Hey everyone, just thought I'd give you a small update on how things are going. It's almost 4 am and I'm up because of a mosquito.
I had originally wanted to make some sort of content update in June, something with a couple of small side quests to tide you over until I can put together something bigger, but there isn't much of June left and I've fallen into bit of a research hole, reading the book Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll. It's about machine gamblers, that is people who gamble on slot and video poker machines, the ways these machines are designed for addiction potential, and the stories the gamblers tell themselves and others. This is relevant to this moment in time in multiple ways.
Machine gambling tech has in many ways pre-configured the way internet and society at large works these days, turning our world into a drip-feed of punishment and shitty rewards. The only difference is that whereas gambling aims to provide a sort of fugue state where the world around you disappears and becomes irrelevant, the global information network works by dispensing rage nuggets for you to get mad at, for free. The resulting state is similar but less enjoyable. Rather than paying with your time you pay with your attention, and when you're angry at something that's about all the attention you could possibly give at any given point in time. Why is this relevant to game development? Because I have to deal with not only game mechanics, but the mechanics of managing rage addicts online.
Video games are just complex forms of video poker. When you think of good game mechanics you mostly just mean something that "feels good". It has very little to do with how the game is actually structured, it has more to do with the look, feel and sound. You just want to sit on your machine and push the buttons to feel good. To maximize the addiction potential of Psycho Patrol R, to make "Good Game" I need to understand how these simple machines will suck the life and money out of human beings. I want to let you experience the "Machine Zone" as described by gambling addicts.
I want to add a gambling minigame to Psycho Patrol R. I want it to be more "fun" than the one in Cruelty Squad, so I need to actually research this a bit. In many ways the evolution will be similar to the one real slot machines have taken, where you no longer have to collect the individual coins to stuff into the machine, but can directly plug in your bank account for easy multi-day sessions.
I've mostly been avoiding social media now, and I didn't really make the connection to this book when I started reading it, but it has also convinced me to try and stay away from it. (despite making no such argument) I'm quite certain that I can do better, more focused work if I'm not constantly distracted by posting mini-updates for cheap likes. Honestly this hasn't been very difficult because social media has stopped working as a proper gambling device for me ages ago. A true skinner box requires uncertainty in the reward system, you need that anticipation. At some point social media will always just give you a big number beyond comprehension and it will become impossible to care anymore. 1000 likes is practically the same as 2000 or 4000 psychologically.
I'm still probably going to make a small update this week.
Let's do this, let's make this game suck.
Best,
Ville Kallio
CEO, Consumer Softproducts
