andddd... i'm almost level 30 and hate myself. Thank you world of warcraft, you have proven to me that I am just as impulsive as I was over a decade ago.
Steel, generally. Steel is gonna be harder to break, though if you wanna be able to repair your balls after, say, a kick in the nuts, then you might wanna go brass since it has a lower melting point and you can re-cast them. Also, brass resists oxidizing and can develop a cool patina, so if you didn't have a sack around them and wanted to show them off then brass would be the better choice. For normal use though, I'd go steel, preferably stainless.
Brass, because it's prettier and doesn't rust as easy. Also, worth a lot more than steel. It'd be like a status symbol. The only person actually going near your balls is your lady friend. You really want her inhaling all that rust when you get a blow job? Exactly. Plus, that shit is going to get in your swimmers and that can't be good. [Although technically all that copper in the brass would probably straight up kill them.]
Well... it kind of is 2007. They just "relaunched" the game from the beginning... so that's the idea.
I think they still have something like 2 million active paying subscribers. That game has ruined lives. There's tons of cases like this: That mom in the video is hilarious though... sobbing and reading up on addiction. Gee, why don't you TAKE THE FUCKING COMPUTER AWAY FROM HIM? Although, that kid they referenced who played for 36 hours straight, and then killed himself so he could go join "The heroes of the game he worshipped." is one of my favorite suicides ever.
And the developers of these games actively work to try to make them addicting. They take psychological studies on what makes people addicted to video games, and then incorporate more of that into the game to get people to play and pay more.
Sounds like most products. EDIT: Right? Not meaning to sound snippy... but the concept of dopamine feedback loops is essentially bronze-age. I wouldn't really call it a secret, and I think most people can get (to a lesser degree) "addicted" to just about anything. I've watched people eat taco bell for lunch for two weeks straight. I feel like the bar isn't set very high when it comes to 90% of the population and positive dopamine loops... or portion control.
That's a lot of weighty words to describe "blatantly stealing whatever casinos pioneered years ago." No one in video games is reinventing the wheel, they're just flat out copying the roulette wheel.
Yeah, no. What they are doing is way, way more advanced, targeted, and engineered than anything the casinos are doing (short of adapting the physical environment to the house winning). Modern video games have these things called "compulsion loops".. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_loop Sure, original casino games (like roulette), kind of hit on that a little bit, but then the video game industry took that little bit and fucking weaponized it. To say that the compulsion loops found in modern video games are like those found in roulette is like saying that the modern F1 car is the same as the Model T. Sure, they're both cars, but any other comparison is almost a waste of time.
Oh, and to be clear, I was heavily involved in that science... I led the team that designed EA's first microtransactional system, whose whole revenue stream was based on those compulsion loops. Need For Speed Online? Yep, that was me... and when you could hit a "buy turbo boost now" button to then IMMEDIATELY get that boost and shoot ahead of your competitor? As Savage Henry was fond of saying... "Steel On Target". That was exactly what we wanted. Players were intentionally put into those positions that would maximize their desire to ring that "buy now" bell in order to get that immediate satisfaction and dopamine hit as they shot ahead of their competitor. And that would make that competitor do the same... which led to a race to the end for everyone trying to out-boost everyone else so that they crossed that virtual finish line first... by spending real money. Modern casinos have NOTHING that is even remotely close to that level of control and manipulation.
I worked in mobile gaming, I'm quite familiar. You're either overestimating our operation or underestimating casinos.
I used to work with Scientific Games on physical casinos... I'm quite familiar with the level of science behind what they do, and the games they craft. (One of my first startups was dealing with game monitoring and data collection and analysis around those games). I'm just saying that video games took it to a whole other level, and have the ability to be much more manipulative within the game due to the mechanics involved; story telling, immersiveness, length of play, sense of control, etc. Casinos are very limited by comparison, at least within the games. Their physical environments are manipulative feats of engineering, but their games don't come close. I say this having sat in a room with a handful of PhD's for weeks whose job was to engineer the most addictive game they could. It was fucking scary.
I mean, when casinos get to use real money instead of fake coins as the reward, they're playing with heroin right from the start.
Just a guess here, but don't casinos also have a major disadvantage in that it's easier for people to walk away? With games, especially games on your phone, that shit is literally with you all the fucking time. It's like someone with a drinking problem having an ice chest full of beer following them around. If you're in a casino for hours each day, you have a "gambling problem," but if you're on your phone.... well, everyone is on their phones nowadays.
I guess for me a lot of the addicting aspects to games aren't that evil. How are you supposed to even make a loot based game without a compulsion loop? I like daily challenges, and mini-rewards for completing missions. It's part of what makes the game fun, you know? Then again, I'm never going to play any of the games where you constantly have to dump more money into it to get yet another minuscule edge over the competition. That is some sad shit, and those people should get help.
I spent a lot of quarters in order to beat Sunset Riders but that’s probably my worst brush with video games addiction. I dabble strictly in gateway games, never the heavy stuff. The best kind of games are the ones where friends in the same room play each other WHILE drinking, and you can watch those friendships end before your eyes via child-like tantrums and fights thrown by grown adults. It’s marvelous to behold.
Hah! I got to play that game again on an emulator about a year ago. I was happy with how fast the controls came back to me from the SNES days. Great game, lots of memories. Bury me with my money!
Nowadays I doubt it would go over well to have video game bosses that have names like “Chief Scalp-‘Em”, but in arcades we chose not to get bent out of shape over some bullshit.