💾 Archived View for whitemercury.ddns.net › cocacola.gmi captured on 2023-03-20 at 17:46:05. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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So, Coca-cola used to have cocaine in it. I think that's true, I should probably look on Snopes. It would have made the medicinal drink addictive. It was eventually removed and is probably only marginally less bad for you to drink now ;)
I was thinking about games on consoles and, particularly, on mobile phones. It feels to me that most games are designed around several addictive elements, rather than around fun game-play. As game design became more and more geared towards maximising profit by big businesses. They more and more understand the psychology of addicting people and extracting as much money as possible.
We used to pay a one off amount for a game. We could play it indefinitely and wouldn't expect or even have any way of paying for in-game extras. Maybe, if the game was popular, you may have bought an add-on pack. Extra levels, enemies and challenges. But, again, that was all that was expected. I couldn't pay extra for a new character skin or a premium weapon.
Now, we are continuously expected to pay and pay and pay. Pay for premium currency, extra weapons, vehicles, clothes, pay to revive. All sorts of things. All in a seemingly innocuous way, making it all seem great value and just to add to the fun of the game. Pay to win.
But, I'm sure this has all been said before.
My point is just this. Cocaine was removed from coca-cola, the highly addictive drug was removed.
Maybe purposefully added addictive features should be illegal in games. I don't know how you'd identify them, compared to fun game-play. You would be able to define what was OK and what was not. Already loot boxes came under fire for adding an addictive gambling element to games.
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