siliconwafer writes: "An article in The Economist raises some interesting points about addiction to video games, drawing from psychology and sociology to describe why certain people prefer certain types of games, and why they might become addicted to them. It is suggested that to discourage addiction, game designers could have their games recognize addictive behavior and respond to it by encouraging gamers to take breaks. Do game designers have any responsibility to recognize addictive behavior, or does this responsibility fall solely on the gamer (or the gamer's parents in the case of a minor)?"
(Score: 2, Informative) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:24PM
There's one reference to Zynga hiring a behavioral psychologist [time.com], and other references indicating that they explicitly design games for addiction.
In protest, one game developer, Ian Bogost, created a game intended to be a conspicuously pure expression of this [bogost.com]. And to his chagrin, it was a big success [npr.org].