“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing"<p>It was a great workplace, but I don't think it was adding much value to the world.