As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off. Over the decades I've been on the teams of high profile games and films with medium levels of violence. After each title is released, I'd receive a half dozen or so "fan" emails from people who obviously researched the dev team and was reaching out. On the games with medium levels of violence, of the half dozen fan emails only one would be praise, the others would be serious hate mail. That kind of stuff throws you, even if you suspect pretty strongly that the sender is probably 8 years old. Yeah, I can totally see why he pulled the plug. He's got enough momey, and he's not greedy. What he want's most is clearly freedom, and fame was taking that away. Yeah, I'd pull the plug too.
To be fair, seen from outside, this seems something strange and, in my opinion, not good about the American culture: there is always somebody to blame for your problem, a reason why you are acting in a given way, an external cause if you suffer a medical problem, eat too much, put all the kind of pills in your body, and so forth.
Probably this is representative only of a minority, but from the outside this looks like a vocal minority, and even a very small minority, if can feel offended, or addicted, or something else because of your work, can easily turn your work into a nightmare.
Now the thing is: it is not true. You, with your work, are not forcing anyone. We live in a world full of possibilities, the problem here is, to be able to critically analyze what you do, otherwise there is no thing that can save you, you'll misuse even the simpler things to cause yourself some kind of problems.
There is more, even controversial things have some very good impact on the life of people making judicious use of those things. Example: a violent game can be a way to express violence of an otherwise repressed person, or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it. Similarly alcool, that if abused can be bad, addicting, and destroy people, is the joy of many people having a glass of wine from time to time, and so forth.
Most of the times the problem is not the tool but the user.
> Example: a violent game can be a way to express violence of an otherwise repressed person, or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it.
Yeah, that's not actually true. "Letting your anger out" makes you angrier.
The study outlined in the article hasn't convinced me and like all studies on matters of bullshit I'm pretty sure other studies will follow trying to prove the opposite.
Personally I have had problems much bigger than what I can handle and as a passive aggressive personality my mind's response is to simply ignore many problems which are otherwise very serious, which has led me into even bigger problems and on the edge of depression. But when I do happen to let my anger out, an interesting thing happens - I take steps to solve those problems, because vetting in itself can also be acknowledgement that you do have a problem in need of a fix.
That's why I don't like the study outlined, because like many other studies of psychology, it's very, very shallow and has a problem with causality.
Also, be mindful about the studies you read about. Before believing anything, be mindful about the science, the methodology behind it. For example if you take a look in the last 60 years, you'll probably discover hundreds of flawed studies on nutrition and cholesterol based on which medical personnel in all countries have been spreading myths as some sort of gospel.
This is quite misleading. Yes, letting your anger out can make you angrier in the long term - providing the right circumstances.
Why? Because if anger becomes socially acceptable, you're more likely to express it. However, saying everyone should bottle it up is trying to take an extreme and apply it to everyone.
Anger is an emotional response to a situation, much like depression. If you don't change your situation, you will become angrier or more depressed. If this "venting" makes someone feel better, and prolongs their stay in this bad situation, then of course they're going to get angrier.
This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes.
So suppressing that anger is going to promote you to resolve the situation rather than tolerate it.
I'll point out that you're linking to a blog post and not a peer reviewed study, so the actual merit is zip without sources, which he provides none.
I however, would like to provide an analogy that is well studied. Porn. The availability of pornography is a well known reducer in rates of both rape and violence against women. Enacting the fantasy - Aristotle's method - IS a proven way to release sexual frustration and thus reduces the resulting violence. At least as far as the general population is concerned.
However, overconsumption of porn is linked with a progressive increase in aggression against women, decreased sympathy to rape victims, etc. Although, this is a chicken and egg issue is the porn delaying the persons aggression or causing it. Basically is porn preventing men from becoming Jack the Ripper, or is it causing them. We don't know because all we have is a correlation between overconsumption of porn and increasing violence.
To put it simply, for the average person "venting" their anger in a healthy way is going to be beneficial if their situation isn't producing the anger but an isolated incident did: your hot water heater rusted through, you've got a new one now but you're pissed about the flood. Getting that anger out is going to be beneficial if you do it in a healthy way (go to the batting cages or driving range and hit some balls). It's the same as porn, your girlfriend went away for two weeks over christmas to see her parents is a very different mental state compared to someone who's watching porn to see women have the shit beat out of them.
To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!
"Why? Because if anger becomes socially acceptable, you're more likely to express it."
I don't think it's just social. In general, "X, then I Y and it feels good" reinforces behavior Y when I do it. Neurons are trained over time, and your brain works differently. My understanding is that studies have supported this regarding "venting" in general, but have not shown this particularly with violent video games (which means likely you're not "venting" at all, really, by playing games).
"This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes."
Causes should be dealt with, but venting is not necessarily dealing with causes - whether I go play video games or slink off and punch a pillow or whatever. Even when venting has some effect on causes (my demonstration of anger is observable and so you notice there's actually a problem, and hopefully we deal with it) it's not likely to be the best way to deal with it.
'To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!'
If you do a good job getting rid of all the eggs, time will get rid of the chickens. If getting rid of eggs is easier or seen as more ethical or whatever, it may well be the right approach to wiping out chickens. (Actually, as I recall it's been pretty effective - DDT put a few species on the endangered species list by thinning their egg shells).
From Europe is easy to notice the difference, random examples: the class actions against tobacco companies are strange from our point of view, or, the other day there was a blog post about somebody losing a member of his family for an illness and he blamed in part a software (it was not the case...), and instead to see a WTF reaction there were plenty of retweets and messages supporting this point of view. Or, even in popular culture like reality shows that are transmitted here, this attitude is constantly present "I did this because of this".
I think you can see it at different levels even on the other side of the medal. I think customer care Americans experience is stellare compared to Europe on average, because Europeans hardly will blame enough the service supplier even when it is the case and this would result in raising the level of service. Apple was one of the first companies to provide US customer service here and at first I and my friends were pretty surprised that this was possible at all.
As with everything I guess this is just a bias and everywhere there are people of all the kinds, but because of culture there are some biases. Like, sicilians can be the most honest often, but surely on average my island exhibits a bias for not being able to stay in line, park the car where it is not possible and so forth. Basically I'm not generalizing.
I had never noticed this about the level of service Apple offers here in the UK, but it is true. Most people don't like making a fuss here, from what I can tell. They grumble about it, but don't actually complain if something is wrong. I think it is changing.
But I would agree that the concept that something you do is someone else's fault is wrong. If anything, accepting that idea leads to daft warning messages on everything, eg. mats on the Land Rover Freelander dashboard for putting stuff with massive warnings reading "Don't put hot drinks here!". It is obvious, but they felt the need to put it there in case someone blamed them for their action of putting a roasting hot drink there and then accelerating swiftly. It's silly.
I had a professor visiting from the U.S. and he was absolutely in love with the culture in Europe - how we sort of accept more responsibility.
He told me he would choose building a business in europe vs. the U.S. every single time. He has been sued several times for the most ridiculous things that never would have held any ground over here.
That, he said, was the single best thing about Europe's business culture. Not sure if I agree with that, but he has a point.
funny addendum: he was surprised at the lack of disclaimers on products here. Go figure.
Do not forget that lawsuits in USA have regulatory function. The attitude seems to be: let them sue each other and see who wins. All those lawsuits results and precedents are replacement for European regulations.
While like European way better, it is not fair to compare lawsuits prevalence in isolation. You have to compare the combination of lawsuits and regulations to say which system is better. And Europe has more regulations about a lot of things.
The thing is that the cost of regulation is borne by the government and thus society at large, while the cost of lawsuits is borne by the few unlucky saps that happen to get hit by the issue first.
Someone in Vietnam released software to the world, therefore this is a story about American culture. That's just how Americans think. It's also necessarily about modern American culture, even if you know absolutely nothing about the past.
Rolling Stone isn't going to run an article about the impact of Flappy Bird on culture in Tazmania or Greece; while it would be tangentially interesting, the subject's incredibly small proximity to the life of the average reader of the American version of Rolling Stone means it won't have the same impact.
Not a "just how Americans think" issue, a "what is relevant to our readers' lives" issue.
Aren't you are proving the parent's point there? You say that only articles depicting their own culture are seem as relevant to the american reader, which is what he claims.
That's absolutely not the case in other places of the world. In some cases, even the opposite problem arises (that is, discriminating against your own country/culture and favouring a foreign one)
No, I said an article about a culture only tangentially related to the reader will be less relevant than an article directly related to the reader.
(To note, the article wasn't about American culture, it was a personal interest piece on a person who was unprepared for the effects of the success he experienced.)
If by "other places in the world" you mean areas that are small enough or have an ephemeral-enough regional identity to have developed strong codependent identities with other regions, then I would certainly agree.
Living in a number of places has shown me that, in larger countries/communities with defined identities, internally facing publications will publish stories that are strongly relevant to their reader.
Because, as I said, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend that sort of space on an article that wasn't relevant to the reader.
As a transplant to America I agree with the difference in cultures but to be fair, you're comparing "other places of the world," which tend to be much smaller and more homogenous that the US, to a country founded as a loose federation of states divided largely along political and religious lines.
Cultural diversity (and exceptionalism, etc) is all rolled into the DNA of the country.
You make some good points, but games are a special case. Making something fun is not really that different from making it addictive. There's a huge grey area and lots of room for cognitive dissonance / rationalization among game creators. We've learned a lot about addiction, and people are not nearly as rational as they want to believe.
My thinking is that many of the people who are really passionate about making games have somewhat addictive personalities. I.e. there are some people who would just never stay up 'till 3 am playing a game when there's something more "important" to do, whereas game creators have turned this flaw into a virtue (and a career).
EDIT> I love games, and I have a great job making games, but I'm 38 and I now realize that I spent way too much time playing games in my 20's. While it is a matter of self-control, I do have some guilt that some kid is going to fail their Compilers exam because they'd rather play computer games instead of studying, like me circa 1995.
I would say the problem is people blaming the proximate but not the absolute causes. In a lot of cases, society sets people up to fail and then blames them when they do. In your overeating example, the problem is that we have tons of highly available, cheap, unhealthy food being marketed to you 24/7. The proximate cause of your obesity might be that you eat too much, but the absolute one is a combination of capitalism, technology, and human physiology.
The "blame game." It's so ingrained in US culture that many people don't know how to operate otherwise. It's not exclusive to the US, but it's certainly a defining factor of society here.
That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off.
The Internet not only has increased the range of hateful groupthink, it has made a large number of people believe that it is somehow noble and elevated. It almost seems like there's an anti-intelligentsia of forum manipulators who see the creation of new and pointless forms of prejudice as a kind of sport.
I have the growing impression that there's a growing segment of people online who see their outrage and any acts motivated by it as the expression of some kind of enlightened vigilante justice. It just so happens that the worst crimes against humanity were motivated by people who thought just like that. Unfortunately, it's the single best way to blind yourself against your own evil deeds while making it likely you'll get trapped into irrevocable courses of action.
People haven't changed. There have always been trolls, malcontents, crazies. Attend any public hearing, ask any fan club or newspaper mail room.
Yes, but now the seductive idea that one can improve the world by getting one's teenage hormonal aggression out on somebody "who deserves it" is beamed into people's living rooms and onto devices in their pocket, complete with calls to action. How many teenagers do you know who realize how morally bankrupt this is, vs the number of teenagers who are actively enthusiastic about some idea like this?
And, how many people do you know who are past their teens who still haven't "gotten it" yet?
I know what "getting it" means. So now you're targetting people who "don't get it" .. is this one of those chase-the-tail until the snake disappears threads?
No, either you're a bit dim or you're trolling. Where in this thread do I say anything about punishment? And also, why is targeting people with philosophical speech a bad thing?
You're probably just emotionally invested in memes and feel hurt when I point out they implicitly espouse shallow and prejudicial positions.
The difference is today, flames are hugely aided by convection.
Or in other words, there's a world of harm that can be done by putting a huge number of these malcontents in contact with each other in a way that they can all cooperate, with laser focus on a single subject.
Basically, the whole series of prejudicial fictions involving fedoras and then there's another series involving neckbeards. It's all shallow, based on appearances.
To be fair, I run a news reader and you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I receive. I just assumed he received much more of it and not enough of the positive mail.
Also, when you're at the business end of a press blitz, you get overwhelmed and can make irrational decisions that you might come to regret.
It was the same for me when I was project lead for Gaim/Pidgin. I was lead for something like 6 years and I eventually got tired of the hate.
Sure, there was plenty of praise, too. But the harassment eventually became annoying. It hit it's breaking point when someone folks managed to figure out my cell phone number and would call me at all sorts of hours (3am once!) to "tell me about their ideas."
I changed my cell number but it eventually happened again.
Most of my interactions with users were positive, though. But, the various legal issues, hateful folks, and my day job suddenly taking more time I decided to give it up and pass it on to someone else. I had already become mostly observational/maintenance on the project in my last year there anyways.
Slight digressions aside, I was fairly young when I got with the project and it was surprisingly to me how angry some people could be for no reason at all.
Big difference is you weren't being paid! I had a free and ad-free app on Android and I got some abuse about missing features. I took it down after a while. The sense of entitlement was unreal. Now if I was making $50k a day, I'd take all the abuse that could have been thrown at me!
Pidgin/gaim fan here - thank you. I think I started using it just before the time of the name change and it's had an enormously positive impact on my life. That might sound silly but it was one of the few Linux programs I knew how to install and configure at the time.
I created a fairly successful app that aimed to give users the best drink specials in my college town. I honestly can't bring myself to work on it anymore because I feel morally reprehensible and somewhat socially responsible for binge drinking when alcohol is such a dangerous substance. Who's not going to over-drink when well drinks are $0.25 a pop, nobody makes a ton of expendable income in college, and my app prominently puts that special in front of 3000 sets of eyeballs? I just don't feel like I'm adding goodness to the world - I feel like I'm subtracting it.
For what it's worth, Australia's been a pretty good case study on how significantly increased (+70%) taxes - and therefore, prices - for alcohol did not deter binge drinking [1]. All it did was shift the consumption from one form to another, as well as decrease drinking between binges. In that sense, you could arguably say that you're not materially increasing the prevalence of binge drinking but really just saving the money of those who are inevitably going to do it.
Then again, binge drinking here is baked in to the cultural psyche. It may still be seen as more dangerous and therefore less socially acceptable in the States.
Yeah, I've read tons of statistics from both sides of the debate, and still feel a little morally wrong for it. I did add taxi calling directly from the app to 7 different local taxi companies to help assuage some of my perceived guilt. The taxi page does see visits in my analytics though, so that's good if nothing else.
I totally disagree with his point of view. He could simply sell the game to an established company that is already set up to handle the responsibilities that come with running a business. Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
As he wrote, he didn't put the game down because he was afraid of the money or didn't want to run a business, he was actually afraid of the effect the "addictiveness" of the game had on some of its users.
With that premise, selling to an established company would have been the most irresponsible thing he could do. After all, the biggest assets of the game are its large user base, the media hype and just that "addictiveness". So this would probably be the first thing any buyer would have exploited, making Dong's problem worse instead of better.
Agree, funny how most comments focus on the money aspect of the conversation. He wanted to feel socially responsible again, did not like the impact that his game had on people's psyche / addictive behaviors and pulled the plug because of it.
In fairness, the three games he's currently working on follow that same mold of being super easy to learn and super hard to beat--not a good recipe for warding off addiction!
You have a point there. The article states he wants to introduce reminders to take a break, though that sounds like the usual excuse feature in such cases.
The average wage in Vietnam is $2,200 a year.[1] He made over 22 times the average yearly wage in a day. The average wage in the US is $50,233.[2] 22 times that is $1,105,126.
If you did that for a month, that would be the Vietnam purchasing equivalent of maybe about $33,000,000. He still has income coming in from the game, it hasn't stopped. He has enough money to retire and live a nice life in Vietnam.
For many people (myself included) enough is enough! He made enough and now he wants to get back to his quiet simple life. That is what he values, not an endless quest for more money. He felt the game was destroying his life. I don't blame him, I wouldn't want that kind of attention either.
Some people can just be happy with what they have.
Yes but let's be clear, he was making $50k/day with no effort of his own besides the work he did last year. There was no chase or action to give up, so his motives lied elsewhere.
Let's be clearer: he has the money he needs to live comfortably. For some people, that's all the money they need. "But you could have even more if you gave it to an agency!" Yes, but a) that means negotiating with an agency (which includes /finding/ one) and jumping through a bunch of hoops, and b) still having to deal with being a 'maverick personality' on the internet.
Or you could just take the Bill Watterson route, shut up shop, and live the rest of your life comfortably and in private.
I don't know why is this so hard for people to understand? Once you have enough so that you don't have to work anymore and live comfortably, one choice is to stop and actually do it. I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit. Even if I could keep on getting more and reach twice that.
> I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit.
That's the Workaholic Test™ -- if you make a million dollars, do you drop everything and sit on a beach somewhere reading a worthwhile novel, or do you move the goal posts and carry on toward a new, less realistic goal?
Most people won't make a million dollars, so most people will never know whether they're workaholics.
Ditto. This "test" assumes lying on a beach producing nothing is an ideal to strive for. I enjoy my vacations, but I wouldn't want to do that all the time!
I won't sit on a beach all day, but maybe I'll move to a beach house somewhere safe, and enjoy the hell out of my children growing up. And will read/learn/do interesting stuff. And I think I can get to be worth 1.5 mil someday.
Ha, I didn't read your name before I replied. You actually stopped when you reached your mark, and travelled the world on a boat. Awesome. I also read your 'Cottage Computer Programming' when I was a teen. Double awesome.
People still have the game, his money was being made of in game ads, which are still running for the people that are playing. I'd say he's probably doing fine.
The article mentions that he IS still making a ton of money. In fact, the announcement that it is being closed down, actually millions of more download in the next 22 hours
Beyond basic survival, money's a tool that lets you avoid having to do annoying things or to deal with annoying people. What is annoying is deeply personal. So if pursuing the tool to de-annoy your life is more annoying than some threshold, it stops being worth it.
1. He's still earning ad revenue from existing installs.
2. In the last 22 hours of the app's existence (when he announced
he would be taking it down) more than 10 million new people
installed it.
In other words, he's likely making just as much if not more today. He could have instantly removed it from the app store instead of saying "in 22 hours", so it's entirely possible that he's way better off due to all the publicity and attention from the app's removal.
Yes, quite possible he managed to snatch the last boost from an app that would otherwise have met a decline. It was already being covered all over the news. Reporters were looking for something more to say about it and he gave them that chance. Instead of being featured all over the news once, he got one mention for the initial spread, another one for the takedown threat. Now as a final (?) third one he achieves cult status for the game, increasing replays for the already installed base and ensuring interest for his future games.
I'm sure everything he says is true and it is not a conscious strategy, but the end result is the same.
So what if it's stupid? We know how much damage greed does to the world. The world would be a better place if more people stood up for principles over money.
The problem there is that there's no universal set of principles that are right or good.
For example "don't leave money on the table" or "make as much money as possible" could easily be a principle someone adopts. In such a case, she would be standing up for her principles by maximizing her acquisition of money at the expense of other things.
I don't need a universal set of principles that are good because such a thing is impossible. The entire world of human thought is a subjective abstraction. This need for objectivity is a common failing of the scientific mind, and it is a struggle in vain as our brains are far too puny to truly comprehend the nature of things—we must deal in abstractions, and abstractions as, any programmer knows, are leaky.
And people who put wealth and money before everything else are generally seen as assholes or even evil.
Example: The asbestos industry officials knew of asbestos dangers of asbestos since the 1930s and had purposefully concealed them from the public. To make money.
>>Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
I would have done the same thing if I was in his shoes; just get out of the spotlight with whatever money I already made(and still making from previous-installs). Getting paid 50k, even just once, for a mobile game I wrote over a weekend is more than enough. I wouldn't care how many millions I left at the table by dropping it and running away.
I'd just upload it to github, throw on WTFPL[1], and run away never to be seen again.
Depending upon one's starting debt load, any person of average intelligence or better would be able to, after a few days to a couple of weeks of that income, "retire" to a lower stress job, or even have the freedom to work for oneself in a less public arena.
In the US, $350,000 (1 week @$50k/day average) works out to somewhere north of $200,000 after taxes. That's a lot of money, even if it's not life changing for somebody in the tech industry with a typical salaried job in the Bay Area.
He did not throw away $50k/day. He walked away from it because he had enough money already and did not need any more of it (especially since he did not particularly enjoy all the attention that came with the money, but even if he did not mind it, that would not change my point).
