What I always enjoy about this kind of posting's is how you instantly get lots of "oh boo hoo, cry me a river" kinds of responses. Maybe its not the same thing as putting nicotine in children's juice boxes but I don't think designing games to exploit human weakness to take peoples money, (weakness not distributed uniformly throughout the population,) is a neutral thing. Some people have gambling problems and you can decide that that is all their fault and that it is ok to design video poker machines using the best available science to encourage compulsive gambling but I don't think it is. I don't know if anybody has been ruined by some stupid phone game but I could see it, Exploiting the weak is lame. This raises the bigger question for me which is: just because you can take somebodies money is it moral to do so? I suppose its on a continuum, clearly committing a crime to get somebody's money is not generally moral. The problem is when it isn't a crime but almost seems like it should be. For instance usury, or the difference between gouging and a fair sale. It would be great if it were black and white, and maybe for a lot of people it is, but I don't see it that way. It kind of reminds me of the stories from decades ago about families losing thousands of dollars because of junior's 900 number habit.
