Leaked AI-powered Game Revenue Model paper foretells a Dystopian Nightmare - "Psychological manipulation tactics" in Anthem by EA

[JimmerSnail]

https://www.techpowerup.com/240655/...e-model-paper-foretells-a-dystopian-nightmare

An artificial intelligence (AI) will deliberately tamper with your online gameplay as you scramble for more in-game items to win. The same AI will manipulate your state of mind at every step of your game to guide you towards more micro-transactions. Nothing in-game is truly fixed-rate. The game maps out your home, and cross-references it with your online footprint, to have a socio-economic picture of you, so the best possible revenue model, and anti buyer's remorse strategy can be implemented on you. These, and more, are part of the dystopian nightmare that takes flight if a new AI-powered online game revenue model is implemented in MMO games of the near future.

The paper's slide-deck and signed papers (with corrections) were leaked to the web by an unknown source, with bits of information (names, brands) redacted. It has too much information to be dismissed off hand for being a prank. It proposes leveraging AI to gather and build a socio-economic profile of a player to implement the best revenue-generation strategy. It also proposes using an AI to consistently "alter" the player's gameplay, such that the player's actions don't have the desired result leading toward beating the game, but towards an "unfair" consequence that motivates more in-game spending. The presentation spans a little over 50 slides, and is rich in text that requires little further explanation.

The rest of the presentation follows.

Spoiler: source\reddit post and archive link

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b6v3n8/leaked_aipowered_game_revenue_model_paper/

http://archive.md/Y3kR6 (credits to u/revisitor007)

inb4: Next EA game will be a just an Hypnotoad gif that will make you throw money at them.
also, some of the images are broken, but clicking them will show them anyway. I'm sorry about that.

 

[Funky Weapon]

Is it so hard to make skins or content people want to pay for?

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

People on Reddit are calling it fake, and I kinda agree, but "fake" doesn't mean it doesn't showcase modern gaming trends.
Even if the specific methods mentioned are not used due to being ineffective and/or illegal, machine learning is already used by larger game developers to squeeze every last penny via microtransactions.

 

[RG 448]

People on Reddit are calling it fake, and I kinda agree, but "fake" doesn't mean it doesn't showcase modern gaming trends.
Even if the specific methods mentioned are not used due to being ineffective and/or illegal, machine learning is already used by larger game developers to squeeze every last penny via microtransactions.

The only aspect of it that seems unlikely to me is that it’s all worded in a way that makes it sound unethical. If it’s a genuine pitch then it’s a terrible one. There’s also no reason to redact portions of the slide if you’re blowing a whistle.

 

[User names must be unique]

Okay the mapping of the house is a new one but anyone who is surprised by the data harvesting of companies like EA is dumb.

Here's EA's head marketer talking about how gathering data and analytics are the most important part of his job and that they're building "platforms and tools" to recognize when players might be burning out or about to quit and changing the game "quickly" to keep them engaged.

With enough gameplay data they can build a pretty accurate profile of exactly who a player is especially when combined with EA store data, the size of friends lists, location and times/time played data.

They'll know exactly how and when to keep you playing whether that's through giving you drops, discounts on microtransactions, matchmaking you with players that are likely to befriend you etc etc etc.

 

[Clop]

Psychological manipulation formulas are so 2018, everyone's already moved on to the next big thing to scream about until it's forgotten in two weeks.

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

Is it so hard to make skins or content people want to pay for?

no. it's just ever so slightly easier to implement an in-game system that takes money out of your pocket on the basis of what it knows you would have spent anyway.

 

[The Fool]

Did anyone ever stop to consider that this mechanism works not due to advances in AI, but rather how simplistic and predictable your average AAA game consumer is?

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

Is it so hard to make skins or content people want to pay for?

It's not hard, the hard thing is to make as little content and sell it to as many customers for as much money as possible.
Companies don't want some money, they want all the money.

Did anyone ever stop to consider that this mechanism works not due to advances in AI, but rather how simplistic and predictable your average AAA game consumer is?

Yeah, just put any Skinner box into your game and people will keep tossing money into it.
Worked in the 70s for the arcades, worked in the 00s for Farmville, works now for literally every kind of game.

 

[Aquinas]

This is bait

 

[PoisonedBun]

Just stop buyin' 'em.

 

[GentlemanFaggot]

Perhaps this technology could be used for good, if it was real.

A malevolent AI running an online game of D&D as DM, for example. I'd play that.

 

[OB 946]

https://www.techpowerup.com/240655/...e-model-paper-foretells-a-dystopian-nightmare

Spoiler: source\reddit post and archive link

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b6v3n8/leaked_aipowered_game_revenue_model_paper/

http://archive.md/Y3kR6 (credits to u/revisitor007)

inb4: Next EA game will be a just an Hypnotoad gif that will make you throw money at them.
also, some of the images are broken, but clicking them will show them anyway. I'm sorry about that.

I saw this leaked over a year ago. Yes, this is where they were headed, no, it won't happen. Look at where their models are getting them: staff layoffs. We're on the cusp of a video game market crash like the 80s. People are already buying fewer and fewer "safe" AAA titles. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, they're all torpedoing their flagship titles because of their absurd monetization models. This presentation was probably made by retreaded gen Xers who assume that the main demographic is still gen Xers who don't know any better, whereas the average consumer is a lot more likely to see themselves getting fucked than they were 10 years ago.

Of course, that's for Westerners. Westerners are generally more opposed to this form of bullshit. The reason they are developing this tool is not for us, it's for China. All the major studios are making big, highly monetized games for the East Asian market, because this level of monetization is normal and accepted. It is not for the Western market.

 

[Poiseon]

Eyup. Sticking with the chad retro games.

 

[Haramburger]

I believe this presentation is real and some companies would like to utilize it. Based on the state Anthem was launched in, I DON'T believe BioWare was/is capable of implementing this shit into Anthem or any game in the next decade. They can't make a working looter-shooter that doesn't fuck newbies accidentally into the final story mission right off the bat or properly pad a game without telling people to do 50 of this/50 of that with no narrative context, and I'm supposed to believe they've implemented a brilliant AI that will tug and pull at my subconscious and lead me to buy microtransactions? HA!

I'm more likely to drop 10bux on a Chromie skin in Heroes of the Storm than I am to buy fucking emblem sprays to put on an Iron Man warframe, and Blizzard just downsized the team that made this, AND I could get this for free with disenchanted dorito shards:

How do you make persistent monies in online games today?
• develop and implement highly advanced and adaptive AI that subtly manipulates a percentage of the playerbase's expectations and behavior, or
• sell cool/cute/sexy cosmetics directly

???

 

[Watcher]

They don't really need an AI to do this they've long since employed social psychologists to do things like inflate how long you have to wait on doing something in a game. To encourage you to spend more

The only part of this I see as dystopian is the parts that are borderline illegal like 3D mapping the user's home. For the rest of it, the AI isn't twisting your arm to make you purchase more and if you don't want to purchase items in a game nobody is forcing you to do it. It's just using suggestion which companies have done since printed advertisement first was a thing.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

People on Reddit are calling it fake, and I kinda agree, but "fake" doesn't mean it doesn't showcase modern gaming trends.
Even if the specific methods mentioned are not used due to being ineffective and/or illegal, machine learning is already used by larger game developers to squeeze every last penny via microtransactions.

Valve hired an economist to run their hat economy for a reason, that guy went on to become the minister of finance in Greece. Lessons learned: maybe an AI is better.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Lol, just because the executives over at EA and ubisoft are stupid doesn't make their intelligence artificial.

 

[jcd]

This is the biggest load of fantasy bullshit I've read all week. If you're falling for this your iq is in the negative. Many commoners think "AI" is magic that lets you do whatever you can imagine. Nobody but the biggest suckers will spend any amount of money at all on mobile phone games anyway.

 

[JM 590]

Yeah that document is way too unprofessionally written to hold water.

My favorite part is how it just kinda randomly throws in the part where it starts talking about 3D mapping people's homes, like it doesn't give a single reason for doing that, or how it can lead to greater player retention or whatever. Just there to scare grandmas I guess