In our episode on liminal spaces,
we talked about the ways that modern games use your
data to personalize your experience.
The examples we used, like getting emails from your
in-game characters, or the AI taking over a friend's
avatar, those would not be possible without today's
connected technology.
Today, we're going to talk about how modern games use
your data in other ways that are a bit less obvious or
noticeable, but no less important for gaming's future.
And to help, we've gotten some writing assistance from
Joe Newman, privacy and consumer protection counsel
at EA. And, disclaimer, these are all Joe's opinions,
not formal legal advice,
and this does not necessarily represent the views or
practices of EA.
Cool? Ok.
Also, say hi to Maki. He's doing the art for us this week,
and he's great.
[intro music]
Behind the scenes at almost any major developer,
there's a team of engineers collecting and using
player data to make the games work.
Most of these data uses are unsurprising:
authenticating in-game purchases, detecting cheating,
identifying balance issues or glitches, stuff like that.
But as tech improves
and data from disparate sources gets better organized,
it opens a whole new field of opportunity for developers
to customize your experience,
even if you aren't consciously aware it's happening.
For instance, games of the future could use player data
in match-making to consider not just your skill level,
but also how seriously or casually you play,
and could automatically shield you from toxic or
overly-aggressive players.
Or future games could save you time by
skipping over tutorials if you are a series veteran,
recommending items or load-outs
based on your play style,
and even offering you custom discounts for in-game
items or other games you might like to play.
Future games could also be made more accessible by
detecting when you're struggling with a specific level or
task and offering personalized help,
either by giving you boosts,
creating specially-crafted training missions,
or, in some cases, even tweaking the RNG odds
ever so slightly in your favor
to give you a better chance of
brute-forcing your way to victory.
Through personalization, games of tomorrow will be
smarter, more streamlined, and ultimately more fun.
But there is a flipside to this.
In today's microtransaction-heavy industry,
where every new feature must be justified
with a bump in revenue,
there's definitely the risk that players are going to be
taken advantage of:
that they'll be pestered with overly-aggressive or
invasive ads, or that their personal data will be used
to make their experience less fun,
all in the service of making a few extra bucks.
So one might reasonably ask, "Is all of that legal?"
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission
and similar state consumer protection laws
prevent private businesses from engaging in,
quote, "unfair or deceptive acts or practices
in or affecting commerce." And the FTC
has written a lot about consumer issues raised by
big data. But, then again, if "unfair or deceptive acts
or practices" sounds kind of like a squishy
legal standard to you, well that's because it can be.
To illustrate, Orbitz drew some negative criticism
a few years back because they were secretly showing
pricier hotel deals to customers searching their site
using a Mac vs. a PC,
the thinking presumably being that Mac users are
probably more likely to pay for the additional luxury.
The Obama administration and FTC did not like that
Orbitz's targeting practices were not super transparent
to consumers. That is for sure.
But the government was hesitant to outright say that
all differential pricing is automatically illegal.
After all, we are a capitalist economy here in the US,
and both buyers and sellers can benefit when the
market efficiently responds to demand.
If a seller knows you well, understands your needs, and
goes out of its way to present you with offers
that it thinks you'll like, that's not necessarily
hurting you.
The heck, some would say that that's good
customer service. But legal analysis aside for a second,
as game developers, we need to tread very carefully
here for a simple reason:
gamers are smart, and they talk to each other.
They compare their experiences on forums,
they reverse-engineer and min-max game systems,
and they do all of that for fun.
Imagine that Orbitz scenario taking place in the gaming
world. Imagine a game where the in-game shop
charges you just a little bit more if you're on an iPhone
than if you're on an Android device,
or imagine a game that bumps up its prices
if it recognizes you as somebody who spends a lot at its
store. Or imagine that the game detects that you've been
collecting all the pieces to build a specific set of armor,
and you only need just one more piece of adamant
to make it, and then suddenly you notice that,
for some reason, adamant costs more in your
in-game shop than in your friend's.
Players will catch on to stuff like that, and if they think
they are being cheated, they will turn on you... hard.
The stakes here are real.
If developers don't self-regulate and
keep their mechanics fair to players, the government
is eventually going to have to intervene.
The EU has already passed a regulation
going into effect next year
giving citizens the right to withdraw their consent to all
behavioral targeting.
Meanwhile, countries like China are already taking
a direct, active role in game development,
forcing game companies to publicly disclose drop rates
for in-game loot boxes.
We need to come to our own set of best practices
for this stuff now, because otherwise all developers,
including those who aren't abusing data,
are going to get caught up in this mess.
If we can figure this out, though,
and keep our players' trust in the process,
data-driven games have the potential to
move our medium forward in some really exciting ways,
making gaming more personal and, therefore,
more engaging.
Hopefully, this has given you a glimpse into gaming's
data-driven future and driven you to think a bit more
about how your games get to know you as a player.
But believe me, there is a lot more
worth talking about here.
Pretty big questions like, "How do we review games
or even talk about them critically when the game
I experienced might be fundamentally different
than the game you experienced due to personalization?"
Or, "As a developer, what responsibility do I have
to avoid exposing players to content that I know
would be outside their personal comfort zone?"
And, if we do take steps like that, do we risk
fracturing our games community into
disparate bubbles, each experiencing
different versions of our game?
And, lastly, as a player, if you know that your actions
are going to be tracked and potentially carry
consequences outside the game, will that actually
change the way you play?
Would you make different choices if you felt like
the game was watching you?
As you can see, we have just barely scratched
the surface on this.
Maybe we'll come back to it another time.
Until then, share your thoughts
on these questions below.
Thank you again to Maki and Joe for their help today,
and we will see you next week.