Calling the game market "sinister" borders on hyperbole.
Horia Dragomir and Stephanie Kaiser from Wooga gave a presentation[0] on metrics driven game development at GOTO Copenhagen earlier this year. Through the lens of one of their more popular franchises "Monster World", they discussed, among other things, A/B testing and the surprisingly short life (days to weeks) of a game feature before it becomes irrelevant. Nothing in their talk suggested late night meetings in dark corners, plotting to turn their users into addicts. Rather, they discussed adapting to rapidly changing trends and patterns--which sometimes but not always included introducing new in-game purchase items.
If on the surface the game industry as a whole appears to you to be an online equivalent of a casino, thats fine. What I see are dedicated and passionate engineers trying to ensure the survival a product in which they've dedicated years of their lives to getting right, by employing many of the same techniques nearly every other user facing tech company uses everyday, and I for one am not ready to cast the first stone and accuse entire industries of moral bankruptcy.
There are surely very dedicated people working in some casinos. That doesn't have anything to do with them doing interesting stuff.
And the fact that they use "what every other user facing tech company uses" is exactly the problem. I like and use A/B testing, but it's purpose as a tool is to take decisions based on what extracts the more money from users. There's no dark corner, but the goal is definitely the same. And it's not exactly something that I want to associate with games.
The fact that your whole post, and a big part of the link you give, is as much applicable to selling games as to selling rocking chairs or any random saas product is exactly the problem. Marketing and sales come first, game development is merely an afterthought.
Horia Dragomir and Stephanie Kaiser from Wooga gave a presentation[0] on metrics driven game development at GOTO Copenhagen earlier this year. Through the lens of one of their more popular franchises "Monster World", they discussed, among other things, A/B testing and the surprisingly short life (days to weeks) of a game feature before it becomes irrelevant. Nothing in their talk suggested late night meetings in dark corners, plotting to turn their users into addicts. Rather, they discussed adapting to rapidly changing trends and patterns--which sometimes but not always included introducing new in-game purchase items.
If on the surface the game industry as a whole appears to you to be an online equivalent of a casino, thats fine. What I see are dedicated and passionate engineers trying to ensure the survival a product in which they've dedicated years of their lives to getting right, by employing many of the same techniques nearly every other user facing tech company uses everyday, and I for one am not ready to cast the first stone and accuse entire industries of moral bankruptcy.
[0] http://gotocon.com/cph-2012/presentation/The%20Metrics%20Des...