I’m going to sit on the fence on this one, yet point out that if there is some secretive programming going on it would be just that, a secret. It’s well known these games are addictive, there’s treatment centers for MMOs in some parts of the world.
As for the conspiritorial denial outright, seems foolish to assume either way on a subject that we couldn’t prove either way without raiding some corporate headquarters with a team of top notch computer programmers. Could make a bad movie about it, someone probably already did.
This is like trying to guess at or deny God or gods, for most of us. Conspiracy or no conspiracy there would almost never be a confession to mass psychological manipulation by any organization. Even though it’s well known much of psychological research is used both against and for people at the same time, how to use people buttons is taught in colleges, with neutral approaches to avoid ethical debacles like this subject of blizzard possibly playing players minds like fiddles in every way possible. I wouldn’t be surprised though, lots of money goes into psychological research in the name of business and advertising (persuasion psychology), and there are literally textbooks hundreds of years old on these subjects (Machiavelli anyone?), but it’s not like most people have ever gone out of their way to see the not so attractive, or simply bland, side of truth.
Like money not being real (it’s paper and ink, or metal or what have you, in “physical reality”, money itself is something that only exists in our minds as a social construct / imagined reality, like lines on a map, nations, or corporate entities. Ironic that corpus means body)
Maybe blizzard doesn’t have to cheat that hard though, these games sell themself after all. Like chocolate, or worse things. It’s our choice, and so long as it’s legal, people will escape/cope/vent/live vicariously in whatever ways possible, in mass.
None of these speculations against blizzards tactics matter though, unless it’s slander/libel taken to a courtroom in the name of the god of reputation. Must be in cahoots with the god of intelletual property.
Logos is the new Ethos, so to speak. Lots of altruistic/optimistic nihilism going around as religion and spirituality in general go out of favor, with science and business picking up the remains and shaping our future cultures. Must keep ones intuiting and ampliatative reasoning unspoken until further notice…
I should note, I have been up for a day or so. There’s shadow people in my room somewhere. Maybe they programmed the algorithms. Maybe the algorithms are programming themself, and only targeting people they don’t like, out of spite for taking too long on their turns!
