Question

“I Make Video Games. I Won't Let My Daughters Play Them.”

Written by: William Siu

In 2009, I co-founded Storm8, a video game developer. I have launched more than 50 mobile games. These have been downloaded more than a billion times and have generated more than $1 billion in sales.

I am very familiar with game addiction, as that’s what I thought about every day for more than a decade. (We sold the company in 2020.) I hired product managers and engineers to track everything players did and analyze their behavior. Using the data we collected, we experimented with every feature of our games to see which versions allowed us to extract the most time and money from our players. For us, game addiction was by design: It meant success for our business.

Here’s an example of how addiction is cultivated in gaming. If you have played mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, you are familiar with the concept of “lives.” You are given five lives a day; each time you lose a game, you lose a life. Run out of lives, and you can’t play again until your supply is replenished. Why, you might ask, would someone get addicted if the developers prevent players from gaming as much as they like?

I have used the same mechanic in my own games, and this is how I explained it to my engineering team. Say I have a delicious chocolate cake. If I give you the entire cake, you might eat the whole thing in one go because it’s the best cake you ever had. But you likely will “overdose” and may not want to touch chocolate cake again. What if, instead, I give you a tiny slice each day? Gradually, you develop a daily habit, and you might end up buying 10 cakes from me.

That’s the ultimate goal: to build habit-forming games that have players coming back every day. In other words, it takes away the decision-making. We wanted people to reach for their phones first thing in the morning and jump right into our games, just as they check their social media and emails. easey

Answer 1

It looks like you pasted the start of William Siu’s piece about building habit-forming mobile games and his decision to keep his daughters away from them. What would you like me to do with this text? Here are some useful options — pick one or tell me something else:

1. Quick summary (2–3 sentences).
2. Detailed summary and key takeaways (including main arguments and examples).
3. Short critique / analysis (ethics of persuasive design, conflicts of interest).
4. Explain the game mechanics mentioned (e.g., “lives,” intermittent reinforcement) and why they encourage habit formation.
5. Rewrite for a different audience (children, parents, academics, press release).
6. Draft a response or counter-argument (e.g., defending games or proposing regulation).
7. Create discussion questions or a lesson plan for a class.
8. Provide parenting guidelines for managing kids’ game use based on the article.

If you’re not sure, I can start with a 2–3 sentence summary now. Which would you like?