Leaked AI-Powered Game Revenue Model Paper Foretells a Dystopian Nightmare

Leaked AI-Powered Game Revenue Model Paper Foretells a Dystopian Nightmare(techpowerup.com)

32 points by phubbard 8 years ago | 17 comments

jakebasile 8 years ago |

This came up a while ago in the PC community and the consensus I saw was that it's a fake. It uses too much language that is deliberately evil in tone like "bait and switching" etc.

That said, Activision (or maybe EA?) recently received a patent for matchmaking technology that "encourages" you to buy items by first allowing you to be demolished by them, and then if you purchase you're allowed to demolish others so that you feel vindicated.

fellellor 8 years ago | |

I've seen conference proceeding on youtube, mostly about some mobile gaming, that used this kind of language. It's not exactly rare, and such meetings are more targeted to the investor/business owner types rather than devs. Also the videos are rarely posted on any video sharing sites.

There are so many startups right now that focus on real time video analysis to determine activities like intrusion detection. Though these developments are focused towards defense and border security, I feel they can easily be retrofitted/repurposed for data collection as described in the slides.

If the argument that the slides are fake is based on how evil they sound, I just can't buy that.

im3w1l 8 years ago | |

Even if it is fake it may be interesting to suspend disbelief. Whoever made this fake obvioulsy put a lot of time into thinking about this and may have spread it as a cautionary tale to avert a future scenario.

flashman 8 years ago |

It looks fake, if not because of the sci-fi tech then because slide decks don't go into this much detail. But it has that ring of Black Mirror plausibility that means people will pay attention to it.

A "hashlib of engine noises" for determining user social class, ha! Fitbit spent millions of dollars just trying to accurately convert wrist movement into steps taken.

b4lancesh33t 8 years ago | |

The first slide, which names the presenting company as "[redacted] data broker llc" already had my bullshit alarms firing. Does someone really name their company that? Who would trust such a company?

cpeterso 8 years ago | | |

And why would the "[redacted] Data Broker LLC" text be left-justified while the other title lines are centered? Why not redact the entire company name instead of leaving "Data Broker LLC", which is presumably part of the actual company name?

flakGuns 8 years ago |

If you’ve ever interacted with drug dealers and/or pimps, you know people are frequently this sleazy on a daily basis. People devise schemes to sell heroin to miserable people, and hook prostitutes on it so that they’ll turn tricks in exchange for doses, operating brothels out of hotels.

What. Video poker and slot machines are the limits of this kind of business model?

Maybe what’s really going in the comments here, is forum sliding and engineered flak.

stevenicr 8 years ago | |

The ones I have interacted with were nothing like you say here. There was this one that came from another city one time that was probably like that, but he did not last long in this city. I suppose the environment they have to work in has various factors they may make more of them do certain things in certain ways? Or perhaps you just trying to infer some kind of thing from pop movie culture or something?

I hate to see others read something absolutist like that and assume it's true, or mostly true more often then not, which I don't believe is true, even if it is some times.

Unless of course you are talking about the reps from the big pharma companies - then I might side with it's more true then less true.

Isn't the gamification of feeds in fbook and instagram basically this - does that make the ux designers pimps and the machine learning systems that hook people on the drip content the dealers?

People would work their fingers to carpal tunnel for some wow gold not long ago and kids have died in bathtubs as hooked parents were glued to facebook.

It would appear the synthetic digital heroin is worse than the natural stuff and affects people in their homes more so than hotels.

candiodari 8 years ago |

This is why you shouldn't play free-to-play games, or perhaps we should say "99.99% of android and ios games".

I mean, it's not quite this bad ... mostly ... yet. But it's very clear that this is where it's going.

b4lancesh33t 8 years ago | |

Does the average f2p shovelware author really have the resources to implement a system like the one contemplated in this presentation? I doubt it.

Accipitriform 8 years ago | | |

"Does the average f2p shovelware author really have the resources to implement a system like the one contemplated in this presentation? I doubt it."

It doesn't matter. Take a look at Summoner's War, the top revenue MMO game right now. I could easily see COM2US (the developers) taking advantage of a lot of those things.

SW has a business model where you can certainly spend thousands a month if you have the money to throw away. I'd be very curious to know what it brings in from the average player per year.

on_and_off 8 years ago | | |

Top grossing f2p games are already doing everything they can to exploit addiction mechanisms.

Sure they might not go as far as what is on these slides, but it is already on the abusive side.

dvfjsdhgfv 8 years ago |

Provided that it's true, this could be stopped by just not giving the game access to the microphone (seriously, why would you?!) and removing the game from memory when you finish playing.

creator_lol 8 years ago |

I thought this was already called Star Wars Battlefront 2?

bitL 8 years ago |

Who is going to play such games then? It might be good indeed, emulators will be popular for real gaming experience and people might spend more time in nature doing stuff in real-life.

on_and_off 8 years ago | |

The same people that already play freemium games ?

bitL 8 years ago | | |

I was hinting at a tipping point when most people will say "I've had enough, I am done with any game that abuses me this way". Abuse is the perfect word here, we might even see a hashtag campaign #abusedbyai from this.