Ejnar Håkonsen has studied the light and dark sides of player manipulation. He’s designed matchmaking and pay-to-win systems himself, and he’s theorycrafted in pay-to-win games with top-ranking whale guilds, to understand the strategies they use.
Years ago, he designed a multiplayer system that used manipulative practices for positive ends. It used commendations in kind of a genius way to reduce toxicity by weaponising a player’s ego against them.
He recently posted a Reddit thread about it which effectively open-sourced the design and had enormously positive feedback, which can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1m86pfb/my_job_is_to_psychologically_manipulate_gamers_as/
Although the game studio had to pivot away from that core design and the system was never implemented, game designers have been expressing their desire to implement similar systems.
Today, we talk to Ejnar about how his "friendship engine" system works, and how we can take that system in new directions.
If you're a game maker and start using this or a similar system, let Ejnar know! His LinkedIn is found at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejnarh/
If you want to read the article mentioned about rolling with top-ranking whale guilds and how the maker of a pay-to-win game lost much of its community, here's the link:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adventures-extreme-ethnography-how-i-got-inside-view-from-h%C3%A5konsen-a2nif/
Apologies for the audio issues in the early part of the podcast, I switched to my backup mic at around 8 minutes in.
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:37 - Ejnar's history in hypnosis
07:53 - Joining BetaDwarf
11:19 - Getting investors to think long-term
16:14 - Why game designers intuit psychology
20:50 - How Ejnar's frienshipping engine works
32:15 - The parallels between hypnotism and game design
36:17 - The Brilliance and Perils of Heroes of the Storm
41:10 - Blizzard's shortsightedness in cancelling HOTS42:15 - What kinds of loot box are toxic?50:33 - A database of friends, PvP, and too much social proof57:44 - How Russia's invasion and covid affected development59:28 - The next steps for this system
