By now, most of you have probably had a game greet you by your real name
without you having entered it yourself.
How is it doing that?
Well, it's scraping your data from...
somewhere.
And as more of our systems end up with more and more of our data, we have to ask ourselves,
"What are the ethical and design ramifications of games doing this?"
This episode is brought to you by Audible.
Go to audible.com/extracreditz (with a z) to start your free 30-day trial.
*Woosh*
Your NES and your SEGA Genesis:
these were dumb machines.
They performed a single, simple function:
to run the code on the cartridges that you put into them
Of course, that's not the case with our Xbox Ones, our PS4s or our Switches
Today, those systems hold a huge manifold of data about us
If you've ever entered a credit card info into one of them, they have a name and an address
If you've linked your email account, they hold that too.
If you've connected your Facebook or your YouTube accounts,
there's probably a ton of personal data that can be gleaned there
And this doesn't even take into account all of the information they have on your playing habits,
from your trophies, hours played on each game, completion rate and such
or the information that's stored about who you play with and who your friend group is
Now, a lot of that data isn't accessible to game developers
but some of it is, and it's almost frightening what a developer,
one way or another, can scrape about you, if they choose to do so,
especially if you play games on your PC.
So let's talk about the ramifications of this
Because, especially in the indie game-space,
I've seen people start to explore what can be done with this collected information
and there are some genuinely cool possibilities.
When you wake up and you check your email in the morning
to find that the mysterious AI character from the game you've been playing
has left you a note with information that will help you progress?
That's a pretty powerful moment!
When one of your friends logs on and hops into your game, except it's not really your friend,
it's just the game using their handle
That can lead to all sorts of genuinely breathtaking, heartbreaking or even revelatory moments
But there are a lot of dangers there too
There are, of course, the obviously terrible examples
Where games start putting in targeted ads based on your purchase history or the like
But I think there are less obvious possibilities worth considering here, too
The ones that might, unfortunately, come up when
people are genuinely trying to make better, more immersive experiences for you to play
Imagine that scenario I described before where a game emails you
What is your gaming account isn't tied to your real email address?
Or worse, what if, in its data scrapping, the game somehow gets the wrong address,
and emails, like, your dad or your significant other?
That is gonna be one confusing email they get in their inbox
And hopefully, it doesn't read like a ransom note or a threat or something
Which kind of leads me to my first point:
When making use of real-world data
we have to be incredibly careful that anything we do
Won't be misconstrued as real by somebody not playing the game
The goal here is, of course to make the game more immersive for the player
I mean, they've already bought in
There's already a sort of tacit agreement involved in playing the game
So they are most likely okay with elements of the game popping up in their real life in cool little ways
But we've got to make sure to prevent confusion with those real-world elements
Or they could potentially have some disastrous ramifications.
Which also leads me to our second point:
Please, please do not have your game do anything that could be misconstrued as criminal
Or that would suggest the possibility of real-world criminal activity to somebody not playing the game
I feel like that should go without saying, but--here we are
Now let's take the second scenario:
The case where the game impersonates somebody you know
I'm hesitant to say that we should never do this
Because I'm just incredibly reluctant to cut off any avenue of design
Much less one that could deliver such huge emotional stakes
But this one rides incredibly close to that line
There are just too many things that could just go too wrong
I mean we could just destroy friendships
Imagine if your friend hopped into your game and then acted like a complete jerk
went way over the line
And then you confront them about it later and they claim to know nothing about it
This just gets bad in a hurry
Or maybe they don't act like a jerk
Maybe they just act weird or they stay silent when you try to talk to them
You could get really worried for that person if you don't immediately recognize that they're just a trick of the computer's
We also have to be careful of who we pull from people's friends list
Imagine if an "ex" of yours suddenly hopped into your game,
one who you still have feelings for
Or imagine if the game pulled in somebody you'd lost--
a parent, or a grandparent--who, for years, had just been sitting idle in your friends list
The person you've never been able to bring yourself to delete
Then imagine them suddenly joining your game
There's just no reason to put somebody through that
So I think games that do this sort of data-dredging will have to notify the player at the outset
At least at first
I know it takes away some of the impact
And blunts some of the emotional effect
But it also helps to mitigate how much damage might be done, and that's essential
And in some ways, I hate losing that surprise
That revelation that the game "knows" me
Not as some impersonal and generic player
But actually knows who I am in some strange way
And that it's, like, tailoring itself to me
Perhaps, in time, as these features become more common, it's possible we won't need any warning
For the time being, though, we need to alert the player if we're going to dig through their data.
And platform-holders are also going to have to start getting involved
By giving players more control over their data
All personal data should default to "share with no one," no matter how innocuous
I mean, do I really care if a game can see what trophies I've gotten
just so it can make some crack about how I need to git gud at Dark Souls?
No, but it doesn't matter. That's got to be the player's choice.
Games should also be able to ask for permissions
Much in the way as when you sign into something with Facebook and it asks for permission to access data
But that needs to be the player's choice to opt into
Not something that they've got to go through arcane menus to opt out of.
If a game opened up and said "Hey, [game] would like to access your trophies and your play-times"
I would almost certainly say "Yeah, sure. Go for it"
And then I would know what I was getting into
I could "okay" these things on a case-by-case basis
limiting the potential negative effects
This new horizon of design, where we scrape data about you
to make your game more personalized, more intimate, has enormous potential
These games could provide us with moments that will stick with us for a lifetime
So I don't really want to simply close that door or say "let's never go there"
But it is really important that we explore these possibilities with our eyes open
That we give the player the opportunity to control their experience and respect them as they do so
We cannot just jump into this new avenue of design thoughtlessly
More than ever, this is the place where we must remember:
The player comes first
See you next week!
This episode was brought to you by Audible
The leading provider of audiobooks with an unmatched selection for you to choose from
Audiobooks are great for making travel or traffic or chores that much more enjoyable
This week for any of you Extra History fans
our recommendation is Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
There is so much more to Catherine than our series of videos could contain
and this book can help you start to fill in those gaps
Go to audible.com/extracreditz (with a "z")
Because it d-d-- don't worry about it
Anyway, go there and start your free 30-day trial