210B. Online Sex Games and Malicious Automation

Once you are plugged in, Reward Removal is repeated over and over using EOMM to inflict maximum suffering. That suffering is converted to spending in the latest generation of "Fun Pain".

My original review of Smutstone on Steam under my game tag sarcerok on January 17th:

“I work in game dev, doing what we call "monetisation". I don't think players appreciate just how sophisticated this game is. It's 100% straight up a PsyOps designed to frustrate players into spending. All of the timers and systems are designed to almost give you something then dangle completion at a price.

I enjoy the game not for the art, but for the challenge of breaking the PsyOp and advancing without spending. If you are here for the artwork, or a sense of accomplishment, I think most players will find the experience frustrating. This "game" is here to intentionally frustrate you until you spend or quit. Spending just causes the game to come at you even more aggressively, so frustration levels will never decline.”

Players and developers of heavily Dark Patterned games have been playing this cat and mouse game for over a decade. The developer tries to frustrate the player at every turn, until they give in and spend to decrease the discomfort. Of course the discomfort just comes back, forcing a repeat of this test of wills. I think at some point King bragged that some 97% of players of their Candy Crush game can play it without spending. This is a dubious brag since it shows just how low the conversion rates are on their monetisation.

But it also points out that players often wear this discomfort as a badge of honor. Being able to play without spending is just like playing on a higher difficulty, and thus bragging rights. The bad news there for developers is that they are in direct competition with their players, and one or both of them must lose. Usually the developer.

With Smutstone, as soon as the first Event starts that’s when the rewards ramp up. The dead zone between events (which can last up to 3 weeks each) is just there to build anticipation for the next event. Rewards are close to zero until the event starts.

But something felt wrong, more wrong than normal with these kinds of games. After a month I found that instead of usually placing really high in these events, I was getting slaughtered. I’m pretty good at these sorts of games, so it felt unfair. I would start out close to the top on the event leader board, but then about 8 hours in everyone would be passing me.

It’s safe to say I play at the mathematical limit of what can be achieved without spending. Were 80% of players really spending 10s or even hundreds of dollars per event? I’m well aware that’s impossible. Something was up.

Automated EOMM

I’ve written a lot of articles on how awful and manipulative “Engagement Optimized Match Making” is. EOMM involves forcing players to win or lose on a schedule, entirely independent of skill or merit, to create the most addictive play experience possible. So in a 5 on 5 player match, when you are supposed to lose you are matched against much better opponents.

But at least there are other players and at least some chance you could win. For the developer, this can be quite a bit of work to manipulate all the players all the time. It gets harder when player census is low as you may not have the right mix of good and bad players on at the same time.

The solution? Get rid of the players entirely. Create a 100% artificial Matrix-like world where every other person is a machine or just a name. In Smutstone, there is no chat, and I now know why. It’s not to protect users, it’s to protect the developers. If players could talk, they would realize that they are all in a custom fake event. During events the goal for the player is to place in the top 50 (bronze), 20 (silver), or 3 (gold) on the leaderboard. Getting points is really hard if you don’t spend, but you can buy as many points as you want.

On February 25th I updated my Steam review to warn that at least 75% of the “players” were actually bots. The bots could just raise their score at will, creating a totally fake competition experience. I suspected the bots were set up to just increase their score rapidly by multiplying their score by a scaler about once an hour. So I took a screenshot of all my competitors and their scores so that I could calculate that scalar.

That’s when I realized the entire game was a scam. Not a single player in my leaderboard competition was still there. Every single one had changed mid event. This implied that there were NO other players. I was surrounded entirely by bots. Those bots could change their names and scores at will to make sure I would always be at the top of the losing band (around 51 to 55 on the leaderboard), so close to getting a reward.

When you get a reward and then the developer takes it away, I call this Reward Removal. I first described this in my viral 2013 Top F2P Monetisation Tricks paper. But here the entire game is automated and you are subjected to continual Reward Removal until the game breaks your will.

This picture of Morpheus being tortured by AI is exactly what is going on here. Those top tier terrorist organisations that prey on children in Roblox, like 764 group I talked about in the previous paper, do something very similar but without automation. This sort of psychological torture is extremely damaging over time.

This sets up the dramatic climax to one of the greatest action movies (and scenes) in movie history. When you plug into Smutstone, this is what it does to you. The goal is to break your mind to make you give up your (or your mom’s) credit card. I think most adults will just eject pretty fast. But children take longer to figure out what is going on, and can be broken easier. Here instead of physical drugs and torture, a digital drug is used based on cyclical Reward Removal. If you spend, it gets much more severe because the “game” can just take away the leader board position you paid for, multiplying the Reward Removal and mixing it with Sunk Cost Fallacy. The latter makes you spend more to “rescue” the amount you already spent. This is the typical end game for gamblers when they lose it all.

The problem here is that Neo and Trinity aren’t going to crash through the door to unplug little Jimmy. His parents probably don’t even know about his naughty little habit and since he’s hiding it, there’s no way anyone can help him. This is the same scenario that led to the death of Sewall Setzer at the age of 14 at the hands of his AI “girlfriend”.

Regulation

While the Digital Fairness Act might block these sorts of games in the EU, this use of Automated EOMM is extraordinarily dangerous, especially with children. Protections need to extend beyond the EU, and soon. Otherwise we are going to lose more kids. As this is fairly new, I don’t know if the EU is specifically looking for this, but they need to really put these sorts of “games” at the top of the list for regulation.

Of course it would be great if parents understood these risks and had conversations with their kids early on so that they can “stay clean”.