThe nicer your wiring job and your setup in general, like your coolings, whether how your
05:01SPEAKERpipes are routed, all that stuff, the nicer job you've done with that, the more time it's
05:05SPEAKERgoing to take to, to, to replace any component in that machine.
05:09SPEAKERRight.
05:10SPEAKERCause like, if I want to get into my machine now, I have to unwire a bunch of fans and
05:14SPEAKERdo a bunch of stuff.
05:15SPEAKERCause they're all hooked up in really specific ways.
05:17SPEAKERAnd it's, it's a, you know, like just assume it's going to take a few hours.
05:21SPEAKERYes.
05:22SPEAKERYes.
05:23SPEAKERIt's tempting to say that good organization, good tidiness is a gift that you give to your
05:28SPEAKERfuture self, but sometimes it backfires.
05:31SPEAKERIt's punishment.
05:32SPEAKERIt's a, it's a way to make future you suffer.
05:35SPEAKERThat's the story, Brad.
06:04SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
06:06SPEAKERI'm Will.
06:07SPEAKERI'm Brad.
06:08SPEAKERBrad.
06:09SPEAKERI know it's a cliche to talk about weather, localized weather on a worldwide podcast,
06:14SPEAKERbut I learned a new word this week.
06:15SPEAKEROh, hit me.
06:16SPEAKERGrapple.
06:17SPEAKERI'm sorry.
06:18SPEAKERGrapple.
06:19SPEAKERWhoa.
06:20SPEAKERIt's a German word.
06:21SPEAKERIt means G R A P P E L?
06:27SPEAKERIt is a, it's called soft hail or hominy snow and it's precipitation that forms when super
06:37SPEAKERcold water droplets in the air collected and freeze on falling snowflakes forming two to
06:42SPEAKERfive millimeter balls of crisp, opaque rhyme.
06:46SPEAKERIt's distinct from hail and ice pellets in that it's, it often forms in cumulonimbus and
06:52SPEAKERthunderstorm clouds and falls in winter storms.
06:55SPEAKEROh, here it is.
06:57SPEAKERGrapple.
06:58SPEAKERGrapple.
06:59SPEAKERYeah.
07:00SPEAKERGoogle said the American pronunciation is grapple.
07:01SPEAKEROkay.
07:02SPEAKERSure.
07:03SPEAKERAnd it kind of yelled it at me.
07:04SPEAKEROkay.
07:05SPEAKERHere we go.
07:06SPEAKERHominy snow.
07:07SPEAKERMan, I like hominy.
07:08SPEAKERYou know, hominy.
07:09SPEAKERWhat if actual hominy fell from the sky?
07:10SPEAKERThat would be cool.
07:11SPEAKERIt's funny.
07:12SPEAKERThere's like a couple of grains, hominy, barley, well, and then there's not a grain, but, but
07:20SPEAKERlike what are the, what are the, what are the white tubers?
07:24SPEAKERThey're not turnips, the other ones, parsnips.
07:28SPEAKERThese are all things my parents hated apparently as children because their, their, their parents
07:31SPEAKERmust have boiled them when they prepared them for them.
07:34SPEAKERAnd when I've had them as an adult, I'm like, these are delicious.
07:36SPEAKERWhy do we not eat more of these?
07:37SPEAKERWhy do I, why do I not have barley cereal in my life as a, as a regular anyway?
07:43SPEAKERSo we've had in 20, I've lived here for 23 years now, I've seen snow once during that
07:49SPEAKERtime period, I've seen hail once prior to last week.
07:54SPEAKERDuring the last week, we've had this grapple stuff happen every day, pretty much it's rained.
08:00SPEAKERAnd had a little bit of hail one day too, which was exciting.
08:03SPEAKERThe FedEx guy showed up right in the middle of that hail with a package for me and he
08:06SPEAKERseemed stoked to be out there in that.
08:09SPEAKERYeah.
08:10SPEAKERLike legitimately, it's hard to tell here because sometimes people are excited by novelty
08:13SPEAKERweather in San Francisco.
08:15SPEAKERHe was grinning and bearing it.
08:16SPEAKEROh, that sucks.
08:17SPEAKERAt least he delivered the package.
08:19SPEAKERFedEx has been not the most reliable for me lately.
08:25SPEAKERSo yeah, it's weird weather here in San Francisco.
08:27SPEAKERThey had, they got, they got 10 feet of snow or 10 meters of snow.
08:31SPEAKERI can't remember.
08:32SPEAKERThey're up, they're up to like 500, 500 centimeters of snow, 500 inches of snow in Tahoe.
08:38SPEAKEROf course.
08:39SPEAKEROkay.
08:40SPEAKERYeah.
08:41SPEAKERThat's a lot of snow.
08:42SPEAKERThat's a lot of snow.
08:43SPEAKERI think that's 40 feet of snow, but I'm not sure.
08:45SPEAKERIt's literally 40 feet of snow.
08:48SPEAKERStrange times around here.
08:49SPEAKERYeah.
08:50SPEAKERI saw, I saw a picture of a ski lift that they had to dig out the poles so that the
08:53SPEAKERski lift would operate the other day.
08:54SPEAKERWow.
08:55SPEAKERI'm like, Oh wow.
08:56SPEAKERThat seems bad.
08:57SPEAKERBut anyway, we're not going to talk about dark clouds today.
09:02SPEAKERNo.
09:03SPEAKERWe're nice and cozy inside our warm houses playing mobile games.
09:06SPEAKERSpeak for yourself.
09:07SPEAKERNo, we're not.
09:08SPEAKERWell, it's not just mobile games.
09:09SPEAKERIt's all.
09:10SPEAKERYou're right.
09:11SPEAKERYeah.
09:12SPEAKERLike this isn't ever, this is everywhere.
09:13SPEAKERThis stuff is literally everywhere.
09:14SPEAKERWe're talking about dark patterns.
09:15SPEAKERYes.
09:16SPEAKERI think, I think the, the sort of classical origin a decade plus ago though, like that's,
09:21SPEAKERthat's, well, it was also Facebook games.
09:22SPEAKERIt wasn't just phone games, but it was that kind of small scale free to play is the first
09:27SPEAKERplace I saw this stuff originate.
09:30SPEAKERI think, I think free to play is where it was weaponized, but I think I saw these things
09:33SPEAKERoriginate on the early web, like, like honestly, like if you think about, so dark pattern for
09:39SPEAKERpeople who don't like, well, okay, we're talking about these for two reasons.
09:41SPEAKEROne is it's an interesting topic and we hadn't thought about talking about stuff like this
09:44SPEAKERon the, on the show before.
09:47SPEAKERBut the other is that they're everywhere and merely knowing that they exist removes a lot
09:53SPEAKERof their power for people.
09:54SPEAKERSo like knowing by talking about this stuff, we're making you the listener, less susceptible
09:59SPEAKERto these dark patterns and hopefully you can make informed decisions about your life.
10:03SPEAKERYeah.
10:04SPEAKERAlso, I feel like I could be wrong at least for me, the term dark pattern only came into
10:09SPEAKERcommon usage maybe in the last year or two, or that's when I encountered it, but people
10:13SPEAKERhave been talking about dark patterns on the web for 15 years at this point.
10:16SPEAKERBut with that name though, what I, what I was gonna say is like, when you read through
10:18SPEAKERthese various phenomena, you realize like, oh yes, okay, yes, I, these, these, a lot
10:23SPEAKERof these I have seen for a very long time.
10:25SPEAKERYeah.
10:26SPEAKERSo, so a lot of this stuff came out of like cognitive science, which is like if psychology
10:30SPEAKERis the, the abstract idea of how brains work, cognitive science is how brains react to certain
10:35SPEAKERspecific stimuli, it's like the applied science version of psychology in a lot of ways.
10:40SPEAKERTheory versus exploitative practice.
10:43SPEAKERWell, or, I mean, look, applied, applied sciences can be good or bad, you know, nuclear power,
10:51SPEAKERnuclear bomb, same science, just different application.
10:54SPEAKERTruly amoral, it's all about how you use it.
10:56SPEAKERYeah.
10:57SPEAKERBut, but the first place I heard about this was on the web.
11:00SPEAKERAnd if you recall, like, I don't know, like late, late, late in the early two thousands,
11:05SPEAKERlike 2007, 2008, 2005, when you could still make good money with advertising on the web,
11:11SPEAKERthere were a lot of weird dark patterns around both e-commerce and like advertising.
11:17SPEAKERAnd so people know a dark pattern is a deceitful design choice added to a site or product that
11:23SPEAKERcauses a negative experience for the user, but a positive experience for the developer.
11:28SPEAKEROften dark patterns are used to mislead users, to bait them into doing things that they might
11:31SPEAKERnot otherwise do is the definition I read that off of our notes.
11:36SPEAKEROkay.
11:37SPEAKERShould we, should we credit that definition?
11:40SPEAKERThat is a definition that was assembled from four or five different websites that I read
11:44SPEAKERtoday.
11:45SPEAKEROkay.
11:46SPEAKEROh, that's your, that's your paraphrase.
11:47SPEAKERThat is my paraphrase of about 15 paragraphs of text.
11:50SPEAKERAlso probably goes without saying generally that positive experience for the developer
11:54SPEAKERis getting paid.
11:56SPEAKEROh, not, not always, but often.
11:59SPEAKERYeah.
12:00SPEAKERGetting paid maybe secondary or tertiary further down the line from the positive.
12:03SPEAKERSo it may be that you spend more time with something that you wouldn't ordinarily spend
12:06SPEAKERtime with and that the act of spending more time makes you more likely to spend money
12:10SPEAKERdown the road.
12:11SPEAKERRight.
12:12SPEAKERWell, yeah.
12:13SPEAKERUltimately, generally it's, it goes to increasing revenue, but there might be some intermediate
12:16SPEAKERsteps there in terms of like kind of social, socially spreading awareness of the game or
12:20SPEAKERspending more time with it or yes.
12:22SPEAKERYeah.
12:23SPEAKERSo in the early days of the web stuff, it was like, Hey, we're going to put a pop-up
12:25SPEAKERad that has, it doesn't have an X that you can close, right?
12:29SPEAKERSo there's no way you have to know how you have to know to press alt F four to close
12:32SPEAKERthe window that the pop-up ad is in.
12:35SPEAKEROr like a mobile ad that is a takeover ad that has a tiny little X in the top, right?
12:40SPEAKERThat would be really easy to click with a mouse, but it's hard to hit with your finger
12:44SPEAKERor a banner ad that looks like a UI element on your page that you're like, Oh, Hey, I
12:49SPEAKERwant to click the next button on this page and move to the next step in this process.
12:52SPEAKERAnd shit, that's an ad.
12:53SPEAKERI mean, I distinctly remember ads of that nature with windows XP style UI elements on
12:58SPEAKERthem.
12:59SPEAKERSo it tells you how long that's been around where they were.
13:01SPEAKERI'm trying to remember, were they able to spawn like browser pop-up windows without
13:06SPEAKERO S level?
13:07SPEAKERDepending on your browser, what's depending on your browser.
13:11SPEAKERSo for a brief period of time, you could pop up a JavaScript window that just had no frame
13:14SPEAKERaround it that had no window Chrome around it.
13:17SPEAKERThey stopped doing that because it was obviously a terrible idea that went away quickly.
13:21SPEAKERI feel like I could do that.
13:22SPEAKERYou could do all sorts of weird stuff with IE, if you had actor X controls turned on
13:26SPEAKERas well, because that would let the browser spawn stuff that acted like a, like an actual
13:31SPEAKERwindow.
13:32SPEAKEROkay.
13:33SPEAKERI mean, I certainly have seen plenty of web designers over time, talk about how much they
13:36SPEAKERhate internet Explorer and that's a little bit of insight into why.
13:41SPEAKERYeah.
13:42SPEAKERThe, the let's see the banner ad that looks like UI element, the banner ad that just keeps
13:47SPEAKERexploding and then popping up like JavaScript menus that won't let you that say, are you
13:51SPEAKERsure you want to close this and you click okay.
13:53SPEAKERAnd it actually keeps going and opens five more windows and all that kind of stuff.
13:56SPEAKERThose are all dark patterns.
13:57SPEAKERThey've been around for a long time.
13:58SPEAKERSometimes, sometimes they're good.
14:00SPEAKERSometimes they're bad.
14:01SPEAKERRight.
14:02SPEAKERSo this is, this is why I mentioned earlier that I think the term is more recent, but
14:06SPEAKERweb designers have been talking about dark patterns for a really long time.
14:09SPEAKEROkay.
14:10SPEAKEROkay.
14:11SPEAKEROr maybe it just got into the popular usage anyway.
14:12SPEAKERYeah.
14:13SPEAKERAnd it's something that I think in the game conversation has just become more popular
14:19SPEAKERrecently too, like, or people become more aware of, I think game designers have been
14:23SPEAKERthinking about them for a long time, but maybe they, they didn't have a label for them until
14:26SPEAKERrecently at that.
14:27SPEAKERI don't know.
14:28SPEAKERYeah.
14:29SPEAKERAnd it's actually, as you read through kind of some literature about this stuff, you realize
14:31SPEAKERa lot of the labels for the different categories are pretty common.
14:35SPEAKERYeah.
14:36SPEAKERAnd it's, it's, it's, they're the name of different psychological phenomena, or they
14:38SPEAKERcame from, like they were described at the same time when a game exploited them in some
14:42SPEAKERnovel way.
14:43SPEAKERLike you're like, we'll talk about Farmful in a little bit.
14:46SPEAKERBut the like, and sometimes you can use these, these same effects for good.
14:51SPEAKERSo for example, if you have something that it's important that people read on your website,
14:55SPEAKERyou can use a dark pattern to encourage them to read that rather than just click through
14:59SPEAKERthe automatic, you know, what looks like the default icon on their page.
15:03SPEAKERYou know, the, the cookie GDPR trackers that when you hit the show me the necessary stuff,
15:10SPEAKERthey automatically fill only the, the non-collecting information cookies, you know, the, the necessary
15:15SPEAKERfor functionality cookies.
15:17SPEAKERThat's actually a good, that's a, that's actually a good design.
15:21SPEAKERThe bad ones are the ones that make you click 15 times to get through and, and, and do the
15:25SPEAKERthing that you actually want to do, which is block the personal collecting information.
15:30SPEAKERYeah.
15:31SPEAKERThere's another bad form of those that involves when you opt into the, like, you know, you
15:36SPEAKERbasically say, okay, I want to set my preferences and click into the bigger window.
15:39SPEAKERYou know, they'll, they'll give you the big list of types of cookies you can disable and
15:43SPEAKERthey will all be disabled.
15:44SPEAKERBut the button at the bottom, that is like the one that's colored in or the one that
15:47SPEAKERyour subconscious mind is just drawn to clicking immediately is an accept all button.
15:53SPEAKERSo like, even though they all look like they're disabled, if you click the button that you
15:56SPEAKERthink is going to be confirmed that these are disabled, you're actually going to enable
16:00SPEAKERthem all.
16:01SPEAKERYeah.
16:02SPEAKERAnd it's very much, it's very much like it's, that's an exploitation of your, your perception
16:05SPEAKERof what the default should do in that, in that situation.
16:09SPEAKERI am super susceptible to that stuff because I rarely read everything in windows like that
16:13SPEAKERbecause I just want to, I'm very impatient with UI and I want to just assume I know what
16:18SPEAKERdecisions they made about what the default should be.
16:21SPEAKERNo one reads anything anymore.
16:23SPEAKERYeah.
16:24SPEAKERAnd also almost everyone clicks the defaults.
16:28SPEAKERThis is why defaults are really important.
16:29SPEAKERThis is why Microsoft got in trouble for Internet Explorer being the default browser and taking
16:33SPEAKERover defaults because, because the, because they knew that no one, everybody just accepts
16:39SPEAKERthe defaults, what the default settings are is incredibly important and exploiting that
16:43SPEAKERis another one of those dark, anyway.
16:45SPEAKERYeah.
16:46SPEAKERI will mention, I use edge on a pretty regular basis as a kind of a supplement to Chrome
16:50SPEAKERand they, they are still pretty bad about nagging you with, Hey, do you want to make
16:54SPEAKERthis your default browser?
16:55SPEAKERAnd frequently that not in that language, frequently more like, do you want to experience
17:00SPEAKERon the web?
17:01SPEAKERDo you want to, do you want to load optimized settings for edge and boy, does that happen
17:04SPEAKERto set this as your primary browser?
17:06SPEAKERWhat a weird coincidence, the also stuff like I don't know if this is a dark pattern technically,
17:14SPEAKERbut the thing where you have to scroll to the end of the terms of service or the software
17:17SPEAKERlicense and then click before you can, before the accept button lets you click it.
17:20SPEAKERIs that the people that do that?
17:21SPEAKERThat's terrible.
17:22SPEAKERIt's a pain in the ass.
17:23SPEAKERI always assume that's just more legal CYA though.
17:26SPEAKERIt's stupid though.
17:27SPEAKERCause it's not like you're reading, like if they, if they wanted to do that, they'd have
17:30SPEAKERit timed.
17:31SPEAKERSo you have to read over five minutes and like, God, what a nightmare.
17:34SPEAKERAnyway, don't do that either.
17:38SPEAKERLike I said earlier, the dark pattern stuff, like the, the web was an opportunity to exploit
17:43SPEAKERit, but because of the kind of relationship between a dopamine hit, the kind of dopamine
17:48SPEAKERhits the games give your brain to make you feel good.
17:52SPEAKERAnd the fact that they control the ability to, to generate those and dole them out means
17:59SPEAKERthat games can kind of weaponize this stuff in a way that is ranges from icky to really
18:05SPEAKERlike dangerous and unhealthy.
18:12SPEAKERTypically they're designed to extract money from you and keep playing.
18:16SPEAKERBut they aren't like they're, they're not just as simple as, Hey, this button is smaller
18:20SPEAKERthan you would expect or stuff like that.
18:22SPEAKERThey're more complicated and they can be damaged like psychologically damaging like loot boxes
18:28SPEAKERare something that everybody knows about, right?
18:30SPEAKERBlind bags and loot boxes, where you put a valuable item and make that more rare than
18:34SPEAKERa less valuable item, it essentially encourages gambling, like addictive gambling behavior
18:40SPEAKERin players and incentivizes you to keep spending money until you get the thing that you want,
18:44SPEAKERright?
18:45SPEAKERIt made you want the, the rare thing.
18:47SPEAKERAnd then you keep pumping money in until you get the rare thing out of the box.
18:51SPEAKERReading up on this stuff made me realize how expansive the definition of the term dark
18:54SPEAKERpattern is because loot like loot boxes is right there at the top of the list.
18:57SPEAKERAnd I was like, Oh yeah, like that's never, everybody knows how shitty loot boxes are.
19:00SPEAKERThat's been a thing for 10 to 15 years.
19:02SPEAKERLike pay to win is another one that I saw come up a lot that like, like when you hear
19:06SPEAKERsomething like dark pattern, you're like, Oh God, this sounds like some insidious new
19:09SPEAKERform of manipulation that has emerged.
19:11SPEAKERBut actually it's a, it's a huge umbrella term over some, some concepts that you're
19:15SPEAKERfamiliar with from 15, 20 years ago, even well.
19:18SPEAKERAnd like loot boxes are a good example because it's not just, well, loot boxes, aren't just
19:22SPEAKERone thing it's manipulating like, like the it's creating artificial scarcity, right?
19:27SPEAKERCause we're talking about digital goods that don't have any appreciable physical cost.
19:32SPEAKERThat's a pure, pure design decision.
19:34SPEAKERYeah.
19:35SPEAKERAnd then, and then they also do things like you know, the, those loot box animations that
19:40SPEAKEReverybody makes fun of are specifically designed to make you feel like you've accomplished
19:44SPEAKERsomething, right?
19:45SPEAKERLike you see the big flashy lights, you see all the, all the, all the twinkling and the
19:50SPEAKERmusic plays and then you get the good chime and the chime is the same as the chime that
19:53SPEAKERhappens when you do something good in the game.
19:55SPEAKERI mean, I mean they work very effective.
19:58SPEAKERYeah.
19:59SPEAKERIt makes you feel good.
20:00SPEAKERSo it's like that's multiple things happening at the same time.
20:02SPEAKERYeah.
20:03SPEAKERThere's also the, there's also the slot machine aspect, the randomness is not, not just the
20:08SPEAKERartificial scarcity, but also the randomness of will you get, yeah.
20:12SPEAKERAnd they can get grosser than that.
20:13SPEAKERLike there's like human brain, the human brain tends to find patterns.
20:17SPEAKERIt finds patterns even when there are none.
20:20SPEAKERAnd that's the thing that slot machines exploit and that, that loot boxes can exploit by,
20:24SPEAKERyou know, they'll give you something good every third box you buy, or when you buy boxes
20:28SPEAKERin threes or when you buy boxes in tens or whatever.
20:31SPEAKERAnd it establishes that pattern and then just keeps you spending money and spending more
20:36SPEAKERmoney.
20:37SPEAKERWhen you combine it with like data tracking that you get in modern games, it can get really,
20:40SPEAKERreally insidious.
20:41SPEAKERSure.
20:42SPEAKERIs, is the, is the kind of stereotypical best value in buying like say free to play currency?
20:48SPEAKERDoes that count here?
20:50SPEAKERI don't know if it does.
20:51SPEAKERI mean, generally I think that's actually legitimately saying, Hey, this is the best
20:55SPEAKERlike per unit costs that we offer.
20:57SPEAKERRight.
20:58SPEAKERI don't know if that falls into this.
20:59SPEAKERThey're trying to get you to spend more like typically when you're buying premium currency,
21:03SPEAKERthey're trying to get you to, there's a couple of ones here.
21:06SPEAKERThat's that is a confusion over value.
21:09SPEAKERSo like, if you think about the classic Microsoft box, 800 points for 10 bucks, Microsoft points
21:16SPEAKERfor a dark pattern this whole time.
21:18SPEAKEROh, the Xbox 360 is entirely dark patterns.
21:21SPEAKEROh my God.
21:23SPEAKERAre dark patterns.
21:24SPEAKERWait, really?
21:25SPEAKERYeah.
21:26SPEAKERCause Chivo's Chivo's are artificial goals that, that invest you in that ecosystem.
21:30SPEAKERSo you're building value.
21:32SPEAKEREvery time you add to your total gamer score, you're like, man, I've looked at all this
21:35SPEAKERvalue I've put in the Xbox.
21:36SPEAKERI should buy another Xbox when the new one comes out.
21:38SPEAKERI guess so.
21:39SPEAKERI mean, by that standard, I mean, quite literally every objective in a video game ever fits
21:43SPEAKERhere.
21:44SPEAKERNot necessarily.
21:45SPEAKERI think.
21:46SPEAKERCause I mean, well, we've said it before, like the best, the best achievements are
21:48SPEAKERto drive, allow you to drive more value out of a game by giving you things that giving
21:52SPEAKERyou ways to play that you might not have thought of otherwise, but that's certainly not all
21:57SPEAKERof them.
21:58SPEAKERBut that, that, that like, so the individual achievements themselves can be fine, but by
22:04SPEAKERputting that overall gamer score on the achievements, that's, that's, that's keeping you closer
22:11SPEAKERto that ecosystem.
22:12SPEAKERSo hang on is the classic high score list in the arcade games of 40 plus years ago,
22:19SPEAKERa dark pattern.
22:20SPEAKEROnly until the power turns off because most of them didn't save in ROM.
22:25SPEAKERSeeing, seeing your name at number 10 sure might incentivize you to pump more quarters
22:29SPEAKERin.
22:30SPEAKERI mean, my, my, you know, when you put it that way, you're absolutely right.
22:33SPEAKERBut the thing was, I always display my name, either ass or poo.
22:36SPEAKERSo there were a lot of us on the list usually.
22:40SPEAKERSure.
22:41SPEAKERBut yeah, so, so like, and, and just to be clear, this stuff can happen, like these aren't
22:48SPEAKERall bad.
22:49SPEAKERRight?
22:50SPEAKERLike blind boxes and loot boxes, like blind bags and loot boxes are all are unequivocally
22:54SPEAKERbad.
22:55SPEAKERLike fucking suck.
22:56SPEAKERPeople shouldn't do them.
22:57SPEAKERI actually want it.
22:58SPEAKERI'm waiting for the, the cow clicker flip on blue boxes where you just get the good
23:04SPEAKERthing every time you, you, you, you do that, like, you know, the, the cow clicker was the,
23:10SPEAKERwas Ian Bogost designing the game.
23:13SPEAKERThat's like the worst dark pattern game of all time.
23:15SPEAKERAnd it generated clickers.
23:17SPEAKERI feel like that was him.
23:18SPEAKERWasn't it?
23:19SPEAKERWas it really?
23:20SPEAKERYou might be right.
23:21SPEAKERYeah, it totally was.
23:23SPEAKERWow.
23:24SPEAKERI had no idea that he made that.
23:25SPEAKERYeah.
23:26SPEAKERHe, he was, he was trying to make like the, the, the ultimate Facebook game and then accidentally
23:31SPEAKERjust spawned an entire genre of terrible games.
23:35SPEAKERYeah.
23:36SPEAKERI just, I just know him as an amusing Twitter follow.
23:38SPEAKERI did not realize that, I mean, that's probably how he, he's a scholar.
23:42SPEAKERGame scholar.
23:43SPEAKERYeah.
23:44SPEAKERI mean, yeah.
23:45SPEAKERThat's definitely very much like sort of an academic experiment.
23:46SPEAKERWhat was God, the browser based text-based one candy candy.
23:54SPEAKERIt wasn't candy clicker.
23:55SPEAKERIt was candy candy shop is C A N D I E right.
24:01SPEAKERI don't remember God candy box.
24:05SPEAKERI think it might've been candy box.
24:07SPEAKERYeah.
24:08SPEAKERThere's a bunch of candy.
24:09SPEAKERThat thing was free.
24:10SPEAKEROh God.
24:11SPEAKEROh no.
24:12SPEAKERDon't do it.
24:13SPEAKERNope.
24:14SPEAKERNope.
24:15SPEAKERNope.
24:16SPEAKERYou're back in Brad.
24:17SPEAKERI've stumbled on candy box again.
24:18SPEAKERClose.
24:19SPEAKERClose.
24:20SPEAKERClose that.
24:21SPEAKERClose that tab right now.
24:22SPEAKERBut I just hit 11 candies.
24:23SPEAKERI can now throw 10 candies on the ground.
24:24SPEAKERHang on.
24:25SPEAKERI'm throwing.
24:26SPEAKERNope.
24:27SPEAKERNope.
24:28SPEAKERNope.
24:29SPEAKERNope.
24:30SPEAKERNope.
24:31SPEAKERNope.
24:32SPEAKERNope.
24:33SPEAKERNope.
24:34SPEAKERNope.
24:35SPEAKERI threw 10 candies on the ground.
24:36SPEAKERSo this is a good example of the infinite treadmill, Brad, which is a temporal dark
24:37SPEAKERroom for good and for positive influence.
24:40SPEAKERIn my experience, having played a lot of match three games, which are especially evil because
24:47SPEAKERthe game controls whether you can win or not based on the gems it gives you at the top
24:51SPEAKERof the board when you replace others, whether these are good or bad depends on how you feel
24:59SPEAKERat the end of a game session.
25:03SPEAKERI think about them mostly when I play something and I get to the end of a session, I'm like,
25:06SPEAKERman, I feel worse now than I did when I started playing this game.
25:09SPEAKERBoy, is that feeling familiar.
25:11SPEAKERYeah.
25:12SPEAKERLike, like you want to play, like for example, I play a lot of Fortnite.
25:16SPEAKERGenerally, even when I lose and I'm having a bad, bad night with bad games at the end
25:21SPEAKERof the game, the end of the evening, I've had fun and I enjoy myself.
25:25SPEAKERAnd I consider that time spent a positive, it positively contributes to my mental state,
25:30SPEAKERwhich is what I'm looking for from games.
25:31SPEAKERRight.
25:32SPEAKERNow crucially, correct me if I'm wrong, pretty much all the randomness in Fortnite is cosmetic.
25:37SPEAKERI feel like that's a dangerous statement.
25:39SPEAKERThere's no randomness.
25:41SPEAKERThe randomness is in loot distribution, like in the game.
25:45SPEAKERLike there's this like, like there is no random loot distribution in, in there's no random
25:51SPEAKERcosmetics in Fortnite.
25:52SPEAKERThere are no cosmetics drops?
25:54SPEAKEROh no.
25:55SPEAKERYou earn, you unlock stuff, so you generate XP if you buy the battle pass, which is another
26:01SPEAKERway that they lock you in.
26:03SPEAKERIf you buy the battle pass, you generate XP by completing missions in the game, like killing
26:07SPEAKERstuff, picking berries, shooting animals, whatever, riding animals.
26:11SPEAKERAnd then you can spend the XP that you earn, that XP is turned into stars when you level
26:15SPEAKERup.
26:16SPEAKERAnd then those stars can be used to purchase level items from the battle pass.
26:20SPEAKERRight.
26:21SPEAKERSo I knew about all that transaction based stuff.
26:22SPEAKERI just assumed that there also was a, like Dota does that cause Dota, I think Dota made...
26:27SPEAKERI don't think Dota has loot boxes anymore, do they?
26:30SPEAKEROh, they absolutely do.
26:31SPEAKERI don't, I don't remember if this is accurate or not.
26:33SPEAKERI feel like Dota may have been, have been what originated the term battle pass.
26:37SPEAKERI'm pretty sure I could be wrong about that, but anyway, Dota, Dota both has the battle
26:43SPEAKERpass model, but also random drops after matches and loot boxes.
26:48SPEAKERSo I figured Fortnite had a similar randomness to it, but I guess not.
26:51SPEAKERNo, the random boxes went away cause of the EU stuff.
26:55SPEAKEROkay.
26:56SPEAKERI don't know if Fortnite ever had them.
26:57SPEAKEROverwatch had them for a long time cause you know, you'd unlock those boxes at the end
27:01SPEAKERof games and then you'd get a skin that you probably already had 18 of.
27:05SPEAKERLike a lot of games, lot of, lot of, lot of non, non pay to win games have like random
27:11SPEAKERloot distribution.
27:12SPEAKERYeah.
27:13SPEAKERIt's cosmetic in nature.
27:14SPEAKEREven Dota, it's not a problem cause they're just cosmetic.
27:16SPEAKERLike that's not really, you know, I mean, you know, you open, Dota shows you everything
27:20SPEAKERyou can get out of a given loot box and like, it can be a little sad sometimes like watching
27:24SPEAKERall the good stuff fade away as you get your crappy, I don't know, doom set that whatever.
27:30SPEAKERBut the, the much, the much worse version of this is like going back further to stuff
27:36SPEAKERlike world of Warcraft or in my case destiny was the worst expression of this.
27:40SPEAKERLike I know WoW was terrible about it.
27:41SPEAKERI just didn't get deep enough into WoW end game for it to matter for me, but the, the
27:46SPEAKERinvesting massive amounts of time in a very difficult, lengthy activity for a chance at
27:51SPEAKERgetting something that will make the game better and then not getting it over and over
27:54SPEAKERlike tying, tying progression, gear progression to random loot drops is what I'm talking about.
28:00SPEAKERLike, I don't know how many, I don't know how many raids I ran in destiny one and got
28:05SPEAKERabsolutely nothing out of them, like just playing the same multi hour dungeon over and
28:09SPEAKERover hoping, hoping to get that vision of confluence and never getting it.
28:15SPEAKERSo like there's a scale here, right?
28:17SPEAKERLike this whole thing is a spectrum of super duper evil to slightly evil.
28:22SPEAKERAnd I think like, honestly, I think the stuff that's like okay, so I think on my scale personally,
28:31SPEAKERthe pay to win stuff is where the most exploitative awful things happen.
28:36SPEAKERSure.
28:37SPEAKERWhere, for example I used to play not clash of clans, Clash Royale.
28:42SPEAKERThat's the one that's, that's the, so it's like destiny and Clash Royale are my examples
28:48SPEAKERhere and Clash Royale is the worst pay to win experience I have had.
28:52SPEAKERSo I think destiny is a different, I think destiny is a completely different scale kind
28:56SPEAKERof, cause you're paying once to get in, there's not even a monthly fee, which is another way
29:00SPEAKERthat people, you know, the what is it that, that one is the monthly fee is a thing that
29:08SPEAKERapplies pressure because you want to get the most value out of your $15, even though $15
29:11SPEAKERfor a month of wow is kind of for most of the people that are playing wow, probably
29:15SPEAKERa relatively low, less than the price of a movie ticket, right?
29:18SPEAKEROh, for sure.
29:19SPEAKERYeah.
29:20SPEAKERBut also, I mean, you get into the more nuanced argument of would you be spending nearly that
29:23SPEAKERmuch time playing wow, if it was not so stingy with the drops, of course not, but you're
29:28SPEAKERright.
29:29SPEAKERLike destiny, destiny, you're right.
29:30SPEAKERIt was just a flat fee to get in.
29:32SPEAKERAlso like they made terrible design decisions around itemization and randomness in the original
29:38SPEAKERgame that by the time even of like the first expansion, but especially by the time you
29:43SPEAKERgot to destiny two, it was like the opposite problem of they were giving you too much good
29:46SPEAKERshit all the time.
29:47SPEAKERSo that was, that was not a, that was not like a staunch position that they took up
29:52SPEAKERand stuck with.
29:53SPEAKERThat was what felt like them not knowing how to like everybody.
29:57SPEAKERIt always felt to me like everybody kind of screws up their first loot game in that era.
30:01SPEAKERLike every time, every time somebody like you remember the stories of like Diablo three
30:04SPEAKERwas a disaster and then they got it to where people liked it.
30:07SPEAKERI played EverQuest one, man.
30:08SPEAKERI know about disasters and then like you, you know, but you, you saw the stories of
30:12SPEAKERbecause they were at the same publisher like the bungee people talking to the Diablo developers
30:17SPEAKERtrying to fix the itemization and destiny.
30:19SPEAKERSimilarly, you know what I mean?
30:20SPEAKERLike some of that stuff was like, okay, it's hard to get this stuff right.
30:23SPEAKERBut then in other cases such as clash Royale, it's like they very clearly know exactly what
30:28SPEAKERthey're doing.
30:29SPEAKERWhoa, I see your keyboard now.
30:30SPEAKERThat's weird.
30:32SPEAKERThe what the hell is this a dark pattern?
30:36SPEAKERWhat did you do Brad?
30:37SPEAKERWhy am I looking at your keyboard?
30:39SPEAKERI've been holding my phone for the last few minutes cause my girlfriend was texting me,
30:42SPEAKERbut not interacting with it.
30:43SPEAKERDid you switch your call to the phone?
30:45SPEAKEROh, is this a Mac OS level thing?
30:47SPEAKERIt could be cause I'm seeing your keys.
30:49SPEAKERI see, I see myself on your monitor.
30:51SPEAKERThis is the weirdest thing that's ever happened.
30:52SPEAKERThis is not a dark pattern though.
30:53SPEAKERI don't think.
30:54SPEAKERVentura did introduce that ability to sort of throw video calls between your Mac and
31:00SPEAKERyour iPhone.
31:01SPEAKERYou threw something.
31:02SPEAKERHow did that happen?
31:03SPEAKERI wasn't even looking at the phone.
31:04SPEAKERI've just been sort of, I turned the phone on, sure enough connected to laptop.
31:08SPEAKERYou can disconnect to remove this iPhone from the Mac camera list.
31:11SPEAKERI'm doing that right now.
31:12SPEAKERPerfect.
31:13SPEAKERNow you have to turn your camera back on.
31:14SPEAKERI really need to figure out what kind of gesture or shake or whatever caused that to happen.
31:19SPEAKERAnyway let's say these things are all around us.
31:23SPEAKERYeah, but I was going to talk about like the destiny thing, like, okay, so clash Royale
31:28SPEAKERcombined pay to win with MMR matchmaking, well, or presumably MMR matchmaking.
31:35SPEAKERAnd it always, okay, a lot of this, we're not quite as speculative because we don't
31:40SPEAKERknow how that matchmaking actually worked in clash Royale.
31:43SPEAKERBut when I played clash Royale, it often felt as though I was being matched exclusively
31:46SPEAKERagainst people who paid a little bit more money into the system than I did.
31:51SPEAKERIt sure felt that way to me too.
31:52SPEAKERI can't say for sure.
31:53SPEAKERI assume there was some kind of underlying skill ranking or at least, you know, hashed
31:57SPEAKERfrom kind of win percentage, if not skill, like if I wanted to make a lot of money with
32:02SPEAKERthat, what I would do is match people who had spent a little bit of money with people
32:05SPEAKERwho are the same skill level, but have spent slightly more money and thus have slightly
32:09SPEAKERbetter units than, than they did.
32:11SPEAKERSo the pretty consistently almost, but not quite could win.
32:15SPEAKERSo that's exactly how it felt, but I mean, also like regardless of the underlying logic,
32:20SPEAKERlike the, the net result is the same, right?
32:22SPEAKERWhether, whether you're, whether, whether the matching criteria are how much this person
32:26SPEAKERhas spent, or if the criteria are how much the person has won by spending more, they're
32:31SPEAKERwinning more.
32:32SPEAKERRight.
32:33SPEAKERSo it kind of doesn't matter how they're doing it because that is that game, just to be clear
32:36SPEAKERfor people who haven't played it.
32:37SPEAKERLike you, it's a, it's a, it's a one of you one action strategy game in which you quite
32:42SPEAKERliterally just pay money to make your units more power.
32:44SPEAKERLike you literally just raise the like health and damage and stuff on your units by paying
32:49SPEAKERmore money.
32:50SPEAKERLike when I say that out loud, like the fact that I played this game for so long makes
32:53SPEAKERlike, I feel like a lunatic that I would actually stick with the game of that nature.
32:59SPEAKERWell, you could also grind out that this is the trick is, is like finding the balance
33:03SPEAKERbetween, Hey, it's obviously like, there's a real fine line between, Hey, if you grind
33:09SPEAKERthis game out, you're never going to be able to compete with somebody who's put a dollar
33:12SPEAKERin versus, and if I put a couple of dollars a weekend, then I'll probably be okay.
33:19SPEAKERVersus, you know, if I put a thousand dollars in here, I'd be an unstoppable killing machine
33:23SPEAKERlike, like they ride a real fine line between where they hit and where they don't hit those
33:31SPEAKERthings.
33:32SPEAKERBrad, your camera's still off by the way.
33:33SPEAKEROh, let me turn that back on.
33:35SPEAKERHey, these stuff.
33:37SPEAKEROkay.
33:38SPEAKERWe'll get there.
33:40SPEAKERLet's keep talking.
33:41SPEAKEROkay.
33:42SPEAKERYou know, you know, what else occurs to me about Clash Royale real quick is that I'm
33:49SPEAKERtrying to think how to describe this with this count as a dark pattern.
33:53SPEAKERThe emoting system in that game.
33:55SPEAKEROh yeah.
33:56SPEAKERThey only give you like four taunts at the end of the game and they all were toxic.
34:01SPEAKERThey're all this, they're all, they're all this little like cartoonish King character.
34:05SPEAKERYeah.
34:06SPEAKERThat's all of them just making shitty gloating kind of facial expressions by and large.
34:11SPEAKERAnd so, so there was no, there was no text or voice chat between players, but you could
34:14SPEAKERjust see this little King popping up and laughing at you as much as, as fast as they could spam
34:19SPEAKERit.
34:20SPEAKERIt would just go over and over for people who were just like taunting you with their
34:22SPEAKERpay to win units as they, as they murdered you.
34:26SPEAKERAnd I do think they maybe changed the defaults on that, but may have become opt in instead
34:31SPEAKERof opt.
34:32SPEAKERI've actually, I think when the game was new, you could not turn that off.
34:34SPEAKERI think that you could not turn that off in the game when I stopped, when I stopped playing
34:37SPEAKERit.
34:38SPEAKERYeah.
34:39SPEAKERAnd I think, I think at least they later gave you the chance to mute that if not make it
34:43SPEAKERopt in entirely.
34:44SPEAKERBut like that, that, I mean, the net effect was to make me play the game less because
34:49SPEAKERit made me so angry to be not just losing to people who spent money, but who were taunting
34:53SPEAKERme at the same time.
34:54SPEAKERBut like, I'm sure that I'm sure the intention there was to make you mad enough to go buy
34:58SPEAKERsome stuff.
34:59SPEAKERWell, so this is, this is, this happens like this isn't, I don't think this is, this wasn't
35:03SPEAKERspecifically listed on one of the things that I saw, but it, it, I mean, I guess it fits
35:06SPEAKERas competition, right?
35:08SPEAKERWhich is usually fine, right?
35:10SPEAKERLike when you play a first person shooter and you're playing against another team, sometimes
35:14SPEAKERyou win, sometimes you lose.
35:15SPEAKERAnd like, there's no, nothing inherently bad with that.
35:21SPEAKERNow if you pair it with the matchmaking that, that puts people who spent more money just
35:24SPEAKERahead of you or people, you know, that, that manipulates your mood to get you in a place
35:28SPEAKERwhere you're going to want to spend money.
35:30SPEAKERSo you feel better about how you've done.
35:33SPEAKERThat's icky.
35:34SPEAKERThat's bad.
35:35SPEAKERThe, the emotes, the emotes are a fun one because like, is that inherently evil?
35:42SPEAKERI don't know.
35:43SPEAKERMaybe the fact that you can't turn it off feels bad.
35:45SPEAKERLike Rocket League used to have this problem where they had the kind of, you know, they
35:48SPEAKERhad a, like a CS Counter-Strike style quick chat menu where you could like press up on
35:54SPEAKERthe D like you'd press up, up, down, left and right had different, like you could put
35:58SPEAKERyou up would be nice shots and down would be sorry, I made a mistake and you know, and
36:02SPEAKERvariations on those.
36:04SPEAKERRight.
36:05SPEAKERAnd when somebody scored an own goal or something by accident, you could say nice shot on the
36:11SPEAKERother, if you were on the other team and that's super toxic, right?
36:13SPEAKERThat's really shitty.
36:15SPEAKERYeah.
36:16SPEAKERUm, recently they turned off, they like, and since they've been become an Epic owned thing,
36:21SPEAKERthey actually upset it so that you could turn off all of the in game communication entirely
36:25SPEAKERbecause it used to be that you couldn't turn off that, that, that chat thing.
36:28SPEAKERNow you can turn that off.
36:29SPEAKERYou can turn off in game voice.
36:30SPEAKERYou can turn off all the other things that like, so there's no, so you don't get any
36:34SPEAKERfeedback on how the other players think you're doing, which is actually quite nice.
36:38SPEAKERLike that, that means it's almost like you're playing a single player game.
36:41SPEAKERIt just happens that the other players are controlled by people that have no impact in
36:44SPEAKERyour life other than whether they win or lose.
36:46SPEAKERRight.
36:47SPEAKERUm, okay, so let's, let's go down.
36:50SPEAKERI think, I think it's probably useful to go down the list of the things that I pulled
36:55SPEAKERout of the, of the different examples on, on, on the different sites.
37:01SPEAKERThe four big categories that most places listed temporal, which encourage you to spend more
37:05SPEAKERtime in the game monetary, which encourages you to spend more money in the game.
37:10SPEAKERAs Brad pointed out earlier, most of the things here eventually ended up getting you to spend
37:13SPEAKERmore money in the game, uh, social, which encourages players to come back if they've
37:18SPEAKERbeen away or to not leave, to feel like they can't leave or to spread awareness of the
37:23SPEAKERgame to other people.
37:24SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
37:25SPEAKERUm, and then just generally psychological things that make it hard to abandon the game.
37:30SPEAKERUm, so the temporal ones are things like, Hey, streaks and daily rewards, right?
37:36SPEAKERLike Snapchat even has some streaks, right?
37:39SPEAKERAbsolutely.
37:40SPEAKERIt's like, well, I've won a match.
37:41SPEAKERI've won my, I've gotten my win a day for the last five days.
37:44SPEAKERI have to keep playing now.
37:45SPEAKERLike I can't let this win streak go away.
37:48SPEAKERWell, and just to be clear, like these things can be, these things could, streaks can be
37:52SPEAKERreally positive things for people.
37:54SPEAKERSome people find them very motivating.
37:56SPEAKERLike there's, there's entire like task and like self-help apps that are designed around
38:03SPEAKERthe idea of making streaks.
38:04SPEAKERMy friend Simone made a board that is, has 365 little lights on it, and each day you
38:09SPEAKERcomplete your streak, you press the button and the next one lights up and it's really
38:13SPEAKERfun and good.
38:14SPEAKERI mean, I, I would guess there is a healthy, positive way to do just about everything on
38:19SPEAKERhere.
38:20SPEAKERAlmost certainly.
38:21SPEAKERIt's the ones, it's the ones that require, I'm trying to think how to even describe it.
38:26SPEAKERI mean, it, you know, generally it's the stuff that makes you keep playing beyond the point
38:30SPEAKERyou want to play.
38:31SPEAKERIt's like, like, like for example, like a win streak is fine as long as you keep the
38:34SPEAKERwin streak, even if you don't play it on a given day, it's only, it's only when they
38:37SPEAKERpenalize you for not playing it that it becomes a problem.
38:40SPEAKERWell, it's, does this make me feel good or does this make me feel bad, right?
38:44SPEAKERLike it sometimes is as simple as that.
38:46SPEAKERSo like a weekly, a daily challenge in, in like a puzzle game, totally fine.
38:50SPEAKERIt's even better if it lets you go back and do previous daily challenges, right?
38:53SPEAKERIf you miss one, right?
38:54SPEAKERThat, that stuff's all totally okay.
38:57SPEAKERAppointment based play is another one that's probably like, Hey Neptune's pride is a, is
39:04SPEAKERa web based game where you like do an interstellar four X war, but it all operates in real time.
39:08SPEAKERSo like your fleets can arrive at two o'clock in the morning.
39:11SPEAKERAnd that would mean that if somebody is attacking your home system at two o'clock in the morning,
39:14SPEAKERyou have to get up at two o'clock in the morning and defend your, your home system.
39:18SPEAKERIncredibly toxic game, like a really cool game.
39:21SPEAKERAlso incredibly toxic.
39:22SPEAKERThat does sound kind of rough.
39:23SPEAKERWe should play that with the community.
39:24SPEAKERSometimes it'll, it'll make enemies for life.
39:27SPEAKERGrinding, grinding is one of those things that like, yeah, you play Valheim, you chop
39:32SPEAKERdown a tree and you get five sticks and you use that to make an ax.
39:36SPEAKERAnd then you have to use that ax to chop down five slightly bigger trees to make a slightly
39:39SPEAKERbetter ax.
39:40SPEAKERAnd then you do, yeah.
39:41SPEAKERAnd like, you can just do that infinitely, which is, yeah, that, that, that even predates
39:46SPEAKERlike kind of situations where they make more money by requiring that kind of thing.
39:49SPEAKERI mean, like the, the first final fantasy on NES absolutely would present you with situations
39:55SPEAKERwhere it's like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to walk around this one forest for the next
39:59SPEAKERfour hours, fighting random battles to try to level up enough to beat this boss finally.
40:04SPEAKERHere's a tower with 100 levels grind as much as you'd like, keeping people from saving
40:11SPEAKERat specific when they want.
40:12SPEAKERSo you like, you can't walk away at a specific time is always unfortunate.
40:16SPEAKERBut like, this is a tough one because like there were entire generations where the technology
40:23SPEAKERkind of prevented people from saving whenever they wanted.
40:26SPEAKERI mean, with checkpoints and stuff like that, like you, you could have made a safe system
40:32SPEAKERthat let you save wherever you wanted, but it would have been a little more expensive
40:35SPEAKERand time consuming, whatever.
40:37SPEAKERInfinite treadmills also terrible, like, Hey, you can keep doing this forever.
40:41SPEAKERKind of the multiplayer, like big multiplayer games are like this, right?
40:44SPEAKERLike your cards and your Fortnite legends prestige.
40:47SPEAKERDoes that count?
40:48SPEAKERYeah.
40:49SPEAKERPrestige is prestige counts.
40:50SPEAKERIs it like, Hey, I filled up my stuff.
40:52SPEAKERI'm going to prestige and fill it all up again.
40:54SPEAKERSure.
40:55SPEAKERWell, I mean, arguably any competitive game is this because they never, you know, like
41:01SPEAKERyou're never going to beat Dota, right?
41:03SPEAKERNo, Dota, Dota, Dota will always win.
41:07SPEAKERYes.
41:08SPEAKERThen the other one is wait to play, which is the, this is a mobile classic.
41:12SPEAKERHey, you've done really well at our game.
41:14SPEAKERSo you got to stop and not play for like 10 hours.
41:17SPEAKERYes.
41:18SPEAKERYeah.
41:19SPEAKERYeah.
41:20SPEAKERThose arbitrary timers were when those, when those really came on the scene, they were
41:23SPEAKERjust like among the most egregious things I think I have seen.
41:25SPEAKERIt's going to take six hours to build this building.
41:28SPEAKERYep.
41:29SPEAKERYou planted your carrots.
41:30SPEAKERNow wait 10 hours for them to spawn or pay us 99 cents, man, 99 cents doesn't sound like
41:34SPEAKERthat much.
41:35SPEAKERI'm paying for my time.
41:38SPEAKERThe monetary stuff is like artificial scarcity.
41:40SPEAKERWe talked about loot boxes paying to skip that's that's part of that goes with those
41:44SPEAKERtimers with the way to play paying to win.
41:47SPEAKERI think, I think that this is the king of all bad dark patterns.
41:51SPEAKERYeah.
41:52SPEAKERI think I can agree.
41:53SPEAKERWell, some of the ones that, that just straight up fool you into like clicking the wrong button
41:57SPEAKERand buying stuff you didn't mean to are well, that's actively illegal.
42:01SPEAKERThat's not just a pattern.
42:03SPEAKERWe'll get to that.
42:04SPEAKERYou know, Fortnite.
42:05SPEAKERI'm looking at you.
42:06SPEAKERYeah.
42:07SPEAKERI didn't play Fortnite.
42:08SPEAKERI didn't play Fortnite stuff with, well, okay.
42:12SPEAKERThe monthly fees kind of fit in this category because it does encourage locks.
42:16SPEAKERIt makes you feel like you have to get your, your, your money's worth out for your monthly
42:19SPEAKERfee.
42:20SPEAKERSure.
42:21SPEAKERAnd Fortnite does this.
42:22SPEAKERThis is like, they have the Fortnite club where you get free access to the battle pass
42:26SPEAKERand it's custom skin every month.
42:27SPEAKERYou're like, man, I got to get my 10 bucks worth out of my Fortnite club or else I'm
42:31SPEAKERnot going to buy my, buy my spending on it.
42:33SPEAKERAnyway.
42:34SPEAKERWhat do you, what do you think about the recent phenomenon?
42:35SPEAKERI don't know if Fortnite started this of essentially allowing you to level up a battle pass without
42:41SPEAKERpaying for it.
42:42SPEAKERAnd then you can retroactively buy it and get the rewards you've already unlocked.
42:46SPEAKERLike I, I'm tempted to say that actually is not so bad.
42:50SPEAKERIt's actually kind of okay, but I'm wondering if there's like some psychological effect
42:54SPEAKERI'm not missing here or I'm not thinking of.
42:58SPEAKERSo I worked on the battle pass on our game, which is a small game that like we don't actively
43:03SPEAKERmonetize super hard or at all, really now.
43:07SPEAKERThe the thing I will say is that battle passes that are good seem to be primarily like having
43:14SPEAKERlooked at like Fortnite and Apex and Call of Duty and Dota and League of Legends and
43:20SPEAKERall and Valorant and all the games that have battle passes right now, the ones that are
43:24SPEAKERgood seem to be more about engagement and getting people to keep playing play, like
43:29SPEAKERmaking, making, making regular play part of their thing.
43:32SPEAKERSo it is a time thing, not a money, money thing necessarily.
43:35SPEAKERI think that the, I think that the, Hey, you can invest in this thing and level it up without
43:42SPEAKERhaving to spend money.
43:43SPEAKERCouldn't you do that with Dota or did you have to buy the compendium in Dota in order
43:46SPEAKERto level it up to unlock?
43:47SPEAKERLike I felt, it felt like you could buy the compendium and at least now you can buy the
43:51SPEAKERcompendium in Dota.
43:52SPEAKERI'm pretty sure after you've played a bunch and you'll unlock all the stuff that you would
43:55SPEAKERhave unlocked up until that point.
43:57SPEAKERI can't remember.
43:58SPEAKERYeah, I think you guys bought the compendium right at the start, so it didn't never apply
44:02SPEAKERto you really.
44:03SPEAKERYeah.
44:04SPEAKERMy, it's tough to say my memory of the earliest battle pass stuff in Dota was that unless
44:08SPEAKERyou had already bought it, you weren't gaining experience on it.
44:11SPEAKERSo any, anything you played before you bought it was just, that was, that was gone in terms
44:15SPEAKERof progression.
44:16SPEAKERThat could be wrong.
44:17SPEAKERLike, I don't know the, the modern, the current model on the one hand, it's nice to know like,
44:21SPEAKEROh, I am racking up progression here.
44:25SPEAKEREven if I, even though I'm not getting anything out of it yet, I have the option later to
44:28SPEAKERgive them the 10 bucks and get all those items I would have earned.
44:31SPEAKERYeah.
44:32SPEAKERBut on the other hand, there is maybe kind of a negative enticement aspect there, right?
44:35SPEAKEROf like, Oh, look at all this stuff I could have if I just gave them the money.
44:39SPEAKERCause I already did it, you know, we'll get to that one in a minute.
44:41SPEAKERThat's a good one.
44:42SPEAKERThe incomplete rewards, incomplete tasks is a really messed up one.
44:46SPEAKERThe, the, the, the, like you're, they're basically letting you instill value in that thing and
44:52SPEAKERendow, endow, endow value in that before you have paid them money.
44:58SPEAKERRight.
44:59SPEAKERAnd to a large extent, like Fortnite, Fortnite is the classic example of this.
45:04SPEAKEROnce you buy the Fortnite battle pass one time, you earn enough currency each season
45:09SPEAKERto buy the next one.
45:11SPEAKERIf you, if you complete or even get mostly complete with the battle pass.
45:14SPEAKERSo like they're literally just, they just want people like that, that's a game that
45:17SPEAKERneeds a hundred people to get a session going.
45:19SPEAKERSo they need to keep people playing all the time.
45:22SPEAKERSo they're just trying to get people to come back every day and do a little bit every day.
45:25SPEAKERSo that, you know, if you play, I think, I think I did the math on the Fortnite battle
45:29SPEAKERpass when we were, when last year, when we were doing this and I figured if you played
45:33SPEAKERtwo games a day or two games a day, five days a week, which is like 30 minutes a day, basically
45:40SPEAKER30 minutes, five days a week, you're probably going to be able to level up the battle pass
45:44SPEAKERto the, to the maximum, to the first big level.
45:48SPEAKERSo yeah, the Fortnite battle passes go up to 200 levels basically.
45:52SPEAKERAnd once you get to a hundred levels, you've unlocked all of the main stuff and then everything
45:56SPEAKERpast that is just like reskins of stuff that's already been doled out.
45:58SPEAKERIt's nothing generally super special.
46:00SPEAKERYeah.
46:01SPEAKERI remember even when it was a kind of a big story in World of Warcraft, when they started
46:05SPEAKERletting you buy more game time with in game gold, right?
46:08SPEAKERLike it's the same kind of thing.
46:10SPEAKERAnd that was, that was years after it launched.
46:11SPEAKERBut I remember that happening.
46:13SPEAKERHere's maybe another candidate for a dark pattern.
46:17SPEAKERWhen I played Fortnite a few months ago, just to check out the, the UE5 stuff, did my first
46:23SPEAKERfew matches.
46:25SPEAKERThey do not make it clear at all in those first few matches, if you're playing against
46:28SPEAKERpeople or not.
46:29SPEAKERYou, you, nobody ever plays their first few matches of Fortnite against people.
46:32SPEAKERThere's like maybe five other people in the game.
46:34SPEAKERRight.
46:35SPEAKERBut they don't really make that clear.
46:36SPEAKERLike they...
46:37SPEAKERWhoa.
46:38SPEAKERI mean, those people would have to be really bad.
46:39SPEAKERTheir bots are bad.
46:40SPEAKERWell, no, that's what I mean.
46:42SPEAKERThat's exactly what I mean is like, you kind of just work your first few matches, right?
46:46SPEAKERLike you just stomp everything and it's like, man, that feels great.
46:48SPEAKERI'm going to keep playing this for sure.
46:50SPEAKERSo they'll go get the battle pass before I play anymore.
46:52SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
46:53SPEAKERLike they kind of, they ease you in in such a way that like...
46:56SPEAKERThat one is a psychological one called illusion of control.
46:59SPEAKEROh, okay.
47:01SPEAKERIt makes you feel more skilled than you are.
47:03SPEAKERFortnite is like, this is a, this is a tough situation because like a battle royale, you
47:07SPEAKERneed a hundred players, right?
47:09SPEAKERAnd if they don't have a hundred people in the queue, are they going to make you wait
47:12SPEAKERfive minutes for, for enough players to do it?
47:15SPEAKERLike I see bots in games that I play and I've played probably a couple thousand hours of
47:18SPEAKERFortnite at this point.
47:19SPEAKEROh, interesting.
47:20SPEAKERI figured, I figured the bots were gone by the time you got deep in.
47:22SPEAKERNo, so they'll fill them in and they get a little bit more skilled, but they're basically
47:26SPEAKERjust filler.
47:27SPEAKERSo like bots will burn your game.
47:28SPEAKERLike bots will sneak up behind you and they just start shooting through bushes and stuff
47:31SPEAKERbecause they don't make a bunch of noise when you're sneaking around and totally hose you.
47:35SPEAKERYeah.
47:36SPEAKERI mean, I understand why they would use bots to fill out a match, but to be clear, I just
47:41SPEAKERassumed Fortnite was still so huge.
47:42SPEAKERThey didn't have problems filling out matches anymore.
47:45SPEAKERI think there's times a day and they have a bunch of like, they have a crazy number
47:48SPEAKERof regions for Fortnite.
47:49SPEAKERLike there's a, there's three regions in the U S they're central East and West.
47:52SPEAKERSo like the, think about the number of games that have to be going for somebody in Australia
47:56SPEAKERto get a game at midnight is, is substantial.
47:59SPEAKERAnyway.
48:00SPEAKEROkay.
48:01SPEAKERSo premium currency is the confusion over value.
48:04SPEAKERLike that thing with the 800 Microsoft started this one, as far as I know, the 800 game gamer
48:11SPEAKERpoints or Xbox bucks for a $10, it was, yeah, it was 80 points to a dollar.
48:16SPEAKERYeah.
48:17SPEAKERThat's hard math.
48:18SPEAKERDoing a four fits conversion is challenging and often you do it the wrong way.
48:21SPEAKERYep.
48:22SPEAKERSo you think, oh, I'm spending $8 instead of spending $10, $12 icky.
48:27SPEAKERThey, they you'll notice they ditched that a few years ago.
48:33SPEAKERYeah.
48:34SPEAKERNow it's just, you just have a wallet with money in it, which is nice.
48:35SPEAKERThey just went to dollars or straight up currency at some point.
48:39SPEAKERThe monthly fee stuff, the depreciation, which is a MMO classic thing where you like you,
48:44SPEAKERyou grind for a hundred, a hundred hours in world of Warcraft and then burning crusade
48:50SPEAKERcomes out and all of a sudden the starter zone in burning crusade is dropping gear.
48:54SPEAKERThat's better than your raid gear was in the initial Warcraft launch.
48:58SPEAKERThat sucks.
48:59SPEAKERThat absolutely feels bad.
49:00SPEAKERI mean, I kind of also understand though, because like they do need a ramp for people
49:04SPEAKERwho didn't play to the end game of the previous expansion, right?
49:06SPEAKERLike destiny is also terrible about that, but also like if they didn't do that and you,
49:11SPEAKERif you just put a few hours into the last expansion and then pick up the new one, like
49:14SPEAKERwhat are you going to do if they don't start dropping stuff that's like level appropriate
49:18SPEAKERright off the bat?
49:19SPEAKERIf you are blizzard and you pay to host servers for world of Warcraft, what's the best possible
49:24SPEAKERplayer for you?
49:28SPEAKERWhat is the best possible player?
49:29SPEAKERThe best possible player is somebody who plays like two hours a month and buys every expansion
49:34SPEAKERand that's it.
49:35SPEAKERIt puts, puts very little load on your infrastructure.
49:37SPEAKERVery little load on the infrastructure and lots and lots of money coming in.
49:43SPEAKERSo yeah, like, like it's, it's a weird, it's a weird situation.
49:50SPEAKERIt is I just had to add on there.
49:52SPEAKERI think they kind of struck a good balance eventually with a lot of games that rely on
49:56SPEAKERrandom loot drops like that where kind of rarity tiers and the benefits associated with
50:02SPEAKERthose are divorced from the kind of baseline level scaling in terms of just basic damage
50:07SPEAKERoutput and stuff like that.
50:08SPEAKERYou know, it's like, like, Oh, you can, we're going to start dropping guns that will let
50:12SPEAKERyou hang with these harder enemies right off the bat, but they're all going to be grays
50:15SPEAKERand greens that have very few perks or customization slots or whatever.
50:18SPEAKERSo they're still like within a given level range, there are still additional things to
50:22SPEAKERchase.
50:23SPEAKERWell, and there's multiple axes that people find valuable too.
50:26SPEAKERSo like you may think that like you may be purely looking for, for damage per second,
50:33SPEAKERright.
50:34SPEAKERIn, in your weapons.
50:35SPEAKERAnd I might be looking for the thing that's the stupidest looking flame sword.
50:39SPEAKERAnd I don't give a shit about the, the damage chairs cause I don't play that way.
50:42SPEAKERRight.
50:43SPEAKERI, and just to be clear, I think it's pretty unfair to tag Blizzard a lot for like stuff
50:48SPEAKERthat they did in 2006.
50:49SPEAKERYeah.
50:50SPEAKERThat was a long time ago now.
50:52SPEAKERAnd you know, they weren't the first, like there were MMOs before them doing, I mean,
50:55SPEAKEREverQuest is arguably worse, way worse than wow.
50:58SPEAKEREver, EverQuest, and I say this, I played a lot of EverQuest, EverQuest didn't tell
51:03SPEAKERyou what the spells did.
51:05SPEAKERThey wanted you to figure it out to the point that like, I, I played to level a hundred
51:10SPEAKERor 80 or whatever it was by the end of the fifth expansion.
51:13SPEAKERAnd there were some spells that we figured out four years, five years, five expansions
51:17SPEAKERinto that game because nobody had ever like, they didn't write a text description for the
51:22SPEAKERspell.
51:23SPEAKERRight.
51:24SPEAKERSo it was an agro debuff, it turns out really hard to figure out what that does, but it
51:27SPEAKERjust makes the area at which the Bob will agro a lot smaller.
51:31SPEAKERThere's there's a lot of design decisions in early MMOs that are like fascinating from
51:36SPEAKERa, I'm not, I can't think of the right term here.
51:40SPEAKERIt's not masochism.
51:41SPEAKERIt's not like grueling realism necessarily, but it's, it's stuff like, it's stuff like
51:46SPEAKERwhat you're talking about, like really obscure ability stuff.
51:48SPEAKERYeah.
51:49SPEAKERStuff like remember, remember Star Wars Galaxies, how they wanted it to be incredibly difficult
51:53SPEAKERand rare for somebody to be a Jedi.
51:55SPEAKERSo it took like massive amounts of like stuff like that, or even like the Ultima online
52:00SPEAKERthing of anybody can be killed at any time and have all of their stuff taken by another
52:04SPEAKERplayer.
52:05SPEAKERLike things like that can be punishing, but also like really fascinating from the standpoint
52:10SPEAKERof not including the guard rails that most games include to keep you from having a bad
52:16SPEAKERthings that allow you to have a really bad time, I guess are like a really interesting
52:19SPEAKERfrom a design standpoint, even if they can be abused pretty badly.
52:23SPEAKERYeah.
52:24SPEAKERThose, those early MMOs, this is something that's happened over and over again in game
52:26SPEAKERdesign.
52:27SPEAKERIf you think about it, right?
52:28SPEAKERLike those early memos were the, the mass marketization of text-based muds, right?
52:35SPEAKERAnd some of those things like the, like the agro debuff didn't exist in muds because they
52:40SPEAKERwere chat based and you didn't really have a good sense of distance from the other enemies.
52:44SPEAKERYou're just either in the same area.
52:45SPEAKERYou weren't a lot of times.
52:47SPEAKERSo like if you were 10 units away, you couldn't make the agro debuff range go down because
52:51SPEAKERthere was no concept of, of distance in a lot of those games.
52:55SPEAKERAnd then a lot of it is like, wow, like a big innovation in wow was literally, they
53:00SPEAKERtold you what your reward would be for finishing a quest.
53:02SPEAKERRight.
53:03SPEAKERI forgot that that was a big deal at the time.
53:05SPEAKERI mean, to be fair, you know, like the market spoke very quickly.
53:08SPEAKERLike that's why world of Warcraft became the biggest game in history because they put up
53:12SPEAKERthose guard rails around what was otherwise going to be a very punishing experience if
53:16SPEAKERthey had just like, they, they literally just made EverQuest except friendlier.
53:20SPEAKERThey made, yeah.
53:21SPEAKERThey made the game accessible to people who valued their time slightly more than people
53:24SPEAKERwho played EverQuest.
53:25SPEAKERRight.
53:26SPEAKERAnd each, each like that happened with roguelikes, right?
53:28SPEAKERLike Spelunky is a really fucking hard game.
53:31SPEAKERYou look at something like dead cells, still a hard game, but the more you play, the more
53:35SPEAKERit reduces the, you know, the, you unlock more weapons and more things that are likely
53:39SPEAKERto be in tuned with the way you play and, and, and stuff like that.
53:42SPEAKERSame thing happened with shooters.
53:43SPEAKERSo, you know, Doom is an incredible, Doom and Quake are incredibly difficult games to
53:47SPEAKERplay.
53:48SPEAKERAnd when you look at that compared to say a modern Call of Duty, where you have like
53:51SPEAKERa auto aim with a controller and all this other stuff, like they're much more accessible
53:56SPEAKERgames now.
53:57SPEAKERYeah.
53:58SPEAKERYeah.
53:59SPEAKERAlso, I mean, this was more a technical limitation at the time, but like playing those early shooters
54:01SPEAKERover modems.
54:02SPEAKERYeah.
54:03SPEAKERYou know, you're literally playing with like a quarter second latency.
54:05SPEAKERLike when I was playing quake over 28, eight, I mean, it was quite literally 250, 300 milliseconds
54:10SPEAKERbetween click a button and a gun shooting.
54:12SPEAKERAnd there was no client prediction in a lot of, in a lot of cases playing, playing original
54:17SPEAKERnet quake before quake world came out on a modem was like, that was a crucible.
54:22SPEAKERIf anything was in multiplayer ever.
54:24SPEAKERYeah.
54:25SPEAKERSo, so like comp competition, like, okay.
54:27SPEAKERSo talk about money, social stuff, pyramid schemes, Hey, you got to bring in three friends
54:31SPEAKERand you get a bonus for bringing in three friends that that's, everybody's seen those.
54:34SPEAKERAnd especially that was really popular in Facebook games is what was mafia wars was
54:38SPEAKERthe classic.
54:39SPEAKERAnd those obligation, this is, Hey man, you're, you're, we need three clerics for this raid
54:45SPEAKERand we're not going to be able to go if you're not around on Saturday.
54:47SPEAKERSo you gotta, you gotta, you gotta ditch your kid's soccer game and come, come play.
54:51SPEAKERWe'll play this wild raid with us, man.
54:53SPEAKERYou let the guild down.
54:54SPEAKERYeah.
54:55SPEAKERYou look, you know, I want this.
54:57SPEAKERYeah.
54:58SPEAKERAre you part of the team or are you not?
55:00SPEAKERThe nice thing is the players do this for you.
55:01SPEAKERIf you set up the game, right?
55:03SPEAKERGod, right.
55:04SPEAKEREven consider the idea of like whales or super diehard players, like carrying water for the
55:11SPEAKERdark patterns voluntarily.
55:12SPEAKERYeah.
55:13SPEAKERWell, but, but then at the same time, like, is it bad that I want to play that?
55:17SPEAKERI just play Fortnite with my friends three nights a week on at eight o'clock.
55:21SPEAKERNo, of course not.
55:22SPEAKERThat's like, that's like a social activity, you know?
55:25SPEAKERYeah.
55:26SPEAKERI don't know.
55:27SPEAKERIt's it's it's as with all of this stuff, it's often complicated.
55:29SPEAKERFriend spam is the mafia war thing.
55:31SPEAKERAgain, it's like you get building stuff in to harass your friends for, for, for, to sign
55:36SPEAKERup for some bullshit that they don't need.
55:38SPEAKERFOMO.
55:40SPEAKERThis is a good one.
55:41SPEAKEROkay, man, we're doing this.
55:43SPEAKERWe're going to do this raid for the first time.
55:44SPEAKERYou want to be there for the first time, right?
55:46SPEAKERYou don't want to miss the drop chance on your breastplate.
55:48SPEAKERYou're going to, you're going to, yeah, 100% felt that one.
55:51SPEAKERNot, not necessarily like a direct A to B of, I feel like I'm going to miss the chance
55:57SPEAKERto get this drop I want.
55:58SPEAKERIt's more just like, it's like the nature of the raid, for example, like it's so hard
56:02SPEAKERand so time consuming, getting that many people together with that much time carved out and
56:08SPEAKERthe ability to complete it.
56:09SPEAKERIt's like, I have to do this.
56:10SPEAKERI don't want to play this today, but I have to, because when else are we going to have
56:13SPEAKERa chance to tackle this?
56:15SPEAKERAnd like,
56:16SPEAKERDestiny raids are what?
56:17SPEAKERNine people?
56:18SPEAKER10 people?
56:19SPEAKERSix.
56:20SPEAKERSix.
56:21SPEAKEROkay.
56:22SPEAKERSix.
56:23SPEAKERSo way, way less than 40, thankfully.
56:24SPEAKERBut you know, like, and, and like finishing, finishing some of those destiny raids was
56:26SPEAKERincredibly satisfying.
56:27SPEAKERLike don't get me wrong, but, but still there's absolutely a feeling of like, I got to cancel
56:32SPEAKERmy plans.
56:33SPEAKERThis is when else are all of my friends going to be able to do this again?
56:37SPEAKERLike I have to do this now.
56:38SPEAKERWell, it's, it's one of those things it's like like if you look at the progression of
56:43SPEAKERraid design from EverQuest launch, which some of those world bosses that I think they probably
56:48SPEAKERdidn't design to be killed in EverQuest one timeframe, like it would take 70 or 80 people
56:53SPEAKERto kill, right down to wow, making raids, 24 people, 40 people, and then 24 people and,
57:01SPEAKERand destiny being like, Hey man, just get two groups.
57:04SPEAKERThat's fine.
57:05SPEAKERThat's cool.
57:06SPEAKERThat's all you need.
57:07SPEAKERLike we're going in the right direction and all that stuff.
57:09SPEAKERAnd I don't think like destiny raids are any like, like I only did one destiny raid ever
57:15SPEAKERbecause I never got super into destiny, but like, I didn't find that much less satisfying
57:22SPEAKERthan killing lady Vox and EverQuest, which took 90 people in two weeks.
57:28SPEAKERRight.
57:29SPEAKERJesus.
57:30SPEAKERRight.
57:31SPEAKERIt was, it was much less exhausting.
57:32SPEAKERThat's man.
57:33SPEAKERYeah.
57:34SPEAKERPart of me, part of me is a little sad.
57:37SPEAKERI missed out on EverQuest, but maybe not that sad.
57:39SPEAKERI don't know.
57:40SPEAKEREverQuest, like I have a great amount of fondness and I learned a lot about like, like honestly
57:47SPEAKERrunning a Guild in EverQuest was harder than managing most teams I've managed as a professional.
57:54SPEAKERBut I don't miss EverQuest.
57:57SPEAKERAnd then the last one, these are the dangerous ones.
57:59SPEAKERWe'll spend a little more time on these.
58:00SPEAKERSorry.
58:01SPEAKERWe're going kind of long on this.
58:02SPEAKERI didn't, didn't the psychological stuff that makes it hard to abandon the game.
58:06SPEAKERSo like the endowed value, right?
58:07SPEAKERLike I've done 10 battle passes in Fortnite.
58:11SPEAKERThat means I have a hundred items in my inventory.
58:13SPEAKERAnd even though I don't ever use any of those items, they're still sitting over me and I'm
58:18SPEAKERthinking, man, I don't want to, I don't want to leave my banana peel skin.
58:21SPEAKERThat's a pretty dope skin.
58:24SPEAKERThis one is weird.
58:25SPEAKERAnd I didn't know this until I read the stuff for this episode.
58:29SPEAKERPeople are more likely to remember incomplete tasks than completed tasks.
58:33SPEAKEROh yeah.
58:34SPEAKERThat makes perfect sense to me.
58:35SPEAKERI mean, once you've completed the task, you've completed the loop, the psychological loop.
58:38SPEAKERYou've gotten the whatever payoff that might be, whether it's just dopamine or if you got
58:41SPEAKERan item out of it, there's, there's also nothing left to look forward to.
58:45SPEAKERThere's nothing left to test your metal.
58:46SPEAKERLike it's just done like, like the, the value is gone instantly.
58:50SPEAKERIt's kind of, I have a, I don't know if this is similar.
58:53SPEAKERI have a weird thing with especially like open world games that have a lot of side stuff
58:56SPEAKERwhere once I finished the main story, I don't really care about going back and doing more
59:00SPEAKERside stuff.
59:01SPEAKERLike even though some of it might be quite good content in its own, right.
59:04SPEAKERIt's like, there's just a feeling of this is done.
59:07SPEAKERLike I, these, these side activities no longer have value to me because I've seen the story
59:12SPEAKERthrough.
59:13SPEAKERSo, so this is it.
59:14SPEAKERLike open world games are really good at this, right?
59:16SPEAKERLike, like, and this is one of those ones that's complicated because sometimes it can
59:19SPEAKERbe good and sometimes it can be bad, right?
59:20SPEAKERLike I finished, I finished God of War, for example.
59:24SPEAKERAnd I was like, I looked at my achievement list and I was like, oh man, I have to kill
59:28SPEAKERlike two Valkyries in all a hundred percent this game.
59:31SPEAKERSo then of course, and, and, and I got to find one thing of gold, right?
59:34SPEAKERSo then I load that up and I go do that stuff and I feel good about it and I have to have
59:38SPEAKERa really hard fight and it's very satisfying and it feels like I, I like, I made myself
59:42SPEAKERbetter at not just that game, but also that kind of genre of games, which I had not been
59:47SPEAKERgood at before.
59:48SPEAKERAnd that, that was really satisfying.
59:50SPEAKERIf you, the, the, the inverse of this is like, I don't want to pick on Call of Duty, but
59:55SPEAKERI'm gonna pick on Call of Duty.
59:56SPEAKERCall of Duty has this mission system in their DMZ mode that is just inexorably complicated
1:00:03SPEAKERand difficult to parse.
1:00:05SPEAKERAnd it seems entirely designed to never let you finish all of the tasks, right?
1:00:10SPEAKERLike whereas Fortnite's mission system, if you play two or three nights, you'll probably
1:00:14SPEAKERfinish all of the weekly stuff, right?
1:00:17SPEAKERIt's it's it is, it is the overwhelming, like one of the things I don't have in the list
1:00:25SPEAKERhere, but the idea that you can overwhelm people with too much information because we're
1:00:28SPEAKERonly able to process a certain amount of things at once is another one of these psychological
1:00:31SPEAKERones that makes, it makes you more likely to make a bad decision.
1:00:37SPEAKERArtificial goals.
1:00:38SPEAKERSo achievements fit in this category, collectibles, all those little dots on the, on the open
1:00:42SPEAKERworld map, like open up a Far Cry or an assassin screen, you see a thousand dots.
1:00:47SPEAKERThat's those are all artificial goals.
1:00:49SPEAKERDo you need to climb to the top of that tower?
1:00:51SPEAKERActually the tower you might have to do, but do you need to go investigate that mountain
1:00:54SPEAKERlion den?
1:00:56SPEAKERProbably not.
1:00:57SPEAKERDo you need all 900 plus Korok seeds?
1:00:59SPEAKERYeah.
1:01:00SPEAKERHow many, how many skins do you realistically need in Red Dead Redemption?
1:01:06SPEAKERThe illusion of control.
1:01:08SPEAKERThis is one of the ones that that is, is a really icky, like you can, with a large enough
1:01:13SPEAKERplayer base, you can manipulate people's feelings of their perceived skill really effectively.
1:01:18SPEAKERSo for example, when I play Fortnite with my daughter, her matchmaking is, she gets
1:01:24SPEAKERmatchmade into much lower skill games than I do.
1:01:26SPEAKERAnd they tend to put you into, into those games.
1:01:30SPEAKERIt feels really good when I play Fortnite with my daughter, because we just absolutely
1:01:34SPEAKERrock ass.
1:01:35SPEAKERWe destroy people left and right.
1:01:37SPEAKERIt's like, I'm owning the seven year olds, right?
1:01:41SPEAKERIt doesn't probably feel great for them.
1:01:45SPEAKERBut that same manipulation that I, I mean, just to be clear, I'm not, I'm not playing
1:01:50SPEAKERwith my daughter to manipulate and let me get easy wins over seven year olds.
1:01:54SPEAKERCause that would be really uncool on my part.
1:01:57SPEAKERI do like spending time playing games with my daughter.
1:01:59SPEAKERThat's very fun.
1:02:00SPEAKEROf course.
1:02:01SPEAKEROf course.
1:02:02SPEAKERBut the matchmaking system, if it's like, oh man, okay.
1:02:04SPEAKERIf Fortnite does some science and they're like, okay, if we make them lose eight times,
1:02:10SPEAKERthey're going to feel really bad.
1:02:11SPEAKERAnd then we dumped them into the nine year old pool and they just absolutely own everybody
1:02:15SPEAKERin there and get 30 kills.
1:02:17SPEAKERThey're gonna feel really good.
1:02:18SPEAKERAnd then, then, then, then after they do that, are they more likely to spend money in the
1:02:21SPEAKERstore if we prompt them with a store prompt when they leave that game?
1:02:24SPEAKEROh yeah.
1:02:25SPEAKEROr Hey, if, if we, if somebody gets killed, if somebody loses badly eight times in a row,
1:02:34SPEAKERcomes in second place eight times in a row, right.
1:02:37SPEAKERAnd then we send them home.
1:02:39SPEAKERThey, they, you know, they reached the end of the time that they usually play and they
1:02:41SPEAKERlog off, are they more likely to come back tomorrow or are they less likely?
1:02:46SPEAKERSo if we let them go out on a win, if we give them a slightly easier matchmaking at the
1:02:49SPEAKERend of the night, they go out on a win, they're more likely to come back tomorrow.
1:02:53SPEAKERSome of what you're describing emerged organically out of early multiplayer games.
1:02:57SPEAKERI'm sure a lot of people know this, but the term is smurfing, you know, going, going and
1:03:01SPEAKERmaking a fresh account.
1:03:03SPEAKERSo you'll get dropped back to the bottom of the matchmaking ladder with a lot of skill
1:03:08SPEAKERbuilt up just so you can absolutely destroy all the newcomers.
1:03:11SPEAKERYeah.
1:03:12SPEAKERGo get your cheap Starcraft key from the gray market site.
1:03:14SPEAKERYes.
1:03:15SPEAKERIs a phenomenon known as smurfing.
1:03:16SPEAKERAnd so like, I didn't even consider that actual game designers have now weaponized smurfing
1:03:21SPEAKERin a way.
1:03:23SPEAKERWell, just to be clear.
1:03:25SPEAKERBy manipulating skill rankings, like you're talking about.
1:03:28SPEAKERYeah.
1:03:29SPEAKERIt's, it's like that, that kind of stuff is it with a large enough player base, pretty
1:03:33SPEAKEReasy to do.
1:03:34SPEAKERLike nobody's gotten caught doing it.
1:03:36SPEAKERRight.
1:03:37SPEAKERBut I mean, we've all felt that right.
1:03:40SPEAKERMatchmaking algorithms and criteria are so opaque.
1:03:42SPEAKERIt's not like they're ever going to have to disclose those to Congress or anything.
1:03:45SPEAKERIt's kind of hard to catch them red handed.
1:03:47SPEAKERWell, they're opaque and they're also transit transitory.
1:03:50SPEAKERSo like, you know, my experience at 10 PM on Tuesday is gonna be different than your
1:03:55SPEAKERexperience at 10 AM on Wednesday.
1:03:59SPEAKERBut it's stuff to be aware of, right?
1:04:01SPEAKERDo you always, do you always go out on a wind when you're playing call of duty?
1:04:03SPEAKERThat's weird.
1:04:04SPEAKERYou stop playing at the same time every night.
1:04:05SPEAKERWhat a weird coincidence.
1:04:06SPEAKERInteresting.
1:04:07SPEAKERInteresting.
1:04:08SPEAKERNow that is God do that.
1:04:09SPEAKERI don't know why all this stuff is insidious, but I don't know why this feels the most insidious
1:04:13SPEAKERthat they would actually, and of course they're doing this pattern or model, model your time
1:04:18SPEAKERof day habits.
1:04:19SPEAKERYou know?
1:04:20SPEAKERI mean, I don't know that they are, but they could be, they have that information.
1:04:25SPEAKERWe talked about it before, you would be amazed at the different types of data that were being
1:04:29SPEAKERcollected at all times.
1:04:30SPEAKERWell, and when you're living, like the data that's collected on you, when you live in
1:04:33SPEAKERa web browser and a phone is way, way less than the like, you know, modeling number of
1:04:41SPEAKERclicks per minute as an attention, as a measure of attention span is, is a, you know, would
1:04:46SPEAKERbe easy to do when you're playing a game.
1:04:49SPEAKERThe last one in the psychological thing that I wanted to call is the variable rewards.
1:04:53SPEAKERAnd this one is this one, every multiplayer shooter I've ever played does this in the
1:04:57SPEAKERmodern era.
1:04:58SPEAKERSo like your call of duty, where you have, where every gun has an XP level and an unlock
1:05:04SPEAKERlevel and your character has an XP level and your character skin has an XP level and you
1:05:08SPEAKERhave quest rewards, quest XP levels, and you have 50 different things.
1:05:13SPEAKERSo when you finish the game, Fortnite does it too.
1:05:14SPEAKERWhen you finish the game, you get a list with like, Hey, you get 50 XP for this.
1:05:19SPEAKERYou get 10,000 XP for this.
1:05:21SPEAKERYou got a hundred thousand XP for this, and you get 250,000 XP for this.
1:05:24SPEAKERAnd you're like, I don't have, and it all goes by so fast.
1:05:27SPEAKERYou don't have any idea what any of it is.
1:05:29SPEAKERIt's just overwhelming when you with look at all the cool shit you got for do it for
1:05:32SPEAKERfinishing this thing, whether you win or lose, just to be clear, like, you know, you, you
1:05:37SPEAKERwin a game of Fortnite, you get the victory Royale, and then you get the thing.
1:05:41SPEAKERIf you lose, you get to watch somebody making the donkey emote at you.
1:05:44SPEAKERAnd then you get the thing it's, it's, it's, it's a, it triggers that you've done good
1:05:50SPEAKERdopamine release with a bunch of shit that your brain can't process.
1:05:56SPEAKERAnd it makes you feel like even if you didn't win, you, you have done something that's worth
1:06:02SPEAKERthat your brain should be happy with some progress.
1:06:05SPEAKERYeah, you've done something good.
1:06:08SPEAKERSo yeah.
1:06:09SPEAKERAnd, and the really awful stuff that happens when you combine multiples of these things,
1:06:12SPEAKERlike the matchmaking stuff with the, with the illusion of control or the pay to win
1:06:16SPEAKERwith the matchmaking, or maybe it's just matchmaking is bad.
1:06:19SPEAKERMaybe we should just go back to server browsers is the, is the take away.
1:06:22SPEAKERYes.
1:06:23SPEAKERLet me run dedicated servers for everything.
1:06:24SPEAKERTrust me, you don't want to run to any, anyway, there's not a good takeaway here, I guess.
1:06:32SPEAKERWell, I mean, the takeaway is just be aware, you know, like kind of just know when you
1:06:36SPEAKERengage with games or web pages or social media services or anything that could implement
1:06:41SPEAKERthese techniques, just be aware, you know, knowing, I think you said it at the beginning,
1:06:46SPEAKERright?
1:06:47SPEAKERLike knowing about these makes you much more readily able to recognize them and maybe not
1:06:52SPEAKERbe exploited.
1:06:53SPEAKERI think you said in GI Joe that knowing is half the battle.
1:06:57SPEAKERSomething like that.
1:06:58SPEAKERYeah.
1:06:59SPEAKERAll right.
1:07:00SPEAKERShall we close here?
1:07:01SPEAKERWe're done.
1:07:02SPEAKERHold on.
1:07:03SPEAKERWe said we were going to talk about Fortnite, Fortnite's FTC thing briefly.
1:07:07SPEAKEROkay.
1:07:08SPEAKERThey just got fined half a billion dollars.
1:07:09SPEAKERYes.
1:07:10SPEAKERAlthough I think only half of that was for a dark pattern related behavior.
1:07:13SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:14SPEAKERHalf of that was for COPPA monetizing children and half of it was for dark pattern violations.
1:07:19SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:20SPEAKERI wasn't familiar with COPPA, but does it, they all, part of, part of this settlement
1:07:24SPEAKERwas also about them, I believe, defaulting voice chat to on for people under 13, stuff
1:07:30SPEAKERlike that.
1:07:31SPEAKERIt was also some in game communication stuff as well.
1:07:34SPEAKERSo COPPA is the law, it's the children's online privacy protection act, rule, whatever.
1:07:41SPEAKERIt was, it's the thing that says, it's the thing that prevents anybody from under 13
1:07:45SPEAKERfrom signing up for accounts without parents permission.
1:07:49SPEAKERSo you can't, if you're under 13, you can't create a Twitter account.
1:07:51SPEAKERYou can't create Twitch.
1:07:52SPEAKERYou can't create Tumblr or whatever without your parents getting an email that says, "Hey,
1:07:58SPEAKERyour kid signed up for this.
1:07:59SPEAKERYou want to approve it."
1:08:01SPEAKERAnd the idea is people are not supposed to collect data on minors under 13 in the same
1:08:08SPEAKERway that they would collect data on you or I without consent of the parents because presumably
1:08:15SPEAKERchildren aren't allowed to, aren't able to consent to that.
1:08:18SPEAKERThat's all it is.
1:08:19SPEAKERBasically they were letting kids buy stuff without parental approval.
1:08:24SPEAKERAnd so they've had to offer some refunds for that.
1:08:27SPEAKERAnd also for some dark pattern stuff around maybe letting people make purchases without
1:08:32SPEAKERconfirmations.
1:08:33SPEAKERSo now let's see, just to be clear, this was a pretty big fine.
1:08:37SPEAKEROften these fines are inconsequential to the vendors, like a couple of days or maybe a
1:08:41SPEAKERweek's worth of revenue.
1:08:43SPEAKERThis was a month's worth of revenue, the 500 million combined.
1:08:46SPEAKERThat's not nothing.
1:08:48SPEAKERAnd now the upshot is that when you buy something in Fortnite and equip it, it says, "Hey, you
1:08:53SPEAKERcan refund this if you click this button by accident until you start your first game or
1:08:57SPEAKERdance in the lobby with other people watching."
1:09:00SPEAKERSo you got that going for you.
1:09:02SPEAKERIt's something.
1:09:03SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:04SPEAKERIt's something.
1:09:05SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:06SPEAKERAll right.
1:09:07SPEAKERI'm in favor.
1:09:08SPEAKEROnce you are paying attention to this stuff, there's a lot of really gross stuff in this
1:09:12SPEAKERspace in kids' games.
1:09:13SPEAKERRoblox, like don't let your kids play Roblox.
1:09:16SPEAKERI can't imagine.
1:09:18SPEAKERMy kid plays Roblox.
1:09:19SPEAKERI wish I hadn't.
1:09:20SPEAKERUnfortunately, it is a part of her social life that was unavoidable during the pandemic,
1:09:26SPEAKERbut don't avoid Roblox.
1:09:28SPEAKERIt's really bad.
1:09:29SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:30SPEAKERPlay Minecraft.
1:09:31SPEAKERPlay something.
1:09:32SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:33SPEAKEROddly, the stuff owned by Microsoft is less gross than almost everything else in the market.
1:09:36SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:37SPEAKERI mean, plenty of microtransactions in Minecraft these days, but the base game is still pretty
1:09:41SPEAKERgood.
1:09:42SPEAKERAnd the things that are microtransaction based in Minecraft for the most part have actual
1:09:48SPEAKERvalue rather than just being like ... Look, Roblox, if you want to see some dark patterns,
1:09:56SPEAKERgo load up the popular Roblox games and see how they gate access and how they do pay to
1:10:02SPEAKERwin stuff and all that.
1:10:08SPEAKERIf you want to make 30% of a lot of money because of the way they pay developers, then
1:10:16SPEAKERyou can do all the dark patterns you want inside Roblox.
1:10:19SPEAKER30%.
1:10:20SPEAKERIf you want to turn ... So they pay you in Roblox.
1:10:23SPEAKERWhen you generate Robux in the game, in a Roblox game that you build, they pay you back
1:10:29SPEAKERin Robux.
1:10:31SPEAKERAnd if you want to turn those Robux into cash, the conversion rate is abominable.
1:10:35SPEAKERWow, man.
1:10:36SPEAKERI had no idea it was that bad.
1:10:38SPEAKERRoblox is super gross.
1:10:39SPEAKERYeah.
1:10:40SPEAKERGenerally, 30% is generally the platform share, not the creator share.
1:10:44SPEAKERAnd even that is considered significant.
1:10:46SPEAKERWell, so for Roblox, because they are paying through platform currencies, they're eating
1:10:55SPEAKERthe 30% on their side.
1:10:59SPEAKERAs always, it's complicated.
1:11:01SPEAKERI still think Roblox is pretty gross.
1:11:03SPEAKERYeah.
1:11:04SPEAKERI can see it.
1:11:05SPEAKERAnd huge.
1:11:06SPEAKERAnd enormous.
1:11:07SPEAKERYeah.
1:11:08SPEAKERAll right.
1:11:09SPEAKERSo you've done something stupid, I think.
1:11:10SPEAKERIs it time?
1:11:11SPEAKERHave you done something inadvisable?
1:11:12SPEAKERMoments ago.
1:11:13SPEAKEROh, no.
1:11:14SPEAKERI've done it before.
1:11:15SPEAKERYeah.
1:11:16SPEAKERI clicked download on Clash Royale.
1:11:17SPEAKEROh, it wasn't still on your phone?
1:11:19SPEAKERNo.
1:11:20SPEAKERI thought I had left it.
1:11:21SPEAKERI must have deleted it in a fit of peak at some point years ago.
1:11:23SPEAKERI haven't even launched Clash Royale in three or four years, at least.
1:11:27SPEAKERI'm just going to open it and see what happens.
1:11:29SPEAKERI want to see what kind of re-onboarding there might be in this game now, or-
1:11:34SPEAKERYeah.
1:11:35SPEAKERWhoa.
1:11:36SPEAKERThat is really loud.
1:11:37SPEAKERPardon me.
1:11:38SPEAKERThat was very loud.
1:11:39SPEAKEROh, I remember that sound.
1:11:40SPEAKEROh, hey.
1:11:41SPEAKERI can download it too.
1:11:42SPEAKERI mean, I really like this game.
1:11:43SPEAKEROne grossly monetized version of this game would be so good.
1:11:46SPEAKERI said that so many times on bomb casts and stuff.
1:11:49SPEAKERI would pay $10 or $20 for a version of this without microtransactions because the game
1:11:53SPEAKERitself is extremely good.
1:11:56SPEAKERThere was a period of time when this game was as popular as PUBG was in 2017 in our
1:12:03SPEAKERcircles.
1:12:04SPEAKEROh, dude.
1:12:05SPEAKERThey were streaming e-sports tournaments of this game, and they were fun to watch.
1:12:08SPEAKERThey were legitimately, for the same reason I liked watching StarCraft, they were really
1:12:12SPEAKERentertaining.
1:12:14SPEAKERI remember sitting at GDC and playing Clash Royale in a group with like six people one
1:12:18SPEAKERyear, right?
1:12:19SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:20SPEAKERAnyway, I just want to load this up and see if there were any enticements they hit me
1:12:23SPEAKERwith as a lapsed player.
1:12:25SPEAKERThey're just like, "Hey, you can play.
1:12:27SPEAKERHere's how you play."
1:12:28SPEAKERThey're just teaching me a new player right now.
1:12:30SPEAKERI have tapped the screen once, and they're already hitting me with what looks like a
1:12:35SPEAKERboost for my Golem card.
1:12:37SPEAKEROh, who doesn't want a Golem boost?
1:12:39SPEAKERI'm just going to hit show card and see.
1:12:42SPEAKERDo you really?
1:12:43SPEAKERYou got that?
1:12:44SPEAKERHere's how to play.
1:12:45SPEAKERGood.
1:12:46SPEAKEROkay.
1:12:47SPEAKERThe King has popped out and says, "Good news.
1:12:48SPEAKERYou've unlocked Star Points."
1:12:49SPEAKERYeah, I bet I have.
1:12:51SPEAKEROh, okay.
1:12:54SPEAKERHere's a gift to get you started.
1:12:56SPEAKEROh, now I've gotten a card level boost for my Magic Archer.
1:13:01SPEAKERNow they want me to connect a Supercell ID, but I don't think I have.
1:13:07SPEAKERI might.
1:13:08SPEAKERAnyway, I just want to load this up.
1:13:09SPEAKERI've had people tweet at me here and there saying, "Hey, it's not as abusive as it used
1:13:14SPEAKERto be.
1:13:15SPEAKERYou should check it out again."
1:13:16SPEAKERDid you get the important please read when you started it?
1:13:18SPEAKERNo.
1:13:19SPEAKERMine said, "Important.
1:13:20SPEAKERPlease read.
1:13:21SPEAKERClash Royale is free to play, but you can speed up your progress with in-app purchases.
1:13:24SPEAKERYou can disable this in your device settings.
1:13:27SPEAKERTap okay to accept our terms and privacy policy."
1:13:29SPEAKEROh, wow, dude.
1:13:32SPEAKERKing level updates.
1:13:34SPEAKERWe have added more King levels and reduced the amount of XP required for each.
1:13:38SPEAKERThere is straight up like two progress bars.
1:13:43SPEAKERIt says old progress and new progress, and the new progress bar is way bigger and has
1:13:47SPEAKERway more levels on it.
1:13:48SPEAKERI'm taking a screenshot of this.
1:13:50SPEAKERWow.
1:13:51SPEAKERI don't...
1:13:52SPEAKERI'm...
1:13:53SPEAKERThat's weird.
1:13:54SPEAKERI have leveled up.
1:13:55SPEAKERDude, I'm getting a level up animation just for starting this game before I even played
1:13:59SPEAKERit.
1:14:00SPEAKERYou should uninstall this quick.
1:14:02SPEAKERYou're getting quite good at this whole Clash Royale thing, says the King, what I haven't
1:14:05SPEAKERplayed in years.
1:14:06SPEAKERWow, Brad.
1:14:07SPEAKERI've gained access to card mastery.
1:14:09SPEAKEROh man, I do like leveling up cards.
1:14:13SPEAKERIt's funny.
1:14:14SPEAKERI'm getting like the new player thing.
1:14:15SPEAKERYou're getting the, you're getting the return player thing.
1:14:18SPEAKEROkay.
1:14:19SPEAKERMaybe, maybe you were on a different game center account or something.
1:14:21SPEAKERNo, I was on the same game center account, but it's been a longer time.
1:14:24SPEAKERLike, I think you played way after I stopped.
1:14:27SPEAKERMaybe so.
1:14:28SPEAKERI was, I was pretty dedicated to this.
1:14:30SPEAKERThis game was my bus rides for a long time.
1:14:33SPEAKERRight.
1:14:34SPEAKERSo this came out, right, like 2013, right?
1:14:38SPEAKER2012?
1:14:39SPEAKER2014?
1:14:40SPEAKEROh no, much later than that.
1:14:41SPEAKERClash of Clans was way big, bigger before earlier.
1:14:46SPEAKERThis came out, I think this is more like 2017-ish.
1:14:49SPEAKERSo I started driving after Whiskey Media shut down in 2012.
1:14:53SPEAKERI started driving to work and not riding Bart anymore.
1:14:57SPEAKEROkay.
1:14:58SPEAKERSo my time for this kind of thing evaporated.
1:15:01SPEAKEROkay.
1:15:02SPEAKERWe have to end this podcast.
1:15:03SPEAKERI just, the King Pop Rejoice, you have unlocked magic items.
1:15:06SPEAKERLike they are, is it just a deluge of new stuff that I have supposedly earned by watching
1:15:11SPEAKERthis game again.
1:15:12SPEAKERBrad, go to your desktop, go to your springboard and long press that app and go to remove application.
1:15:19SPEAKERI should probably do that.
1:15:21SPEAKERAfter we finish the podcast.
1:15:23SPEAKEROh, so are we, so that's it.
1:15:26SPEAKERDark patterns.
1:15:27SPEAKERYou know, a great dark pattern is to go to patreon.com/check.
1:15:31SPEAKERNo, this is not a dark pattern.
1:15:33SPEAKERThis is a good pattern.
1:15:34SPEAKERThat is the brightest of patterns.
1:15:36SPEAKEROkay.
1:15:37SPEAKERYeah.
1:15:38SPEAKERIt should go to the, the Patreon for the tech pod.
1:15:41SPEAKERAnd if you want to support the show, you can sign up for us for five bucks a month and
1:15:45SPEAKERget access to our patron episodes the wonderful tech pod community in the tech pod discord.
1:15:52SPEAKERAnd we also have a Mastodon server that's running now.
1:15:55SPEAKERThat's open to everybody.
1:15:56SPEAKERYou don't have to be a patron, but we do encourage people who want to support the Mastodon who
1:15:59SPEAKERare using it to chuck in a couple bucks to the Patreon because it, you know, it takes
1:16:05SPEAKERtime and energy to to keep it running.
1:16:12SPEAKERBut this, this, I hope that people who listen to this episode, sorry, not to go back to
1:16:17SPEAKERthe episode for a sec, but I hope that like just knowing about this stuff helps people
1:16:22SPEAKERunderstand it a little bit better and be more aware of it so that they can tell when they're
1:16:25SPEAKERbeing manipulated and, and can discern what feels good versus from what feels bad.
1:16:31SPEAKERAnyway.
1:16:32SPEAKERAnyway.
1:16:33SPEAKERIt's we, we always like to thank all of our patrons.
1:16:37SPEAKERSo thank you, patrons.
1:16:38SPEAKERThank you, patrons.
1:16:39SPEAKERWe especially like to thank our executive producer, tier patrons, including Nick Johnston,
1:16:44SPEAKERpaddle Creek games, makers of fractured veil, Andrew Slosky, Octo Thorpe parentheses, hashtag
1:16:51SPEAKEROcto parentheses, bunny crimes, just wedge, Joel Krauska, twinkle Twinkie, David Allen
1:16:57SPEAKERand James Kamek.
1:16:58SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:16:59SPEAKERWe appreciate you all.
1:17:01SPEAKERAnd I think that'll do it for us this week's episode.
1:17:06SPEAKERWe got to go because I'm keep staring at the screen.
1:17:09SPEAKERYou got to uninstall it, man.
1:17:10SPEAKERYou got to get rid of that.
1:17:11SPEAKERWhat if I just play like one match?
1:17:12SPEAKERNo, no, no, no.
1:17:14SPEAKERIt's going to look, this is, this is how, look, do I need to tell you what this one,
1:17:19SPEAKERthis one is a competition and it's a little bit of a illusion of control because they're
1:17:26SPEAKERgoing to give you something really easy to win.
1:17:27SPEAKERSo you're going to feel really good and it's going to shake the screen.
1:17:30SPEAKERIt's going to show you some sparkly lights and make a good sound.
1:17:32SPEAKERYou're gonna be like, Oh man, this is a really good game.
1:17:34SPEAKEROkay.
1:17:35SPEAKERAll right, fine.
1:17:36SPEAKERI'm going to hurl this phone into the sea.
1:17:37SPEAKERI'm going back to a flip phone.
1:17:39SPEAKERTake your artificial goals and go to hell.
1:17:41SPEAKERClash Royale.
1:17:42SPEAKERWe will see you all next week.
1:17:43SPEAKERThanks for listening, everybody.
1:17:49SPEAKERyou