Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite

I love how we’re moving into an age where we have to teach our children about sophisticated psychological manipulation before they’re old enough to even be curious about sex.

Video game DJ: Drop your favorite emote! 60 broke kids sharing a server: awkwardly waves at DJ

watching this in 2021 and hearing the phrase "non-fungible" knocked the wind out of me

"Yo lemme see your favorite emote" Jesus, he may as well be saying "Yo lemme see yo moms credit card. Yo which a you kids have spent the most money let's go!!!"

It's not a wave, its a cry for help.

"Default" is now a derogatory term being used to mock players that haven't paid for skin customization.

"This is ultimately the meaning of Game-as-a-Service. Its just a euphemism for a game that takes up all your free time and becomes the only game that you play, because its just an elaborate constantly resetting Skinner Box that utilizes progression systems and seasonal competitions as a means to place you constantly in the path of an endless stream of monetary interactions." - Thank you, Folding Ideas.

It’s interesting how the whole paid skins vs randomised default avatar thing creates a visible ‘class’ distinction between players. I used to defend microtransactions as long as they were just ‘cosmetic’ and didn’t affect the gameplay but, looking at how predatory and isolating these practices have become, I feel like that was a naive opinion.

It's nice to see some criticism of Fortnite that doesn't boil down to "I hate it because the youths like it".

the hand-waving is making me so anxious

I taught middle school science for a bit, and they straight up made fun of one another using the term "no skins." When they said that "no skins" don't necessarily play worse than other people, they clarified that you didn't want to be a no-skin because it meant that you were a scrub or a hack. They didn't know it, but the degree to which Fortnite had indoctrinated them into this thinking was wild to me. It's comparable to what sneakers were back in the 90's, but constantly, every day, and with an even funkier pricing model.

"A perpetually monetized view of the future" After the NFT video that just came out, he was spot on.

That feel when you click on a video and think it's an April fools joke but then nope it's actually a carefully researched and well written video essay

13:30 - Speaking from someone in the digital marketing ecosystem ... the terms "manufactured discontent"/"hostile design" are also known as "dark design". Look it up. I've employed it in testing. It works. It's why terms and conditions and EULA popups are massive, ungodly walls of text that numb your brain after the first sentence. It's why auto dealer ads on TV and radio have that high speed chatter listing all the legalese at the very end ("we're annoying, you can tune out now!") ... it's why sometimes, for some regions and income levels, some elements of a page may not load quickly. It's small annoyances and inconveniences that get people to do something without directly telling them to do it. And it's terrifying how effective it can be, and almost no one I know questions whether it's morally right or ethically right to be doing it.

Having grown up between the time when games were simply games and where games started to become live services, all I can say is that I’m thankful I’m old enough at this stage to recognise the majority of the predatory things highlighted in the video. To think that Fortnite is mostly aimed at young teenagers with this level of psychological manipulation and borderline warfare with social pressures and monetisation makes me really scared. I’m at least somewhat happy that these tactics are finally highlighted and being considered for regulation, because it is gambling. For kids.

I am an educator. During a conversation, two of my fourteen-year-old boys casually dropped the revelation that they had spend HUNDREDS of euros on Fortnite. Now I understand how that happened.

“I kill weed names because you can enjoy what the Earth Mother gave us, but that isn’t the same as having a personality,” is one of the greatest treatises I have ever heard. Expertly thought-out and crafted. Perfect.

“A concert in a game? That sounds fun!” a few minutes later “...Oh.”

"Lots of games use progression systems and incremental rewards as part of their core loop, to keep players playing. Fortnite is a maturation of those systems, a refinement of every habit-forming trick and micro-transaction pressure point developed in the last decade, condensed into a weaponized product targeted at kids." All the strongest manipulation techniques are now aimed at the most impressionable among us.

Came back to rewatch and just noticed the hidden tab jokes haha