irresistible the rise of addictive technology

It happened to be his mother and she came, collected him, and took him to reSTART, this Internet addiction treatment center. He eventually picked up a phone call 45 days later after sleeping roughly an hour each night. He paid a doorman in the building to bring up pizza, so by the end of this binge there were stacks of pizza boxes to the ceiling. He played instead of sleeping, and his greatest binge was a 45-day binge where he played almost continuously. He developed an addiction pretty quickly because he found that it was basically a much better alternative world to the real one, and he spent a lot of time there. He started playing World of Warcraft because he, as he described it, was quite lonely and he found that there were a lot of other like-minded people on the game. There was a person I spoke to, he was a straight-A student, he was very high-achieving, and he was also on the football team at his college. Technology When Playing Video Games Means Sitting On Life's Sidelines So what you're left with after, say, 20 generations is this weaponized evolved version of the game, or a weaponized evolved mission, that is maximally addictive. They'll continue that process through generation after generation after generation. So what they'll do is they'll take the missions that aren't as successful and they'll cast them aside, and now they'll form three new versions of saving missions. What they'll find is, for example, when you have to save something, you spend more time playing than say, when you have to kill or find something. They generally call this 'time on device,' which is a term that's borrowed from the gambling world - how long are you on the slot machine. They'll look at how long you play, whether you return to the game, and generally how engaged you are. to different people, sort of A/B test these different missions. So one thing that a lot of the designers do is they'll release different versions of missions.

Part of the reason for that is, I think, that these large game companies have access to an incredible trove of data. So that to me suggests that it's a weaponized game it's an experience that's very, very hard to resist. One hundred million, roughly, have played the game, and by many measures, about half of them have developed an addiction, at least temporarily. On how World of Warcraft game designers make it to be more addictive Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Irresistible Subtitle The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked Author Adam Alter

Irresistible the rise of addictive technology