About Addiction-Based Design

My latest View From the Bottom column, sadly the last one, is now live:

About Addiction-Based Design

It made front page Slashdot, and the comments were not unfriendly. Which is kind of a first for me. It's a bit more dry that my usual articles, but I wanted to put on my fancy Game Design Theory hat and try to isolate a particular sort of way to make a game addictive: The World of Warcraft poopsocker way. Some academics in the psychology field have taken cracks at this, but I thought it was useful to approach it from the designer perspective, which includes not assuming that a game being addictive is not necessarily evil.

Anyway, the article was originally pretty long and I was going to publish it in two parts, but the column got ended so I had to submit a shortened version. Next week, I'll put up here the original second half, which I think has some other interesting points and examples.

And View From the Bottom, RIP. One of the sad side effects of the recession is that a lot of the editors and writers who boosted me for so many years are disappearing from their positions. Oh, well. Thanks to Richard Aihoshi for supporting me all these years, and best of luck at mmorpg.com!